The Information — AI
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The Information — AI news-outlet 13d ago
Polymarket, Kalshi Take Steps to Block Fraud Rings
Polymarket and Kalshi are racing to turn more major events into opportunities to place bets, including everything from daily temperature highs during a New York City heat wave to the latest contestant to be eliminated from “Love Island,” the reality TV hit. That’s helped the…
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Index Startup Ornn Launches Anthropic, OpenAI Token Benchmarks
Ornn, a startup that tracks the cost of computing power for artificial intelligence, has launched a service to track the price of tokens produced by the leading AI labs. The new benchmark comes as AI firms’ customers and financial backers search for better ways to track major AI…
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SpaceX finalizes $60 billion deal to acquire Cursor
SpaceX announced it agreed to buy AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion on Tuesday. The announcement came only a few days after SpaceX went public at a valuation of about $1.77 trillion. Since the IPO, SpaceX stock has risen 42% to close on Monday at $193.50, valuing it at…
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DeepSeek Closes Record $7 Billion-Plus Funding with Unusual Deal Structure
Chinese AI lab DeepSeek has closed its first funding round that raised more than 50 billion yuan ($7.4 billion) under an unusual deal structure, The Information reported. The funding round, which values the large-language model developer at more than $50 billion, requires…
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DeepSeek Closes Record $7 Billion-Plus Funding with Unusual Deal Structure
Chinese AI lab DeepSeek has closed its first funding round that raised more than 50 billion yuan ($7.4 billion) under an unusual deal structure, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. The funding round, which values the large-language model developer at…
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Anthropic Discusses Possible Accord With Trump Administration
Anthropic senior leaders met with top Trump administration officials on Monday to discuss a resolution to a White House directive that caused the AI startup to suspend access to its latest models, according to a company spokesperson. A spokesperson for the White House did not…
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Roku’s Timely Exit; Salesforce’s Dealmaking Is Revving Up
There’s a lot going on all of a sudden. We’re all still trying to come to grips with the latest Anthropic-Trump administration standoff. SpaceX’s market performance so far has been like a rocket ship: The stock rose 20% on Monday, finishing with a market capitalization of $2.5…
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Qualcomm in Talks to Buy Tenstorrent to Expand AI Chip Capabilities
Qualcomm has been in talks to buy Tenstorrent, a startup that designs chips for AI, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deal. The two companies have discussed a price between at least $8 billion and $10 billion, the person said, which would be a significant…
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Nvidia Plans To Raise At Least $20 Billion In Bonds
Nvidia said Monday it plans to raise new debt even as the AI chip leader keeps generating tens of billions of dollars in cash every quarter. It will be the company’s first corporate bond sale since 2021, when it raised $5 billion. Bloomberg earlier reported that Nvidia would…
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Anthropic Sued Over ‘Misleading’ Limits on Premium Subscription Plans
A Washington, D.C.-based Anthropic customer filed a class action lawsuit against Anthropic Sunday night alleging that the company had misled customers about the value of its premium “Max 5x” and “Max 20x” subscription plans. The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic markets its Max 20x…
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Nvidia’s Share of AI Inference Chip Market Appears to Be Rising
As AI developers and cloud providers have launched server chips to lessen their dependence on Nvidia’s, some analysts and executives at these firms expected the chips to eat into Nvidia’s market share. That doesn’t seem to be happening. Nvidia has actually increased its share of…
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AI’s Cost Problem Becomes Front and Center, At Least in Asia
Anthropic can’t catch a break! Leaders of the AI firm are meeting with Trump administration officials in D.C. this week to try to resolve a dispute that blew up on Friday night. The administration said that it would need to cut off access to its most advanced Claude Fable 5 and…
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Salesforce to Acquire Customer AI Agent Fin for $3.6 Billion
Salesforce has agreed to buy Fin, a startup that develops customer agents formerly known as Intercom, for $3.6 billion, as the software giant hopes to win new businesses from enterprises to adopt its own AI offering. The sale price is a big premium to Fin’s last valuation of $2…
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Inside Broadcom’s Bold Move to Boost Demand for Its Chips
When Broadcom last week announced a funding venture with Apollo and Blackstone to pay for a gigawatt of computing capacity to be used by Anthropic, it looked like the latest in a series of AI computing deals funded by private equity. Behind the scenes, however, the deal…
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Fox to Buy Roku for $22 Billion
The Murdoch family’s Fox is buying Roku for $22 billion in cash and stock, or $160 a share, giving Roku shareholders an exit at the highest price at which the stock has traded since the 2020-2022 Covid-fueled surge. In recent years Roku has traded mostly below $100 a share.…
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Exclusive: Nvidia Server Marketplace Startup Raises $100 Million at $800 Million Valuation
Data center software startup and AI-server broker Hydra Host has raised $100 million at a valuation of close to $800 million, led by Kindred Ventures. Nvidia, Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest, early CoreWeave backer Magnetar, and existing investors Founders Fund and Flume Ventures also…
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Exclusive: Tencent Backs Former Alibaba Researcher’s New AI Lab
Tencent Holdings has backed a new AI lab founded by Junyang Lin, former lead researcher of Alibaba Group’s Qwen models, according to two people with knowledge of the investment. Tencent invested $20 million in Lin’s first funding round that raised several hundred million dollars…
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Anthropic’s Contradiction; The Risks of Buying SpaceX Stock Now
What a weekend! Set time aside this coming Thursday for the New York City ticker tape parade celebrating the victorious Knicks. The joy flowing from that game Saturday night tops even the plaudits flowing from SpaceX’s successful IPO (read down for more on that subject.) Still,…
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Bootleg Market for Reta Reaches At Least $100 Million in Estimated Sales
Demand for knockoff versions of retatrutide, a peptide-based drug being developed by Eli Lilly, has skyrocketed lately, propelling a gray market that likely exceeds $100 million in annual sales, according to an estimate prepared by The Information that examined many of the…
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OpenAI, Anthropic Employees Have Already Cashed Out About $14 Billion
Anthropic and OpenAI have some pressing reasons to go public. But they have already relieved some of the pressure that typically pushes companies toward initial public offerings: employees anxious to cash out their equity. The two AI model companies have allowed early employees…
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Exclusive: U.S. Government Unlikely to Extend Anthropic Export Control to Other AI Companies
The White House is unlikely to extend export restrictions on Anthropic’s advanced models to other AI companies, an official close to the U.S. government said Saturday. The mandate stemmed from what the official said was Anthropic’s refusal to fix vulnerabilities in its recent…
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Amazon’s Jassy Raised Concerns About Anthropic Model Before Trump Crackdown
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was among the tech leaders who raised concerns to senior Trump administration officials this week about security risks in Anthropic’s most advanced models, according to two people familiar with the conversations. The calls between the head of…
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AI’s Blithe Spending and Crusoe’s Stargate Woes
Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter: • The Big Read: Tech readies itself for a Reta-aissance • Politics and Policy: A Silicon Valley politician’s counter move to the big tech PACs • Biotech: Longevity startups’ holy grail pursuit faces a prosaic roadblock • Plus,…
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Longevity Startups Have a Conundrum: Can They Sell Longevity Drugs?
In many ways, these are the best of times for Silicon Valley’s buzziest crop of longevity startups and their pursuit of drugs that can reverse aging. NewLimit, a cell reprogramming company co-founded in 2022 by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, announced earlier this month that it…
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How One Silicon Valley Congressman is Trying Get AI Mega Money Out of Politics
In early April, a staffer for Sam Liccardo, a freshman congressman representing the heart of Silicon Valley, got a call from a reporter telling them he was about to receive an endorsement—from Leading the Future, the $125 million political action committee funded by…
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Anthropic Suspends Customers’ Access to Latest Models After Government Order
Anthropic announced in a blog post Friday night that customers could no longer access its advanced models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, following a U.S. government order over national security concerns. The company also disabled access for foreign-national employees. The company said…
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OpenAI Investigated by State Attorneys General on User Interaction
A coalition of state attorneys general has sent OpenAI a subpoena seeking documents about how the ChatGPT maker’s chatbot affects users, an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed. The attorneys general directed OpenAI to send them information including advertising, user engagement,…
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Roku in Discussions to be Acquired
Roku is in discussions to be acquired by another company, Bloomberg reported, sending shares of the streaming device maker up 20%. At the higher price, Reddit has a market capitalization of $21 billion. The idea that Roku might be acquired isn’t new. Roku’s ability to survive as…
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Binance, Bybit Cancel SpaceX IPO Allocations After Shortfall
Crypto platforms Binance, Bybit and Bitget said Friday they had to cancel plans to offer tokens backed by SpaceX stock to overseas investors during the IPO after their partner in the venture, Kraken-owned xStocks, couldn’t secure enough SpaceX stock. The episode is a setback for…
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How Musk Kept Bankers Guessing in Sprint to SpaceX IPO
High up in Goldman Sachs’ downtown Manhattan headquarters Thursday afternoon, bankers from Goldman and Morgan Stanley, together with SpaceX executives, toasted the pricing of SpaceX’s IPO over glasses of Champagne. In many ways, it was a replay of hundreds of other such…
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Tokenminimizing: Meta Moves to Curb Employee AI Usage as AI Costs Reach Billions
Meta Platforms plans to clamp down on skyrocketing AI costs inside the company by imposing limits on employees’ token usage, the company told staff in a memo on Tuesday, just weeks after it pushed them to adopt AI tools in their work. The company is building an internal platform…
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Microsoft Has Considered Spinning Out Xbox, Plans New ‘Halo,’ ‘Fallout’ Games
As Microsoft gets ready to overhaul its struggling Xbox gaming unit, it hasn’t ruled out spinning out or restructuring the unit as a wholly-owned subsidiary, which could make it easier to sell, or creating a joint venture with other partners, according to three people with…
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SpaceX Shares Open at $150 Per Share
SpaceX shares started trading at $150 per share around mid-day on Friday, up 11% from the company’s initial public offering price of $135. Shares of the company climbed shortly after trading began, reaching about $165 shortly after noon. The offering makes SpaceX CEO Elon Musk…
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Inside Tech’s Feverish Demand for Retatrutide, a Supposed Super Peptide
For more than a decade, Dr. Molly Maloof has had a front-row seat to Silicon Valley’s ever-evolving health obsessions as a physician and founder of M3 Healthspan, a San Francisco–based concierge medical practice serving the tech elite. Lately, those conversations have…
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Meta Bought Rivos to Accelerate Its AI Chip Push. It Isn’t Working.
Meta Platforms bought semiconductor startup Rivos last year to accelerate development of in-house chips and reduce its reliance on Nvidia as it pours cash into data centers for its AI ambitions. Now six months since the acquisition closed, Meta is struggling to make it work,…
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Nvidia Pitches Vera CPU to Chinese Customers
Nvidia is pitching Chinese customers on its new Vera central processing units for AI data centers, telling them the chips could be available as soon as August and that orders can begin now, Reuters reported, citing three people familiar with the matter. The push gives Nvidia…
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Customers Fret as Anthropic Launches Apps That Compete with Theirs
Anthropic is increasingly launching applications that directly compete with its own enterprise customers, triggering fears in the software and AI startup sectors, The Information reported . This friction boiled over during Anthropic’s recent launch of Claude Design, when Figma…
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Microsoft’s Gaming Glitch
Sorry. We have no SpaceX news (if you define news as something you don’t already know). The rocket-and-cloud firm on Thursday priced its IPO at the $135 offering number announced last week, as it was widely expected to. Check back tomorrow, when shares start to trade. (Here’s a…
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Sierra Space, Axiom Plot IPOs as SpaceX Feeds Frenzy
It’s finally here! SpaceX Thursday officially priced its IPO at $135 per share, valuing the company at around $1.75 trillion, capping a frenetic six month stretch that defied many of the norms of initial public offerings . If the IPO goes well, expect to see more space public…
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Anthropic Blindsides Its Business Partners
Weeks before Anthropic in April revealed Claude Design, an AI tool for creating designs and software application prototypes, it asked firms including Figma and Canva to be “partners” of the launch announcement showcasing the tool’s capabilities. These two design firms, longtime…
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Crypto Traders Bet on SpaceX IPO Popping 20%
Crypto traders are pricing SpaceX perpetual contracts at $165 on exchanges such as Binance and Hyperliquid as of Thursday afternoon, about 20% higher than SpaceX’s IPO price of $135 per share. SpaceX stock is set to start trading on the Nasdaq Friday. Pre-IPO perpetual contracts…
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SpaceX Prices IPO at $135 Per Share, Starts Trading Friday
SpaceX officially priced its initial public offering at $135 per share, the same figure as its earlier target, and the shares will start trading on Nasdaq on Friday, the company said in a filing. The take-it-or-leave-it approach upended Wall Street tradition where a company…
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Snowflake Mounts Full-Court Press to Get Employees Using AI
When Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy and CFO Brian Robins face Wall Street analysts on quarterly earnings calls nowadays, they’re armed with material from an internally developed AI agent. The agent tells the two executives the questions they’re expecting the analysts to ask and…
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KKR, Nvidia, Others Launch $10 Billion Data Center Company
Private equity firm KKR, the Kuwait Investment Authority, Nvidia and power generation company Vistra launched a new company on Thursday to finance and help build AI data centers. Nvidia’s role as an anchor investor in Helix signifies another extension of the AI giant’s growing…
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Anthropic Pursues First Data Center Leases, Seeks Financial Backing From Google
Anthropic is moving forward with a plan to control its own servers for developing AI, giving it the ability to cut its computing costs in the long run. The maker of Claude in recent months has signed more than a dozen initial agreements, known as letters of intent, to lease data…
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Meta Cuts Ties With Manus
Meta Platforms has fully separated its operations from Manus after Chinese authorities ordered the companies to unwind their $2 billion acquisition deal, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp has halted data…
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Why Microsoft and Other Anthropic Customers Held Off On Using Claude Fable
Anthropic’s latest AI is so good at coding tasks that many firms are willing to pay top dollar to use it even as Anthropic effectively raises prices. But some customers are holding off over cybersecurity concerns. In releasing its latest model, Claude Fable , Anthropic started a…
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DoorDash Launches Conversational AI Assistant
DoorDash launched a new AI assistant, Ask DoorDash, that customers can use to search for restaurants, shop for groceries and place orders in its app. In the coming weeks, customers will also be able to use the assistant to create restaurant reservations. DoorDash cofounder Andy…
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Google Turns to Samsung for Future AI Chip as Capacity Tightens
Google is considering giving Samsung Electronics a crucial role in making a component of one of its most advanced future AI chips, as the ongoing manufacturing capacity crunch pushes chip firms to look for suppliers beyond Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. The U.S. tech…
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German Court Ruling Against Google Spotlights AI Liability Question
We got big news in the past couple of days concerning a European court ruling against Google. But bear with me, this is not one of those knee-jerk anti-U.S. tech decisions we often see coming out of Europe. This ruling makes some sense—and could have broader implications for the…
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