Good morning. It’s Jeremy here, filling in for Andrew who, along with many of my Coins2Day colleagues, is kicking off Coins2Day Brainstorm Tech in Deer Valley, Utah today. Check out coins2day.com for coverage of the mainstage sessions.
Over the weekend, everyone was still talking about that White House dinner. Never has such an extraordinary collection of intellectual heft gathered in the White House since Thomas Jefferson dined—oh never mind.
But the amount of market power gathered in the room on Thursday night was truly extraordinary. Dave Smith has a rundown of who was there below. If nothing else, it was the dinner that launched a thousand memes. (If you haven’t checked out the deepfake parody someone created of Bill Gates’ remarks at the dinner, it’s hilarious, but NSFW, so I won’t link to it here.)
Coming to “kiss the ring” certainly seems to have paid off for at least one of the guests, Sundar Pichai. Fresh from having escaped lightly from the U.S. Government’s antitrust suit against Alphabet, Pichai’s dinner performance may have helped convince Trump to go to bat for Google with the EU. (Not that Trump needed too much persuading.)
More on that, as well as all the other tech news–including Anthropic’s potentially precedent-setting settlement of an AI copyright case—below.
—Jeremy Kahn
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Trump threatens (trade) war over EU Google fine
U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened the European Union with additional tariffs after the bloc fined Google €2.9 billion ($3.4 billion) for violating competition laws with its search ad practices and ordered it to change its business practices.
Just hours after the EU announced the fine on Friday and a day after he met with Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai at the White House, Trump took to Truth Social to call the decision "very unfair."
“We cannot let this happen to brilliant and unprecedented American Ingenuity,” Trump wrote. He also threatened a trade investigation that could result in additional tariffs on EU goods.
The fine is one of the largest Google-parent Alphabet has ever faced. It previously hit the tech giant with a €4.2 billion fine in 2018 for anticompetitive behavior in the way it used Android. Google has 60 days to tell the EU how it will comply, with Brussels threatening to break up the company if it is not satisfied with the proposed solution.
"At this stage, it appears that the only way for Google to end its conflict of interest effectively is with a structural remedy, such as selling some part of its Adtech business,” EU competition chief Teresa Ribera said.
Alphabet has promised to appeal the decision, which it called "unjustified." Trump's threat of further tariffs comes as the EU is in the middle of tricky negotiations with Washington over a possible trade deal.
—Jeremy Kahn
Anthropic reaches landmark $1.5 billion settlement in AI copyright case
Anthropic just dodged a potentially existential legal blow to its business with a $1.5 billion settlement.
The suit was a class action brought by authors over the use of some copyrighted works used to train Anthropic’s Claude model. The case centered on how the company allegedly obtained some of the training data by bulk-downloading pirated texts from shadow libraries like LibGen, rather than whether training AI on copyrighted books counts as “fair use” (a judge said it does). It was set to go to trial in December.
The settlement, which equates to roughly $3,000 per book across 500,000 works, is being billed as the largest copyright recovery in history.
It comes just days after the company raised $13 billion at a $183 billion valuation. While the settlement is steep, it’s manageable for a firm the size of Anthropic and amounts to less than a third of its projected $5 billion in annual revenue. More importantly, it spares the company from trial, where damages could have reached $1 trillion.
For now, the case sets a benchmark other AI giants may need to meet. Authors are also suing Meta and OpenAI on similar grounds. Legal experts said Anthropic’s deal with authors may be a “Napster-to-iTunes” moment for AI, forcing the industry toward real licensing markets for training data.
—Beatrice Nolan
Burn baby, burn: OpenAI's Cash Inferno
OpenAI is telling investors to brace for a much bigger burn rate than previously expected.
The company now projects spending could hit $115 billion by 2029, roughly $80 billion higher than earlier estimates, according to a report from The Information.
It wasn’t all bad news for shareholders, however, as OpenAI also reportedly raised its total revenue outlook to $200 billion by 2030, up 15% from prior forecasts. Revenue from ChatGPT alone is expected to generate nearly $90 billion by the end of the decade.
The higher burn rate could explain why the company is raising more capital than any private startup in history. Investors are buying shares at a $500 billion valuation, per the report, nearly double what they paid six months ago.
One of the key drivers behind the AI company’s soaring expenses is its cloud use. OpenAI has become one of the world’s largest renters of cloud servers. To counter some of these costs, the company is investing heavily in developing its own data center server chips and facilities (see the item in "More Tech" below).
—Beatrice Nolan
Trump and Silicon Valley break bread
President Donald Trump hosted Big Tech heavyweights at a White House dinner in the newly renovated Rose Garden late last week. The lavish display marked a sharp contrast with Trump’s first-term clashes with Big Tech.
The guest list was made up of 13 billionaires plus a roster of top VCs and executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Tim Cook, and Bill Gates, who each took turns praising the president.
Microsoft’s Satya Nadella lauded Trump and his policies for “helping a lot,” AMD’s Lisa Su praised the “acceleration” under the administration’s watch, and Oracle’s Safra Catz credited him with “unleashing American innovation and creativity.” Sam Altman thanked Trump for being “a pro-business and pro-innovation president” and pledged to “invest a ton in the United States.”
Trump, in turn, pressed executives on how much they plan to spend domestically, coaxing commitments in the hundreds of billions.
Former ally and “first buddy” Elon Musk was notably absent following a very public spat with Trump over his “Big Beautiful Bill.” He later insisted on social media that he was invited but couldn’t attend.
—Dave Smith
More tech
OpenAI strikes a $10 billion custom AI chip deal with Broadcom. The move could help to ease the shortage of high-powered chips.
ASML becomes Mistral AI’s top shareholder. ASML invested $1.5 billion in Mistral's $2 billion Series C, sources told Reuters.
Cable cuts in the Red Sea briefly disrupted Microsoft’s Azure service. Microsoft said on Saturday it was no longer detecting issues.
“Godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton says AI will spark a surge in unemployment and profits. But he says capitalism is to blame for this, not AI.
Palantir’s Alex Karp says AI won’t replace U.S. Skilled labor. Karp argued the tech will actually enhance workers’ value.
Authors sue Apple over use of books in AI training. It's the latest in a wave of lawsuits that claim tech companies violated copyright protections.
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