2025-11-22 04:30:15
Stocks seem to be whipsawing right now to close the week – up, down, up, down, up. It's like a Contra or Zelda code (more on that below). Regardless, the swirl (thanks, NVIDIA) seemingly has pushed Google ahead of Microsoft to be the third most highly valued company in the world from a market cap perspective. Sort of a wild ascent given that just six months ago I was writing about how undervalued Alphabet seemed as a stock relative to its parts. The company has gained over $1.6T in market value since that post – the stock is up nearly 80%.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
🌎 World Models, So Hot Right Now – With Gemini 3 out the door, what is Google DeepMind's Demis Hassibas now spending most of his (research) time on these days? The same thing that Yann LeCun and seemingly many others are... And he thinks we may be closing in on a "ChatGPT moment" for the "World Model" space – if we can get the costs down. Luckily, Google has the "huge advantage" of TPUs – something which is seemingly becoming more clear by the day. And it may become more clear yet if and when the AI Bubble bursts. "It feels like there’s obviously a bubble in the private market. You look at seed rounds with just nothing really being tens of billions of dollars. That seems a little unsustainable. It’s not quite logical to me." That's a bit self-serving, of course. But that doesn't mean it's wrong! [Sources 🔒]
📽️ Netflix's Warner Bros Bid Includes Theatrical Promise – It seems like each week now brings a new sign that Netflix is thawing their stance against theatrical releases for their content (a prediction I made a year ago). To be fair, this one is probably necessary if the company wants any shot of competing for the Warner Bros movie studio (which has agreements already in place for theatrical distribution). Still, it once again signals that Netflix is not as militant on this stance as they have historically projected in public. And this will continue soon with the release of the final season of Stranger Things, which is (smartly) paired with a theatrical experience. And there will be more calls and pressure when the third Knives Out is released, which would obviously be a huge theatrical event because Netflix has helped make it a big franchise. It doesn't have to be all-or-nothing here, Netflix should leverage theaters where it makes sense both for marketing and to make money, imagine that. BTW, those first bids from Paramount, Comcast, and Netflix are now in David Zaslav's hands... [Bloomberg 🔒]
📲 Perplexity's Mobile AI Browser – For all the talk and hype about the "AI Browser Wars", I've been surprised that none of the major players have tried to immediately go after the green field: mobile. I get that it's harder to do – in particular on iOS which remains locked-down when it comes to browser technology, which is undoubtedly part of the reason why Perplexity is starting with Android. Still, as someone now fully sold on using an AI browser, I find it weird/frustrating to use a mobile browser and have no such AI options to do what I regularly do on the desktop now. Instead I have to use a separate app, like an animal. There might even be a real opportunity on iOS as Apple should add AI functionality to Safari in about 15 years. I still regularly use The Browser Company's (clever) Arc mobile app, even though they've abandoned ship on Arc for the more AI-centric Dia. [TechCrunch]
📺 Big Streamers Bet Big On 'Pause Ads' – As much as I generally dislike advertising – certainly, when it's say, crammed into your TV UI, or certainly your refrigerator! – I think I'm actually okay with this. Right now when you pause content, it's just frozen as a static image. Some people obviously pause to try to catch something, but most of the time it's just to do something else. So I'm okay with using this otherwise dead space – especially if the ad is actually relevant to something you just saw on-screen. You can imagine a world in which some consumers may even pause on purpose to see if they can buy something they're seeing. This may sound like the definition of dystopia to any filmmaker, but you could see this being a thing if it worked well enough. Certainly for Amazon TVs! And in general, I'd be more in favor of this type of ad if you got something back in exchange for seeing it, such as a discount on the streaming service. Sort of like the lock screen ads on Kindles. Or even that free TV set that has the ad bar at the bottom. This all sounds like a nightmare to me, but I get it. And I don't think it has to be all bad. [Variety]
💸 Sam Altman's 'Rough Vibes' Memo – Three interesting elements here. First, that Altman felt the need to write this just ahead of Google's release of Gemini 3. Clearly, he knew it was going to be good. And second, that's a problem for OpenAI because if nothing else, it highlights a fear that many investors and watchers have that Google's sheer size and scale – and most importantly, profits – will allow them to ride ChatGPT's first-mover advantage into the ground. This is obviously why OpenAI is trying to move heaven and earth to create their own infrastructure – but do they have enough time before the bubble bursts? That's the million dollar question. Actually, the trillion dollar one. Perhapsseveral trillion. Finally, the specific notion that Google has in some way overcome the pre-training hurdles that the other LLM makers have run into is interesting... Google itself is playing this up – is it something specific about TPUs (versus NVIDIA's GPUs) or something else in the process? That's also a several trillion dollar question! [Information 🔒]
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
"You can’t go through 50 states. You have to get one approval. Fifty is a disaster. Because you’ll have one woke state and you’ll have to do all woke. You’ll be back in the woke business. We don’t have woke anymore in this country. It’s virtually illegal. You’ll have a couple of wokesters."
– The President of the United States with some very deep and serious thoughts as to why he might issue an Executive Order to stop states from enacting their own AI laws.
Interestingly enough, this notion is something that at least some of the MAGA base is pushing back against. That's right, AI and Epstein are the issues dividing the party.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
It feels like I've been waiting my whole life for a Legend of Zelda movie. While I loved Mario, my favorite Nintendo game was always Zelda. From the golden NES cartridge on down, it was absolutely magical to me. I even tolerated Zelda II, which was rewarded in the form of A Link to the Past, the Super Nintendo sequel which is still my favorite of the series (undoubtedly for nostalgic reasons). Anyway, just seeing this one shot (and some spy cam footage) is insanely exciting to me. They better not fuck this up, and at least from this, it doesn't look like they will.
2025-11-21 18:54:05
I have a simple method for my own AI rankings: product delight. That is, when I use the various services from the players in AI, do they constantly surprise and delight me with not only the outputs but also the user experience details. Put simply: is it the best product for me, the end user, to use? It's subjective. But I trust my taste. For it is my own.
Anyway, this very scientific approach is why I've always considered ChatGPT the best product in the category. And judging from usage, I'm obviously not alone there. Sure, some of that is the first-mover advantage that OpenAI enjoys – which, in turn, has helped from a branding perspective as ChatGPT (a rough name to say and even spell out for many) is becoming sort of the "Kleenex" of the field. But beyond any technical capabilities, I've just always found OpenAI's strength to be in productizing AI in a way that their peers haven't been able to match. At least when it comes to consumers.
To be clear, I still think that's the case (see the recent Sora vs. Vibes "battle" and Group ChatGPT), but I also can't help but wonder if Google is closing the gap.
Yes, Google, the company famous for amazing technology but often flubbing the product when it comes to the roll out. That included, naturally, their first stab at AI. "Bard" was a comical flop, but they were quickly able to regroup and find their footing with "Gemini". And over the past year or so, it has felt like they were really making some strides and perhaps stepping on the gas.
Gemini 3 feels like the culmination of that. And the early technical benchmarks look impressive. But just as impressive to me are the product touches Google has been dishing out. NotebookLM was perhaps the start of this, but more recently, I was impressed by Google's ability to actually create a sort of viral product moment with "Nano Banana" – going so far as to lean into the silly codename (taking my advice?). There are now bananas – literal banana emojis – all over the UI. This mixed with the little, colorful graphical flourishes when using Gemini are just... nice.
Then last night I stumbled into Gemini's "Dynamic view" option. This is decidedly not a good name as it hides a product output that's truly profound in a sheath of blandness. But I mean, you have to try this.
From describing the end of Heat (spoilers) to explaining Interstellar (spoilers), it's wild what Gemini is able to do here. Basically, it takes what would be a useful AI text-based answer and wraps it in an interactive, visual output. It's honestly a bit hard to describe, but each result contains about a dozen little bits that are beyond impressive. Especially for something that Gemini is able to create in about a minute.
From the background sound (which you can toggle on and off) for the Interstellar result, to the time dilation relativity calculator for 'Miller's Planet', to the "landing lights" button to illuminate Neil McCauley's shadow in Heat. I mean, it really made this. Out of the blue. Again, in 60 seconds.
All of this sounds almost silly, but it also points to a world in which increasingly complex creations are able to be made on the fly by these tools. For "vibe coders" this may seem like nothing new, but this type of tool opens the aperture on what's possible for regular users to do. Are you more of a visual learner? Why not use Gemini 'Dynamic View' to create an explanation of stock buybacks for you?
Why not use it for anything and everything?
Have I mentioned that this product is still technically in "Labs"?1 Not only is it going to get better, there's hope Google will launch it with a better name.
Anyway, color me impressed. Google is on a bit of a roll when it comes to product delight, which isn't something I expected – and yes, I worked there for over a decade. And that – beyond the inherent structural, technical, and monetary advantages that Google has here (aside from that, what did you think of the play, Mrs. Lincoln?) – should have OpenAI a bit worried. There's a crocodile in the product moat.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
2025-11-20 21:35:03
Well, they did it. I'm happy to report that Jensen Huang saw his shadow and so we will have at least another three months of AI euphoria. I'm "happy" about this because it means that NVIDIA's stock won't collapse when it opens today and thus risk bringing down the entire stock market which is so heavily wrapped around the Big Tech bet. At some point, this seems inevitable, but not today. Phew.
The reason why is because NVIDIA continues to bring in boatloads of money selling their AI wares. They even managed to defy the Law of Large Numbers this quarter and saw that mythical uptick in revenue growth – the first on a sequential basis in a couple of years. Even more impressively, they're projecting another uptick next quarter. No matter how you choose to look at this situation, it's insanely impressive growth.
At the same time, it's growth that is largely fueled by a handful of players. This makes sense, NVIDIA's Big Tech peers are really the only companies that can afford to spend the amounts of money that makes up most of what NVIDIA is now bringing in. This is obvious, but often overlooked: much of NVIDIA's revenue is coming from Big Tech.1
2025-11-20 04:14:08
It's November 22, 1996 and Steve Jobs has a cold. But unlike Frank Sinatra 30 years earlier, Jobs actually sits down for his interview,1 because it's the one year anniversary of the release of Toy Story, Pixar's first film released in collaboration with Disney. And now, to mark the 30th anniversary of the movie, the Steve Jobs Archive is sharing this never-before-seen footage.
Jobs is just 41 years old at the time but it has been 11 – eleven! – years since he was pushed out of Apple. That was the same year that he started NeXT, which he's still the CEO of in this video, not yet reunited with his first company (that would happen just weeks later). He's also been the CEO of Pixar for just over a decade here, having bought the business from George Lucas, out of Lucasfilm – for $10M. It took that entire decade to make their first feature film. But it worked. Boy did it:
Toy Story was the world’s first entirely computer-animated feature-length film. An instant hit with audiences and critics, it also transformed Pixar, which went public the week after its premiere. Buoyed by Toy Story’s success, Pixar’s stock price closed at nearly double its initial offering, giving it a market valuation of approximately $1.5 billion and marking the largest IPO of 1995. The following year, Toy Story was nominated for three Academy Awards en route to winning a Special Achievement Oscar in March.
The largest IPO of 1995 would be a seed round for an AI startup today – and in some cases, not even that outlandish of one.
The entire 22-minute video is obviously worth the watch. There are a lot of good nuggets about both Pixar and Disney, but the one part that really stood out to me was about how he thought about building teams – in particular at Pixar, which wasn't necessarily a world, filmmaking, that he was close to. But he did know technology and knew this would have to be a sort of hybrid of Silicon Valley and Hollywood – even though he also knew previous attempts to fuse those worlds never worked. The cultures were simply too different. Or were they...
When asked about how he's different than the studio heads of old, Jobs takes a moment to think about it – a very Jobs-ian move in such interviews – and he starts to talk through how they're building something different with Pixar. But as he talks through it, he seems to realize that actually, it's not that different from what he's done in technology when it comes to building teams:
"This is the same in technology as it is at Pixar and on the creative side. Which is: where you’ve got incredibly talented people that are also rare and in-demand, if you don’t treat them right, they can go get another job in 10 minutes. So this strange thing happens, which is sort of the hierarchy of power inverts. And the CEO is actually at the bottom [laughs]. So I sort of feel like I work for most of these people. Because they’re the ones that are doing all the brilliant work. And it’s the same in software. It’s the same thing. The best people are very hard to come by. And so it’s managements job to support them. Because they’re on the front lines doing the work. So that’s kind of how we run the place."
"I play the orchestra" anyone? But really, there are similarities to the answer he gave in a Q&A all the way back in 1983 about attracting and retaining talent at Apple. And obviously this will resonate with anyone building teams – in particular, perhaps those building teams working on AI at the moment. "They can go get another job in 10 minutes."
When pressed how he's been able to build such a culture to foster success:
“We do that by creating the right environment. A very rich environment. And removing obstacles out of their way. And putting together the right teams of people together. And getting the right projects. Keeping the quality levels very high, both in terms of people and strategy and projects. Those kinds of things.”
He keeps going:
“As an example our studio has grown tremendously this year. We started off at about 175 people and we’ll be at about 300 people by the end of this year. And one of our major challenges was not to lower the quality bar one iota. And we managed to accomplish that. We put together a very strong recruiting group. We did a lot of other things that I’d rather not talk about cause they’re competitive advantages. And we were able to hire you know, 125 A+ people this year.”
He played the orchestra, but he also assembled that orchestra.
It would be interesting to know what Jobs would have thought about our current Age of AI – in particular, AI as a tool to augment creative endeavors, such as filmmaking. Hollywood is obviously up-in-arms about it right now, but there was a time when digital animation was the new technology cast aside. The same has been true of basically all new technology.
While many would undoubtedly jump to say that Jobs might hate something as seemingly "soulless" as some of the creative output we get right now from AI, I'd like to imagine he would find a way to fuse the creative talent with the technical talent to make something magical. Something like Toy Story.2
One more thing: the other stand-out bit is when Jobs is explaining how Walt Disney realized that to make filmmaking work with this new technology at the time, animation, he would actually have to invert the way movies were typically made – something which Pixar had to do as well: "You have to edit your film before you make it."
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 Issey Miyake shirt and all. ↩
2 Incidentally, we just showed our youngest part of Toy Story this past weekend as her very first movie. Have to gear her up for Toy Story 5 with it's antagonist... the um, tablet! ↩
2025-11-19 20:55:03
My god what a colossal waste of time. Here's Cecilia Kang for The New York Times:
Meta did not break the law when it bought its nascent rivals Instagram and WhatsApp, a federal judge said on Tuesday, handing a major win to the $1.51 trillion company and dealing a blow to the government’s efforts to rein in the power of tech giants.
Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia said in an 89-page ruling that Meta did not create a monopoly in social networking through the acquisitions and that the market has continued to expand with rivals including TikTok and YouTube. The Federal Trade Commission had sued the company, accusing it of breaking antitrust law by acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp in a “buy or bury” strategy to cement its social networking dominance.
The F.T.C. “continues to insist that Meta competes with the same old rivals it has for the last decade, that the company holds a monopoly among that small set and that it maintained that monopoly through anticompetitive acquisitions,” Judge Boasberg said, adding that the agency needed to prove that argument. “The court’s verdict today determines that the F.T.C. has not done so.”
This case was so obviously going to fail from the get-go – and actually, it did fail from the get-go, but the judge allowed the FTC to rework it and refile it – that it should call into question the government's judgement and competence in going after any such cases.
Even a recent case in which they "won", against Google in Search dominance, they completely and utterly failed to secure remedies that will change much of anything. And they shouldn't have gotten any such remedies, because that entire premise is fatally flawed in the age of modern technology – and the Age of AI, where things are moving faster still, will only make such issues more obvious.
To put it simply and plainly: the government litigates antitrust in hindsight, but by the time they're able to bring these cases forward to trial, the technology at the center of these debates is already in the rearview mirror, making many of the arguments and debates moot. That was the issue with the Google remedies, and that was the problem with this Meta case. I made the longer version of this argument back in April's Antitrust's Hindsight Problem:
If anything, I suspect these cases – as well as the myriad other antitrust cases against Big Tech™ – will ultimately point to how ineffectual current antitrust law is for our modern age (apologies, Lina Khan). But that will likely only be obvious in hindsight, which is interesting because that itself is a big part of the problem with these cases: that they're being litigated with hindsight...
I mean, that's sort of true about *every such case*. You have to go after what is viewed to be problematic elements of the past, obviously. We don't have Minority Report-style pre-crime – yet. But these Big Tech™ antitrust cases in particular seem to look back upon the past with a different set of glasses than how things were viewed in real time. Nowhere is that more evident than in Meta's ongoing antitrust case. The FTC wants the company to sell-off Instagram and WhatsApp, without really acknowledging that the common consensus at the time – in particular with the former – was that the deals were silly ones in which Facebook, as the company was then known, was drastically overpaying.
Essentially, the government is going after Meta for doing deals that are only deemed savvy and anti-competitive in hindsight. It's sort of the opposite of pre-crime! It's making things crimes in the present that were not crimes in the past.
Worse, had the judge ripped WhatsApp and Instagram away from Meta over a decade after those deals closed, it would have certainly had a chilling effect on basically any deal – in a time when most deals are still mainly frozen because all of these companies still have PTSD in dealing with the wrath of Lina Khan. Again, she was largely ineffectual in action, as we're seeing now with cases playing out after her tenure is over, but the government also made getting deals through such a pain in the ass that it literally wasn't worth the time. Remember when they tried to block Meta from buying a VR fitness app? Yeah...1 Talk about waste of time...
So instead, we saw the rise of "hackqusitions". Deals so convoluted and so clearly set up to get around such nonsense (in many cases, less about the fear of being blocked but the fear of how long such deals would take to get through – basically death in the Age of AI).
Speaking of death, I also might point out that if the government had forced Meta to spin out Instagram, it very well could have killed the company. That sounds like hyperbole, but I'm not sure that it is – by most accounts, Instagram is now the main driver of Meta's all-important ad revenue, more so than Facebook itself. Certainly, it would have ensured that Meta had no shot to compete in AI because they wouldn't have the money to do so. Mark Zuckerberg's case to would-be hires that Meta is better positioned for the long term in AI than, say, OpenAI, because they have the profits to pour back into the projects would have been all-but destroyed.
Hard to debate "buy, build, or bury" when you can't buy, build, or bury...2
So does this mean M&A meat is back on the menu, boys? Maybe, but probably not. Again, "hackquisitions" work so much faster than traditional M&A since they're not subject to, well, much of anything aside from an agreement between two parties. So I wouldn't be shocked to see them continue. Unless the government wakes up to that reality. Which they might... in 2045.
That's around when the government might also realize that Meta's real competition here was TikTok and YouTube, you morons. Any child would know that. I mean that very literally! It took one simple, quick experiment to highlight this fact to the judge in this case, as Casey Newton rightly zeroes in on in writing up the verdict today on Platformer. The government? They were too busy on something called 'MeWe', apparently. Maybe we should look into that. Of course, even those undoubtedly won't be the competition by then because,3 well, see: above.
It's like trying to play Whac-A-Mole where the moles are high on amphetamines. And your mallet weighs a thousand pounds.
It's almost as if the government has spent the past 25 years congratulating themselves for the Microsoft antitrust case that they also actually lost in the end, that they're blinded to the reality of how markets actually work in the modern age. And that's really going to screw them in the Age of AI.
With this Meta case, at least we'll always have the discovery documents and testimony here. That was fun, albeit not for Meta. The same will likely be true for Apple and Amazon with their own antitrust cases still making their way to trial. The Apple case in particular also seems awfully weak, so that mixed with the fact that Apple hates to disclose anything about their business (not to mention public embarrassment) might lead to some sort of settlement before that happens. We'll see.
I'll close with my closing from my post about antitrust back in April (a longer excerpt, since it was paywalled):
Now, that is the one part where the government may have a point and a role here. Rather than worrying about the dominance of Google Search, if they were focused on making sure Google doesn't leverage their market position to control the future of AI in an anticompetitive way, that's the correct framing here. And you're starting to hear them talk in such a way. The problem goes back to pre-crime. No one can know for sure that AI will be the key to dominating the future right now. Many believe that, and for good reason, I think. But it's trying to litigate the future.
So yeah, that puts the government in a tricky spot between the past and the future. Still, that future should clearly be the focus versus the past. And so if there's a way to keep an eye on ensuring that a market position isn't leveraged in an anticompetitive way – *while still allowing Google to compete* – that's the angle.
Admittedly, it's a tough needle to thread.
But even without that, it feels like the market is moving in ways right now that are naturally starting to erode what all of these antitrust cases are focused on. The humorously defined social media dominance that Meta enjoys seemingly matters less by the day. And same with Google when it comes to Search. As noted, the ad case against Google is probably the strongest, but it's perhaps also under attack as AI starts to change the way the web actually works – or, at least, is served.
Meanwhile, the cases against Apple and Amazon are yet to begin. But there are already clear issues with the Apple case as well, largely in trying to cram their market position with the iPhone into older antitrust definitions around market dominance. There as well, there's perhaps a case to be made against the App Store in particular as a form of distribution, but it's going to require the DoJ lawyers to yes, think different. About the future, not about the past.
Good luck.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 Shoutout though for successfully torpedoing the Amazon/iRobot deal – though Europe largely gets the credit for that particular one. We almost fell victim to Big Tech owning Big Vacuum! Instead, iRobot is about to die, having had to lay off nearly everyone. What a win for everyone! ↩
2 Here's where I'll again note the irony that TikTok rose to power largely on the back of Meta's ad platform. It allowed Bytedance to turn the acquired startup Musical.ly into the hit product that Vine should have been, had Twitter not so pathetically fumbled that bag! And now TikTok's success effectively saved Meta here. Funny that. ↩
3 It's still not entirely clear that TikTok will even exist next year, let alone in a decade or two, thanks to the continued bungling of the "deal" to sell the service. ↩
2025-11-19 06:04:52
When I was a kid, I distinctly remember the phrase "collect them all" as a marketing slogan used to upsell toys and other collectables. As a completist, this always worked on me – honestly, still does. It also sure seems to work on Big Tech when it comes to AI.
With the news today that Microsoft and NVIDIA are now making investments in Anthropic – naturally alongside a pledge from Anthropic to spend at least $30B on Azure, because you can't have a tit without a tat – I'm honestly sort of at a loss for how to frame this. Everything is just so tangled and interwoven at this point. I mean, this is a company which owns 27% of OpenAI investing in their main rival. And, to be fair, it comes after OpenAI signed deals with all of Microsoft's main rivals in the cloud. So instead, I'll just assume from now on that all bets are off because all bets are on.
Still, I feel the need to list out some of this conflicted mess just for my own sanity and so I can keep referencing and checking it as I write about tangential topics. Really, it's just an expansion of a list I made in July when noting just how hedged Big Tech was now thanks to their massive investments in these AI companies.
This is just the latest such deal, but obviously won't be the last.
Amazon
Investor in: Anthropic • Databricks • Hugging Face • Scale AI
Investment from: N/A
Other deals: OpenAI
AMD
Investor in: Cohere • Hugging Face • Scale AI • Thinking Machine Lab • World Labs
Investment from: OpenAI
Other deals:
Anthropic
Investor in: N/A
Investment from: Amazon • Google • Microsoft • NVIDIA
Other deals: Apple
Apple
Investor in: N/A
Investment from: N/A
Other deals: Anthropic • Google • OpenAI
Cisco
Investor in: Anthropic • Cohere • CoreWeave • Mistral • Scale AI • Thinking Machine Lab
Investment from: N/A
Other deals: Microsoft
CoreWeave
Investor in: N/A
Investment from: Microsoft • NVIDIA
Other deals: OpenAI
Databricks
Investor in: N/A
Investment from: Amazon • Microsoft • NVIDIA • Salesforce
Other deals: Google
Google
Investor in: Anthropic • Hugging Face • Safe Superintelligence
Investment from: N/A
Other deals: Broadcom • Databricks • NVIDIA • OpenAI • Thinking Machine Lab
Hugging Face
Investor in: N/A
Investment from: Amazon • AMD • Google • IBM • Intel • NVIDIA • Salesforce
Other deals:
Intel
Investor in: Hugging Face
Investment from: NVIDIA • SoftBank • US Government
Other deals: Amazon • Google • Microsoft
Meta
Investor in: Databricks • Safe Superintelligence • Scale AI
Investment from: N/A
Other deals: Black Forest Labs • Broadcom • Midjourney • NVIDIA
Microsoft
Investor in: Anthropic • Databricks • Mistral • OpenAI
Investment from: N/A
Other deals: NVIDIA
Mistral
Investor in: N/A
Investment from: ASML • Cisco • IBM • Microsoft • NVIDIA • Salesforce • Samsung
Other deals:
NVIDIA
Investor in: Anthropic • Cohere • CoreWeave • Mistral • Nokia • OpenAI • Perplexity • Safe Superintelligence • Scale AI • Thinking Machine Lab • xAI
Investment from: SoftBank (just exited)
Other deals: Literally everyone, except maybe Apple
OpenAI
Investor in: AMD
Investment from: Microsoft • NVIDIA • Oracle • SoftBank
Other deals: Almost everyone, except Anthropic, Meta, and xAI
Oracle
Investor in: Ampere • Cohere • OpenAI
Investment from: N/A
Other deals: NVIDIA • SoftBank
Salesforce
Investor in: Anthropic • Cohere • Databricks • Hugging Face • Mistral • World Labs
Investment from: N/A
Other deals:
Scale AI
Investor in: N/A
Investment from: Amazon • AMD • Cisco • Meta • NVIDIA
Deals with:
SoftBank
Investor in: Ampere • Intel • NVIDIA (just exited) • OpenAI
Investment from: N/A
Deals with: Oracle
xAI
Investor in: N/A
Investment from: AMD • NVIDIA
Deals with: Black Forest Labs • Microsoft • Oracle
So there you go, while NVIDIA is obviously out there like Thanos collecting Infinity Stones, others are more subtle in their strategic bets. Special shout-out to Cisco, which kept unexpectedly coming up as I was putting together the list.
It also sure feels like with this latest news we're mere weeks away from Google and/or Amazon investing in OpenAI, completing the ouroboros. Apple? All totally cool, right? Since this isn't "zero sum" per Nadella...1
Anyway, I'm off to play Clue. Or Pokemon.
I can't believe they don't break into a rendition of "Kumbaya" to close...
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 Narrator: as it turns out, it was not "totally cool" in the end, as many of these conflicted sides and companies would fight tooth and nail for market share. ↩