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Jun 18, 2025
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Happy Wednesday! OpenAI wants Microsoft to accept a 33% stake in a restructured version of its for-profit business. Elon Musk’s xAI is burning $1 billion a month. Goldman Sachs returns to SPAC underwriting.
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OpenAI has told shareholders it wants Microsoft to accept a roughly 33% equity stake in a restructured version of its for-profit business, one of several concessions it wants from its biggest outside shareholder, The Information reported on Monday. The startup is locked in negotiations with Microsoft over the terms of that restructuring and changes to its existing contract with the software giant, which can veto OpenAI’s plans. In exchange for the 33% stake, OpenAI wants Microsoft to relinquish its right to 49% of OpenAI’s future profits up to a certain
cap, as well as 20% of OpenAI’s revenue and the right to use its intellectual property through 2030. The restructuring of the for-profit unit with traditional equity would allow OpenAI to go public. At the same time, Microsoft is angling for its own concessions from OpenAI, including continued access to the startup’s IP after the current commercial deal between the companies ends in 2030.
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Elon Musk’s xAI is burning $1 billion a month as it spends heavily on building its AI models, Bloomberg reported, citing people briefed on the company’s financials. The company is trying to raise $9.3 billion in debt and equity, according to the report, and plans to spend more than half of that sum in the next three months. Meanwhile, the company has told investors to expect just $500 million in revenue this year, Bloomberg reported. xAI has raced to build costly supercomputing centers in Tennessee to catch up to competitors like OpenAI. But some investors believe xAI has an advantage over rivals thanks to its merger with Musk’s X social media platform, which gives its access to news users posts and other information to train AI on.
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Goldman Sachs is again open to underwriting new deals for special-purpose acquisition companies, Bloomberg reported, after pulling back from SPAC work three years ago amid regulatory scrutiny of blank-check deals. The SPAC dealmaking boom that peaked in 2021 was a gold rush for Wall Street firms, since banks often advised the blank-check companies on their own public listings and acquisitions they made after that. The frenzy attracted scrutiny from securities regulators, potentially exposing banks that worked on the deals to liability, and many companies that merged with SPACs performed poorly on public markets. But there’s been a fresh wave of new blank-check IPOs this year, and the Securities and Exchange Commission under President Donald Trump is expected to ease SPAC oversight. Goldman will evaluate potential new
SPAC work on a case-by-case basis, according to the Bloomberg report. Goldman Sachs declined to comment.
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Investors have approached Anysphere, the company behind the popular AI coding assistant Cursor, offering to invest in the company at a valuation of $18 billion to $20 billion in recent weeks, Bloomberg reported. The company might not agree to the offers, according to the report. But if the company does accept the funding, it would double its valuation from $9 billion earlier this month, when it raised $900 million led by Thrive Capital, Bloomberg reported, adding that the company had surpassed $500 million in annualized revenue. Cursor has already helped define coding as a key application for large language models. The doubled valuation immediately following its last funding round would further establish Anysphere as a breakout winner of the generative AI boom.
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JPMorgan will launch a U.S. dollar token on Base, a blockchain developed by Coinbase, offering an alternative to stablecoins like Tether and Circle’s USDC. The token, called JPMD, represents dollar deposits at the bank. It will allow approved institutional clients to transfer funds between each other almost instantly. Deposit tokens differ from stablecoins because they reflect deposits held at a bank. Stablecoins, by contrast, are typically backed 1:1 by cash and short-term Treasurys. The launch on Coinbase’s blockchain allows JPMorgan to offer its deposit token
beyond its internal systems to eventually target a broader user base. It signals upcoming competition from banks against popular stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle. Some banks, including French bank Société Général, plan to issue their own stablecoins targeting crypto users. The U.S. Congress is deliberating laws to regulate the issuance of stablecoins. Separately, JPMorgan executives met with the SEC today and discussed potential impact of capital markets activity migrating to public blockchain, according to a meeting log.
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Salesforce is raising prices for business users of its customer management, customer service, Slack and other products, while also adding new AI features to these offerings. The move comes a few weeks after Salesforce changed its data usage policies to prohibit customers from training AI models on the data they create in its messaging app, Slack, while also introducing
other restrictions on how third-party software providers can use that data. It has been two years since Salesforce raised pricing for its customer management and other products and three years since the last Slack price increase, so the price hikes aren’t too surprising. Other Salesforce rivals, including Microsoft and Google, have raised pricing for AI-powered products this year. In August, Salesforce will raise pricing for the Enterprise and Unlimited editions of its products, the two that are most widely used by large customers, by an average of 6%, the company said in a blog post. Slack’s Business+ edition, the second-highest tier for the workplace chat product, is going up by 20%, from $12.50 per user monthly to $15 per user monthly, while adding new AI features like enterprise search and text translation.
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Popular articles
By Jon Victor and Kevin McLaughlin
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