Journal archive, page 4

Andreessen Horowitz launched a new $1.1 billion fund dedicated only to AI chips, power, and robotics. The pitch to founders: hardware moats now beat software speed.

Owner raised $240 million at a $2.3 billion valuation, and its AI agents now run more US restaurant locations than Domino's or Taco Bell.

A federal judge ruled the Pentagon's six-month blacklist of Anthropic violated the First Amendment and was retaliatory. For founders selling to government, procurement risk isn't just financial anymore.

Anthropic plans to unveil its IPO prospectus after Labor Day and list by early October, letting existing shareholders sell shares, unlike SpaceX and Cerebras.

AI assistant startup Instinct raised $250 million at a $2.5 billion valuation, up 50x from $50 million four months ago, as VCs race to fund agentic AI products.

AWS is adding 2 million more Nvidia GPUs for 2027-2028, tripling its original 1 million-chip commitment after demand blew through the plan ahead of schedule.

Nvidia's data center revenue hit $89 billion, up 117%, and its next-quarter guidance excludes China entirely and still points to 85%+ growth.

Meta will pay up to $18 billion to settle a 52-state lawsuit over addictive design for kids, and must ship default time limits and age checks within months.

Universal, Sony and Warner Music all backed Stability AI's $76M round, a first for any generative AI company, after two years of licensing deals instead of lawsuits.

OpenAI expanded ChatGPT ads to 31 European countries this week, six months after its US pilot. Analysts expect under $1B in 2026 ad revenue, a fraction of what OpenAI spends on compute.

Amazon hiked Echo, Kindle, Fire TV and eero prices as much as 60% with no announcement, blaming memory costs. The AI data center boom is now taxing a product line that has nothing to do with AI.

Nvidia is reportedly in talks to invest in Perplexity at a valuation above $30 billion, a 50% jump from last year, as the AI search startup's revenue triples to $750 million annualized.

Hugging Face is reportedly exploring a sale near $13 billion, almost triple its 2023 valuation, just a month after a serious security breach tied to an OpenAI model.

Nscale is pursuing a $3 billion US IPO on a $51 billion contract backlog. Its real annualized revenue run rate is closer to $400 million, a gap every founder pitching backlog as revenue should study.

Nvidia told its biggest customers that Vera Rubin and Grace Blackwell servers will cost over 15% more next year, driven by soaring HBM and DRAM memory prices, not the GPUs.

Broadcom is negotiating up to $100 billion in private debt, routed through a special-purpose vehicle, to fund AI chips for Anthropic, the latest sign AI compute runs on debt.

CBRE's 2026 report finds New York overtook the Bay Area in tech jobs for the first time in 13 years, while 80% of AI venture capital stayed exactly where it was.

Nvidia is paying $6 billion to license Poolside's AI model-building tech and hire 109 employees, plus $1 billion for a $12 billion stake, without buying the startup outright.

Alphabet's Waymo has shipped a custom 5-nanometer, 1,000+ TOPS chip that fuses sensor data onboard, cutting its dependence on Nvidia and AMD as the robotaxi race scales up.

Rillet raised a $100 million Series C at a $1 billion valuation, its third round in 14 months, after new ARR doubled in three months and 600 customers left legacy ERP.

Anthropic is expanding its pre-IPO credit facility past $10 billion, four times last year's $2.5 billion line, as top banks compete for a role in what could be 2026's biggest IPO.

Google took a warrant on 58.97 million Marvell shares worth $12.2 billion, but nearly all of it vests only as Marvell ships custom AI chips, not upfront.

AI chip startup Etched raised $700M at a $21B valuation, doubling in under a month, after lead investor Jane Street tested the hardware, bought a rack, then wrote the check.

OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT for Teens on August 18, adding age prediction, content limits and parental controls, its answer to a wrongful death lawsuit and mounting AI safety scrutiny.