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Jun 15, 2026
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Welcome back! Nvidia server marketplace startup Hydra Host raises $100 million at a valuation close to $800 million. The White House is unlikely to extend export restrictions on Anthropic’s advanced models to other AI companies. Tencent backs a former Alibaba researcher's new AI lab in China.
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Data center software startup and AI-server broker Hydra Host has raised $100 million at a valuation of close to $800 million, led by Kindred Ventures. Nvidia, Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest, early CoreWeave backer Magnetar, and existing investors Founders Fund and Flume Ventures also participated. Founded in 2021 to serve crypto miners, Hydra Host sells automation software to data center operators so that they can rent out unused Nvidia AI server capacity. Hydra also runs a marketplace that aims to match GPU owners with renters. The 90-person company says its technology is in 50 data centers around the world, up from 30 last February.
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The White House is unlikely to extend export restrictions on Anthropic’s advanced models to other AI companies, an official close to the U.S. government said Saturday. The mandate stemmed from what the official said was Anthropic’s refusal to fix vulnerabilities in its recent Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models. Anthropic has argued that other companies have developed models that hold similar risks, writing in a blog post on Friday that the vulnerabilities were found in other publicly available models. OpenAI, for instance, in April released its most recent model GPT-5.5, which matched some of Mythos’ cybersecurity benchmarks. The official said that the government was concerned that Fable, a version of Mythos that included special guardrails designed for public release to a broader swathe of developers, could still find vulnerabilities in sensitive systems. They were also concerned about the risks that advanced AI capabilities could expand to foreign adversaries. On Friday, Anthropic said the U.S. government had issued an export control directive that required the company to suspend all access to Anthropic’s latest models to any foreign national, either inside or outside the country. Anthropic said it ultimately cut off access to all of its customers. The directive followed Jassy and other tech leaders calling administration officials to raise concerns about security risks, The Information earlier reported. Former White House AI & crypto czar David Sacks wrote on X Saturday that the administration asked Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to fix the vulnerabilities or de-deploy the model, and Amodei refused. Anthropic said in its blog post that it disagrees with the government’s decision that a “narrow potential jailbreak” should trigger recalling a commercial model. “The potential jailbreaks that have been disclosed to us are either entirely benign responses or are minor findings,” it said.
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Tencent Holdings has backed a new AI lab founded by Junyang Lin, former lead researcher of Alibaba Group’s Qwen models, according to two people with knowledge of the investment. Tencent invested $20 million in Lin’s first funding round that raised several hundred million dollars at a post-money valuation of around $2 billion, according to the people. The round was led by Chinese venture capital firms Gaorong Ventures and HongShan, each of which invested $100 million, the people said. The Information first reported on Lin’s new AI lab and fundraising in May. Having just completed the deal, Lin is already looking to raise yet another funding round, the people added. Tencent has backed many Chinese AI model developers, including Moonshot AI, MiniMax and Zhipu. Tencent is also participating in DeepSeek’s current fundraising, The Information previously reported. Investors’ appetite for Lin’s fundraising is due largely to his accomplishments at Alibaba. Alibaba’s Qwen line of models are among the leaders in open-source AI models. A $2 billion valuation for a brand new AI lab is almost unheard of in China, where startups are typically valued far less than those in the U.S. Lin departed Alibaba in early March in a rare public fall-out with the Chinese tech giant. He broadcast his resignation in a post on the X social media site, before any official announcements were made by Alibaba’s executives.
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A coalition of state attorneys general has sent OpenAI a subpoena seeking documents about how the ChatGPT maker’s chatbot affects users, an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed. The attorneys general directed OpenAI to send them information including advertising, user engagement, handling of consumer data and activities related to minors and seniors, The Wall Street Journal first reported. The New York AG sent the subpoena according to the newspaper. States have been scrutinizing OpenAI and other AI companies and asking for more protections for users. Parents of children who have died by suicide after talking with AI chatbots have also sued OpenAI and its competitors. In a statement, an OpenAI spokesperson said that OpenAI had added more safeguards for minors, including age prediction and parental tools. “We take the concerns raised by state attorneys general seriously and intend to engage constructively with their offices,“ the spokesperson said.
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Anthropic announced in a blog post Friday night that customers could no longer access its advanced models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, following a U.S. government order over national security concerns. The company also disabled access for foreign-national employees. The company said it had received an export control directive from the Trump administration because government officials had believed they had “become aware of a method of bypassing, or ‘jailbreaking’” the models. Axios reported that the letter came from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and the decision came after another company claimed it was able to jailbreak Mythos. Anthropic downplayed U.S. officials’ concerns, and characterized the national security risks as “minor vulnerabilities. The dramatic standoff comes three days after Anthropic released its latest models publicly. Anthropic said in the blog post that it had ensured its “safeguards are so strong that many users have complained that they are overly broad.” Spokespeople for the White House and Commerce Department, which manages export controls, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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