Chapter 1: What are the details of OpenAI's $110 billion funding round?
Here's your morning TNB Tech Minute for Friday, February 27th. I'm Julie Chang for The Wall Street Journal. OpenAI has secured $110 billion in new funding. The deal values the company at $730 billion before the investment, and this round of financing includes $30 billion from SoftBank, $50 billion from Amazon, and $30 billion from Nvidia.
Amazon will invest an initial $15 billion with the remainder contingent on milestones. The Amazon deal also includes OpenAI buying billions of dollars' worth of Amazon's AI chips, marking a shift from its historical reliance on NVIDIA GPUs. OpenAI said additional investors are expected to join the round. News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a content licensing partnership with OpenAI.
Chapter 2: How is Sam Altman addressing the Anthropic and Pentagon standoff?
Plus, we exclusively report that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has waded into the standoff between Anthropic and the Pentagon over the use of AI on the battlefield. Altman told his staff yesterday evening that the company was working on a deal that might help solve the impasse. A person familiar with the matter said no deal has been signed and the talks could fall through.
Earlier yesterday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amadei announced that the company had rejected the Department of War's demands.
And Jack Dorsey, the chairman and co-founder of Block, said he's cutting 40% of the payments company's workforce, or more than 4,000 employees. Dorsey alluded to AI tools as the reason for the cuts in a letter to shareholders, saying they've changed what it means to build and run a company. Block owns Square and Cash App.
Chapter 3: What impact do AI tools have on workforce reductions at Block?
In a memo to staff, Dorsey explained he chose an immediate major cut over gradual layoffs, arguing the latter is destructive to morale and to the trust of customers and shareholders. And that's your TMB Tech Minute.
Chapter 4: What reasons did Jack Dorsey give for the drastic cuts at Block?
We'll be back this afternoon with more.