Good morning. R.I.P. to Doug Lebda, founder and CEO of LendingTree, who died in an ATV accident over the weekend.
Lebda, 55, founded LendingTree in 1996 to make it easier to apply for loans. Back then, you had to visit a bank branch in person. (Millennial and Gen Z readers, please scream.)
The company’s been on quite a ride since: IPO in 2000, IAC acquisition in 2003, IAC spinoff in 2008, all-time highs in 2019. That year, Doug also bought a minority stake in the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Our condolences to the Lebda family. Today’s tech news below. —Andrew Nusca
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Broadcom, OpenAI will co-develop 10GW of AI chips
The AI partnerships just keep on comin’.
Broadcom and OpenAI say they’re working together to develop and deploy 10 gigawatts’ worth of custom AI chips and related hardware over the next four years.
The companies will co-develop the GPUs, informed by Broadcom’s extensive semiconductor expertise and OpenAI’s learnings running GPT-5, Sora 2, and other top AI models.
The pair have reportedly been working on the project for well over a year and expect to deploy the hardware beginning in the second half of 2026. The chips are planned for use in OpenAI datacenters as well as those run by third parties.
The companies didn’t disclose the financial ramifications of the agreement, but a Wall Street Journal report characterizes it as “worth multiple billions of dollars.”
Shares of Broadcom, which is led by CEO Hock Tan and headquartered in San Jose, jumped 9% to $357 on Monday.
OpenAI has been on quite a dealmaking spree as of late. In just the last few weeks, the privately held company, led by CEO Sam Altman and backed by Microsoft and SoftBank, has formalized multibillion-dollar computing infrastructure agreements with Nvidia and AMD in an effort to lock up a future share of the AI-led data center boom. —AN
Anduril shows off AI-powered ‘EagleEye’ military system
Palmer Luckey’s defense tech firm wants to make every soldier “a connected node on the battlefield.”
Its new EagleEye system is a step toward that.
The system puts an artificial intelligence-fueled heads-up display inside battle-hardened headgear to allow “warfighters to know the precise location of teammates” and threats in an environment, even if objects block their direct line of sight.
The system—which combines a helmet, visor, and glasses—will also let the wearer dispatch drones, control robots, and call for fire support while on the go. Partners on tap include Meta, OSI Systems, Qualcomm, and Gentex.
Anduril says it hopes to place 100 EagleEye units—costing somewhere in the ballpark of $30,000 or $40,000 each, according to its founder’s latest comments—in the hands of the U.S. Army by Q2 2026.
“I don’t want to sound too arrogant here,” Luckey said in a press preview of the system, “but I have got this shit figured out.” —AN
Will Grindr go private?
Have you checked Grindr’s stock price lately?
Shares of the “queer mobile social network”—to, um, put it mildly!—have been sliding since June, losing roughly 50% of their value.
That has “forced its owners into a precarious personal financial position,” according to a new Semafor report, leading to discussions to take the company private.
The owners in question are Tiga Investments founder (and American-turned-Singaporean national) Raymond Zage and Chegg co-founder (and Chinese-born U.S. citizen) James Lu.
The men purchased Grindr from a Chinese firm in 2020 after the U.S. expressed concern about Beijing’s access to users’ personal data.
According to the report, the pair are in talks for debt financing from NYC’s Fortress Investment Group—talks that moved quickly after Temasek, the Singapore investment firm, “seized some of the underlying shares last week and sold them.”
At $15 a share, the potential buyout price would value Grindr at about $3 billion—six times the value of Bumble but less than half the value of market-leading, Tinder and Hinge-owning Match Group. —AN
More tech
—Apple TV+ gets a rebrand. The plus, a vestige of more innocent times in streaming, goes away. (Here’s looking at you, Disney and Paramount.)
—Fivetran and dbt Labs merge. The all-stock data deal will put Fivetran CEO George Fraser atop the combined company.
—JPMorgan Chase commits to frontier tech. AI, cybersecurity, and quantum computing are included in the bank’s $10 billion equity and venture investment plan.
—California to regulate AI chatbots. SB 243, which becomes law on Jan. 1, requires “common-sense guardrails for companion chatbots.”
—Wayve in talks to raise at $8 billion valuation. The British self-driving startup reportedly had chinwags with Microsoft and SoftBank.
—Strava IPO? Runnin’ toward that capital, according to CEO Michael Martin.
—Crypto rebound! And just like that, most cryptocurrencies have rebounded from the severe weekend selloff. Volatile stuff, eh?