| |  | Mar 12, 2026 | | | | | | Happy Thursday! Anthropic is in talks with private equity firms including Blackstone about forming an AI joint venture. Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr attacks Amazon. Nvidia will invest $2 billion in European AI cloud firm Nebius Group.
| | | | Anthropic is in talks with a consortium of private equity firms including Blackstone and Hellman & Friedman about forming an AI-focused joint venture to sell the Claude maker's technology to companies funded by the investment firms, The Information reported on Wednesday. The proposed joint venture would use a Palantir-like model to sell consulting services that would help companies integrate Anthropic's AI into their businesses. OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI firms are taking new approaches to ensure businesses have hands-on service while attempting to use AI across their workforces, as it can be difficult to set up at a large scale. | | | | Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr attacked Amazon in a Wednesday social media post after the company petitioned against a request by SpaceX for permission to launch one million satellites into space to create an orbital data center constellation. While it's common practice in the satellite industry for companies to file petitions urging the FCC to rule against their competitors, it's unusual for the agency's leader to respond so quickly and publicly. Carr wrote on X that Amazon should "focus on the fact" that it's not on track to meet an upcoming milestone to deploy satellites for its Leo satellite internet constellation, which it wants to be a competitor to SpaceX's Starlink, "rather than filing petitions against companies that are putting thousands of satellites in orbit." Amazon has launched more than 200 satellites for Leo but is not on track to meet a FCC deadline of launching 1,600 satellites by this July. An Amazon spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. SpaceX first asked the FCC for permission to launch a million satellites to form a gigantic orbital data center this January, though the filing did not include details such as the size of the satellites, their cost or when they would be launched. Then in March, Amazon urged the FCC to deny SpaceX's petition, describing it as a "lofty ambition rather than a real plan," as well as "a speculative placeholder rather than a complete application under the Commission's rules." While the FCC has yet to decide whether to approve SpaceX's application, when The Information asked Carr about the potential for the company to launch data centers into space last week, he called the idea "awesome." | | | | Nvidia will invest $2 billion in Amsterdam-based AI cloud company Nebius Group and the two companies will work together to build data centers using 5 gigawatts of energy by the end of the decade. The deal, announced by both companies Wednesday, adds to the growing tally of investments Nvidia has made in customers to support their growth. Nvidia invested $17.5 billion in private companies and infrastructure funds in its most recent fiscal year and provided $3.5 billion of financial guarantees to companies working on data centers, according to financial disclosures. Nebius was formed from the non-Russian assets of internet company Yandex and is led by its former CEO, Arkady Volozh. The company's shares rose more than 13% following the announcement, giving it a market value of almost $28 billion. | | | | AI coding startup Cursor is in discussions with investors to raise a funding round that could value the startup at $50 billion, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. The discussions are preliminary and may not result in a funding deal, the report said. Cursor last raised $2.3 billion at a $29.3 billion valuation from investors including Accel, Thrive, Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue Management, Nvidia and Google in November. The San Francisco-based startup's AI assistant helps developers write code quickly. It's become one of the fastest growing startups in Silicon Valley, and its annual recurring revenue reportedly soared to $2 billion as of February, up from $150 million a year ago. Replit, Lovable and Cognition each make their own coding assistants that compete with Cursor's, and OpenAI and Anthropic have also introduced their own coding tools. | | | | Amazon raised $37 billion in bonds in the U.S., the company confirmed in a securities filing on Wednesday, buttressing its balance sheet as it ramps up its investment in AI. the bonds range from two year notes to 50 year notes. Separately, Bloomberg reported Wednesday that the company raised an additional $16.8 billion in Euro-denominated bonds in Europe. The debt-raising comes just four months after Amazon raised $15 billion in bonds. The latest series of bonds were issued at a range of prices—measured as the spread over Treasurys—with the spread meaningfully higher than those issued in November. That's a sign Amazon is having to pay a slightly higher price as it borrows more money. Amazon has said it will lift capital expenditures this year by 50% to about $200 billion and will invest as much as $50 billion in OpenAI. Amazon's debt raising comes as numerous tech firms are tapping the bond market to raise money, including Salesforce, which also confirmed on Wednesday it was raising money. Salesforce is raising money to help fund a big stock buyback. | | | | Atlassian, which sells software that lets developers and other business teams collaborate on projects, is laying off around 1,600 employees, or around 10% of its staff, CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes announced in a blog post. Few companies have been harder hit by investors' fears over the impact of AI on enterprise software than Atlassian, whose shares are down more than 50% since the start of the year and over 65% over the past 12 months. In the wake of the job cuts, Atlassian plans to invest more in AI and enterprise sales, while also focusing more on profitability, according to Cannon-Brookes. "Our approach is not 'AI replaces people,'" Cannon-Brookes said in the blog post. "But it would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn't change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas. It does." | | | | Tesla and xAI are working together on a joint artificial intelligence project, Elon Musk said Wednesday. The move, which comes after turnover at xAI, is the latest shift in Musk's plan to build AI designed to replace white collar workers. In a X post, Musk said "Macrohard or Digital Optimus is a joint xAI-Tesla project." Macrohard is the name of an xAI team that's been developing computer use agents designed to behave like office workers, while Optimus is the name of Tesla's humanoid robot project. Toby Pohlen, a co-founder of xAI who Musk put in charge of Macrohard as part of a reorg last month, left xAI shortly afterward. It could not be learned who is now in charge of Macrohard, though top Tesla AI executive Ashok Elluswamy posted about recruiting for the project on Wednesday. Musk also said the joint project is "part of Tesla's investment agreement with xAI." Tesla disclosed a $2 billion investment in xAI as part of its fourth quarter 2025 financial results, shortly before SpaceX acquired xAI. | | | | Uber announced it would offer the Zoox robotaxi to customers starting this year. This is the first time the Amazon-owned self-driving car company has partnered with an outside ride-hailing app. Zoox will be available on the Uber app starting this summer in Las Vegas, and next year will be available in Los Angeles. Zoox will continue offering rides through its own separate app. So far, Zoox has been offering its rides for free. That's because Zoox needs to secure approval from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to charge for rides in cars without certain standard features, which currently don't meet the agency's standards. But earlier this week, the regulator opened public comment on whether Zoox can be exempted from the agency's rules. That puts Zoox ahead of Tesla's rival robotaxi, as the government hasn't opened public comment on whether Tesla self-driving vehicles can be exempt. But Zoox is still behind Google-owned Waymo, which operates commercially in 10 cities across America, with more standard car features. Waymo also has a commercial partnership with Uber. | | | | Google has completed its $32 billion acquisition of the cybersecurity startup Wiz, the companies announced on Wednesday. Wiz will become part of Google Cloud, but Wiz customers can continue to use different cloud providers. The deal, Google's largest-ever acquisition, was announced almost a year ago, after earlier talks to acquire the company for $23 billion fell through over concerns that regulators might block the deal. In the past year, Google lost an additional antitrust case over its adtech monopoly, but staved off a breakup over its Google Search monopoly loss. | | | | Shopify Chief Financial Officer Jeff Hoffmeister said the e-commerce software company wasn't yet seeing many transactions completed by AI shopping tools, even though shoppers are increasingly using chatbots to look for product recommendations. "As you think about true agentic commerce and how that looks, you're just not seeing a ton of that," Hoffmeister told investors at a Cantor Fitzgerald conference Wednesday. "You're seeing a lot of thoughtful discovery on the LLMS. In terms of the full agentic commerce transaction, we're still very, very early." The comments underline the slow going for AI companies so far in having so-called agentic tools actually make online purchases on behalf of shoppers. Shopify was an early partner of OpenAI on the AI juggernaut's in-chat checkout feature, which it announced in late September but walked back in recent weeks. Shopify's overall strategy is to help its merchants sell products in more places, Hoffmeister said, and that hasn't changed despite recent shifts in strategy from OpenAI. | | | Popular articles
By Anita Ramaswamy and Miles Kruppa
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