Amir Efrati
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Articles by Amir Efrati
Google DeepMind Exec Says Unprecedented Capex Is Actually a Bet On ‘RSI’
Over the weekend, Jasjeet Sekhon, the chief strategy officer at Google’s DeepMind AI unit, used two words to describe what needs to happen to justify his industry’s unprecedented capital expenditures: recursive self-improvement. The white-hot term refers to AI that can automatically create better versions of itself. RSI is a “key part of the investment thesis,” Sekhon said at the Agentic AI Summit, which took place at the University of California-Berkeley.
Microsoft’s AI Sales Didn’t Boost Overall Growth But the Company Says It Won’t Burn Cash
Source: The Information Microsoft revenue rose 18% to $90 billion in the June quarter, the same growth rate it reported in the first quarter, according to its quarterly earnings report. AI-related sales growth was tempered by revenue declines in its Xbox and Windows device businesses, and overall revenue growth would decelerate by 1 to 2 percentage points in the current fiscal quarter, CFO Amy Hood said.
Exclusive: Thinking Machines Cofounder to Return to OpenAI
Source: The Information Lilian Weng, a researcher who cofounded AI startup Thinking Machines Lab alongside former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, is rejoining OpenAI after announcing her departure from Thinking Machines earlier this week, an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed to The Information. She will be working on using AI models to develop new models, otherwise known as recursive self-improvement research, said one person with knowledge of the move.
OpenRouter Financials Suggest Steep Price For Possible Acquirer Stripe
If Stripe ends up buying three-year-old startup OpenRouter for close to $10 billion, the payments firm would be paying a substantial premium of about 70 times the startup’s recent annualized revenue, according to a person with knowledge of OpenRouter’s financials. OpenRouter, which helps app developers access hundreds of AI models, was recently generating about $140 million in annualized revenue, or roughly $12 million a month.
Intel Shares Jump 12% After Second Quarter Report Shows It Generated $4.5 Billion in Cash
Source: The Information Intel shares rose 12% in after-hours trading after the company said revenue growth hit a 15-year high in the second quarter on the back of chip demand from AI customers. Intel’s data center and AI hardware unit grew 59% to $6.3 billion as central processing units, one of Intel’s longtime fortes, benefited from AI demand that relies on part on the chips. That includes AI agents, which use software tools to perform tasks over extended periods.
AMD to Invest Up to $5 Billion in Anthropic, Strikes Chip Deal
Source: The Information Advanced Micro Devices said Wednesday it would make an equity investment of “up to $5 billion” in Anthropic “in the future,” and the Claude AI maker would use AMD’s AI server chips starting next year. Anthropic has been steadily diversifying its AI server sources and is evaluating chips from other providers including startups and Microsoft, The Information has reported.
Three Charts Show How xAI, Meta and Anthropic Are Entering Each Other’s Turf
XAI’s decision to rent out spare server capacity, Meta’s launch of an AI agent for enterprises, and Anthropic’s move to develop AI server chips this year should have come as no surprise to anyone well versed in the history of the tech industry. Over time, big tech firms tend to creep into each other’s territory, seeking more room to grow. And since late 2024, we’ve charted how nine major tech firms have done exactly that, with our latest installment today.
Nvidia Will Backstop Customers’ GPUs, Take a Cut of Their Cloud Revenues
Source: The Information Nvidia is promising to financially backstop young cloud providers that rent out its graphics processing units in exchange for a share of their revenues, The Information reported Wednesday. The backstop would come in the form of promising to rent back unused GPUs if the companies can’t find AI developers to rent them.
Star Google AI Researcher Shazeer Joins OpenAI
Noam Shazeer, the Google DeepMind researcher whose work underpinned the generative AI boom, is joining OpenAI, the AI firm told staff on Wednesday. Shazeer left Google in 2021 to co-found a chatbot startup Character.AI, but rejoined Google’s AI team DeepMind in 2024 as part of a $2.7 billion deal with his AI startup. He then became a tech lead on Gemini, Google’s core AI model, and made key contributions to the initial development of new generations of the model, known as pretraining.
Customers Fret as Anthropic Launches Apps That Compete with Theirs
Source: The Information Anthropic is increasingly launching applications that directly compete with its own enterprise customers, triggering fears in the software and AI startup sectors, The Information reported.
Anthropic Is Likely Generating at Least 35% More Revenue Than OpenAI
On New Year’s Day, OpenAI leaders would have been happy to hear that the company’s monthly revenue would rise more than 50% over the first five months of 2026, roughly in line with the projections it previously shared with investors. But they’re not likely to feel that way now: That pace looks downright tame compared to that of Anthropic, whose revenue grew five times in the same period, leapfrogging OpenAI’s. Anthropic was recently generating revenue at an annualized rate of close to $45 billion.
Pope Leo, Anthropic Co-Founder Warn of AI Power Concentration, Labor Displacement
Source: The Holy See Catholic Pope Leo XIV on Monday weighed in on hot-button AI policy debates, publishing a treatise describing the church’s concerns about AI development and its current and potential societal harms. His post, Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”), which runs more than 42,000 words, offers a blueprint for “safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence” and lends credence to activists who believe governments should be more involved in the process.
White House, Anthropic Near Deal For Spy Agencies to Use AI
Source: New York Times The White House is nearing a deal with Anthropic that allows the National Security Agency and other U.S. spy agencies to use the company’s advanced AI models for classified work, according to the New York Times.
Nvidia Projects 95% Sales Growth in the Current Quarter
Source: The Information Nvidia’s revenue grew 85% to $81.6 billion in the three months that ended April 26, the company said Wednesday. That’s 12 percentage points higher than the blistering growth the AI chip designer reported in the January quarter. It also projected revenue would grow 95% in the current fiscal quarter, suggesting that the AI boom is far from peaking and its Blackwell-series chips are hitting their stride.
Anthropic and OpenAI’s Share of AI Startup Revenues Rises to 89%
Anthropic and OpenAI are widening the revenue gap between themselves and the rest of the AI startup field. A group of 34 leading startups in that sector, including Anthropic and OpenAI, is generating nearly $80 billion in annualized revenue, or $6.6 billion per month, from selling AI applications or access to the models that power such apps, according to The Information’s Generative AI Database. That’s up 112% from six months ago.
Anthropic and OpenAI’s Share of AI Startup Revenues Rises to 89%
5 hours ago The next time you're at a networking event, don't be thrown if you spot new job titles on people's name tags. Loading audio narration... AI companies aren't just changing the way people work. They're changing the kinds of roles being hired, including within their own companies. The wider jobs …
Anthropic Commits to Spending $200 Billion on Google’s Cloud and Chips
When Google last month said it would supply Anthropic with an astonishing five gigawatts of server capacity, the companies didn’t put a dollar figure on that commitment. But as part of the deal, which begins next year, Anthropic plans to spend about $200 billion with Google over five years, according to a person with knowledge of it.
OpenAI Recently Missed an Internal Revenue Target
Source: The Information OpenAI missed an internal revenue goal during the first quarter, according to a person with knowledge of the situation, after the company’s ChatGPT chat previously missed user-growth goals. The missed goals followed a surge or usage of Google’s Gemini chatbot and booming sales at archrival Anthropic, whose revenue has nearly closed the gap with OpenAI despite being founded five years later.
Apple Sends Siri Staffers to Coding ‘Bootcamp’ in Latest Shakeup For Organization
Apple is sending a portion of its Siri programmers back to coding school just two months before the company is expected to unveil a major, AI-powered revamp of the voice assistant, people familiar with the team said. The company plans to send a significant chunk of people working on Siri—a group that totals in the hundreds—to a multi-week bootcamp to learn to code using AI, according to the people.
OpenAI CFO Questions 2026 IPO Readiness
Source: The Information OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and CFO Sarah Friar are diverging over the company’s timeline for an initial public offering as Altman pushes for a public debut as early as the fourth quarter, The Information reported. Friar has privately expressed concerns that the AI startup will not be organizationally ready for a 2026 IPO, questioning whether its slowing revenue growth can support Altman’s aggressively escalating $600 billion server spending commitments.
OpenAI CEO and CFO Diverge on IPO Timing
Sam Altman has committed OpenAI to spend $600 billion in the next five years and privately said he wants to go public as soon as the fourth quarter despite expectations his company will burn more than $200 billion before it starts generating cash. Behind the scenes, Sarah Friar, his chief financial officer, has voiced concerns that reflect the tensions and risks inherent in the CEO’s extraordinarily ambitious plans.
Anthropic Discusses Q4 IPO, Preps ‘Claude Mythos’ Advanced AI
Source: The Information Anthropic is discussing an initial public offering that could happen as soon as the fourth quarter of this year, The Information reported Thursday. Bankers vying to take the company public have said it could raise as much as $60 billion, the report said. Meanwhile, Anthropic on Thursday said it was preparing to release Claude Mythos, its next flagship AI model.
Microsoft Freezes Hiring at Key Cloud, Sales Groups to Improve Margins
Source: The Information Microsoft recently suspended new hiring across major divisions, including its Azure cloud and North American sales groups, as the company seeks to offset its investments in artificial intelligence infrastructure, The Information reported. Executives have instructed managers in these sprawling divisions to freeze all potential hires who do not already have job offers, prioritizing cost restraint and gross margin improvements before the fiscal year ends in June.
As Anthropic Surges, OpenAI Exec Tells Staff to Focus on Business Customers
Source: The Information OpenAI’s applications chief Fidji Simo told staff in a meeting last week that the company needed to refocus on business customers and cut down on side quests that were becoming a distraction, according to a person with knowledge of the comments. Simo made the comments as archrival Anthropic has made gains with businesses with AI for coding and other white-collar work and is quickly closing a revenue gap with OpenAI.
Nvidia Cloud Ally In Talks to Buy a Major U.S. AI Data Center Site
Source: The Information U.K.-based cloud provider Nscale, whose announced customers include OpenAI and Microsoft, is in negotiations to acquire a massive AI data center site in West Virginia, The Information reported. Amazon, Meta and a cloud ally of Google have also expressed interest in the site. The site is targeting 2 gigawatts of data center capacity by 2027, which would make it one of the largest such sites in the country, and up to 8 GW by 2030.
Commerce Department Shoots Down U.S. Draft Rules For Reviewing Nvidia AI Chip Exports
Source: The Information The U.S. Commerce Department said in a statement Thursday that it wouldn’t enact new restrictions on exports of American AI technologies that would resemble Biden administration policies.
Anthropic CEO Says Refusal to Praise or Donate to Trump Contributed to Its Pentagon Conflict
Source: The Information A scathing internal memo from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei last week characterized OpenAI’s recent move to strike a Pentagon partnership as “mendacious” and accused rival Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, of engaging in “safety theater” that was insufficient to prevent misuse in military contexts like mass surveillance or autonomous weaponry, The Information reported.
Anthropic CEO: Trump Disliked Company For Not Giving ‘Dictator-Style Praise’
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Friday told employees that a deal OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman struck to provide AI to the Department of Defense was “safety theater,” adding that the Trump Administration didn’t like Anthropic in part because the company hadn’t “given dictator-style praise to Trump.” Amodei made the comments in a 1,600-word message [read the full memo here] to more than 2,000 employees the same day the Pentagon said it planned to designate Anthropic as a “supply chain risk,”...
Cook Acknowledges Apple Employee Unhappiness Over ICE Crackdown
Source: The Information Apple CEO Tim Cook acknowledged at an all-hands staff meeting on Thursday that some company employees were upset about the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. He voiced his support for both immigrants and law enforcement and said he was saddened by the feelings people were experiencing around recent events, according to a person who was present at the meeting.
Nvidia CEO Becomes the Latest SaaS Defender—Sort Of
Simmering anxieties about AI’s threat to subscription software have turned into a raging nervous breakdown on Wall Street in the past week, thanks in part to Anthropic’s recent AI launches (and despite Anthropic's own love for SaaS apps). Even Palantir, which has lately posted blockbuster growth, has been caught up in the selloff. Enter Jensen Huang.
Google’s World-Generating AI Product Causes Selloff in Videogame Stocks
1 hour ago SpaceX has filed a request with the Federal Communications Commission to launch a constellation of up to 1 million solar-powered satellites that it said will serve as data centers for artificial intelligence. The company’s filing lays out a grandiose vision, not just describing these planned …
Google’s World-Generating AI Product Causes Selloff in Videogame Stocks
Source: The Information Shares of videogame software creator Unity fell 24% Friday after Google unveiled Project Genie, a tool customers can use to create virtual worlds. Shares of other videogame-related firms Take Two and Roblox dropped 8% and 13%, respectively. The selloff likely wiped out tens of billions of dollars in equity value across various stocks.
Anthropic and JPMorgan Seem to Agree That AI Isn’t Eating Enterprise Apps Yet
AI has been a frequent bogeyman to software stocks in the past year, with investors worried that AI agents could erode seat-based subscription pricing models and long-term growth. Shares of big incumbents such as Salesforce, Workday, Hubspot, ServiceNow and Adobe are down anywhere from 29% to 58% in that time frame, prompting some analysts and executives (at those companies) to argue that investors have overreacted.
OpenAI Plans to Take a Cut of Customers’ AI-Aided Discoveries
Hi! If you’re finding value in our Applied AI newsletter, I encourage you to consider subscribing to The Information. It contains exclusive reporting on the most important stories in tech, like this story from Aaron and Wayne on Apple software chief Craig Federighi‘s cautious approach to improving the company’s AI standing. Save up to $250 on your first year of access.
OpenAI Hires Three AI Researchers From Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab
Source: The Information OpenAI has rehired prominent AI researchers Barret Zoph, Luke Metz, and Sam Schoenholz, who had been working at rival Thinking Machines Lab, according to an X post from OpenAI applications chief Fidji Simo. The three researchers left OpenAI in late 2024 to help establish Thinking Machines, a high-profile startup led by former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, who left around the same time.
Is Claude Code the Revolution?
Before we get to today’s column, we wanted to point you to Kevin’s Saturday scoop about a longtime Google DeepMind director raising capital for a visual reasoning AI startup and our Friday scoop about DeepSeek’s upcoming V4 model, which insiders say is great at coding. Major U.S.-based AI developers are waiting with bated breath to see whether the model from this Chinese high-flyer (pun intended) is as good as advertised.
Google’s Chatbot Health Move Can’t Be Far Behind OpenAI’s
OpenAI’s official foray into health, unveiled in this post on Wednesday, has been a long time coming, as we explained last summer. In short, OpenAI is creating a special section of ChatGPT for customers to ask health-related questions and dump data from their personal health apps and wearable devices to get personalized advice. The features are in a trial phase with a subset of paid users for now. (See our report on Wednesday, which we published around the time OpenAI posted its blog item).
OpenAI Preps Personal Health Features in ChatGPT
OpenAI is turning ChatGPT into a personal health coach, hoping to keep the chatbot one step ahead of rivals like Google. One feature would let people use ChatGPT to analyze data contained in their personal health apps and wearable devices, such as an Oura ring, Apple Watch or Whoop bracelet, according to two people who have seen designs for the feature.
Nvidia CEO Says Groq Didn’t Have a ‘Nook and Cranny to Fit Into’
Before we get to today‘s column, you should check out our scoop this morning that the Chinese government has asked local companies to hold off ordering Nvidia’s H200 chips. It‘s the latest move in the geopolitical chess match that governs Nvidia’s China business. Meanwhile, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has finally given investors a partial explanation for his company’s $20 billion Christmas Eve shocker deal to hire the team behind AI server chip designer Groq and license its tech.
OpenAI, Meta and Their AI Rivals Ramp Up Turf Wars and Partnerships, in Three Charts
You can call 2025 the year of the robot, at least for the major AI companies. While companies such as Anthropic, Meta and xAI filled out their AI hardware and software lineups, nearly everyone started to work on technology for humanoid robots. The shift to robots says as much about the current competitive landscape in AI as it does about the dream of humanoids running around every factory and household.
Nvidia Agrees to Pay Around $20 Billion to Access Groq’s AI Chip Tech and Hire Its Leaders
Source: The Information Nvidia on Wednesday struck a deal to license technology from Groq, one of its best-funded rivals developing AI chips, and hire the startup’s leaders for approximately $20 billion, The Information reported. The companies didn’t disclose financial details but Nvidia said the deal is structured as a nonexclusive licensing arrangement rather than an outright acquisition, a tactic that may help the world’s most valuable company avoid immediate regulatory review.
Why Our Story on Salesforce’s Declining Trust in LLMs Hit a Nerve
On Friday, Aaron and Kevin’s article about Salesforce calling out the ingrained limitations of large language models struck a major nerve, as have our other in-depth articles about Salesforce AI challenges this year. Business people saw the piece as further evidence that marketing of generative AI got ahead of what the technology could actually do.
Oracle Burned $10 Billion as AI Investments Rise, Shares Fall 11%
Source: The Information Oracle shares fell more than 11% in after-hours trading on Wednesday after the database and cloud firm said it burned roughly $10 billion in the November quarter due to spending on data centers for artificial intelligence customers such as OpenAI. The cash burn, unprecedented in Oracle’s history, has prompted the firm to borrow heavily for such projects, including an $18 billion bond offering in September.
Trump to Let Nvidia Sell Advanced AI Chips to China
Source: The Information The Trump administration will let Nvidia sell a relatively advanced set of artificial intelligence server chips to China, the president said in a social media post, ending a debate in Washington about whether to let a geopolitical adversary access state-of-the-art technology from the U.S. Trump implied that the White House is directing the Commerce Department to let Nvidia sell Hopper 200 chips, which are a generation behind the Nvidia’s Blackwell chips that are now...
OpenAI CEO: Google’s AI Breakthrough Could Cause ‘Headwinds’ For OpenAI
Source: The Information In an internal memo, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged that Google’s recent progress in artificial intelligence could create “temporary economic headwinds” for his company, The Information reported Thursday. The memo anticipated Google’s launch of its Gemini 3 model, suggesting OpenAI’s once-dominant technological lead is narrowing, particularly in the crucial pretraining phase of AI model development where OpenAI has faced challenges.
Nvidia Says AI Chip Revenue Growth is Accelerating
Source: The Information Nvidia’s revenue rose 62% to $57 billion in the three months ended October compared to the same period a year earlier, largely from sales of AI chips and related equipment. Remarkably, its sales growth accelerated 8 percentage points compared to the July quarter, and Nvidia has projected even faster growth—65.4%—in the current fiscal quarter.
Databricks in Talks to Raise Capital at Valuation Above $130 Billion
Source: The Information Databricks, a database provider whose tools help customers develop and use AI, is in talks to raise money at a valuation of more than $130 billion, up around 30% from its valuation in a financing round just two months ago, The Information reported late Monday. The company, which has raised more than $15 billion from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners and T.
Databricks in Talks to Raise Capital at a Valuation Above $130 Billion
Databricks, a database provider whose tools help customers develop and use AI, is in talks to raise money at a valuation of more than $130 billion, up around 30% from its valuation in a financing round just two months ago, according to two people involved in the discussion. The possible capital raise reflects investor interest in companies providing cloud software to AI developers and which are generating cash.
Shares of AI Cloud Firm CoreWeave Drop as Data Center Delay Tanks Revenue Growth
Source: The Information CoreWeave, a cloud provider that rents out Nvidia chips to AI developers like Microsoft, Meta and OpenAI, said Tuesday that revenue rose 134% in the September quarter to nearly $1.4 billion and its revenue backlog more than doubled to $55 billion.
Why OpenAI CFO Said Uncle Sam Should Backstop Chip Financing; Databricks Co-Founder Responds to Benchmark Critics
It’s not every day one of the world’s most valuable companies asks the U.S. government for assistance, but these aren’t ordinary days. On Wednesday, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar suggested at a Wall Street Journal event that the federal government ought to guarantee the financing of AI chips. Come again? “We’re looking for an ecosystem of banks, private equity, maybe even governmental, the ways governments can come to bear,” she said. “The backstop, the guarantee that allows the financing to happen.
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