Vulcan Elements, a North Carolina-based maker of rare-earth magnets, has raised $65 million in Series A funding at a $250 million valuation.
Why it matters: The U.S. is pushing to onshore production of materials critical to its national defense, plus commercial needs, rather than relying on China.
OpenAI is raising money at a $300 billion valuation, in a SoftBank-led round that the company announced months ago but which isn't slated to close until year-end.
It's also working on a secondary share sale at a $500 billion valuation, as recently reported by Bloomberg and confirmed by Axios.
The big question: Why would investors buy shares at the much higher price?
GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke announced Monday that he plans to step down, with Microsoft opting not to directly replace the position, according to memos shared first with Axios.
Why it matters: GitHub, which has operated largely independently since Microsoft acquired it in 2018, has become increasingly important to Microsoft's overall strategy to woo developers to Windows and Azure, as well as to its suite of AI tools.
Your fake friends are getting a lot smarter ... and realer.
Why it matters: If you think those make-believe people on Facebook, Instagram and X — the bots — seem real and worrisome now, just wait.
Soon, thanks to AI, those fake friends will analyze your feeds, emotions, and habits so they can interact with the same savvy as the realest of people.
The U.S. government will levy a 15% fee on some of Nvidia's and AMD's chip sales to China as a condition of granting them export licenses to sell in the country, a Trump administration official confirmed to Axios.
Why it matters: While export controls for sensitive products are nothing new, charging a company 15% of its revenue to sell a particular product to a particular country is unprecedented.
David Sacks — famed tech founder & investor, co-host of the "All-In Podcast" ("The Rainman") and now White House special adviser for AI & crypto — declared Saturday on X that "Doomer narratives were wrong" about AI.
Why it matters: The big takeaway from Sacks' post is that the fear of one AI frontier model dominating all now looks far-fetched, since high-performing competing models are diffusing power.
"The AI race is highly dynamic so this could change," Sacks wrote. "But right now the current situation is Goldilocks":
