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1.	Blue Origin to Raise $10 Billion at $130 Billion Valuation By Nick Wingfield Source: The Information

For the first 25 years of Blue Origin’s existence, its founder, Jeff Bezos, solely funded the space company from the fortune he made at Amazon. No longer.

Blue Origin has signed a term sheet to raise its first outside capital as part of a $10 billion funding round that will value the company at $130 billion before the funding, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. Coatue is expected to lead the round with a $4 billion check, while Bezos has committed to put in $2 billion as part of the round, the person said. Blue Origin is in discussions with other investors about contributing the remainder of the funding in the round, the person said.

The round suggests that a rocket explosion that Blue Origin experienced on its launchpad in Florida in late May has not deterred outside investors from backing the company. Prior to that setback, the company had launched and landed its reusable New Glenn rocket twice—key milestones on its path to building a self-sustaining business. In January, it announced an effort dubbed TeraWave to build orbital data centers, which could provide Blue Origin with a lucrative new revenue stream. And the company has contracts with NASA to deliver astronauts and rovers to the moon.

“You’re going to see a lot of Blue Origin hardware on the Moon in the coming years,” the person familiar with the matter said.

The success of the June IPO of SpaceX, Blue Origin’s biggest competitor, also brought considerable investor attention to the space category.

2.	BofA Extends $520 Million Loan to OpenAI By Alix Coutures Source: The Information

Bank of America has given a $520 million credit line to OpenAI in the last couple of months as the AI giant prepares for an initial public offering, two people familiar with the agreement said. The loan brings OpenAI’s total available credit to more than $5 billion, one of the people said

The bank had previously passed on financing OpenAI in October 2024 when the company secured a $4 billion credit line from JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Banco Santander, Wells Fargo, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., UBS and HSBC. Bloomberg first reported on the new credit line. Earlier this year, OpenAI expanded its revolving credit facility to approximately $4.7 billion.

Bank of America has raised nearly $500 billion in capital for AI-related companies over the last two years, accounting for 60% of such fundraising across investment-grade debt, leveraged finance and equity capital markets, according to one of the people. The new loan to OpenAI makes BofA one of OpenAI’s largest lenders.

3.	Anthropic Responds to China’s ‘Backdoor’ Warning By Juro Osawa Source: The Information

Anthropic on Thursday reiterated its policy that access to it Claude models and coding tools is not permitted in China, responding to the Chinese government’s recent warning about a security backdoor in Claude Code.

The U.S. company said what Beijing’s warning described as a hidden backdoor is an anti-abuse mechanism its team operated earlier this year. That mechanism checked a device’s timezone and whether a request was routed through a domain tied to unsupported regions such as China—or labs known to be illicitly using Claude models to train their own models in a practice known as distillation, according to Anthropic.

Even though Anthropic doesn’t offer Claude in China due to national security reasons, many developers in China have found ways to circumvent the restrictions. Chinese users’ access to Claude has become a sensitive topic as the U.S.-China rivalry in AI has intensified. Anthropic previously accused several Chinese AI developers—including DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, MiniMax and Alibaba Group—of using Claude for large-scale distillation attacks aimed at improving their own models.

Anthropic’s response comes after China’s cybersecurity platform operated by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the warning about Claude Code on Wednesday. Beijing’s move came after a recent Reddit post revealed Claude Code’s hidden code that can track whether the user is in China and affiliated with a Chinese lab. It sparked online debates and backlash from Chinese users earlier this month.

The security concerns also prompted Alibaba to ban its employees from using Claude, The information reported last week.

4.	SpaceXAI and Cursor Launch Grok 4.5, Tout Lower Costs Than Rivals By Grace Kay Source: The Information

Elon Musk’s AI company, SpaceXAI, and Cursor released Grok 4.5, an AI model focused on coding and agentic work, on Wednesday.

The Information was the first to report on the release date, which Musk confirmed on Tuesday night. The model is the first joint AI model that SpaceXAI and Cursor have developed through their partnership. SpaceX agreed to acquire Cursor last month in a deal that values the coding startup at $60 billion.

SpaceXAI said in a blog post that the model was “trained on datasets spanning knowledge in coding, science, engineering, and math” and is geared towards engineering tasks, as well as basic office work. In a post on X, Musk described the model as an “Opus-class model, but faster, more token-efficient and lower cost,” referencing Anthropic’s flagship product.

5.	Exclusive: Grubhub Owner Offers Investors Sweeteners in $9 Billion-Valuation Raise By Julia Hornstein Source: The Information

Wonder, which owns GrubHub and Blue Apron, is raising hundreds of millions of dollars at a valuation of $9 billion, The Information reported Wednesday.

To entice investors, Wonder has arranged to give backers of the financing extra shares if the restaurant and delivery startup’s stock price in an initial public offering is less than 1.5 times the price of shares in this round, a condition known as an IPO ratchet. Wonder also included a similar provision in its Series C fundraise, which closed last year.

Existing investor New Enterprise Associates has discussed co-leading the new round, and Accel and GV, which also previously invested, are planning to buy shares, the report said. And Lore has indicated he’ll write a $200 million check into the round, according to a person briefed on the fundraise. Lore has told Wonder’s staff an IPO could happen as soon as next year.

Spokespeople for the firms and a spokesperson for Wonder declined to comment.