"It's a hell of a target-rich environment right now," for leaders who are unafraid to speak up on political and environmental issues, Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert said Tuesday at an Axios House event during NYC Climate Week.
Why it matters: A lot of U.S. business leaders are afraid of triggering the Trump administration's wrath, but the Patagonia CEO is continuing in the company's tradition of speaking up on environmental and social issues.
OpenAI's Stargate data center infrastructure project will add five new sites to provide seven gigawatts of planned capacity over the next three years, the company announced Tuesday.
Why it matters: The push to build massive, power-thirsty data centers is key to winning the AI race.
President Trump isn't an existential threat to the energy transition and climate change, investor and climate activist Tom Steyer said Tuesday at an Axios House event during Climate Week NYC.
Why it matters: Steyer's free-market views offer an upbeat contrast to the Trump administration's focus on fossil fuels and nuclear over other clean-energy technologies.
Microsoft is in talks with select U.S. publishers about a pilot program to help launch a two-sided marketplace that would compensate publishers for their content used by AI products, starting with its Copilot assistant.
Why it matters: Microsoft would become the first major tech company to build an AI marketplace for publishers, a milestone in building a sustainable business model for content companies in the AI era.
In the hype cycle of AI development, one thing still rings true for security professionals: securing AI doesn't look any different from securing any other enterprise software tool.
Why it matters: AI is already amplifying and automating many of the cyber threats that businesses face on a day-to-day basis. Making the wrong investments in tools to fend off these threats could be a costly mistake.
Venture capitalists are buzzing over the Trump administration's plan to charge $100,000 for H1-B visas, and it hasn't quieted down after White House clarification that these will be one-time fees on new applications.
The big picture: Most VC reaction seems to be negative. Both because of the financial burden it could place on startups, making it that much harder to compete with richer incumbents, and also because of the longer-term risks it presents to American innovation.
Stripe is in talks to repurchase shares from venture capital backers at a $106.7 billion valuation, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: The payments infrastructure giant caught grief, including from yours truly, for not going public when its valuation hit $95 billion before the pandemic — after which it was slashed to only $50 billion.
Meta launched a new super PAC on Tuesday to help fight off what it sees as onerous AI and tech policy bills across the country, per an announcement shared exclusively with Axios.
Why it matters: As the federal government fully embraces AI and looks unlikely to pass significant tech policy regulation any time soon, busy state houses are tech companies' biggest problem.
