⛅OpenAI signs record $300B cloud deal with Oracle

OpenAI has agreed to a five-year, $300 billion contract with Oracle for cloud services, starting in 2027 - the largest such deal in history. The scale of the infrastructure will demand 4.5 GW of power, comparable to four million households.

🖱 OpenAI reported ~$10B annual revenue in June, far below the ~$60B it must pay each year under the contract
🖱 Oracle will likely need financing to buy AI chips for its data centers
🖱 The agreement ties a huge portion of Oracle’s future revenue to a single client
🖱 Analysts call the deal a risky gamble for both sides, with execution hinging on long-term AI demand

This partnership underscores the extreme capital intensity of the AI race and how even tech giants must take outsized risks to secure capacity.

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🚀 PsiQuantum raises $1B to build a million-qubit computer

Quantum startup PsiQuantum secured a $1B Series E led by BlackRock, Temasek, and Baillie Gifford, doubling its valuation to $7B.

🖱 Goal: deliver a fault-tolerant, 1M-qubit machine by 2028
🖱 New investors include Macquarie, Ribbit, Nvidia’s NVentures, and Adage Capital
🖱 Tech: photonic chipsets with Barium Titanate for ultra-fast optical switching
🖱 Partnership with Nvidia to integrate GPUs for hybrid quantum-AI workloads

Rivals aren’t standing still - Quantinuum just raised $600M at $10B, and Google unveiled its error-correcting Willow chip. IBM has its own roadmap.

The quantum arms race is now funded at billion-dollar scale.

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💰 Nebius lands $3B boost with Microsoft deal

Amsterdam-based Nebius has secured $3 billion in fresh funding, just days after signing a landmark partnership with Microsoft. The raise combines $2B in convertible notes and $1B in new shares, aimed at expanding land and computing capacity.

🖱 Microsoft will receive dedicated capacity from a new Vineland, New Jersey, data center later this year
🖱 Convertible notes mature in 2030 and 2032, with coupons between 1.25%–3.25% and conversion premiums of 45%–50%
🖱 Nebius projects at least $17.4B in revenue through 2031 from the deal, a huge leap from $117.5M in 2023 sales
🖱 Microsoft becomes Nebius’ largest customer, signaling its move into top-tier AI infrastructure supply
🖱 The company spun out from Yandex last year, previously focused on smaller businesses and startups

This puts Nebius on the map as a serious challenger in the AI cloud race, with Microsoft’s backing giving it both scale and credibility.

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🤝 OpenAI settles terms with Microsoft, paves way for restructuring

OpenAI has resolved its financial disputes with Microsoft and will transfer a $100B stake to the nonprofit that oversees it. The moves clear the path for transforming into a public benefit corporation, opening access to broader investment and a potential IPO.

🖱 Microsoft invested over $13B, initially securing rights to 49% of future profits
🖱 The new deal revises those terms, though details remain undisclosed
🖱 NYT reports the agreement also adjusts clauses around Microsoft’s access to top-tier tech if OpenAI reaches AGI
🖱 The nonprofit’s ownership strengthens its role in guiding OpenAI’s long-term mission

This shift signals OpenAI’s transition from research lab to market-facing giant, balancing investor power with governance safeguards.

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💻 Replit unveils Agent 3 and secures $250M at $3B valuation

Developer platform Replit has raised $250M at a $3B valuation, in a round led by Prysm Capital with participation from American Express Ventures, AI Futures Fund, and others. Alongside the funding, the company introduced its most advanced AI agent yet.

🖱 Agent 3 can autonomously test applications, build social media bots, and even create new AI agents
🖱 The launch signals Replit’s move from coding assistance to fully autonomous software creation
🖱 Funding will fuel product expansion and scaling of its AI-driven development environment
🖱 Investors see Replit as a key player at the intersection of dev tools and AI automation

By combining fresh capital with a powerful new product, Replit positions itself at the frontier of AI-native software development.

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📈 Via ends first trading day just above IPO price

Transit software company Via had a cautious market debut, with shares opening below the $46 IPO price before recovering to close slightly higher at just over $49, valuing the company at about $3.9B.

🖱 IPO raised nearly $493M, including ~$328M in new shares and ~$164M from existing holders
🖱 Via projects ~$429M revenue in 2025, with ~30% YoY growth, but remains unprofitable (H1 loss of $37.5M)
🖱 The company powers microtransit for 689 cities and transit agencies worldwide
🖱 Past acquisitions: Remix (2021) and Citymapper (2023); CEO hints at more deals ahead
🖱 Proceeds will go toward growth, sales, marketing and potentially strategic acquisitions

Via’s steady debut reflects tempered enthusiasm, but its government-focused transit tech model positions it as a unique public player in urban mobility.

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📊 Crypto Venture Weekly: September 8–12, 2025

$1.48B was raised across 24 projects this week, led by Figure’s $788M IPO and Rapyd’s $500M Series F.

Forward Industries and Eightco Holdings added $1.94B in SOL and WLD reserves.

Here’s what the top 7 are building 👇

🖱 Figure ($788M IPO, $5.29B valuation)
Blockchain-native capital marketplace connecting origination, funding, and secondary markets.

🖱 Rapyd ($500M, General Catalyst, Spark, BlackRock, Dragoneer, Altimeter, Target Global)
Global payments infrastructure platform bridging fintech and crypto rails.

🖱 Gemini ($50M, Nasdaq Ventures)
Centralized exchange raising strategically ahead of its IPO.

🖱 Inversion ($26.5M, Dragonfly, HashKey, ParaFi, Mirana, MoonRock, Balaji Srinivasan)
Private equity model applied to crypto, acquiring low-margin trad businesses and layering blockchain infra.

🖱 Tetra ($10M, Shopify, Purpose, Wealthsimple, National Bank Holdings)
Canadian digital asset custodian building a regulated CAD-backed stablecoin.

🖱 Multipli ($5M, Pantera, Spartan, Sequoia, Avalanche Foundation)
Yield platform for native, stable, and tokenized real-world assets.

🖱 Runesoul ($4M, Bitgo Capital, AccelByte, IGC Global)
3D card-based action RPG in Web3.

Investor focus this week was on stablecoin infra, regulated custody, tokenized yields, and gaming - while massive treasury moves and M&A reshaped the landscape.

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⚠️ xAI fires 500 annotators, then announces 10x hiring spree

Elon Musk’s xAI laid off 500 data annotators overnight — roughly one-third of its annotation division, the company’s largest unit. Hours later, xAI posted that it plans to grow its “AI trainer” team by 10x.

🖱 Laid off staff were “general-purpose” annotators handling basic labeling tasks
🖱 Departures were abrupt - same-day emails, revoked access, rising complaints
🖱 New hiring targets domain experts in STEM, finance, medicine, security, and more
🖱 Suggests routine annotation is being automated, with humans reserved for complex work
🖱 Messaging framed as building “AI that seeks the truth”

The move highlights a shift from broad, manual labeling toward specialized human input raising the question: is this AI taking jobs, or creating new ones?

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📊 Gemini pops 14% in $425M Nasdaq debut

Crypto exchange Gemini surged on its first day of trading, closing at $32 per share - a 14% jump from its IPO price of $28. The debut raised $425M, marking another win in crypto’s streak of successful listings.

🖱 Fully diluted market cap opened at $3.3B, well below its $7.1B peak valuation in 2021
🖱 IPO demand forced Gemini to raise its price range twice before pricing above it
🖱 Nasdaq invested $50M in a private placement at the IPO price, boosting confidence
🖱 Recent crypto IPOs like Circle, Bullish, and Figure also saw strong first-day gains
🖱 Despite mounting losses, investors piled in, underscoring appetite for crypto-native firms

Gemini’s public debut is a clear signal: traditional markets are warming up to crypto exposure, and the Winklevoss twins just scored their biggest validation yet.

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💼 Tesla board chair defends Elon Musk’s $1T pay package

Tesla shareholders will vote in November on a 10-year, $1 trillion compensation deal for Elon Musk - the largest in corporate history. Board Chair Robyn Denholm, who helped craft the plan, dismissed criticism.

🖱 Performance-based: Musk gets nothing unless he hits future goals
🖱 Power over pay: Denholm says the real issue is Musk’s voting control, not the dollar figure
🖱 Timing: Proposal arrives as Tesla’s vehicle sales and profits are slipping
🖱 Dismissive tone: Denholm called the debate “a little bit weird”

Tesla positions the package as a bet on Musk’s ability to drive long-term growth, but with financial headwinds, the shareholder vote may be anything but smooth.

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⚡ Musk buys $1B in Tesla shares to boost control

Elon Musk just purchased about 2.57M Tesla shares in open-market trades, spending nearly $1B to slightly lift his stake from 12.7% to 12.8%.

🖱 Paid between $372–$397 per share in the transactions
🖱 Tesla stock jumped over 8% pre-market after the disclosure
🖱 Musk has said he wants ~25% voting power at Tesla for long-term influence
🖱 Even this billion-dollar buy moves him only a fraction closer
🖱 Comes as Tesla pivots beyond EVs into robotaxis, AI, and robotics

The purchase signals confidence, but highlights the steep cost of Musk’s quest for control — raising the question: can he realistically reach 25% without massive new funding or board maneuvers?

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💼 Robinhood opens VC fund to retail investors

Robinhood is launching Robinhood Ventures Fund I (RVI), a closed-end, publicly traded venture capital fund designed to let everyday investors buy into private companies, a space long reserved for institutions and the wealthy.

🖱 Managed by new arm Robinhood Ventures, filed with the SEC
🖱Open to Robinhood’s 26.5M customers
🖱 Targets private firms as public listings keep shrinking
🖱 Offers long-term, illiquid stakes with higher potential upside (and risk)
🖱 Pitched as democratizing access to Silicon Valley-style investing

The fund pushes the “retail revolution” into venture capital, but raises the question: will broad access to risky, illiquid startups empower small investors, or expose them to hazards they can’t hedge?

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🔐 Google releases VaultGemma: a differentially private LLM

Google unveiled VaultGemma, a 1-billion parameter model trained from scratch under strong differential privacy (DP) constraints, with weights open to the public.

🖱 Establishes new scaling laws for DP-LLMs, quantifying trade-offs among model size, compute, data, and noise levels.
🖱 VaultGemma uses sequence-level DP (ε ≤ 2.0, δ ≤ 1.1×10⁻¹⁰) over sequences of 1024 tokens.
🖱 Shows little to no memorization of training data under tests, indicating strong privacy in practice.
🖱 Performance is comparable to non-private models from ~5 years ago, though still behind modern non-DP ones.
🖱 Released on Hugging Face and Kaggle, plus technical report, to accelerate community work in private AI.

The launch marks a big step: balancing utility and privacy in large language models — but asks the question: how quickly can that utility gap be closed for real-world use?

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👟 Under Armour’s tech pivot that almost broke the brand

In the 2010s, Under Armour tried to reinvent itself as a “health-focused tech company”, inspired by Nike+, Strava, and Fitbit. It spent $700M+ acquiring fitness apps to build a connected ecosystem, but the bet collapsed.

🖱 Acquired MapMyFitness, Endomondo, and MyFitnessPal (then the biggest calorie tracker) between 2013–2015.
🖱 Vision: collect user data, sell connected sneakers, personalize gear, and monetize via subscriptions + device partnerships.
🖱 Reality: MyFitnessPal sold in 2020 at half price, MapMyFitness lost users, Endomondo shut down, stock fell as Nike/Adidas surged.
🖱 Core mismatch: UA’s audience were performance athletes, not casual wellness users, they already relied on Garmin, Apple, and niche pro tools.
🖱 Engagement in UA apps stayed weak; no rollout of premium features like personalized training or online coaching.

Data alone isn’t enough, success comes from turning it into insights your audience values and monetization that actually works.

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🌐 SpaceX buys $17B spectrum stake to supercharge Starlink direct-to-cell service

SpaceX has acquired $17 billion worth of satellite spectrum licenses from EchoStar to boost Starlink’s ability to deliver broadband directly to cellphones, especially in under-connected areas.

🖱 Deal split: $8.5B paid in cash, $8.5B in SpaceX stock.
🖱 Spectrum includes the H-block (1915-1920 MHz), used for 4G/5G mobile services, plus AWS-4 from EchoStar.
🖱 EchoStar’s prior plan to build its own LEO 5G constellation is scrapped.
🖱 Starlink’s direct-to-device service launched in 2024 for text transmission; this spectrum boost promises much greater throughput, up to 20× more vs current satellites.
🖱 The deal also closes an FCC investigation of EchoStar’s use of that spectrum.

This is a big step toward eliminating “dead zones” for mobile connectivity, pushing broader broadband access, especially in remote areas. If SpaceX delivers, the gap between on-ground mobile networks and space-based connectivity keeps shrinking, but scaling performance, latency, and cost effectively will be the real test.

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💰 Alphabet’s market cap tops $3 trillion for the first time

Google now joins the elite club alongside Nvidia, Microsoft, and Apple. Next in line is Amazon, with a market cap of $2.4 trillion.

Takeaway: The trillion-dollar race is no longer rarefied air, it’s becoming the new benchmark for Big Tech dominance.

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📱 TikTok set for U.S. spin-off under Oracle-led deal

The U.S. and China are close to finalizing TikTok’s future: a new American company will own and operate the app for U.S. users, resolving years of political and security disputes.

🖱 Ownership: ~80% controlled by Oracle, Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, and early ByteDance investors; Chinese stakes cut to <20%.
🖱 Algorithm: Rebuilt by U.S. engineers but licensed from ByteDance; Oracle to oversee U.S. data storage and protection in Texas.
🖱 Politics: Trump postponed the TikTok ban to December, saying a deal “has been reached,” pending direct talks with Xi Jinping.

This structure gives Washington ownership and data security assurances, while Beijing retains leverage via algorithm licensing. The true test will be whether U.S. engineers can replicate TikTok’s addictive feed without losing what makes the app tick.

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🤖 China halts corporate purchases of Nvidia AI chips

Beijing has ordered major tech firms, including Alibaba and ByteDance, to stop buying Nvidia’s AI chips, a move aimed at reducing reliance on U.S. hardware and bolstering China’s leverage in trade talks.

🖱 Scope: Affects Nvidia’s RTX Pro 6000D chips, custom-built to skirt U.S. export restrictions.
🖱 Scale: Chinese companies had planned to buy tens of thousands of units for AI model training.
🖱 Strategy: Signals Beijing’s intent to accelerate domestic semiconductor development and curb U.S. tech influence.

This is less about short-term performance and more about long-term independence: by cutting Nvidia out, China forces its ecosystem to double down on homegrown chips even if the transition slows AI progress in the near term.

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🔥 OpenAI joins tech’s “money burner” club

Uber, Tesla, Snap, and Netflix have torched a combined $42B chasing growth. Now OpenAI is set to outspend them all, with projected costs of $115B by 2029, according to The Information.

🖱 New wrinkle: a $300B cloud deal with Oracle (revealed after those projections) will drive spending even higher.
🖱 Funding gap: OpenAI has raised ≈$70B to date, far short of what’s needed.
🖱 Implication: record-breaking mega-rounds are inevitable if OpenAI wants to sustain ChatGPT’s compute-hungry trajectory.

The company is effectively betting that it can raise capital at a scale no startup has ever attempted. If successful, it won’t just burn money like Uber or Tesla, it could redefine the ceiling of how much investors are willing to bankroll AI.

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⚡ Nvidia buys $5B stake in Intel for AI chip pact

Nvidia is taking a 4% stake in Intel, investing $5 billion to anchor a partnership on next-gen AI and PC chips.

🖱 Data centers: Intel will design custom x86 CPUs tuned for Nvidia’s AI infrastructure.
🖱 PCs: new “x86 RTX SoCs” will embed Nvidia GPU chiplets directly into Intel processors, targeting AMD’s CPU-GPU edge.
🖱 Architecture: Nvidia’s NVLink will be built into Intel systems, enabling faster CPU-GPU communication than PCIe.
🖱 Rollout: first products expected across data center and consumer lines in the coming years.

This is more than a financial move, it’s an architectural alliance. If Intel executes, Nvidia gains tighter integration and performance control, while Intel finally gets a credible GPU boost against AMD.

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