OpenAI announced a lease for a sprawling data center in central Ohio with financing partly guaranteed by Nvidia, saying it will create 35,000 construction jobs and 2,500 permanent operating positions.

• Why it matters: The facility — which will be built and owned by SoftBank's SB Energy — illustrates the immensity of the computing and power needed to fuel the growth of the AI economy.

Zoom in: The data center will have 8 IT-gigawatts of computing capacity, powered by 10 gigawatts of new energy generation, on private land and federal property formerly used for uranium enrichment.

• A massive 9.2 gigawatts of new gas-fired power is ultimately envisioned for the Ohio project — enough energy to power around 7 million homes, though estimates vary.
• Nvidia — which will be the exclusive provider of chips to the site — agreed to guarantee up to $105 billion in conditional lease and power payment obligations to SB Energy, according to an SEC filing.
• Nvidia also said today that it's investing $1.5 billion in SB Energy to back its "continued evolution into a leading AI infrastructure developer."

What we're watching: The deal may reignite fears of a "circular" AI bubble that could create systemic financial risks.

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took to X to try to head off the argument:
• "Is this circular financing? No. OpenAI will pay the lease," he said, adding that Nvidia is using "its scale and long-term visibility to" enable the site to happen.

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Anthropic's second-quarter revenue exploded from a year ago, helping push the AI lab's annualized revenue run rate above $65 billion ahead of its expected IPO, according to figures reported by Bloomberg.

• The metric — an estimate of future annual revenue based on a short period of data — was hit at the end of July, per Bloomberg, and implies a sevenfold increase from where it was at the end of last year, Axios' Madison Mills writes.

What we're watching: Anthropic could go public before its rival, OpenAI.

• IPOs would help the companies tap additional pools of capital to secure more capacity for model usage — and going first could give the Claude maker a leg up.

State of play: OpenAI's latest revenue run rate hit $40 billion, according to a message shared internally by co-founder Greg Brockman last week.

• Caveat: The two companies may not measure revenue the same way.

Reality check: The "winner" of any metric used to measure where each company is in the AI race changes constantly.

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🏀 The Buss family is selling its remaining 17.8% stake in the Los Angeles Lakers to new majority owners Josh Kushner and Bob Iger. (ESPN)

⚖️ Meta faces a landmark federal trial beginning Tuesday in a case where state attorneys general have accused the company of designing its social media platforms to hook kids and of lying about the associated risks. (NPR)

Google is acquiring Spirit Airlines' emails, calendar info, chats, documents, spreadsheets and other business data, according to a bankruptcy court filing.

• It will use the data to improve its products and AI models.

Why it matters: Spirit Airlines ceased operations earlier this year after it failed to emerge from its second Chapter 11 bankruptcy, but attorneys are still handling the disposition of its assets.

Zoom in: Google won a bankruptcy auction for the data, agreeing to pay $10 million for the information.

• The data does not contain any personally identifiable information, according to a court filing by PJT Partners vice president Dylan Friesner, an investment banker for Spirit.

By the numbers: The deal includes about 100 million emails and 500 million Microsoft Teams chats, according to a court filing.

• It does not include passenger profiles or their frequent flyer information.

State of play: Google is expected to use the data as fodder for large language model training.

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