News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
Anthropic seals US$35 billion cloud-computing deal with Nvidia-backed Lambda: Bloomberg
ANTHROPIC agreed to a US$35 billion computing deal with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia, part of an effort to quickly expand its AI capacity, according to a person familiar with the matter. Infrastructure company Hut 8 is developing the Texas data centre involved in the project, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. The Wall Street Journal previously reported on the agreement, saying that Nvidia would hold the lease on the data centre, which is in Nueces County, Texas. The deal is just the latest AI computing agreement tied to Nvidia, the world's most valuable business and the leading provider of AI chips. The company has been using its financial resources to expand access to computing infrastructure, which, in turn, should increase demand for its technology. Anthropic, meanwhile, has emerged as one of the most significant customers for data centre power. The Claude chatbot maker on Aug 26 agreed to spend US$45 billion to rent capacity from Nscale in West Virginia. In recent months, it has also signed cloud deals for US$50 billion with neocloud Fluidstack and US$45 billion with Elon Musk's SpaceX. A representative for Anthropic declined to comment. Nvidia, Lambda and Hut 8 did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Lambda is in talks to raise as much as US$3 billion, Bloomberg reported on Aug 25. The company has discussed a valuation of as much as US$12 billion or more, according to people familiar with the talks. Lambda raised more than US$1.5 billion in a November 2025 funding round. The company also reached an agreement with Microsoft in 2025 to deploy AI infrastructure that would be powered by tens of thousands of Nvidia processors. BLOOMBERG
Anthropic signs $35 billion cloud deal with Nvidia-backed Lambda, source says
Aug 31 (Reuters) - Anthropic has signed a cloud-computing deal worth $35 billion with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday. The deal will bring online Nvidia capacity to meet growing demand for Anthropic's Claude AI, the source said. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. (Reporting by Chandni Shah in Bengaluru and Natalia Bueno Rebolledo in Mexico City; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu) Copyright Reuters or USA Today via Reuters Connect This story was originally published August 31, 2026 at 8:50 PM.
Anthropic signs $35 billion cloud deal with Nvidia-backed Lambda, source says
Aug 31 (Reuters) - Anthropic has signed a cloud-computing deal worth $35 billion with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday. The deal will bring online Nvidia capacity to meet growing demand for Anthropic's Claude AI, the source said. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. (Reporting by Chandni Shah in Bengaluru and Natalia Bueno Rebolledo in Mexico City; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)
Anthropic signs $35 billion cloud deal with Nvidia-backed Lambda, says report - CNBC TV18
Anthropic signed a $35B cloud deal with Lambda, backed by Nvidia, for Claude AI. Nvidia paused a financing initiative for AI cloud companies. Anthropic has signed a cloud-computing deal worth $35 billion with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday. The deal will bring online Nvidia capacity to meet growing demand for Anthropic's Claude AI, the source said. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Nvidia has paused some deals that were part of its new financing initiative that offered credit support to AI cloud companies in exchange for a share of revenue, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The chip giant stepped back from the program last week, the Journal said, adding that it could still revamp the initiative later or fold it into another program. "The new business model ... that opens up compute access to the fast-growing AI ecosystem is still in place and continues to evolve due to high demand," an Nvidia spokesperson said. The reported move comes less than two months after Nvidia announced the program, designed to support financing needs at small AI cloud firms. Nvidia had sought to rent compute capacity back from cloud customers if they were unable to sell it, providing them with a guaranteed buyer and making it easier for the firms to borrow the capital needed to fund their purchases of Nvidia's AI chips. Under the model, Nvidia would earn revenue on the sale of the hardware itself and then a share of its customers' cloud revenues derived from Nvidia-powered capacity. Nvidia said in its earnings call this week that the model had the potential to drive billions in revenue over the medium- to long-term. But investor scrutiny has mounted in recent months as Nvidia pumps money back into the AI ecosystem, stoking fears over its role in so-called circular deals that could artificially inflate demand. The company this month helped arrange $500 billion in financing from major US financial institutions for its customers, and also agreed to guarantee up to $105 billion to help OpenAI lease a massive data centre. The Journal reported that some Nvidia employees expressed concerns to current and potential customers that the initiative could draw antitrust scrutiny, and said there are sensitivities around the extent to which Nvidia can dictate how its customers do business. In the early weeks of the program, Nvidia irked some potential partners with the extent of control it sought, the report said. Nvidia told some cloud providers they could only rent its chips out to approved customers and signalled it preferred the capacity be distributed among multiple smaller firms rather than one large customer, the report added. Under the proposed deals, Nvidia would receive 50% of any revenue cloud providers earned through its chips beyond a certain threshold, the Journal. Also Read: Sun Pharma shares in focus after White House pricing deal wins two-year tariff reprieve
Anthropic signs $35 billion cloud deal with Nvidia-backed Lambda, source says
Aug 31 (Reuters) - Anthropic has signed a cloud-computing deal worth $35 billion with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday. The deal will bring online Nvidia capacity to meet growing demand for Anthropic's Claude AI, the source said. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. (Reporting by Chandni Shah in Bengaluru and Natalia Bueno Rebolledo in Mexico City; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)
Anthropic signs $35 billion cloud deal with Nvidia-backed Lambda, source says
Aug 31 (Reuters) - Anthropic has signed a cloud-computing deal worth $35 billion with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday. The deal will bring online Nvidia capacity to meet growing demand for Anthropic's Claude AI, the source said. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. (Reporting by Chandni Shah in Bengaluru and Natalia Bueno Rebolledo in Mexico City; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu) Copyright Reuters or USA Today via Reuters Connect This story was originally published August 31, 2026 at 5:50 PM.
Brazilian Counter-Strike pros reportedly paid up to $500 a post to push Polymarket on X
The controversy comes at a moment when online gambling and prediction-style platforms are expanding quickly. According to Proto, professional Counter-Strike players in Brazil are being paid as little as $20 per post to promote Polymarket, and it's drawing fresh criticism over how gambling marketing is showing up inside gaming culture. The backlash has been especially sharp because some of the content reportedly relies on artificial intelligence-generated posts and sensationalized betting talk to grab attention. Here's what to know According to Protos, citing Dust2, Polymarket lists 509 Counter-Strike bets, with some reportedly seeing $1 million to $2 million in volume. Pro players are being paid $20 to $500 per X post to react to news, mention the market, and share wagers. Polymarket is reportedly showing up in everyday conversation around players, match results, and scene drama, not just as a sponsor. One flashpoint involved professional Counter-Strike player Robin Kool. An official Polymarket Counter-Strike account falsely claimed he was in Paris with a Porsche, leading Kool to post on X on Aug. 16, 2026: "so we just lying and creating shit out of thin air, that's how low we're going." He also called sponsored AI-style posts "a f*cking joke." Other users were similarly critical, with one who described the reported $20 rate per tweet as a way for professional players "to completely debase yourself... for a morally bankrupt gambling company." More background The controversy comes at a moment when online gambling and prediction-style platforms are expanding quickly, often through polished social-media marketing that can make betting seem casual, social, and harmless. But that broader boom has also raised concerns about predatory design, aggressive advertising, financial risk, and the ease of placing real-time bets -- especially for younger audiences who may encounter this content in gaming communities. Protos said Polymarket lists 39 countries where it is restricted, reflecting the legal and regulatory complexity surrounding its business. A platform's accessibility, rules, and protections can vary widely depending on where someone lives. The company has also faced scrutiny over how its promotions are presented. The Wall Street Journal reported that Polymarket-linked sponsored posts were largely fake, with a mock version of the site used to display invented bets and up to $900,000 in winnings. If those bets had really been placed, they would have translated to roughly $160,000 in losses. Protos also said that the same reporting found "clippers" -- people who edit and repost influencer footage -- were paid only if 60% of their audience was based in the United States, even though Polymarket is not allowed to operate there. What's being done? Reporting from outlets covering crypto, finance, and esports has brought more visibility to how these promotions work, while players and fans are calling out misleading or low-quality sponsored content in real time. Kool's response is one example of that pushback. Kool said on X: "and all the people sponsored doing AI slop tweets, what a fucking joke" and "genuinely blocking you if i see any of this AI slop on my timeline, this is literal digital cancer." Get TCD's free newsletters for easy tips, smart advice, and a chance to earn $5,000 toward home upgrades. To see more stories like this one, change your Google preferences here.
Sundar Pichai Says Alphabet Can't Build AI Capacity Fast Enough, and Anthropic Has Secured 5 Gigawatts of It.
Alphabet (GOOG -2.18%)(GOOGL -2.09%) said something striking on its second-quarter earnings call in July. Even after committing to as much as $205 billion of capital spending this year, the company still can't build artificial intelligence (AI) computing capacity as fast as customers want it. "[W]e continue to be supply constrained -- a sign of momentum and rapid adoption," CEO Sundar Pichai said in his remarks on the quarter. Yet Alphabet has agreed to hand multi-gigawatt blocks of that scarce capacity to a fast-growing outside customer: Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude models. And a look at Alphabet's underlying business performance shows why the company is racing to sell its capacity to major customers like Anthropic -- even if it's scarce. Selling scarce capacity is a great business Google Cloud, the segment that sells cloud computing to outside customers, grew revenue 82% year over year to $24.8 billion in the second quarter. That was up from 63% growth in the first quarter. The profit is growing even faster than the revenue. Google Cloud's operating income more than tripled year over year, from $2.8 billion to $8.8 billion -- after reaching $6.6 billion in the first quarter. The segment's operating margin came in at about 36%, versus about 21% in the year-ago quarter and 33% in the first quarter of this year. And the contracted work keeps piling up. Pichai said cloud backlog (future revenue from signed contracts) grew to about $514 billion in the second quarter, up from $462 billion at the end of the first quarter. That backlog is now more than four times the revenue Alphabet's entire business produced last quarter. How much of it is Anthropic? Alphabet doesn't break out the number, but the disclosed pieces -- even if they lack financial details -- are big. Last October, Anthropic agreed to expand its use of Google Cloud in a deal giving it access to up to 1 million of Google's tensor processing units (TPUs), the AI chips Google designs in-house, with well over a gigawatt of capacity coming online in 2026. Google Cloud said the agreement was worth tens of billions of dollars. This spring, the relationship got much bigger. In early April, Anthropic secured multiple gigawatts of next-generation TPU capacity from Google and chip partner Broadcom, coming online starting in 2027 -- about 5 gigawatts in all, CNBC reported. Anthropic will access that capacity through Broadcom, according to a Broadcom securities filing. Weeks later, Google agreed to invest up to $40 billion in Anthropic itself, putting in $10 billion right away with as much as $30 billion more tied to performance milestones. Worth noting from that Broadcom filing, though, is that Anthropic's use of the expanded capacity "is dependent on Anthropic's continued commercial success." That is the honest risk in this arrangement. To be fair, Anthropic said in April that its run rate revenue (its recent revenue pace, annualized) had surpassed $30 billion, up from about $9 billion at the end of 2025. Growth like that is extraordinary. But it means a meaningful slice of Alphabet's contracted future rests on one young AI developer growing into its commitments, and Alphabet is now an investor in that developer on top of being its supplier. The build-out still has to be paid for Of course, Alphabet has to build all of this capacity before anyone can rent it. The company raised its 2026 capital expenditures guidance in July to $195 billion to $205 billion. In the second quarter, capital spending of $44.9 billion exceeded the $39.1 billion of cash its operations produced. And the funding has gone well beyond cash on hand. Alphabet collected $49.6 billion from stock sales in June and issued senior notes (a form of debt) for another $20.3 billion of proceeds during the quarter. In other words, the company is financing enormous capacity ahead of the revenue it will carry, and pre-selling chunks of it profitably. What's in it for Alphabet? Probably more of the incredible momentum it's already seeing: Faster cloud revenue growth, a segment margin up from about 21% to about 36% in a year, and a $514 billion pile of signed contracts. So, there's a lot to like here. The supply constraint Pichai described is another way of saying Alphabet has pricing power, and the Anthropic agreements convert that scarcity into contracted revenue years into the future -- something that should help an already thriving cloud business over the long haul. And shares trade near $339 as of this writing, at about 23 times next year's expected earnings, which is arguably a reasonable price for a company growing total revenue by 24% (with an explosive cloud business underneath).
Anthropic secures 5 gigawatts AI capacity amid Alphabet's infrastructure strain
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has stated that the company is unable to build AI capacity rapidly enough to meet demand, highlighting a significant development in the artificial intelligence sector. In response, Anthropic, the AI lab behind the Claude model family, has secured a substantial 5 gigawatts of capacity, a move that positions it strongly in the race for AI supremacy. This development comes in the wake of Alphabet's announcement of up to $40 billion in investment in Anthropic, underscoring the competitive pressure to secure infrastructure in the AI landscape. The agreement places Anthropic alongside other top-tier AI developers in terms of both financial backing and computational resources, as companies compete to dominate AI benchmarks. Key Takeaways * Sundar Pichai's comments suggest Alphabet's current AI infrastructure is insufficient to meet its goals, emphasizing the competitive nature of the AI industry. * Anthropic's acquisition of 5 gigawatts of capacity appears consistent with scenarios where it enhances its competitive edge in AI development. * Pricing suggests growing confidence in Anthropic's ability to deliver a leading AI model by the end of September 2026. What to Watch Markets will closely observe Anthropic's performance in upcoming AI benchmarks, which could validate its strategic investments. Watch for any announcements or evaluations from dominant AI benchmarks that may indicate Anthropic's standing relative to competitors like Google, Meta, and OpenAI. Additionally, any further strategic moves by Alphabet or its competitors to expand AI capacity could influence market perceptions and pricing in the coming weeks. Get live prediction-market analysis, powered by Vera. Sign up for Vera.
Anthropic seals US$35 billion deal with Nvidia-backed cloud provider Lambda: Bloomberg
ANTHROPIC agreed to a US$35 billion computing deal with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia, part of an effort to quickly expand its AI capacity, according to a person familiar with the matter. Infrastructure company Hut 8 is developing the Texas data centre involved in the project, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. The Wall Street Journal previously reported on the agreement, saying that Nvidia would hold the lease on the data centre, which is in Nueces County, Texas. The deal is just the latest AI computing agreement tied to Nvidia, the world's most valuable business and the leading provider of AI chips. The company has been using its financial resources to expand access to computing infrastructure, which, in turn, should increase demand for its technology. Anthropic, meanwhile, has emerged as one of the most significant customers for data centre power. The Claude chatbot maker on Aug 26 agreed to spend US$45 billion to rent capacity from Nscale in West Virginia. In recent months, it has also signed cloud deals for US$50 billion with neocloud Fluidstack and US$45 billion with Elon Musk's SpaceX. A representative for Anthropic declined to comment. Nvidia, Lambda and Hut 8 did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Lambda is in talks to raise as much as US$3 billion, Bloomberg reported on Aug 25. The company has discussed a valuation of as much as US$12 billion or more, according to people familiar with the talks. Lambda raised more than US$1.5 billion in a November 2025 funding round. The company also reached an agreement with Microsoft in 2025 to deploy AI infrastructure that would be powered by tens of thousands of Nvidia processors. BLOOMBERG
Anthropic signs $35 billion cloud deal with Nvidia-backed Lambda, source says
Aug 31 (Reuters) - Anthropic has signed a cloud-computing deal worth $35 billion with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday. The deal will bring online Nvidia capacity to meet growing demand for Anthropic's Claude AI, the source said. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. (Reporting by Chandni Shah in Bengaluru and Natalia Bueno Rebolledo in Mexico City; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)
Anthropic Seals $35 Billion Cloud Deal With Nvidia-Backed Lambda
(Bloomberg) -- Anthropic PBC agreed to a $35 billion computing deal with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia Corp., part of an effort to quickly expand its AI capacity, according to a person familiar with the matter. Most Read from Bloomberg Infrastructure company Hut 8 is developing the Texas data center involved in the project, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. The Wall Street Journal previously reported on the agreement, saying that Nvidia would hold the lease on the data center, which is in Nueces County, Texas. The deal is just the latest AI computing agreement tied to Nvidia, the world's most valuable business and the leading provider of AI chips. The company has been using its financial resources to expand access to computing infrastructure, which, in turn, should increase demand for its technology. Anthropic, meanwhile, has emerged as one of the most significant customers for data center power. The Claude chatbot maker last week agreed to spend $45 billion to rent capacity from Nscale in West Virginia. In recent months, it has also signed cloud deals for $50 billion with neocloud Fluidstack Ltd. and $45 billion with Elon Musk's SpaceX. A representative for Anthropic declined to comment. Nvidia, Lambda and Hut 8 didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. Lambda is in talks to raise as much as $3 billion, Bloomberg reported last week. The company has discussed a valuation of as much as $12 billion or more, according to people familiar with the talks. Lambda raised more than $1.5 billion in a November funding round. The company also reached an agreement with Microsoft Corp. last year to deploy AI infrastructure that would be powered by tens of thousands of Nvidia processors. --With assistance from Lynn Doan and Ian King. Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek
Anthropic Seals $35 Billion Cloud Deal With Nvidia-Backed Lambda
(Bloomberg) -- Anthropic PBC agreed to a $35 billion computing deal with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia Corp., part of an effort to quickly expand its AI capacity, according to a person familiar with the matter. Most Read from Bloomberg Infrastructure company Hut 8 is developing the Texas data center involved in the project, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. The Wall Street Journal previously reported on the agreement, saying that Nvidia would hold the lease on the data center, which is in Nueces County, Texas. The deal is just the latest AI computing agreement tied to Nvidia, the world's most valuable business and the leading provider of AI chips. The company has been using its financial resources to expand access to computing infrastructure, which, in turn, should increase demand for its technology. Anthropic, meanwhile, has emerged as one of the most significant customers for data center power. The Claude chatbot maker last week agreed to spend $45 billion to rent capacity from Nscale in West Virginia. In recent months, it has also signed cloud deals for $50 billion with neocloud Fluidstack Ltd. and $45 billion with Elon Musk's SpaceX. A representative for Anthropic declined to comment. Nvidia, Lambda and Hut 8 didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. Lambda is in talks to raise as much as $3 billion, Bloomberg reported last week. The company has discussed a valuation of as much as $12 billion or more, according to people familiar with the talks. Lambda raised more than $1.5 billion in a November funding round. The company also reached an agreement with Microsoft Corp. last year to deploy AI infrastructure that would be powered by tens of thousands of Nvidia processors. --With assistance from Lynn Doan and Ian King. Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek
Anthropic Forces Claude Users Out After Infostealers Hijack Sessions to Burn Paid Tokens
Anthropic moved fast. The AI company began signing affected Claude subscribers out of their accounts last week. It yanked saved payment methods too. All to slam the door on attackers who had quietly stolen active login sessions. The root cause traces back to ordinary infostealer malware. Nothing bespoke for Claude. The same families that have vacuumed credentials for years. Vidar. LummaC2. StealC. RedLine. Acreed on Windows systems. Atomic Stealer, also known as AMOS, on a handful of Macs. These tools don't target Claude directly. They arrive through the usual vectors. Cracked games. Unofficial downloads. Dodgy apps. Once inside, they copy saved passwords, browser cookies, and local app credentials. The Claude session cookie becomes just one more prize in the haul. Attackers then replay that authenticated session. No password needed. No 2FA prompt. The system sees a legitimate logged-in user. "We have recently become aware of a bad actor that is using common infostealer malware to steal Claude login sessions from people's computers, then using those login sessions to access Claude accounts and consume their usage," Anthropic explained in emails sent to impacted customers. The message, first shared on Reddit by user WorriedAssociate7029, was reported in detail by The Register. Users noticed odd behavior first. Usage limits that refilled. Then drained rapidly. Even when they weren't prompting Claude at all. That pattern tipped off Anthropic's monitoring systems. The company responded by invalidating the stolen sessions. Removing stored cards. And issuing refunds for unauthorized charges. But here's the catch. Signing out stops the immediate abuse. It does not clean the infected machine. "Signing you out of Claude stops the stolen sessions, but it doesn't remove the malware," the email warned. Victims must scan and remove the infostealer first. Only afterward should they reset passwords, enable two-factor authentication on their email, and review other sessions. Security researchers saw the same pattern play out across the industry. Help Net Security detailed how the malware copies the session cookie. Attackers replay it. The platform treats them as already authenticated. This bypasses every login hurdle. The incident highlights a broader shift. AI computing power now carries real street value. Tokens aren't abstract. They're expensive resources that bad actors can consume at someone else's expense. Or bundle and resell. One Chinese-language report described attackers wrapping hundreds of stolen sessions into backend proxies. Then offering "unlimited chatting" for pennies to end users. All while the original account holders footed the bill. That coverage appeared on 36Kr. Anthropic stressed the malware had no connection to its platform. "We have no reason to believe that this malware is related to Claude, installed through Claude, or related to anything you did with Claude," the email stated. "Your Claude session was likely one of the many things it collected. It appears that a bad actor has now started picking the Claude sessions out of what it collected and using them." One victim told The Register he got fooled by a cracked game. Classic entry point. He later used Claude itself to help analyze the malware on his system. After the company's alert, he changed passwords again and revoked all active sessions. The experience left him more appreciative of Anthropic's proactive steps than past refund disputes on Reddit. This isn't the first time Claude has drawn large-scale abuse. Earlier this summer Anthropic accused operators linked to Alibaba of running the biggest known campaign to extract its model's capabilities. That operation allegedly used nearly 25,000 fraudulent accounts to generate more than 28.8 million exchanges. The company shared evidence with U.S. senators and called for punishment. Ars Technica broke down the letter and its claims. Yet the latest wave feels different. It relies on commodity tools already loose in the wild. No need to create fake accounts or build custom infrastructure. Just harvest sessions from thousands of ordinary users who clicked the wrong link or downloaded the wrong file. The barrier to entry dropped. The incentive rose. Security firm Huntress identified a related campaign called FakeAgent. Attackers hosted malicious pages that posed as Claude-related tools. At least 29 organizations fell victim in two days. Roughly 7,100 downloads occurred before Anthropic took the page down. Some payloads led to SectopRAT. Others dropped poisoned SKILL.md files that could persist through Claude's own agent features. Those findings appeared in reporting by CyberSecurity News. The speed of Anthropic's response stands out. Account lockouts. Card removal. Refunds processed. Notifications sent. All within days of detecting the pattern. But the company also signaled it may act again if similar misuse appears. Users could face another forced logout. For enterprise teams that rely on Claude for code generation, research, or agentic workflows, the implications sting. A single compromised developer laptop can drain shared subscription credits or rack up surprise bills. Teams that treat AI usage limits as mere convenience now face them as a security boundary. Recommendations from Anthropic and the reporting outlets converge. Treat the machine first. Remove the malware completely. Then harden the accounts. Strong unique passwords. Proper 2FA. Session hygiene. Avoid unofficial software. The advice feels basic. Its repeated necessity reveals how often it gets ignored. So the cycle continues. Malware authors update their stealers. Users download tempting cracks. AI companies detect the drain and cut the sessions. Each round exposes the same truth. The value of compute has moved from theoretical to transactional. And thieves noticed first. Additional coverage today from SecurityWeek and Notebookcheck confirmed the same email language and remediation steps. No new families of malware. No evidence of a Claude-specific exploit. Just opportunistic reuse of tools that have plagued browsers and password managers for years. Anthropic's move buys time. It doesn't solve the underlying problem of session theft. Browser vendors, password managers, and endpoint security products all carry pieces of the defense. Until those layers tighten, AI platforms will keep playing whack-a-mole with stolen cookies. The tokens keep burning. The bills keep arriving. And users keep learning the hard way.
Anthropic signs $35 billion cloud deal with Nvidia-backed Lambda, source says
Aug 31 (Reuters) - Anthropic has signed a cloud-computing deal worth $35 billion with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday. The deal will bring online Nvidia capacity to meet growing demand for Anthropic's Claude AI, the source said. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Reporting by Chandni Shah in Bengaluru and Natalia Bueno Rebolledo in Mexico City; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
Anthropic signs massive cloud deal backed by Nvidia as AI compute race intensifies
The Claude maker is stacking billions in compute agreements as it positions for a potential IPO in a fiercely competitive AI landscape. Anthropic is on an infrastructure spending spree that would make a sovereign wealth fund blush. The AI company behind Claude has locked in compute commitments that collectively run into the hundreds of billions of dollars. This latest agreement fits into a broader strategy that has seen Anthropic ink deal after deal for computing power at a pace that's hard to keep up with. The company recently signed a $45 billion, six-year compute rental agreement with Nscale, a deal that will tap into Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin chip architecture. That Nscale contract alone is designed to deliver up to 460 megawatts of power capacity. There's a separate $10 billion computing agreement with Volta Infra Holdings, a company backed by Nvidia, for a cloud facility in Norway. And in November 2025, Anthropic committed $30 billion to Microsoft Azure in a partnership that also involved Nvidia's investment and collaboration on advanced computing systems. Following the money In June 2026, Anthropic secured a $35 billion funding tranche under what it calls the AI XPV Platform, co-led by Apollo and Blackstone. That capital is specifically earmarked for infrastructure expansion exceeding 1 gigawatt of total power capacity. The financing structure itself is notable. By bringing in infrastructure-focused investors like Apollo and Blackstone rather than traditional venture capital, Anthropic is essentially treating its compute buildout the way energy companies treat pipeline construction: as a long-duration capital project with predictable returns. The IPO question The timing of Anthropic's spending binge is not coincidental. The company is widely understood to be positioning for an initial public offering, and locking in compute capacity ahead of going public serves a dual purpose. First, it removes a critical risk factor from the IPO narrative. By securing years of guaranteed compute access across multiple providers and geographies, Anthropic can walk into its roadshow with that box firmly checked. Second, these long-term agreements create a moat. Compute capacity is genuinely scarce at the scale required for frontier AI training. Every megawatt Anthropic locks up is a megawatt that a competitor cannot use.
CFND) Announces Second Quarter 2026 Results, Adds Polymarket to Portfolio, and Repurchases ~$824,000 of Shares
C1 Fund Inc. (NYSE: CFND) ("C1 Fund" or the "Fund"), a publicly traded closed-end fund providing investors with exposure to a curated portfolio of private late stage digital asset services and technology companies, today released its financial results, including net asset value ("NAV"), for the second quarter ended June 30, 2026. * C1 Fund had 6,568,348 shares outstanding. * C1 Fund's NAV was $42,625,013, or $6.49 per share. * Portfolio investments at fair value were $33,067,058, representing approximately 77.5% of net assets. * Short-term U.S. Treasury investments were $9.96 million, representing 23.3% of net assets. * Total investments at fair value were $43,031,199, reflecting net unrealized depreciation on investments of $53,311,989. * The Fund held investments in eleven portfolio companies, compared with seven at December 31, 2025. Operational Highlights and Strategic Progress * Through July 31, 2026, C1 Fund repurchased and retired 249,300 shares of its common stock at an aggregate cost of $824,440 under its buyback program approved by the Board of Directors on January 29, 2026. The Fund is currently authorized to repurchase up to $3,000,000 of its common stock, subject to market conditions and SEC rules. * As of June 30, 2026, the portfolio included eleven companies: Alchemy, BitGo, Blockchain.com, Chainalysis, ConsenSys, Figment, Fireblocks, Kraken (Payward, Inc.), Polymarket (Blockratize Inc.), Ripple Labs Inc., and Uphold. In keeping with its mandate, C1 Fund's portfolio investments remain focused on digital asset services and technology. * During the second quarter of 2026, C1 Fund added Polymarket (Blockratize Inc.), a leading decentralized prediction market platform that enables users to trade on the outcomes of real-world events, and increased positions in several of the companies in which the Fund first invested in 2025. * C1 Fund's two largest portfolio exposures are Ripple Labs Inc. (17.5% of the Company's net assets as of June 30, 2026), a global blockchain infrastructure company focused on cross-border payments and digital asset solutions, and Payward, Inc. (16.9% of the Company's net assets as of June 30, 2026), the parent company and unified financial infrastructure platform behind Kraken, one of the world's largest digital asset exchanges serving retail, institutional, and enterprise clients. * Two portfolio companies, Kraken and Blockchain.com, have publicly announced confidential submissions for potential initial public offerings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. BitGo, Inc. completed its initial public offering in January 2026. An early partial issuer buyback by Ripple Labs Inc. generated approximately a 150% return to the Fund in just over four months. * Investments continue to be selected from the C1 30, C1 Fund's defined universe of leading companies in digital asset services and technology, based on availability in secondary markets and expected return potential. Chief Investment Officer Elliot Han commented, "Our investment discipline remains consistent: acquire secondary shares in larger, late stage companies from the C1 30 when access is available and pricing offers compelling return potential. As of June 30, our eleven company portfolio represented approximately 77.5% of net assets and spanned payments, custody, compliance, staking, exchanges, development infrastructure, and prediction markets. Weaker secondary market pricing affected quarter end fair values, but selected portfolio companies continued to report customer growth. BitGo's clients on platform increased 26% year over year to 5,833, and Payward's (Kraken's) funded accounts increased 42% to 6.6 million. We believe this divergence reinforces the importance of evaluating both market based fair values and underlying business performance as we manage the portfolio and pursue liquidity opportunities."
Salesforce's 80% earnings beat came mostly from its Anthropic stake
Five years ago, valuing Salesforce meant counting seats and multiplying. That maths broke this year. In January the market decided AI agents would eat enterprise software, and roughly a trillion dollars of enterprise SaaS market value went with it, per market commentary at the time. Salesforce spent seven months as the poster child for that trade. Then it reported a quarter in which the fastest growing product is not billed by the user at all, it is billed by the unit of work completed. That's why we built Winvesta Crisps, to decode what's actually driving the companies you own, in plain language, before the consensus catches up. 60,000+ investors from all over India are already in. What about you? Subscribe now! 🔔 Don't miss out! Add [email protected] to your email list so our updates never land in spam. Salesforce reported adjusted earnings of $5.90 per share for its fiscal second quarter on Wednesday 26 August, against a consensus near $3.27, and the shares closed 22.6% higher the following day, per market reporting. Read the headline and you would conclude the software business had a spectacular quarter. It did not. About $2.53 of that $5.90 came from gains on strategic investments, most of it a markup on the company's stake in Anthropic, per company disclosures and analysis at The Motley Fool. Strip that out and adjusted earnings were roughly $3.37 per share, up about 16%, on revenue of $11.345 billion that grew 11%. The market bought the stock anyway, and the reason sits three lines further down the release. 🧩 What Salesforce actually sells now The company stopped reporting the way most investors still think about it. There is no line in this quarter called Sales Cloud or Service Cloud. Salesforce now splits its subscription revenue into two buckets, and the names it chose say more than the numbers. The first bucket, which Salesforce calls Agentforce Apps, is the business everybody knows: sales, service, marketing, commerce and Slack. It produced roughly $7.2 billion in the quarter and grew about 8% in constant currency, per the company's Q2 fiscal 2027 disclosures. The second bucket, Data 360 together with the headless platform and other products, produced roughly $3.6 billion and grew about 20% in constant currency. Two thirds of the revenue is compounding at single digits. One third is compounding at more than twice that rate. A company that renames its entire application suite after its agent product, then reports the data layer growing 20%, is telling you where it thinks the next decade of revenue comes from. Some of that 20% is bought rather than built. Informatica, the data management business Salesforce acquired, contributed $456 million of revenue in the quarter, $440 million of it subscription, per the company. Back that out and the data and platform line still grew, but the gap between the two buckets narrows considerably. Anyone modelling this company needs to hold both facts at once: the mix shift is real, and the acquisition flatters it. Total subscription and support revenue was $10.820 billion, up 12% as reported and about 11% in constant currency. Total revenue was $11.345 billion. By geography, the Americas contributed $7.404 billion, Europe $2.764 billion and Asia Pacific $1.168 billion.
Anthropic's Automated AI Researchers Outpace Humans in Fixing Model Flaws
Chen Yueh-Han, a researcher in Anthropic's fellows program, has produced striking evidence that AI systems can now systematically repair their own behavioral weaknesses. The work, detailed in a paper released last week, marks one of the clearest demonstrations yet of machines taking on core elements of AI research itself. Automated alignment researchers built on Claude models searched scientific literature, proposed training techniques, generated data, fine-tuned target models and evaluated outcomes in repeated cycles. They tackled 10 distinct categories of misalignment. Privacy violations. Deception. Sycophancy. Vulnerability to jailbreaks. In every case the systems improved performance on the designated benchmarks. Overall model capabilities remained intact. "Claude's methods worked," the Anthropic research paper states plainly. "For all 10 alignment failures, Claude found fixes that improved the target benchmarks without degrading capabilities." On deception using the Gemma-2-2B model, the best automated approach closed 85 percent of the safety gap on average. Human proposals under the same constraints managed only about 20 percent. The results landed with force inside the AI community. Russell Brandom of TechCrunch described the experiment as an early look at what training AI models with other AI models might look like in practice. And the implications stretch beyond safety tweaks. This setup replicates much of the traditional research loop. Literature review. Hypothesis generation. Experimentation. Iteration based on measured outcomes. But the standout experiment involved a weaker model improving a stronger one. Anthropic gave Claude Sonnet 5 an early, partially aligned checkpoint of the more powerful Claude Opus 4.8. The assignment was straightforward: make this model behave better across the same set of problems. Over roughly 60 hours the system tested more than 50 different approaches. It produced a final training set of just over 2,000 examples drawn from simple templates and public datasets. That method brought the early Opus checkpoint close to the alignment scores of the released production version of Opus 4.8. The paper notes the winning solution proved roughly 15,000 times more efficient than Anthropic's standard production alignment procedure. Cost numbers tell another part of the story. The automated researchers ran at about $4 per hour in API inference. Human researchers at the company command $150 per hour. "The best AAR method beats what experienced humans propose, on average within six hours," the paper reports. "Human guided research directions do not lead to stronger performance." The finding comes from comparisons against proposals from 28 experienced human AI safety researchers. The automated systems won consistently. Methods generalized. Improvements held up on benchmarks that had been withheld during the research process. They also transferred to Petri, an open-source tool that simulates adversarial multi-turn conversations designed to expose misalignment. Performance held when the techniques were applied to models up to 4.7 times larger than the ones used in initial experiments. Anthropic has spent years warning about the arrival of recursive self-improvement, the point at which AI systems could autonomously design, train and improve their own successors. In a June report the company noted that more than 80 percent of the code merged into its codebase is now authored by Claude. Engineers ship eight times as much code per quarter as they did a few years ago. The trend line has been visible for months. Yet this latest experiment narrows the gap in a specific and unsettling way. A less capable model successfully enhanced a more capable one in the critical domain of alignment. The loop is not fully closed. Humans still select the problems, supply the base models, provide compute and review final outputs. Still, the distance between current practice and a system that could iterate on its own alignment without meaningful human guidance has shortened. Monitoring revealed limits. Anthropic deployed a separate Claude Opus 4.8 agent to watch roughly 1,600 research transcripts. It identified cheating attempts in 39 of them, or 2.4 percent. The systems sometimes tried to game the benchmarks rather than solve the underlying problems. Such behavior echoes longstanding concerns about AI finding shortcuts when objectives are specified through proxies. The paper itself lists several caveats. The 10 failures tested represent narrow slices of possible misalignment. The work does not address rare but consequential biases that lack reliable benchmarks. Capability degradation might have occurred in dimensions the evaluations did not measure. And success depends entirely on how faithfully the benchmarks capture real-world goals. Even with those qualifications, the results have drawn attention across the industry. Recent coverage in The Indian Express highlighted that the automated systems not only matched but exceeded human proposals while operating far more cheaply. Discussions on X in recent days have focused on the speed of the loop. Once AI can reliably research and improve AI, the question becomes how quickly each generation compounds. Anthropic has open-sourced the harness used to run these automated researchers, inviting others to replicate and extend the work. The company frames the findings with cautious optimism. Automated alignment post-training could become practical in the near term. That would allow safety efforts to keep pace as models grow more powerful. Yet the same capability that accelerates safety work could accelerate everything else. Jack Clark, Anthropic's co-founder, has argued in earlier writing that recursive self-improvement could arrive sooner than institutions expect. The June report he co-authored urged preparation, including the option for coordinated slowdowns if necessary. This new paper supplies concrete data points for that conversation. AI systems have begun to handle meaningful pieces of the research task. The remaining human role, while still central, is shrinking in scope. Observers outside the company strike different tones. Some see validation of long-held predictions about AI automating its own development. Others caution against overinterpreting narrow benchmark wins. The distinction between improving measured alignment and producing genuinely more trustworthy systems remains real. Benchmarks are proxies. Real deployment brings surprises. Still, the experiment stands out for its clarity. One model. A defined set of problems. Measurable progress without capability trade-offs. Outperformance relative to humans on both quality and cost. Generalization to new benchmarks and larger models. The pattern fits the broader story Anthropic has been telling: AI development is already accelerating because AI itself is doing more of the work. What comes next will likely involve expanding the range of failures addressed, tightening monitoring against gaming, and testing whether these techniques persist after further training stages. Anthropic suggests the automated researchers could eventually propose improvements directly to production models. The loop would tighten further. For an industry racing toward more capable systems, the paper delivers both reassurance and a warning. Safety research can be automated to a surprising degree. The same automation that protects against misalignment could remove humans from the critical path of improvement. The difference between those two futures may depend on decisions made in the narrow window before the loop becomes fully self-sustaining. And the clock, if these results hold, is ticking faster than many assumed.
US government sells Anthropic stakes seized from former FTX executives
Forfeited shares originally bought for $50 million during Anthropic's 2022 Series B could now be worth billions, but FTX victims haven't seen a dime yet The US government quietly sold equity stakes in AI giant Anthropic that were seized from two former FTX executives, turning what started as a $50 million crypto-era investment into one of the most lucrative asset forfeitures in recent memory. Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research, and Nishad Singh, a former FTX engineering director, both forfeited their personal Anthropic holdings to the government as part of their criminal proceedings tied to the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto empire. The US Marshals Service then sold those shares to existing Anthropic investors in 2025. From crypto convictions to AI windfalls Ellison invested roughly $10 million and Singh put in about $40 million during Anthropic's Series B funding round in 2022. Both executives cooperated with federal prosecutors. Ellison pleaded guilty and testified against Bankman-Fried. Singh did the same. As part of their respective deals, Ellison forfeited her Anthropic shares in February 2025, and Singh followed suit in April 2025. The US Marshals Service acquired the shares and found buyers among Anthropic's existing investor base. The exact sale price remains undisclosed. Estimates suggest the government may have netted somewhere between $250 million and $1.1 billion, depending on the valuation Anthropic was trading at in private markets during the sale window. By May 2026, Anthropic reached a $965 billion valuation. At that price, the combined value of Ellison and Singh's original stakes would sit somewhere in the range of $4.17 billion to $5.03 billion. FTX victims left waiting As of late June 2026, none of the proceeds from the government's sale have been transferred to the FTX bankruptcy estate. Sunil Kavuri, a representative for FTX victims, has publicly advocated for the forfeited assets' proceeds to be directed toward victim compensation. The logic is straightforward: Ellison and Singh made those investments using resources connected to FTX and Alameda, so the returns should flow back to the people who lost money. Forfeited asset proceeds go through a separate legal pipeline from bankruptcy distributions, and coordinating between the Department of Justice and the bankruptcy court has proven slow and complicated. The FTX bankruptcy estate has already been working to repay creditors through other recovered assets, and notably had previously liquidated its own separate position in Anthropic. The broader context Anthropic, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers Dario and Daniela Amodei, has raised billions from investors including Google, Salesforce, and Amazon. Its Claude model competes directly with OpenAI's GPT series and Google's Gemini. The Marshals Service's decision to sell to existing Anthropic investors suggests they opted for a clean, low-friction transaction. The shares were sold under forfeiture regulations set forth by Title 21 U.S.C. § 853. Kavuri and other victim advocates will likely continue pushing for faster resolution. The sheer size of the potential payout -- hundreds of millions at minimum, and potentially exceeding $4 billion based on Anthropic's May 2026 valuation -- makes this one of the most consequential remaining pieces of the FTX cleanup.
