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Aug 17, 2026
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Welcome back! Anthropic's revenue jumped 14 times in the second quarter. Nvidia is talks to invest as much $3 billion in Softbank-backed SB Energy. Stripe finalizes the $7 billion-plus acquisition of OpenRouter.
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Anthropic’s revenue rose around 14 times in the second quarter from the same period a year ago, according to a person briefed on the figures. That brought total revenue to $11.5 billion, from $787 million in the year-ago quarter and $4.73 billion in the first quarter, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the figures. It was also profitable on an adjusted operating income basis, the report said. Anthropic has been briefing investors in the run-up to a public offering that could take place as soon as next month. The figures point to a gap with older OpenAI that took place this spring. The ChatGPT maker generated $6 billion in revenue in the first quarter, outpacing Anthropic for the period, The Information previously reported. Its total second quarter results couldn’t be learned, but annualized revenue that recently topped $40 billion, according to another person familiar with OpenAI’s financials. Anthropic, however, was generating about $45 billion in annualized revenue as of May and by some estimates, is now generating more than $70 billion in annualized revenue. A representative for Anthropic didn’t respond to a request for comment. Bloomberg first reported on OpenAI’s recent run rate.
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Nvidia is in talks to invest as much as $3 billion in SB Energy, the Softbank Group-backed developer of a massive planned Ohio data center project for OpenAI, The Information reported. Nvidia has discussed investing half of the $3 billion when a deal for the Ohio project is signed and the other half as part of SB Energy’s planned initial public offering next month. It is part of Nvidia’s efforts to use its own financial heft to support other companies in the AI ecosystem that use its chips. If Nvidia puts in $1.5 billion into SB Energy’s public debut, it would be one of the offering’s largest investors.
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Stripe has finished a deal to spend more than $7 billion on OpenRouter, a startup that helps developers switch between AI models. The price tag is significantly higher than the $1.3 billion valuation OpenRouter received months ago, a reflection of the high demand for its technology at a time of increasing concern around AI spending. OpenRouter had raised money from prominent investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Menlo Ventures and one of Alphabet’s venture capital units. OpenRouter, founded in 2023, was generating $50 million in annualized revenue as of April, up five-fold from October. The Information had previously reported that Stripe’s purchase of OpenRouter could value the startup at close to $10 billion in a cash-and-stock deal. OpenRouter charges a small fee when developers buy credits to run AI models through its catalog of models. Many companies are choosing to rely on a variety of AI models rather than solely using the newest, biggest and most expensive ones.
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The Roadster Tesla unveils later this year will look different from the sports car the company first showed off almost a decade ago. The company has explored several different designs since 2017, including designs reminiscent of a Lamborghini Countach and a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird aircraft, The Information reported. The hypercar has been delayed at least eight times since Tesla unveiled a prototype in 2017. Its design has evolved from a conventional sports car into an all-new vehicle built around a carbon-fiber tub. Tesla is planning to unveil the next generation Roadster as early as this month and has been planning an elaborate demonstration of a limited edition version of the Roadster since earlier this year. The demo is meant to show how the vehicle is capable of hovering in the air—Musk has previously said he wants the Roadster to be a “flying car”—and is expected to take place at SpaceX’s testing site in McGregor, Texas. Tesla worked with SpaceX engineers on the cold-gas thrusters, which are intended to lift the car off the ground. Earlier this year, Tesla was preparing for the event to include the vehicle driving on a magnetized roller-coaster-like ramp and driving upside down before righting itself and hovering in the air. It is unclear if the demonstration has since changed. The vehicle will be remotely operated, with spectators positioned several hundred yards away because of the noise and vibrations from its thrusters.
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Nvidia is close to finalizing a deal that would provide about $100 billion in credit support for OpenAI’s plan to lease a giant Ohio data center, The Information reported. The figure is lower than an earlier report in the Wall Street Journal that it could backstop $250 billion for the project that could cost more than $500 billion. One person with knowledge of the backstop talks told The Information the amount had been scaled back, while another said the deal had been split into two phases. The $100 billion would support the first phase. Nvidia is also seeking to limit its total credit exposure to the Ohio project to 25% of the total financing, said another person familiar with the discussions. The project would eventually entail multiple data center buildings requiring a total of 10 gigawatts of power, or 4.5 times the generating capacity of the Hoover Dam.
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SpaceX completed its $60 billion acquisition of coding startup Cursor on Friday, the companies said. SpaceX received an option to buy Cursor for $60 billion in an all-stock transaction in April, part of a partnership agreement between the two companies. That agreement allowed Cursor to use SpaceX’s AI unit computing capacity to train its coding model, Composer, while SpaceX got access to tools and data that could accelerate its coding-focused AI efforts. SpaceX finalized plans for the acquisition in June, a few days after the rocket ship company went public. Cursor had told staff at an all-hands on Aug. 6 that the acquisition would close by the end of this week, The Information reported. The company told staff that Cursor employees would be fully integrated into SpaceX’s AI division and would not operate as an independent unit. Staff have also been told they will be migrated into SpaceXAI’s internal Slack in the days to come.
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Thrive Capital’s 2022 fund—a $516 million vehicle that invested in SpaceX, OpenAI, Cursor, Anduril, Ramp, Wiz and Databricks—has risen in value more than seven times net of fees as of June 30, according to a recently published letter it sent to limited partners. The multiple of total value to paid-in capital, which includes paper and cash returns, puts Thrive’s fund well above top decile funds of the same vintage year, which have a TVPI of 1.73 times on average, according to PitchBook benchmarks as of year-end 2025. Founder Josh Kushner wrote in the letter that the firm manages over $65 billion in assets, more than half of which came from investment gains. Since inception almost 15 years ago, Thrive funds have reached an aggregate net IRR of 33%, the letter said. All of Thrive’s funds from 2021 on, with the exception of its growth fund in 2022, have yet to give capital back to limited partners, according to a slide deck included in the letter. That could be because of the relative dearth of public offerings over the last few years. Its 2014 and 2015 funds, though, have distributed 2.3 and 2.5 times their initial capital, respectively, according to the letter published by Bloomberg. Those multiples would put the 2014 fund in the second quartile and 2015 fund in the top decile, according to benchmarks provided by Pitchbook. Both of those funds invested in Stripe and Github; the 2012 fund also backed Slack and Instacart, and the 2014 fund backed Robinhood as well, according to a slide in the investor letter. Thrive Capital is also working to transform traditional industries with emerging tech by buying services companies and injecting AI into them. That initiative is called Thrive Holdings, and it recently raised $2 billion from institutional backers including Softbank, D1 Capital Partners and Altimeter. The firm is also investing in companies that it thinks won’t be disrupted by AI through its permanent capital vehicle, Thrive Eternal. Kushner and Bob Iger agreed to purchase a controlling stake in The Lakers on Wednesday. The deal valued the basketball team at $12.5 billion.
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