|
|
|
Apr 30, 2026
|
|
|
|
|
Supported by
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Happy Thursday! Google defends its work with the military after employee backlash to the Pentagon contract. Anthropic receives investment interest at a $900 billion valuation. OpenAI plots a big expansion on cheaper ChatGPT subscriptions.
|
|
|
|
Google is trying to assuage employee concern following The Information’s reporting on its deal to let the Pentagon use its AI on classified systems. “We have proudly worked with defense departments since Google’s earliest days, and we continue to believe that it’s important to support national security in a thoughtful and responsible way,” Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs, wrote in an internal memo on Tuesday. Over 600 employees signed an open letter on Monday urging CEO Sundar Pichai to reject the deal, which allows the agency to use Google AI for “any lawful government purpose.” The employees argued that the only way they could ensure that Google’s AI wasn’t misused was by not engaging in classified work. Walker’s memo didn’t directly confirm the new deal, but he did address some employee concerns about how their tech could be misused. “We strongly support the consensus that has emerged in the field regarding lawful use of Al and the reality that today’s Al
tools are not appropriate for domestic mass surveillance or use in connection with autonomous weapons without appropriate human oversight,” Walker wrote. Google’s response on Tuesday marks a stark contrast from how Google reacted in 2018 after employee protests about its Project Maven contract with the Pentagon, which included the use of AI for drone targeting. Google declined to renew that deal after thousands of employees signed a letter to Pichai opposing it. Administration officials noted the change on X Wednesday. “Very different response from @Google compared with the 2018 Project Maven debacle,” Scott Kupor, a veteran venture capitalist who is currently the director of the Office of Personnel Management, wrote in response to a Financial Times article about Walker’s memo. Emil Michael, the defense undersecretary for research and engineering, retweeted
the post.
|
|
|
|
Anthropic has received investment interest at a valuation above $900 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. An investment at that level would more than double a February valuation of $380 billion. However, the company has not formally started a fundraise, said the person and a second. Bloomberg first reported that Anthropic has received investment interest and the news report said it was considering those offers. Anthropic has seen a surge in investment interest in recent weeks after its annualized revenue pace topped $30 billion, potentially
eclipsing its older rival, OpenAI. According to TechCrunch, the company’s annualized revenue is close to $40 billion, a jump from $30 billion at the beginning of the month.
|
|
|
|
OpenAI is banking on subscribers to a cheaper, ad-supported ChatGPT subscription will drive revenue from advertising over the next several years, The Information reported late Tuesday. Earlier this year, OpenAI forecast that consumer subscribers to ChatGPT Go, which costs $8 a month in the U.S. and around $5 monthly in other countries such as India, would surge about 36 times to 112 million this year. As a result, leaders have projected that the number of subscribers to ChatGPT Plus will fall 80% to about 9 million. The company expects to make up for the drop in consumer subscriber revenue with an increase in advertising shown to ChatGPT Go users. Annual advertising revenue per user will rise from nothing last year–since it hadn’t launched the ads business yet–to over $3 next year and about $59 per user in 2030,
it projects. The company didn’t adjust its full year revenue targets.
|
|
|
|
Meta Platforms raised its 2026 capital spending forecast again, underscoring rising infrastructure costs as it continues to scale its artificial intelligence and data center investments. The parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp announced the increase Wednesday as it reported first-quarter revenue of $56.3 billion, up 33% from a year earlier and just shy of the upper end of its own forecast range of up to $56.5 billion. Net profit rose 61% to $26.8 billion, although this included a one-time income tax benefit of $8 billion related to U.S. tax legislation. Without that, earnings growth would have been below 13%. Meta also projected second-quarter 2026 revenue of between $58 billion and $61 billion. The company now expects full-year capital expenditures
of between $125 billion and $145 billion, up from its January forecast of $115 billion to $135 billion. Meta said the latest increase reflects higher component prices and additional spending on data centers. That increase appeared to worry some investors, with Meta’s stock falling more than 6% in after-hours trading following the results. Asked on Wednesday’s earnings call about ensuring a good return on Meta’s AI investments, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it will “ramp up monetization” as it sees how model training and product development scale in the coming quarters. “I don’t think we have a very precise plan for exactly how each product is going to scale month over month or anything like that, but I think we have a sense of the shape of where these things need to be,“ he said. Chief Financial
Officer Susan Li said that Meta will expand agentic capabilities for both consumers and businesses, adding that there will be clear monetization opportunities over time. Meta also warned that it continues to face regulatory scrutiny over youth-related issues and has additional U.S. trials scheduled for this year, any of which could ultimately result in a material loss.
|
|
|
|
Microsoft revenue grew 18% to $82.9 billion in the first quarter, 1 percentage point higher than its growth in the prior quarter, the company said Wednesday. Growth also slightly accelerated in its Azure cloud and Office 365 commercial businesses, which the company attributed to growing demand for AI software and the servers needed to run it. In one illustration of customer demand, Microsoft said its total AI revenue—including sales of specialized AI servers on its Azure cloud to OpenAI and other AI firms, as well as sales of its own Copilot AI software—exceeded $9.25 billion in quarterly revenue. It was the first time Microsoft disclosed the figure, which the company said was 123% higher compared to the same period last year. The metric is difficult to parse, as it mixes several different types of revenue, including subscription-based Copilot sales and so-called
consumption-based revenue from server rentals. Microsoft said it had 20 million paying users of its Office 365 Copilot software, which uses models from OpenAI and Anthropic to power AI features in Office apps like Word, Excel and Outlook, up from 15 million in the prior quarter. That figure only includes subscribers who pay a monthly rate per seat, which starts at $30 per month, but not customers that pay Microsoft for such tools based on usage. Revenue for Azure and other cloud services, including GitHub sales, grew 40% in the first quarter, or 1 percentage point higher than the prior quarter. The result is slightly higher than the 37% to 38% growth rate Microsoft had previously projected for the first quarter. Microsoft expects Azure growth of 39% to 40% in the current quarter, CFO Amy Hood said. Shares rose 1% in after-hours trading following her comment, after
initially sliding 2%. (Shares are down about 10% so far this year.) Microsoft said it had a revenue backlog of $627 billion, up slightly from $625 billion last quarter. Microsoft did not specify what percent of the backlog came from OpenAI, after saying last quarter that the startup accounted for 45% of its revenue backlog. The company said 25% of the backlog, or $157 billion, would become revenue in the next 12 months. Microsoft has been spending heavily on building and leasing new data center space to meet demand from OpenAI, Anthropic, and other firms that rent AI servers from Azure, though Microsoft said it spent $5.6 billion less on capital expenditures in the first quarter compared to the prior quarter. Microsoft said the deceleration was due to normal fluctuations in construction schedules, not a decrease in demand. Microsoft generated $15.8 billion in free
cash flow, down 22% from a year ago, which the company attributed to rising capital expenditures compared to a year ago.
|
|
|
|
| |
