Chris Malone joins a string of recent high-level executive departures as the AI giant heads toward an IPO and ramps up its spending on computing power.

Among those charged are two Super Micro employees and one from Nvidia, marking another flashpoint in US-China AI rivalry

The company's new fundraising total now stands at $232 million.

BofA says investors are exhibiting AI fatigue, and are hunting for ways to keep exposure to the growth theme buffering against swings in the AI trade.

"Meat proxy" refers to someone who sends outputs straight from Claude or ChatGPT without analyzing them. It's caught on with techies on X.

Explore more offers. $45 per month Essential digital access to quality FT journalism on any device. Pay a year upfront and save 20%. Complete digital access to quality FT journalism with expert analysis from industry leaders. Pay a year upfront and save 20%. $16.99 per month Our digitised version of the FT newspaper, for easy reading on any device. Find out why

Anthropic is giving Claude a shared memory across chat and Cowork, so users no longer have to repeatedly brief the AI on projects, preferences, and other context.

Years of warnings about the digital vulnerabilities lurking inside basic utilities are colliding with a new reality: AI is making those weaknesses easier for hackers to exploit. Why it matters: AI is lowering the barrier for state-backed hackers looking to disrupt or manipulate water systems, power plants and other critical infrastructure. Driving the news: A recent wave of cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructure is raising new questions about the preparedness of U.S. water systems and a British power plant. The Telegraph reported that Iran-backed hackers broke into a U.K. power plant, prompting a four-day shutdown around the time a series of cyberattacks on U.S. water systems began. U.S. officials warned last week that hackers were actively using an AI-generated exploitation script to target a device commonly found in critical infrastructure that has played a key role in the ongoing attacks on U.S. water systems. Markus Mueller, field CISO at critical infrastructure security firm Nozomi Networks, told Axios he has medium confidence that the U.S. and U.K. attacks are linked to the same threat actor. The big picture: Policymakers have been warning for years that weak cybersecurity across critical infrastructure could eventually have real-world consequences. Five years ago, Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) warned Congress that cyber weaknesses across U.S. water utilities represented "an extremely dangerous situation." "We're the most wired country in the world. That's good," he told lawmakers. "But we're also the most vulnerable country in the world." Between the lines: AI isn't fundamentally changing how hackers break into these systems. It's reducing the time and expertise needed to understand specialized equipment and exploit weaknesses that already exist, experts told Axios. Suspected Iranian hackers have long studied U.S. critical infrastructure, including how specialized devices such as programmable logic controllers work. Historically, threat actors might have needed to obtain the devices themselves or pore over technical manuals before they could successfully target them, Mueller said. Now, AI is lowering the "time, cost, and expertise needed to take advantage of weaknesses that already exist," Diana Kelley, chief information security officer at Noma Security, told Axios. Reality check: Governments haven't simply ignored the problem. But efforts to impose stronger security requirements have moved slowly and repeatedly run into legal, political and funding hurdles. The Environmental Protection Agency attempted during the Biden administration to require water utilities to implement basic cybersecurity measures, but it later rescinded the policy after legal challenges from states and industry groups. Recent federal cuts to cybersecurity resources and uncertainty around federal grant funding for state and local governments "leaves communities more vulnerable to future cyberattacks," Mayuresh Dani, a security research manager at Qualys, told Axios. Cyber hygiene guidance and government advisories alone won't keep pace with attackers, John Gallagher, vice president at automated cybersecurity firm Viakoo, told Axios. "Adversaries will always have an upper hand because of speed when cyber defense relies on bureaucratic budget cycles and multiyear legislative processes," Gallagher said. Yes, but: So far, the recent attacks appear to have caused only limited disruptions. In some towns, hackers affected the pressure levels for local water supplies and officials issued precautionary boil-water advisories. The Telegraph reported that the cyberattack on the local power plant "had no impact on the U.K.'s wider power supply or energy generation. " The intrigue: Critical infrastructure remains an alluring target for nation-state hackers precisely because even relatively small disruptions can have highly visible consequences, Margaret Cunningham, vice president of security and AI strategy at Darktrace, told Axios. "AI gives attackers more speed and reach, but it doesn't erase the problems critical infrastructure organizations have been dealing with for years, including exposed operational technology, difficulty patching and systems that cannot simply be switched off," she said. What to watch: Key details about the U.K. incident remain unknown, including what type of power plant was targeted and which devices the hackers accessed, Mueller said.

Expectations are high for Nvidia heading into its Q2 earnings report, with AI demand, next gen chips, and details on financing deals top of mind.

A pioneering AI scientist once predicted computers would replace human radiologists. They haven't.

The AI startup is likely to top SpaceX’s eye-popping potential revenue estimate.

OpenAI's CEO said he was too bullish on AI's economic takeover in 2023. Slower adoption is a "positive in many ways," he added.

Google unveils Gemini Enterprise for Legal, targeting law firms with AI tools like agents for contract review and regulatory tracking.

Regulations will require new sites to avoid pushing up power prices by building renewable energy plants and minimising water use

Craig Gidney is largely unknown outside of quantum computing, but his pioneering work on quantum circuits could have huge consequences for us all, ushering in both useful quantum computers, and the end of digital privacy and security as we know it

Find out why

Tested on Semianalysis’s InferenceX benchmark, Jalapeño registered both more tokens per user and more throughput per kilowatt than the currently available state-of-the art.

OpenAI still isn’t giving up Nvidia chips, though.

Folks have been daisy-chaining Macs for AI—this refresh keeps that in mind.

Also, CEOs want AI agents to read employees’ Slack messages.

Now exiting stealth mode with a $26 million seed round, Keenable has been building a vast web search index for AI agents.

"With these frameworks and new chips, developers can run and fine-tune large AI models locally on their Mac," Apple said.

The M6 is Apple’s first 2nm chip.

TechCrunch talks agents, UX, and reporting to Greg Brockman with OpenAI's head of product.

Plus: No one really knows how to safely test frontier AI models.

Nvidia is trying to expand its customer base by creating new financing options that allow for more clients to purchase its costly systems.

Lambda Inc., an AI cloud-computing provider backed by Nvidia Corp., is in talks to raise as much as $3 billion in a round that could tee it up to go public next year, according to people familiar with the efforts. The company, part of a group of “neoclouds” that rent access to chips and other AI infrastructure, has discussed raising the money at a valuation of as much as $12 billion or more, the people said, asking not to be identified because the discussions aren’t public. The fundraising talks are ongoing and deal terms haven’t been finalized, they said.

Plus: U.S. sanctions suspected Iranian hackers on ‘economic D-Day;’ Alabama subpoenas OpenAI over rogue cyberattack.

The AI company said the incident "illustrates how influence actors can use AI as a supporting tool within a broader effort to manufacture authority."

Exclusive: Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire sites predicted to emit 4.5m tonnes a year when fully running

Explore more offers. $45 per month Essential digital access to quality FT journalism on any device. Pay a year upfront and save 20%. Complete digital access to quality FT journalism with expert analysis from industry leaders. Pay a year upfront and save 20%. $16.99 per month Our digitised version of the FT newspaper, for easy reading on any device. Find out why

Good morning from Sydney. Australia is set to legislate data center power and water use as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese seeks AI investment that doesn’t burden households. Also, the US tells Iran’s trade partners to cut ties or risk sanctions.— Jackie Edwards, stocks editor. Albanese will outline on Wednesday the proposed obligations for data centers’ use of electricity and water in a bid to harness AI development without provoking a backlash. Electricity use by the computing facilities is expected to rise almost sevenfold over the next decade.

Marco Argenti, the firm's chief information officer, said engineers are now focused on transferring "tribal knowledge" to AI agents.

Anthropic staff were told they should not come to the AI company's San Francisco offices on Monday and Tuesday in case a security strike took place.

The financial engineering the company is using to keep revenue growing introduces risks that could eventually cause real pain.

Nothing is driving more new U.S. economic investment or political volatility than data centers. Why it matters: They're the Great Subplot of 2026, THE topic animating the AI race and elections. Everyone needs to understand the size, scope and sentiment surrounding them. The big picture: It's almost impossible to wrap your brain around the scale of the cash dedicated to this buildout — now the biggest capital project in human history. The five biggest hyperscalers — Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta and Oracle — are set to spend more than $750B on capital expenditures this year. That's up 67% from last year, and roughly 75% of it is earmarked for AI infrastructure. The three things about data centers that you won't be able to hide from: They're coming for everything. Hyperscalers aren't bottlenecked by GPUs alone. Big Tech is hungry for everything physical in order to get these things built. The richest companies on earth are now your main competition for things like land, cooling systems and turbines. They're straining the grid. Utilities now forecast a sixfold jump for 2030's peak electric demand growth from predictions just three years ago. That's driven by data centers, and our aging systems can't keep up. They're a defining political issue. Both Republicans and Democrats want to capitalize on the populist line of limiting or banning their construction. It's happening at all levels — the federal government, at the state level and in local communities. Top Republicans tell me data centers alone could cost them control of the Senate. The issue boiled over last week, with politicians who had embraced data centers running for cover. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), who had boasted last year about landing a huge data center, imposed strict new requirements on new ones. In Michigan, Republican U.S. Senate nominee Mike Rogers backed a one-year moratorium. Earlier this month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) froze new data centers. The bottom line: Data centers are proxy fights over AI, jobs, the environment, energy production and energy use. Your cheat sheet 🤔 What they actually do: They're giant buildings filled with chips used to train AI models or process the queries sent to them. Their size is generally measured in megawatts, the units of electrical capacity needed to run them and cool the infrastructure inside. 📈 Total online: About 4,000 and counting across the U.S., with 580 hyperscale facilities. 🗳️ Total delayed by politics: At least 75 projects nationwide totaling roughly $130B in potential investment were impacted in Q1 2026. 💡 Average site capacity: 62 MW for large projects currently in the pipeline. (For comparison, the typical site in Virginia at the end of 2024 averaged roughly 34 MW.) 💰 Average cost to build: Roughly $2.1B-2.4B all in for that 62 MW project. 🧑‍💻 Average employees: About 50 to keep the average Virginia site running. That number balloons to a peak of 1,500 workers on site during the 12-18 months of construction Competition, for everything The richest companies on earth are the highest bidders for the physical components of pretty much anything needed to build. Why it matters: Data centers need a hell of a lot of infrastructure to exist and operate. The hyperscalers can buy it all, with unlimited resources and endless timelines. The big picture: Data centers are singlehandedly propping up private construction across America, adding more than $21B in new spending over the past year even as the rest of the industry shrank by over $100B. John Deere shares spiked this week after sales in its construction and forestry segment jumped 18% year over year, which the company linked directly to the data center buildout. Every input you can imagine is being scrambled: ⚡️ Electrical gear: The North American transformer supply chain chief of Hitachi Energy, the world's largest transformer maker, says that 44% of data center leaders report utility wait times beyond four years. 🪧 Land: Amazon snagged 188 acres in Northern Virginia last year for $700M — $3.7M an acre — for one of its data center projects. A homebuilder had originally assembled the parcel for $51M, planning roughly 500 homes on the site. 👷 Labor: The construction industry needs almost 350K more workers to meet demand this year. Analysts say there aren't enough specialized workers to complete cooling and electricity jobs. The bottom line: Anything being built could come into competition with the best-capitalized buyers in the history of humanity. Water use, overhyped It's basically true that a hyperscale data center directly soaks up roughly as much water as one of the most famous golf courses in America. 🚜 Between the lines: Even when you take into account that data centers indirectly use roughly 12x more water to generate the power to run them, the numbers don't change on a macro level. The water use of every data center in America in 2023 equaled less than 1% of the water used to irrigate the nation's agriculture that year. ⚠️ Smart way to look at this: Though their water use is a rounding error nationally, individual data centers can still have massively outsized impacts on local watersheds. That's where the backlash will live. Electricity use, underhyped On the flip side, data centers' electricity use is likely more massive than you imagine — and demand is surging. Data centers used 4.4% of U.S. electricity in 2023. It's forecast to be almost 12% by 2030. 🏭 Smart way to look at this: Energy is rapidly shifting from an operating cost to an open competition and strategic constraint. Our grid is running out of room faster than it can build more. Utilities simply can't add the power plants, transmission lines and equipment needed fast enough. It's getting so fraught that PJM, America's largest grid operator, proposed that data centers without their own power plants get cut from the grid first in times of high stress. OpenAI's job board tells you where this is headed. They want a power trading lead for their data center portfolio. 💸 That capacity shortage is exactly what's driving up electricity costs for everyone. PJM saw its capacity prices spike by 11x in just a few years — and utilities pass that on to monthly bills. Meta's massive play Meta is committing more than $50B to build Hyperion, one of the largest data centers in America, in rural northeastern Louisiana. ⚡️ The size: Its capacity upon completion sometime around 2032 will be 5 GW (roughly 80x the average project mentioned above), powered by 10 new natural gas plants paid for by Meta. The construction site is massive — five miles long and a mile wide. 🧠 What it'll do: Hyperion is at the heart of Meta's plan to have compute power ready for what it believes is the era of superintelligence. 👋 An out: Meta only owns 20%. The rest is owned by funds managed by Blue Owl Capital, with Meta leasing the campus. That gives Meta flexibility to walk away if the AI boom crumbles, though it could still owe money if the property's value drops too far. 💵 The impact: Meta is touting a ton of positive local benefits, like infrastructure investments and huge bonuses for teachers. But The New York Times found rent costs are spiking as construction workers move in — and noted it'll take years to see if state and local incentives pan out. 🤑 Its competition: Nvidia announced over $100B in guarantees this week to back an 8 GW project in Ohio that'll power OpenAI. A new kind of politics The politics of data centers only runs one way right now: against them, almost astonishingly so in our divided America. How people feel: More than 70% of Americans oppose the construction of a data center in their area, according to Gallup — more than a nuclear power plant. In Virginia, America's data center heartland, support has halved in just three years. The big picture: You can be sure this will spill over into the midterms. A majority of competitive House districts this fall have data centers under construction or in the planning stages. All of the congressional and gubernatorial ads tracked by AdImpact that mention data centers are against them. Between the lines: This brutal bipartisan backlash means the era of states and localities paying AI and other tech companies to show up and break ground might be ending. For two decades, the calculus has been pretty simple: arrive with capital and jobs and get tax breaks and quick permits. Now people are pissed off about these monstrous buildings and worried their local government is getting fleeced by a Big Tech company that doesn't care about them. The other side: Most positive stories you'll find from communities with data centers got them well before the AI boom, and there's been enough time for civic benefits from tax revenue to become visible. ‼️ Go deeper: Data center uproar scrambles the midterm election. Read the memo: GOP issues stark warning to AI companies on data centers. 📈 If you're a CEO or on a CEO's team: Ask to join Jim's new weekly Axios C-Suite newsletter.

Thanks to a dwindling supply of open roles, “one-click” applications, and the rise of artificial intelligence, it’s easier than ever to apply for a job. We’re all paying the price.

Sponsored search results lead developers straight into a ClickFix malware trap

“It never crossed my mind that they would be so bold as to sell our private data for AI,” says one former Spirit Airlines flight attendant.

The state is investigating whether OpenAI’s ‘inability or unwillingness to ensure the safety of its products’ endangers citizens.

Humanoids are becoming a popular form of public entertainment here.

Irregular, an Israeli start-up, worked with OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta to assess the security of their A.I. models. It made a mistake. Then the tests went off the rails.

As people grow used to AI chatbots, we’d like to hear your views about Google’s search engine