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1.	Cerebras Shares Jump 68% in IPO Debut By Martin Peers Source: The Information

Cerebras Systems shares surged 68% in their first day of trading Thursday, to close at $311 a share, as investors bet the cash-burning chip designer was primed to benefit from strong demand by OpenAI and other AI developers.

The company had priced its initial public offering at $185 a share Wednesday night, well above its initial expectation of between $115 and $125. The IPO price valued Cerebras at $56 billion taking into account all outstanding options and warrants.

Cerebras sold 30 million shares in the offering, up slightly from the 28 million originally planned, and underwriters have an option to buy an additional 4.5 million.

Among the big winners from the IPO was venture capital firm Benchmark, which stands to make 12 times on its initial investment, The Information reported Thursday.

2.	Anthropic Picks Co-Leads for $900 Billion Valuation Funding Round By Sri Muppidi Source: The Information

Dragoneer, Greenoaks, Sequoia Capital and Altimeter Capital have agreed to co-lead a $30 billion round of funding into Anthropic at a $900 billion valuation before the money, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions. The investment nearly triples its last valuation of $350 billion fetched in a fundraising in early February.

Investors have circled Anthropic after its blistering revenue pace made its last valuation look undervalued compared to its main rival OpenAI. Last month Anthropic said its annualized revenue had topped $30 billion. That meant its last valuation was only 12 times its revenue.

The co-leads are each likely to invest $2 billion or more, reported the Financial Times, which first reported on the funding terms. All four are return investors. OpenAI, Sequoia and Altimeter have also invested in rival OpenAI.

3.	Musk, OpenAI, Microsoft Lawyers Deliver Closing Statements By Rocket Drew Source: The Information

Lawyers for Elon Musk, OpenAI and Microsoft delivered closing statements Thursday in their courtroom battle, setting the stage for jury deliberations next week.

A lawyer for Musk argued that it was OpenAI’s 2023 deal with Microsoft that violated OpenAI’s charitable mission, in part by taking on more investment than in previous deals and allowing the caps on investors’ potential returns to increase by 20% per year. The lawyer also questioned the credibility of defendants Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. The lawyer invited the jury to imagine they’re hiking and come upon a bridge, and a woman nearby says “don’t worry, the bridge is built on Sam Altman’s version of the truth,” the lawyer said. “Would you walk across that bridge? I don’t think many people would.”

OpenAI’s lawyers emphasized that Musk already knew—or could have found out—about the actions he claims were unjust by the time he posted on X in 2020 that “OpenAI is essentially captured by Microsoft.” That would mean Musk brought his lawsuit after the statute of limitations on his claims had already expired. The OpenAI lawyers also argued that Musk didn’t place any restrictions on his donations to OpenAI that would have created a charitable agreement between them in the first place.

Microsoft’s lawyer said that even if such restrictions did exist, Microsoft did not know about them because they did not turn up in the due diligence that Microsoft conducted before investing.

The jury is set to pick up their deliberations on Monday morning. Also on Monday, the judge will begin to hear arguments about potential remedies to grant in the event the jury finds that OpenAI is liable and she concurs. (The jury’s decision is only advisory, meaning the judge could disagree with it.)

4.	Microsoft Names Former EY CEO to Board By Aaron Holmes Source: The Information

Carmine Di Sibio, the former CEO of consulting firm EY, is joining Microsoft as a new board director, Microsoft announced Thursday. Di Sibio’s appointment expands Microsoft’s board to 13 members, the company said.

Di Sibio previously spent more than 24 years at EY, ultimately serving as its CEO and chairman from 2019 to 2024, during which the company reported an uptick in consulting revenue driven by firms seeking advice using AI software. He currently serves on the boards of Paypal, Prudential Financial, and the enterprise AI startup Evolver.

Di Sibio’s appointment comes six months after Microsoft made its last changes to the board, naming Walmart CFO John David Rainey as a director at the time.

5.	Anthropic Calls for Tighter U.S. Chip Restrictions on China By Juro Osawa Source: The Information

Anothropic published a new paper on Friday that calls for the U.S. to make sure China’s access to advanced chips is restricted, in the same week when President Donald Trump is in Beijing on a high-stakes state visit to China.

In the paper, entitled “2028: Two Scenarios for Global AI Leadership,” Anthropic said if the U.S. loosens its restrictions on China’s access to compute, China could become more competitive in AI development, resulting in a “destabilizing neck-and-neck race” two years from now.

“AI labs in China have world-class talent. It is compute constraints that limit their ability to keep up,” the U.S. company said.

Anthropic has been increasingly vocal about its view that China’s advancements in AI pose a threat to the U.S. and its allies. However, on social media sites such as X, some users criticized Anthropic’s new paper, saying that the company is using nationalism to its advantage in its attempt to fend off challenges from competitive Chinese open-source AI models. The paper comes as Chinese open-source AI developers, such as DeepSeek, have recently rolled out new models that offer more affordable alternatives to Anthropic’s proprietary models.

In the global AI race, it is “essential that the US and its allies stay ahead of authoritarian governments like the Chinese Communist Party,” Anthropic said in the paper. The prospect of the Chinese Communist Party leading in AI is “among the greatest threats to a successful transition,” it said.

In February, Anthropic accused multiple Chinese companies of using Claude to train their models, a technique known in the industry as “distillation.” DeepSeek, Moonshot AI and MiniMax had been carrying out “industrial-scale campaigns,” setting up fraudulent accounts to “illicitly extract Claude’s capabilities to improve their own models,” Anthropic said. The three Chinese companies didn’t respond to these allegations.