Good morning. President Trump’s State of The Union speech set a new record for length on Tuesday night, but tech and AI featured surprisingly little in the nearly two-hour-long address. Save for a shoutout to “Trump Accounts” donor Michael Dell (“he sold a lot of computers, a lot of those laptops”), tech only came up once when Trump unveiled a new “ratepayer protection pledge” that he said he’d negotiated in order to mitigate the effect that AI data centers will have on consumer electricity bills.
“We’re telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs. They can build their own power plants as part of their factory. So that no one’s prices will go up and in many cases prices will go down,” Trump said. What that might look like in practice remains to be seen, but it will be worth following in the weeks and months to come.
Alexei Oreskovic
@lexnfx
alexei.oreskovic@fortune.com
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AMD and Meta ink chip deal
Facebook owner Meta Platforms will buy artificial intelligence chips from Advanced Micro Devices in a deal that will also give it the opportunity to buy up to a 10% stake of the chip company.
Meta will buy AMD’s latest chips, the MI450, to help power data centers. The 6-gigawatt agreement will see shipments supporting the first gigawatt deployment set to start during the second half of this year. The agreement could potentially be worth more than $100 billion.
Shares of AMD finished Tuesday's regular trading session up nearly 9%.
News of the AMD deal comes just days after Meta announced a long-term partnership where it will use millions of chips and other equipment from Nvidia for its artificial-intelligence data centers.
AMD is looking to keep pace with Nvidia, which carved out an early lead in tailoring its GPU chips to train powerful AI systems. As part of Monday's deal, AMD issued Meta a performance-based warrant for up to 160 million shares of its common stock at $0.01 a piece, structured to vest as long as certain milestones are achieved.—The Associated Press
Anthropic gets Friday ultimatum from Pentagon
Anthropic has until Friday to agree to the Pentagon's terms about how the military can use its AI tools—or face a variety of potential punishments, including being placed on a blacklist.
The ultimatum comes after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei met U.S. Secretary of Defense (err, War!) Pete Hegseth on Tuesday to try to resolve the disagreement, according to Axios, which cited anonymous sources.
A quick recap on the standoff: Amodei says Anthropic's Claude product (the only commercial AI product that has had access to DoD classified systems) cannot be used to attack enemy combatants or to spy on Americans. Hegseth insists the military be able to use Claude, and any other AI company's products, for "all lawful purposes."
The meeting was cordial but "not warm and fuzzy at all" according to Axios. Neither side budged on the key issue, and Hegseth laid out his ultimatum. If Anthropic does not acquiesce by Friday, the Pentagon could invoke the Defense Production Act and force the recalcitrant AI company to comply. The Pentagon also threatened to declare Anthropic a supply chain risk—a designation that would not only end Anthropic's business with the military, but require any other companies with military contracts to stop using Anthropic.
For Anthropic, valued at $380 billion and considered a top IPO candidate, the threats, if carried out, could have big consequences on its business. Anthropic's commitment to AI safety is a big part of its identity, but as Time reported late on Tuesday, the company has recently dropped an important part of its flagship safety policy.—AO
Amazon AI lab leader departs
The head of Amazon's AI lab plans to "cook up something new"—just not at Amazon.
David Luan, Amazon's VP of Agents and leader of its San Francisco AI lab, announced his departure in a Linkedin post on Tuesday, leaving just 14 months after Amazon acquihired him from his startup, Adept. Luan, who said he will leave at the end of the week, had kind words for Amazon's leadership, including CEO Andy Jassy, in his farewell note. "There’s incredible work to be done at Amazon and opportunities for me to take on more areas. But with AGI so close, I decided to spend 100% of my time on teaching AI systems brand new capabilities," Luan wrote without providing many details of his next project.
Still, Luan's exit is sure to raise questions about Amazon's AI efforts as it tries to catch up with OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. Amazon reorganized its AI team in December, with then AI boss Rohit Prasad leaving the company.—AO
More tech
—Anthropic claims DeepSeek, 2 other Chinese firms ripped it off. Illicit Claude use.
—Waymo rolls in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Orlando. Alphabet's robotaxis now in 10 U.S. cities.
—Apple moving some Mac Mini production from Asia to Houston. Reshoring in baby steps.
—SBF wants Trump pardon. Trump not feeling it.
—Profound raises $96 million. 18-month-old AI discovery startup fetches $1B valuation.
—Warner Bros. still recommends Netflix takeover—but it’s reviewing Paramount's new offer.
