Snowflake escaped the market's software-stock penalty box after posting earnings results, even as traders shrugged off the numbers from fellow software stalwart Salesforce.
The big picture: Software shares have struggled, as investors bet AI will undercut the previous profitability of software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies.
OpenAI is launching a tool to help develop new biodefense and pandemic preparedness capabilities, according to an announcement shared first with Axios.
America's billionaires are developing their own prescriptions for AI-fueled inequality, anxious to defuse a populist revolt aimed at their ballooning fortunes.
Why it matters: The AI boom has dramatically raised the stakes of the wealth-tax debate, unleashing a technology that could wipe out millions of jobs while minting the world's first trillionaires.
Corporations are looking to offload AI tasks to cheaper models as usage blows out IT budgets and returns on investment haven't solidified.
Why it matters: The search for cheaper subscriptions could threaten the three biggest AI labs' near trillion-dollar valuations right as they near record IPOs.
Progressive Democrats taking hardline positions against AI are getting louder.
Why it matters: Five influential progressives are shaping a confrontational Democratic message on AI, distinguishing themselves from party centrists by openly challenging data centers and AI-linked political money.
AI companies, the cryptocurrency industry and pro-Israel groups are spending like never before to sink their least favorite members of Congress and congressional candidates.
Why it matters: Thevolume cannot be ignored. It's the kind of spending that can kill careers and stop political movements in their tracks.
Anthropic raised $65 billion in a Series H funding round, valuing the AI lab at $965 billion post-money, in one of the largest private funding rounds in tech history.
Why it matters: With the round, Anthropic leapfrogs OpenAI, which was most recently valued at $730 billion.
Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.8 Thursday, an upgrade to its flagship AI model with better coding and knowledge work skills, all for the same price as its prior version.
Why it matters: The new model still lags the performance of Mythos, Anthropic's most advanced, but the company says Mythos-class models are expected "in the coming weeks."
Founders Fund was one of the earliest investors in SpaceX, investing $20 million in 2008. It kept backing the company, with a stake that could be worth more than $60 billion.
Scott Nolan was an early SpaceX employee who later became a Founders Fund partner. Axios spent some time speaking with him ahead of what's expected to be the largest IPO ever.
What follows is lightly edited for clarity and length.
Groq is raising up to $650 million from existing investors, after the AI chipmaker previously signed a $20 billion licensing deal with Nvidia that saw much of its senior team depart, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: Groq is one of the biggest AI wins so far for venture capitalists, and those same investors now get a second bite at the apple.
An increasing share of regular folks in South Korea are going all in on the country's stock market — borrowing money so as not to miss out on the AI-fueled stock boom there.
Why it matters: The entire economy is now hanging on the success of a few chipmakers.
The latest: South Korea's KOSPI index, which crossed 8,000 for the first time on Tuesday, is up 207%from a year ago.
A few big, newly minted trillionaire chipmakers are behind the surge, including SK Hynix and Samsung.
The big picture: A mania for stocks has swept the country, as Bloomberg reported earlier this year.
Zoom in: And retail traders are borrowing to fuel the buying binge: Margin loans are at a record high, according to reporting earlier this month in the Korea Times.
Middle-aged and older Koreans are increasingly getting in on this — borrowing money so as not to miss out, "mirroring" younger generations but "often with larger sums at stake."
Threat level: Some of these folks are risking retirement money with leveraged bets — Korea already has a high poverty rate (40%) for older adults.
If the AI trade falters, the country's entire economy is on the line, writes Ed Yardeni at Yardeni Research.
"Asia's fourth‑largest economy increasingly resembles a giant leveraged bet on AI."
The bottom line: What could go wrong? See our piece on how American investors are using a record amount of borrowed money to bet on stocks.
IBM is investing $5 billion and deploying more than 20,000 engineers to help secure open source software, according to an announcement shared first with Axios.
Why it matters: AI is supercharging cyberattacks, pushing companies to adopt the same technology to defend against threats.
Working-age Americans in cities are nearly twice as likely to use AI as those in rural communities, according to a new report from Microsoft, shared first with Axios.
Why it matters: The uneven spread of AI adoption could deepen existing economic opportunity gaps across the U.S., Microsoft president Brad Smith said in an interview.
Corporate leaders are starting to question whether soaring AI spending is delivering meaningful returns.
Why it matters: Companies that rushed to embrace AI are now confronting ballooning IT costs, uncertain productivity gains and growing employee skepticism.
