☕️ OpenAI raises $110 billion in record funding round

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In today's Techpresso:

💰 OpenAI raises $110 billion in record funding round

📉 Block lays off 40% of workforce in AI bet

🛡️ Anthropic refuses Pentagon demand to drop AI safeguards

📺 Netflix walks away from $83B Warner Bros takeover

🔒 Apple devices approved for classified NATO use

🤑 Google and Meta sign multibillion-dollar AI chip deal

Plus: 🎁 11 other news you might like, 🧰 5 tools, and 📚 1 papers.

💰 OpenAI raises $110 billion in record funding round LINK

OpenAI announced it has raised $110 billion in private funding from Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank, making it one of the largest private funding rounds ever, against a $730 billion pre-money valuation.

Amazon is investing $50 billion while expanding its AWS partnership by $100 billion, and OpenAI will build a new "stateful runtime environment" running its models on Amazon's Bedrock platform.

Nvidia is contributing $30 billion, with OpenAI committing to 3GW of inference capacity and 2GW of training on Vera Rubin systems, though $35 billion of Amazon's share depends on undisclosed conditions.

📉 Block lays off 40% of workforce in AI bet LINK

Block, the payments company behind Square and Cash App, announced plans to lay off 40% of its workforce — more than 4,000 employees — with CEO Jack Dorsey pointing to AI tools as the reason.

Dorsey told shareholders that "intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company," and said he chose to act now rather than cut jobs gradually over months or years.

Block reported $6.25 billion in fourth-quarter revenue, slightly above expectations, and shares rallied more than 20% in after-hours trading following the layoff announcement and improved 2026 gross profit outlook.

🛡️ Anthropic refuses Pentagon demand to drop AI safeguards LINK

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the company "cannot in good conscience" let the Pentagon use its AI models without limits, even after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threatened to invoke the Defense Production Act.

Anthropic wants assurance its models will not be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance, while the DoD insists the company agree to all lawful purposes without restrictions.

Rivals OpenAI, Google, and xAI already agreed to let the DoD use their models for all lawful purposes, and xAI this week also allowed its models in classified settings alongside Anthropic's existing access.

📺 Netflix walks away from $83B Warner Bros takeover LINK

Netflix has decided not to raise its bid for Warner Bros., effectively handing the victory to David Ellison's Paramount Skydance in the high-stakes fight over the studio.

Co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said the deal was "no longer financially attractive" and called it a "nice to have" at the right price, not a "must have."

Paramount's winning proposal offered $31 per share with additional sweeteners, and Paramount agreed to cover the $2.8 billion termination fee Warner Bros. owes Netflix for ending its earlier merger agreement.

🔒 Apple devices approved for classified NATO use LINK

Apple says iPhone and iPad are now the first and only consumer devices approved to handle classified information at NATO's restricted level, without needing special software or settings.

Germany's Federal Office for Information Security, known as BSI, conducted exhaustive technical assessments and testing of iOS and iPadOS platform security before confirming compliance with NATO requirements.

Apple had previously received approval for classified German government data, and the new certification running iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 now extends that recognition across all NATO nations.

🤑 Google and Meta sign multibillion-dollar AI chip deal LINK

Meta has agreed to a multibillion-dollar deal to rent Google Cloud's custom AI chips, known as tensor processing units, to train and run its next-generation large language models.

The deal helps Meta diversify its AI hardware beyond Nvidia, following recent multibillion-dollar agreements to buy Nvidia's Vera Rubin GPUs and AMD's Instinct MI400 series GPUs.

Google is also in talks to sell millions of TPUs directly to Meta for its own data centers, a separate arrangement from this cloud access deal, though no agreement has been reached.

Other news you might like

• Dell breaks records, says "traditional" server demand as well as AI surgingLINK

• Memory shortage could cause the biggest smartphone shipments dip in over a decadeLINK

• Microsoft just launched a to-do list tool that completes itself using AI — introduces Copilot TasksLINK

• Anthropic retired a popular AI model and now it's blogging on SubstackLINK

• Meta sues advertisers in Brazil and China over 'celeb bait' scamsLINK

• Suno investor admits she ditched Spotify for AI music, accidentally undermining the company's fair use defenseLINK

• Sam Altman’s ‘Human Verification’ Startup Leans on Consumer BrandsLINK

• US lawmakers want your OS to determine if you’re old enough to use an appLINK

• Amid Anthropic–Pentagon clash, Google employees urges company to steer clear of military tiesLINK

🧰 Trending tools

Superset: an IDE that runs multiple AI coding agents in parallel sandboxes, letting you delegate tasks simultaneously while monitoring progress from a unified dashboard.LINK

Claude Code Remote Control: enables developers to resume and control their desktop Claude coding sessions from mobile devices or any browser for flexible remote work.LINK

Nano Banana 2: a fast image generation model from Google that maintains consistent subjects across outputs while leveraging deep world knowledge for production workflows.LINK

Mastra Code: a framework for building AI apps and agents with built-in workflows, memory management, streaming, and an interactive UI for development and testing.LINK

RetroTick: emulates x86 CPU and Windows/DOS APIs in the browser to run classic Windows executables like FreeCell, Minesweeper, and QBasic natively.LINK

📚 Trending papers & reports

RustyDL: A Program Logic for Rust: creates mathematical rules to prove Rust programs behave correctly, letting developers verify safety properties beyond what the compiler checks alone.LINK

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