Tech

Tesla shares fell over 4% after European sales data revealed a 23% year-over-year decline in August EV registrations, contrasting with a 26% rise in overall European EV market. RBC analysts remain optimistic, projecting strong Q3 deliveries driven by U.S. tax credit incentives. Despite a challenging start, Tesla’s stock is up 5% YTD. Analysts suggest Elon Musk’s political involvement might affect the brand. Tesla plans a more affordable model to counter increasing competition.

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center Director, Joseph Pelfrey, has resigned amidst the agency’s intensified Artemis program. Pelfrey cited the need for leadership alignment to execute lunar return missions. NASA is initiating a public search for his replacement at the center, which manages a $5 billion budget and over 6,000 employees. The resignation, considered unexpected by insiders, has raised concerns about potential disruptions to Artemis hardware development, especially given recent budgetary pressures and workforce efficiency initiatives within NASA.

A proposed deal to keep TikTok operational in the U.S. is gaining traction, with former President Trump approving a transaction valuing the U.S. TikTok business at $14 billion. The agreement aims to address national security concerns by requiring ByteDance to divest its U.S. operations to a new joint venture, retaining a minority stake. Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX are expected to control approximately 45% of the venture. While ByteDance hasn’t formally acknowledged the deal, it needs Chinese regulatory approval. Oracle will oversee security. The deal aims to ensure American operation.

A federal judge preliminarily approved Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement in a copyright infringement class-action lawsuit. Authors claimed Anthropic illegally used their works, downloaded from pirated databases, to train its AI model Claude. The settlement, potentially the largest copyright recovery, involves Anthropic paying authors and destroying the datasets. This case highlights the conflict between AI innovation and intellectual property rights, setting a precedent for future AI training practices and copyright law. Anthropic aims to focus on safe AI development after resolving the claims.

Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX are reportedly investing in TikTok’s U.S. operations, holding a combined 45% stake. ByteDance will retain 19.9%, with the remaining 35% distributed among existing and potentially new investors. This deal aims to address U.S. national security concerns that led to the divestiture mandate. The new TikTok USA will have a majority-American board, with Oracle overseeing security. The U.S. government will not take an equity stake. Existing ByteDance investors like Susquehanna and General Atlantic are expected to invest further.

Amazon will pay $2.5 billion to settle FTC accusations of deceptive Prime enrollment practices. The FTC alleged Amazon used manipulative tactics to enroll users and obstructed cancellations. The settlement includes a $1 billion civil penalty and $1.5 billion in refunds to approximately 35 million affected customers. Amazon, while agreeing to the settlement, doesn’t admit wrongdoing. The agreement mandates clear Prime program disclosures and a straightforward cancellation process. The case highlights increasing regulatory pressure on big tech, as Amazon also faces a larger antitrust lawsuit from the FTC.

Microsoft has suspended certain cloud and AI services to a division within the Israeli Ministry of Defense (IMOD) following an internal investigation prompted by a report alleging the use of Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure by the IDF Unit 8200 to track Palestinian phone calls. President Brad Smith confirmed evidence supporting elements of the report. The decision follows internal pressure from employees concerned about the ethical implications of the company’s technology. Unit 8200 may be considering migrating its data to Amazon Web Services (AWS). The incident highlights the responsibilities of tech firms regarding government use of their services.

OpenAI and Databricks, valued at $500B and $100B respectively, are deepening their collaboration with a $100M multi-year commitment. This partnership aims to simplify enterprise access to OpenAI’s GPT-5, integrating it seamlessly with data stored in Databricks. This move allows Databricks customers to easily leverage advanced AI and gives OpenAI a stronger foothold within the enterprise data ecosystem, competing with rivals like Snowflake and Oracle in the rapidly evolving AI integration landscape. The partnership promises revenue growth and simplified AI adoption.

CoreWeave (CRWV) expanded its partnership with OpenAI, securing a $6.5 billion deal. This brings their total contracted revenue from OpenAI to $22.5 billion. CoreWeave provides specialized compute infrastructure for AI and machine learning, utilizing high-density Nvidia GPUs. CEO Michael Intrator emphasizes CoreWeave’s ability to power demanding AI workloads. The deal highlights the escalating demand for computational resources in AI and CoreWeave’s position as a key infrastructure provider, alongside players like Microsoft. This signals both growth for CoreWeave and increasing concentration of resources in the AI sector.

Nscale, a UK-based AI infrastructure firm, secured $1.1 billion in Series B funding led by Aker, with participation from Nvidia, Nokia, and Dell. This investment will fuel the expansion of AI-ready data centers to meet the surging demand for compute power driven by AI model development. Nscale collaborates with OpenAI on the “Stargate” project, building data centers in the UK and Norway, aiming for significant Nvidia GPU deployments by 2027 focusing on secure and energy-efficient AI infrastructure.