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Jul 03, 2025
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Happy Thursday! OpenAI and Oracle sign another big cloud deal. Tesla halts purchasing components for the Optimus humanoid robot pending changes to the robot’s designs. Microsoft plans to cut 9,000 jobs in the second round of layoff this year.
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OpenAI has increased the amount of compute capacity it plans to rent from Oracle as part of its Stargate data center plan, according to Bloomberg, a sign that the effort, which was announced in January, is progressing. OpenAI plans to rent an additional 4.5 gigawatts of data center capacity from Oracle in the U.S., according to the report. That’s an unprecedented amount of power that could power several hundred thousand artificial intelligence chips. The timeline for the deal is unclear. OpenAI had already signed a deal to rent Nvidia graphics processing units from Oracle in Abilene, Texas. That site could provide up to 2 GW of capacity. To meet the extra demand, Oracle plans to build new data centers with other partners that could be in states such as Texas, Michigan, Wisconsin or Wyoming, according to the
report. The report said the deal is related to Oracle’s disclosure earlier this week that it had signed a deal with an unnamed customer worth $30 billion in annual revenue beginning in fiscal 2028, which starts in the middle of that year. OpenAI, which spent about $4 billion on computing in 2024 and projected to spend $14 billion on computing this year, has separately signed cloud server deals with Google and CoreWeave. A spokesperson for OpenAI declined to comment. A spokesperson for Oracle did not immediately respond.
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Tesla has halted purchasing components for the Optimus humanoid robot, as the company is making changes to the robot’s hardware and software designs, Chinese tech media LatePost reported Wednesday, citing Tesla suppliers in China. The changes began last month when Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s vice president of AI software, started overseeing Optimus following the departure of Milan Kovac, the former head of the project, LatePost said. After the company completes the design adjustments, it will come up with a new mass production plan and resume its component purchases, according to the report. The component procurement suspension will likely make it impossible for Tesla to meet its previous goal of producing 5,000 units of Optimus this year, the report said. As of the end of May, Tesla had purchased enough parts for
1,200 units, and the company had already produced nearly 1,000, the report added.
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Microsoft plans lay off roughly 9,000 jobs across the company, according to someone briefed on the layoffs. The cuts, which affect nearly 4% of the company’s workforce, come just months after Microsoft laid off roughly 6,000 employees in April. This round of layoffs will primarily affect Microsoft’s sales organization led by Judson Althoff, but will also impact divisions across the company, including Microsoft’s Xbox gaming unit and its Azure cloud unit, according to the person briefed on the decision. Althoff is also taking a leave of absence for the next
two months. “We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company and teams for success in a dynamic marketplace,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. Microsoft is trying to reduce the number of employees that customers interact with to simplify its sales pitch, The Information previously reported. This year’s sweeping job cuts come as Microsoft has instructed employees to use new AI tools to become more efficient (but the company has said that the layoffs are not directly related to its use of AI).
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The U.S. government lifted its export restrictions on key chip-design software to China, after the two countries last week reached a broader trade agreement. The decision, which comes less than two months after the Trump administration implemented the curbs, is significant for China. Access to the software, known as electronic design automation tools, is essential in the development of all kinds of semiconductors, including high-performance artificial intelligence chips for data centers. Synopsys, one of the biggest developers of EDA tools, said in a statement Wednesday that it had received a letter from the U.S. government about lifting the export restrictions related to China. Two other major players in the industry, Cadence Design Systems and Siemens AG, also told some media outlets that the U.S. had lifted the
curbs. The Trump administration announced the curbs on EDA tools for China in late May, as part of its broader response to Beijing’s restrictions on the export of vital rare-earth minerals to the U.S.
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Khosla Ventures filed securities paperwork indicating that it is targeting a fundraise of $3.95 billion across three new funds, slightly higher than a target reported last fall. The firm, known for its early bets on OpenAI and Instacart, is targeting a flagship fund of $1.95 billion to back early and late-stage startups, $1.25 billion for a growth fund focused on mature companies
and $750 million for a seed fund focused on backing very young companies, according to the filings. If it successfully raises those amounts, the funds will top the sizes of funds focused on similar-stage companies raised in 2023. Khosla Ventures declined to comment. The filings have not been previously reported.
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TikTok on Wednesday laid off employees across different parts of its business, including in its global e-commerce business TikTok Shop and a small number in its U.S. trust and safety team. The layoffs are just the latest in a series of job cuts undertaken by the app over the past year, including at its global trust and safety team in February. Wednesday’s cuts at TikTok Shop, meanwhile, were the third round of cuts at the unit since April. The commerce effort has likely been hurt by the Trump administration’s ending in May of a longstanding duty exemption for
imported goods with a value of below $800, a change which has hit several Chinese e-commerce firms such as Temu and Shein as well. It’s unclear how many employees lost their jobs Wednesday. Employees at TikTok have been in limbo for months waiting for news on TikTok’s fate in the U.S., after a law came into effect in January that required TikTok to be sold or to face a ban. President Trump has signed multiple executive orders to delay enforcement of the law, to give TikTok time to reach a deal. He had planned to announce an agreement in April that
involved creating a new U.S. entity to buy TikTok. The plan stalled after Trump imposed tariffs on China. Since then, the investors have been finalizing the legal and financial details for the deal, with TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, The Information previously reported. However they still need China’s approval for it to go into effect.
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