Nvidia is reportedly in advanced talks to acquire server rental startup Lepton AI for several hundred million dollars. The two-year-old startup rents out compute powered by Nvidia’s own chips, putting the chip giant on track to compete directly in the server rental market. Why it matters: Nvidia is no longer just selling picks and shovels—it is steadily moving into infrastructure operations.
Earth AI just revealed it uncovered promising deposits of copper, cobalt, and gold across Australian sites that miners overlooked for decades. The startup trained algorithms on national geological archives dating back to the 1970s and built custom drill rigs to prove the predictions. It proves AI can compress decades-long prospecting cycles into fast, data-driven discoveries.
Perplexity just proposed an ambitious bid to acquire TikTok, promising to rebuild its recommendation system from scratch in US data centers and make the code open-source. The plan also includes adding AI search and video citations. Why it matters: With TikTok valued at up to $50B, the pitch faces massive financial hurdles and may simply be another wild PR stunt.
Nvidia and Elon Musk's xAI just officially joined the AI Infrastructure Partnership (AIP), a coalition led by Microsoft, BlackRock, GIP, and Abu Dhabi's MGX. The alliance aims to mobilize $30 billion in private capital to build massive data centers and energy infrastructure, primarily in the US. Why it matters: Surging compute and power demands are pushing fierce tech rivals into unprecedented infrastructure alliances.
Niantic just announced a massive restructuring, selling its gaming division—including Pokémon GO and Pikmin Bloom—to mobile giant Scopely in a deal valued at around $3.85 billion. The company is parting ways with game operations to focus entirely on spatial computing and AI through Niantic Spatial.
Cartesia just raised a $64M Series A led by Kleiner Perkins to build out its real-time voice AI platform. Alongside the funding, the startup officially launched Sonic 2.0, its next-gen voice model aimed at cutting latency and powering the next wave of interactive voice apps.
OpenAI just inked a massive five-year deal worth $11.9 billion with CoreWeave for AI data centers and infrastructure services. As part of the agreement, OpenAI will also receive around $350 million in equity tied to CoreWeave's upcoming IPO. The commitment secures vast GPU capacity for OpenAI while supercharging its partner's public debut.
Stability AI just scored a strategic investment and partnership with advertising titan WPP. The deal will plug Stability’s multimodal models for image, video, 3D, and audio directly into WPP’s AI operating system, WPP Open. Why it matters: It gives Stability a massive enterprise testing ground and validates its commercial push under new leadership.
OpenAI is reportedly preparing to launch specialized AI agents with monthly subscriptions ranging from $2,000 to $20,000 for tasks up to PhD-level research. The rollout features three tiers covering business, development, and research, with SoftBank committing $3 billion. OpenAI is betting enterprises will pay senior executive wages for automated expertise.
Deutsche Telekom just partnered with ElevenLabs to embed its Gen FM audio tech directly into the Magenta AI app, letting users turn news articles into podcasts in seconds. The telecom giant also invested in ElevenLabs’ Series C round. It signals a major shift toward making AI speech a default smartphone interface.
TSMC just committed at least $100 billion to expand its US semiconductor manufacturing footprint, funding two new factories in Phoenix alongside its existing three. CEO C.C. Wei confirmed the new sites will build advanced AI chips. It is a massive bet to onshore supply chains ahead of planned semiconductor tariffs.
Anthropic just secured $3.5 billion in Series E funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, rocketing its valuation to $61.5 billion. The massive war chest will fund compute infrastructure, next-generation frontier models, and AI alignment research right on the heels of Claude 3.7 Sonnet's launch. It firmly cements Anthropic as a titan capable of matching OpenAI toe-to-toe in enterprise adoption.
The world’s largest call center operator Teleperformance is deploying Sanas AI to neutralize the accents of its Indian customer support reps with zero latency. Management insists turning accents into neutral English cuts handling times and boosts satisfaction, but investors weren't convinced by the $104 million AI roadmap, dragging its stock down 11%.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang just pushed back on fears of slowing AI demand, revealing that next-gen reasoning models require 100 times more computation than when ChatGPT debuted. Addressing market concerns after DeepSeek's rapid rise, Huang argued that step-by-step reasoning actually multiplies the need for chips. Why it matters: Despite worries that efficiency gains would cut spending, Nvidia insists smarter AI only makes the appetite for hardware grow faster.
Promise just announced its acquisition of Curious Refuge, the premier training school for AI filmmaking. The team says the move will expand creative education and open real opportunities for AI storytellers, framing generative AI as a tool to amplify creativity rather than replace creators.
Google just quietly revealed pricing for its Veo 2 video generation model, charging 50 cents per second of generated video—which translates to $30 per minute or $1,800 per hour. Unlike OpenAI bundling Sora into a $200 monthly plan, Google is taking a pure pay-as-you-go approach as high-end video generation models finally test commercial waters.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang just pushed back against fears that DeepSeek will kill chip demand, calling its R1 reasoning model “incredibly exciting.” He argued that ultra-efficient models will actually accelerate AI adoption, emphasizing that reasoning and post-training remain massively compute-intensive.
OpenAI is forecasting a major shift in its computing power over the next five years, expecting to get three-quarters of its data center capacity by 2030 from Stargate, a project heavily financed by SoftBank. The transition away from Microsoft won't happen overnight, but OpenAI projects burning $20 billion in cash in 2027 as inference costs eventually overtake training.
Crunchbase just relaunched as an AI-powered prediction platform designed to forecast startup milestones, funding rounds, and acquisitions instead of just cataloging historical data. Powered by web filings and data from 80M active users, the company claims its fundraising predictions achieve 95% precision. Why it matters: Market intelligence is shifting from static spreadsheets to predictive algorithms.
Humane just threw in the towel on the AI Pin, selling its platform, patents, and team to HP for $116 million. Existing devices will stop connecting to servers after February 28, bricking core voice and cloud features. Humane's founders and technical staff will join HP to launch a new division dubbed HP IQ.
