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Happy Friday! Snowflake agrees to buy app monitoring startup Observe Inc. Meta signs a series of nuclear power deals. Microsoft adds checkout features to Copilot.

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Snowflake Agrees to Acquire App Monitoring Startup Observe Inc.
By Valida Pau	Source: The Information

Snowflake announced Thursday that it agreed to acquire app monitoring startup Observe Inc. The Information earlier reported that the two companies were in talks about a possible deal.

Terms of the transaction weren’t disclosed. The Information previously reported that Snowflake would pay around $1 billion for the startup, which would be Snowflake’s biggest deal in its history. Observe has raised more than $470 million from investors including Sutter Hill Ventures and Madrona Ventures, and was valued at $848 million including the money, according to PitchBook.

Founded in 2018, Observe sells so-called observability tools that help developers to understand how their applications are performing and allows them to spot disruptions and outages. Acquiring Observe would bring Snowflake into closer competition with software firms Datadog and Cisco’s Splunk.

Meta Agrees to Nuclear Deals to Power Its Data Centers
By Jing Yang	Source: The Information

Meta Platforms announced on Friday that it had agreed to a series of nuclear power deals for its data centers, making it one of the biggest corporate buyers of nuclear energy in the U.S.

Meta will purchase electricity from three existing Vistra Corp plants as well as reactors from Sam Altman-backed Oklo and Bill Gates-backed TerraPower. The deals total 6.6 gigawatts, and will create thousands of construction jobs and hundreds of long-term operational jobs by 2035, according to Meta.

Microsoft Adds Checkout Features to Copilot
By Ann Gehan	Source: The Information

Microsoft is adding a buy button to its Copilot chatbot, the company said Thursday, making it the latest AI app to allow users to make purchases without leaving the chatbot window. The company said that shoppers will be able to purchase from retailers including Urban Outfitters and Etsy.

Shopify merchants will automatically be enrolled in the feature following an opt-out window, Microsoft said. Merchants wanting to enroll via PayPal or Stripe can apply for access, which Microsoft said it will provide on a rolling basis. To help Copilot complete transactions and communicate with merchants, the feature will use the Agentic Commerce Protocol, a standard developed by OpenAI and Stripe to establish rules for how AI apps, merchants and payments firms communicate and complete transactions.

Other AI-powered commerce features like OpenAI’s Instant Checkout have been rolling out slowly, The Information reported, in part due to the need to work hands-on with merchants on structuring and sharing accurate product data. OpenAI said it is trying to learn from early uses and incorporate feedback from merchants and payments firms.