PwC US plans to devote $1 billion over the next three years to AI projects, including upskilling its 65,000 workers, Hope reports.

Why it matters: One of the largest professional services and consulting firms in the world, PwC is seeking to ensure that its entire workforce is fluent in AI as competition for expertise heats up.

• While dealing with its biggest concerns — trust and issues around data privacy and transparency — PwC is also preparing to guide clients that are grappling with how best to use AI to improve their businesses.

Details: PwC's plans involve partnering with Microsoft and using its Azure OpenAI platform to build products and technologies — both for its clients and for itself.

• The partnership "will allow us to teach models in our controlled environment, not in the public space," a concern that a lot of clients have, Joe Atkinson, PwC's chief products and technology officer, tells Hope.

Meanwhile, the company's focus on upskilling is a reflection of the impact it expects AI to have on the future of work.

• Indeed, OpenAI's ChatGPT product has shifted moods within tech and many different sectors dramatically over the last few months — ranging from euphoria over increased innovation to worry about job loss.

What they're saying: "Will there be jobs that are going to be impacted completely by generative AI? I fully expect that there will be," says Atkinson.

• "[I]t's one of the reasons we are pressing so hard on both responsible use and on upskilling — because we believe that the best way to protect people's jobs is to train them for the reality that they're in."

Go deeper.

In a surprise announcement, British antitrust regulators today said they'll seek to block Microsoft's $69 billion takeover of video game giant Activision Blizzard, Axios' Dan Primack and Stephen Totilo report.

• Shares of Activision closed down 11.5%.
• Microsoft's stock, meanwhile, jumped 7.2%, partly in response to yesterday's better-than-expected earnings.

Details: Regulators cited concerns about the merger hindering competition in the emerging cloud gaming market.

📈 Meta shares spiked more than 12% after hours following its optimistic guidance for Q2. (Axios)

🍻 Bud Light pours at bars took a dive amid boycott calls. (Axios)

Disney filed a federal lawsuit today against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other officials, alleging they "orchestrated" a retaliatory campaign to punish the company for having "expressed a viewpoint the Governor and his allies did not like," Hope writes.

• The suit was filed after a supervisory board that DeSantis picked to oversee Disney's district voted today to nullify the company's authority over development.

DeSantis spokesperson Taryn Fenske told Axios' Yacob Reyes that the administration is "unaware of any legal right that a company has to operate its own government or maintain special privileges" in the state.

What others are saying: Jacob Schumer, a local government and land use attorney in Orlando, told Matthew Belloni last week in Puck that Disney would be "very strongly positioned to win" a lawsuit for retaliation.

Continue reading Yacob's story.

Gen Zers, defined by Pew as those born from 1997 to roughly 2012, are determined to protect themselves against an economic downturn.

What they’re saying: “A lot of my friends, I see them trying to think about how [they can] get passive income, how [they] make sure that [they] know how to manage that income ... so that that wealth is growing for them,” Princess Dandoo, a sophomore at Spelman College, tells Axios.

• Dandoo, whose team won Goldman Sachs’ Market Madness competition in New York on Monday, adds that students from underrepresented backgrounds also have to be “very, very strategic” about financial planning.

The big picture: Younger adults are out-prepping older generations in cutting back on spending, delaying big purchases and taking on a second job, a survey from LinkedIn last fall shows.

“If you go to a job in real life, you can’t pick and choose what tasks you want to do. … We’re really setting students up for a false sense of reality.”