tech

Report: OpenAI’s Stargate has been a chaotic mess

Just over a year ago, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stood alongside President Trump, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son to announce an ambitious $500 billion plan to build massive data centers in the US — Project Stargate.

While today an actual Stargate 1-gigawatt data center is certainly well under construction in Abilene, Texas, it turns out there wasn’t much of a plan in place at the time of the announcement, according to a new report from The Information.

The past year has been full of partner disputes, debt problems, and scuttled plans as the loosely defined project races to build the AI computing infrastructure that OpenAI is craving as competition heats up.

Per the report, OpenAI tried to build its own data centers as the project stalled, but lenders balked at funding the risky project. They eventually settled on the current plan, in which partner Oracle borrows the money and leases capacity back to OpenAI. OpenAI was still able to control the design of the facility.

The slow start for the project resulted in OpenAI missing its own goal of 10 gigawatts of AI computing capacity from Oracle and SoftBank by the end of 2025.

Inside OpenAI’s Scramble to Get Computing Power After Stargate Stalled

Inside OpenAI’s Scramble to Get Computing Power After Stargate Stalled

The past year has been full of partner disputes, debt problems, and scuttled plans as the loosely defined project races to build the AI computing infrastructure that OpenAI is craving as competition heats up.

Per the report, OpenAI tried to build its own data centers as the project stalled, but lenders balked at funding the risky project. They eventually settled on the current plan, in which partner Oracle borrows the money and leases capacity back to OpenAI. OpenAI was still able to control the design of the facility.

The slow start for the project resulted in OpenAI missing its own goal of 10 gigawatts of AI computing capacity from Oracle and SoftBank by the end of 2025.

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Ives says AI represents huge opportunity for cybersecurity firms as losses mount

Cybersecurity stocks continued to slide Monday, after Anthropic unveiled a new security feature for its AI model Friday. The company’s AI advancements have been wreaking havoc across software firms, and its latest foray appears to be doing the same to cybersecurity leaders, including CrowdStrike, Zscaler, and Cloudflare.

But similar to Dan Ives’ broader thesis on the software sell-off — which he has called “overblown,” arguing that the companies getting hit may ultimately become “core participants in the AI Revolution” — the Wedbush Securities analyst says AI is actually a positive for cybersecurity stocks.

“Anthropic going after this market with an initial tool validates our thesis that cyber security is the next frontier for the AI Revolution,” Ives wrote Monday morning, arguing that AI is elevating the risk environment — and the need for cybersecurity firms in the first place.

“AI will be a major tailwind to the cyber security sector over the coming years as protection of use cases, data, and endpoints expand markedly,” he said, adding that companies including CrowdStrike and Zscaler are well positioned to capitalize on the shift by incorporating AI into their strategies.

tech

Analysts slash Salesforce price targets ahead of Wednesday earnings, as narrative of AI eating its lunch persists

A number of analysts have significantly lowered their price targets for Salesforce, citing growing fears that AI workforce tools, including Anthropic’s Cowork, could threaten parts of its core business. According to reports, here are some of the recent cuts:

Morgan Stanley cut its price target nearly 30%, to $287 from $398.
Jefferies slashed its forecast 33%, to $250 from $375.
Barclays reduced its price target to $265 from $338.
Evercore ISI went to $260 from $340.
Last week, Citigroup also reduced its price target to $197 from $257.

Earlier this month, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives offered a different view, adding Salesforce to his list of top 30 AI companies and calling the stock a “core participant” in the “AI revolution.” He described the recent software sell-off as “overblown.”

Shares of Salesforce, which reports earnings Wednesday, are down 30% year to date and 1% premarket today.

tech

Max Knoblauch2/20/26

Report: Amazon’s AI bots have been behind multiple AWS outages

Amazon’s AI tool Kiro, which launched in July and can code autonomously, was behind a 13-hour interruption to Amazon Web Services in December, according to reporting by the Financial Times.

The FT reports that the company’s AI tools have caused AWS service disruptions at least twice in recent months.

In the December outage, which Amazon called an “extremely limited event” that did not have an impact on customer-facing service, engineers allowed Kiro to make changes and the tool opted to “delete and recreate the environment.”

Amazon has a closely tracked internal target that 80% of its developers use AI to code once a week, employees told the FT. The company says the December incident was a “user access control issue” and not an issue with Kiro’s permissions.

AWS accounted for 57% of Amazon’s operating profit in 2025. In December, following a larger outage months earlier, AWS and Google announced a partnership to attempt to prevent massive network outages.

Update, February 20, 5:50 p.m. ET: In a statement to Sherwood News, an AWS spokesperson disputed the report, writing:

“These brief events were the result of user error — specifically misconfigured access controls — not AI. The December service interruption was an extremely limited event when a single service (AWS Cost Explorer — which helps customers visualize, understand, and manage AWS costs and usage over time) in one of our two Regions in Mainland China was affected. This event didn’t impact compute, storage, database, AI technologies, or any other of the hundreds of services that we run. We are not aware of any related customer inquiries resulting from this isolated interruption. Following these events, we implemented numerous additional safeguards, including mandatory peer review for production access, enhanced training on AI-assisted troubleshooting, and resource protection measures. Kiro puts developers in control — users need to configure which actions Kiro can take, and by default, Kiro requests authorization before taking any action.”

Amazon service was taken down by AI coding bot

Amazon service was taken down by AI coding bot

In the December outage, which Amazon called an “extremely limited event” that did not have an impact on customer-facing service, engineers allowed Kiro to make changes and the tool opted to “delete and recreate the environment.”

Amazon has a closely tracked internal target that 80% of its developers use AI to code once a week, employees told the FT. The company says the December incident was a “user access control issue” and not an issue with Kiro’s permissions.

AWS accounted for 57% of Amazon’s operating profit in 2025. In December, following a larger outage months earlier, AWS and Google announced a partnership to attempt to prevent massive network outages.

Update, February 20, 5:50 p.m. ET: In a statement to Sherwood News, an AWS spokesperson disputed the report, writing:

“These brief events were the result of user error — specifically misconfigured access controls — not AI. The December service interruption was an extremely limited event when a single service (AWS Cost Explorer — which helps customers visualize, understand, and manage AWS costs and usage over time) in one of our two Regions in Mainland China was affected. This event didn’t impact compute, storage, database, AI technologies, or any other of the hundreds of services that we run. We are not aware of any related customer inquiries resulting from this isolated interruption. Following these events, we implemented numerous additional safeguards, including mandatory peer review for production access, enhanced training on AI-assisted troubleshooting, and resource protection measures. Kiro puts developers in control — users need to configure which actions Kiro can take, and by default, Kiro requests authorization before taking any action.”

Max Knoblauch2/19/26

OpenAI is finalizing commitments on a funding round that could climb beyond $100 billion at a valuation of $830 billion, according to a report from The Information.

Per The Information, SoftBank is expected to invest $30 billion into the ChatGPT maker, spread across the year in three installments of $10 billion. Up to $50 billion could come from Amazon and $30 billion from Nvidia (up from the $20 billion Bloomberg reported earlier this month). An additional investment in the low billions could come from Microsoft.

OpenAI was last valued at $500 billion following a fundraising round completed in October. Earlier this month, its rival Anthropic took in $30 billion from investors including Microsoft and Nvidia at a $380 billion valuation.

tech

Max Knoblauch2/17/26

Tesla’s 45 Austin Robotaxis now have 14 crashes on the books since launching in June

Since launching in June 2025, Tesla’s 45 Austin Robotaxis have been involved in 14 crashes, per Electrek reporting citing National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data.

Electrek analysis found that the vehicles have traveled roughly 800,000 paid miles in that time period, amounting to a crash every 57,000 miles. According to the NHTSA, US drivers crash once every 500,000 miles on average.

The article says Tesla submitted five new crash reports in January of this year that happened in December and January. Electrek wrote:

“The new crashes include a collision with a fixed object at 17 mph while the vehicle was driving straight, a crash with a bus while the Tesla was stationary, a collision with a heavy truck at 4 mph, and two separate incidents where the Tesla backed into objects, one into a pole or tree at 1 mph and another into a fixed object at 2 mph.”

Tesla updated a previously reported crash that was originally filed as only having damaged property to include a passenger’s hospitalization.

Last month, Tesla shares climbed after CEO Elon Musk said in a post on X that the company’s Austin Robotaxis had begun operating without a safety monitor.

Tesla 'Robotaxi' adds 5 more crashes in Austin in a month — 4x worse than humans

Tesla 'Robotaxi' adds 5 more crashes in Austin in a month — 4x worse than humans

The article says Tesla submitted five new crash reports in January of this year that happened in December and January. Electrek wrote:

“The new crashes include a collision with a fixed object at 17 mph while the vehicle was driving straight, a crash with a bus while the Tesla was stationary, a collision with a heavy truck at 4 mph, and two separate incidents where the Tesla backed into objects, one into a pole or tree at 1 mph and another into a fixed object at 2 mph.”

Tesla updated a previously reported crash that was originally filed as only having damaged property to include a passenger’s hospitalization.

Last month, Tesla shares climbed after CEO Elon Musk said in a post on X that the company’s Austin Robotaxis had begun operating without a safety monitor.

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