Axios

Shares in Meta sunk 9% in after-hours trading Wednesday after the tech giant said it planned to spend more money than initially expected on AI infrastructure costs this year.

Yes, but: Those investments do appear to be paying off meaningfully in fueling the growth of Meta's ad business.

Amazon trimmed about 2,300 Seattle-area jobs this week — including hundreds at its South Lake Union and Bellevue offices — as part of a 14,000-person global layoff that marks one of the tech giant's largest white-collar cuts to date, according to a new state filing.

Why it matters: Seattle's economy leans heavily on Amazon's highly paid, corporate workforce, whose spending fuels much of downtown's housing, retail and restaurant activity.

What's good for a new-school company can also be good for an old-school one.

The big picture: Nvidia passed $5 trillion in value Wednesday, while Caterpillar's stock soared. The burgeoning AI economy is fueling insatiable demand for the modern form of picks and shovels — the types of AI chips that Nvidia designs — and for the actual picks and shovels needed to build that new capacity.

Shares in Alphabet rose 5% in after-hours trading Wednesday, as revenue growth for YouTube and Google Cloud topped analyst expectations.

Why it matters: That top-line performance helped the company surpass $100 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time in its history.

It's all hands on deck for LA's AI adoption as the city gears up to host a string of major sporting events.

Why it matters: LA faces a massive logistical challenge as it prepares to host three global sporting events in three years — and it's turning to AI to help the city cope.

Apollo Global Management has reached a deal to sell AOL to Italian tech holding group Bending Spoons in a deal valued at roughly $1.5 billion, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: AOL still drives hundreds of millions of dollars of free cash flow.

Nvidia surged at the market open Wednesday, becoming the first company in history to be worth more than $5 trillion.

Why it matters: It became the first $4 trillion company less than four months ago.

OpenAI and Character.AI are tightening safeguards after increasing reports of adults and teens forming unhealthy attachments to chatbots.

Why it matters: A series of suicides linked to users' emotional dependence on AI companions has prompted senators to propose regulation and AI companies to begin making changes.

A new kind of data center built by a coalition including Nvidia aims to smooth out power use as AI demand surges.

Why it matters: Shared exclusively with Axios, the project is the first commercial rollout of software that adjusts energy draw in real time — a model the companies say can ease strain on the grid and curb electricity costs.

Maritime-technology startup Navier today unveiled three hybrid-electric hydrofoiling vessels: the 30-foot Quanta, the 80-foot Valkyrie and the 120-foot Morpheus.

• Each is customizable. And each promises thousands of nautical miles of range as it glides above choppy waters.

The big picture: The Trump administration is obsessing over the shipbuilding gap with China. Sampriti Bhattacharyya, a roboticist and Navier's chief executive, told Axios the U.S. doesn't just need to catch up in terms of quantity. It also needs to "out-innovate" competitors.

For True Anomaly CEO Even Rogers, the future of defense conjures thoughts of "space warfare, flat out."

• "Warfare is becoming autonomous. It's becoming multi-domain, and it's becoming an activity that happens in the gray zone," he told Axios in an interview.
• "There's all this entanglement around economics, politics and warfare," he added, "and the battlefield just looks very, very different than it used to."

Why he matters: Rogers is — as he puts it — a former space operations officer, commercial fisherman and grease monkey.

• His company in April announced a $260 million Series C.

One of the most important real-time, real-world debates in America is whether AI causes a short-term job apocalypse among white-collar workers.

• Two developments unfolding this week show urgent reasons for acute concern:

1. Amazon announced yesterday that it's cutting 14,000 white-collar jobs. JPMorgan, Walmart and others have revealed plans to slow hiring. All cited AI. PwC, the accounting and consulting giant, cut staff globally, partly because of AI. Nestlé cut jobs, blaming automation.
2. As importantly, a 2-year-old company with a 22-year-old CEO, founded by three college dropouts, was just valued at $10 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. The San Francisco company, Mercor, pays doctors, lawyers and others to train AI so machines can perform like human professionals. This is part of a mad rush to fine-tune AI with true human expertise so it can do for free what junior employees do now — and, later, what senior ones get paid good salaries to do.

The AI industry is preparing to launch a multimillion-dollar ad campaign through a new policy advocacy group, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: The new group — Build American AI — is the latest sign that the flush-with-cash AI industry is preparing to spend massive sums promoting its agenda, namely its push for federal, not state, regulation.

A slew of major companies announcing large-scale layoffs serves as a warning that the U.S. labor market, which has been in a prolonged-but-precarious balance, could be starting to tip over.

The big picture: Corporate psychology looks to be shifting, as the worker shortages of 2021 fade into memory and AI advances hold the promise of doing more with less.

A leading business group — in a report shared exclusively with Axios — is trying to jump-start efforts in Congress to cut red tape so that new AI and other projects can roll out more rapidly.

Why it matters: The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) carries considerable clout with Republicans.

OpenAI and Microsoft have solved the big details of their complicated partnership — for now, anyway.

Why it matters: The restructuring gives both companies more flexibility, but also lets them compete more effectively against each other.