No. of Recommendations: 6
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/openai-reache...https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/openais-110...OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced Friday that his company reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy its artificial intelligence models on its classified network, just hours after President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to phase out rival Anthropic.
Altman said in a post on X that he had been in talks with the Pentagon, which "displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome."
"AI safety and wide distribution of benefits are the core of our mission," he said. "Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement."
The deal came after Trump directed every federal agency to stop using Anthropic technology, escalating a standoff over how artificial intelligence should be used in military operations.
So, that sounds like the government agreed to accept the same thing that they rejected with Anthropic. Not only did they bar Anthropic from the Defense Department, but made them toxic to any company which hope to hold a US government contract.
A cynic might wonder who shorted Anthropic and went long on OpenAI recently.
A confusion of who is paying money to who:
OPENAI'S $110B FUNDING ROUND DRAWS INVESTMENT FROM AMAZON, NVIDIA, SOFTBANK
OpenAI said on Friday it is raising $110 billion in a blockbuster funding round that would value the ChatGPT maker at $840 billion, in a deal that signals the feverish pace of investment in artificial intelligence.
The funding round — one of the largest private capital raises on record — includes a $30 billion investment from SoftBank, $30 billion from Nvidia, and $50 billion from Amazon, and comes ahead of the AI startup's expected mega-IPO later this year.
More investors are expected to join the round as it progresses, OpenAI said.
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Big Tech companies and large tech investors such as SoftBank are racing to forge partnerships with OpenAI — which is spending heavily on data centers — betting that closer ties with the company would give them a competitive edge in the AI race.
For OpenAI, the fresh cash will help secure advanced AI chips and the computing capacity that it needs to maintain its pole position in the AI industry, especially as competition heats up from rivals such as Claude chatbot maker Anthropic and Google's Gemini.
OpenAI is targeting roughly $600 billion in total compute spend through 2030, a source told Reuters last week.
AMAZON PARTNERSHIP
Along with the $50 billion investment, OpenAI and Amazon have also struck a deal in which OpenAI will utilize 2 gigawatts of computing capacity powered by Amazon's in-house Trainium AI chips.
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The companies are also expanding their $38 billion cloud deal signed last year, with OpenAI saying it would spend an additional $100 billion on Amazon Web Services over the next eight years. As well, OpenAI will work with Amazon to develop customized models for the e-commerce giant's engineering teams.
Amazon will start with an initial $15 billion investment, followed by another $35 billion in the coming months when certain conditions are met, the companies said.
Amazon Web Services will also be the exclusive third-party cloud provider for OpenAI Frontier, the ChatGPT maker's enterprise platform for building and running AI agents.
The partnership does not change OpenAI's existing relationship with Microsoft, with Microsoft Azure still remaining the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI's APIs that provide access to OpenAI's models, the companies said.
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OpenAI's first-party products will continue to be hosted on Azure, and Microsoft holds its exclusive license and access to intellectual property across OpenAI models and products.
NVIDIA INVESTMENT RAISES DOUBTS
Nvidia's investment in OpenAI gives the chip giant a financial stake in one of its largest customers, amplifying the already intertwined relationship between two of the highest-profile players in the AI industry.
It also underscores a growing trend in the tech and AI industry where firms invest in and sign supply deals with each other, raising concerns about "circular" financing deals.
It was not immediately clear whether Nvidia's $30 billion investment replaced its earlier commitment announced in September under which Nvidia was set to invest up to $100 billion in the startup.
Jeff
