tech

Jon Keegan5/12/25

Report: SoftBank $100 billion Stargate investment stalled by tariff chaos

At a splashy announcement of the “Stargate” AI mega data center project at the White House the day after Inauguration Day, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son stood alongside OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle CTO and cofounder Larry Ellison.

Son turned to President Trump and said that his company would “immediately start deploying $100 billion with a goal of making $500 billion within the next four years.”

But Trump’s tariffs appear to have thrown a wrench in the works, and that money hasn’t materialized yet. Bloomberg is reporting that tariff uncertainty has prevented any Softbank financing from going forward. Last month, it was reported that SoftBank was seeking to borrow $16.5 billion to help pay for the project.

The report also said that fears of an oversupply of AI computing infrastructure may be “bogging down discussions.”

SoftBank Stargate Venture With OpenAI Snags on Tariff Fears

SoftBank Stargate Venture With OpenAI Snags on Tariff Fears

But Trump’s tariffs appear to have thrown a wrench in the works, and that money hasn’t materialized yet. Bloomberg is reporting that tariff uncertainty has prevented any Softbank financing from going forward. Last month, it was reported that SoftBank was seeking to borrow $16.5 billion to help pay for the project.

The report also said that fears of an oversupply of AI computing infrastructure may be “bogging down discussions.”

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Meta considering a stand-alone TV app as it leans into Instagram videos

Meta is considering building a dedicated TV app to expand the reach of Instagram’s video content, according to comments by Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, at a Bloomberg conference.

Instagram has 3 billion monthly users and is leaning into its Reels vertical videos, which puts it head-to-head with TikTok. Mosseri told Bloomberg:

“If behavior [and] the consumption of these platforms is moving to TV, then we need to move to TV, too.”

A move to living room screens could let Meta compete against Alphabet’s YouTube, but adapting vertical videos to TV could prove challenging.

Instagram Is ‘Exploring’ a Dedicated TV App in Video Push

Instagram Is ‘Exploring’ a Dedicated TV App in Video Push

“If behavior [and] the consumption of these platforms is moving to TV, then we need to move to TV, too.”

A move to living room screens could let Meta compete against Alphabet’s YouTube, but adapting vertical videos to TV could prove challenging.

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Nvidia backs Reflection AI in $2 billion fundraising round

When DeepSeek R1 was released at the end of last year, it shook the AI world to its core.

The scrappy Chinese startup developed a competitive open-weights reasoning model that bested several state-of-the-art models from OpenAI and Google in several benchmarks.

The release caused the industry to question its bet on massive AI infrastructure over clever engineering done with constrained resources.

American startup Reflection AI thinks the West needs its own DeepSeek, and plans on being the company to build it.

On Thursday, Reflection AI announced it had raised $2 billion at an $8 billion valuation, with Nvidia leading the fundraising round with an $800 million investment.

Reflection does not appear to have developed a frontier-scale model yet, but has built the software needed to train one. A $2 billion cash infusion will certainly help with the company’s training costs, but by comparison, DeepSeek’s R1 model was trained for only $249,000.

Reflection AI Raises $2 Billion as It Aims to Compete With DeepSeek

Reflection AI Raises $2 Billion as It Aims to Compete With DeepSeek

The release caused the industry to question its bet on massive AI infrastructure over clever engineering done with constrained resources.

American startup Reflection AI thinks the West needs its own DeepSeek, and plans on being the company to build it.

On Thursday, Reflection AI announced it had raised $2 billion at an $8 billion valuation, with Nvidia leading the fundraising round with an $800 million investment.

Reflection does not appear to have developed a frontier-scale model yet, but has built the software needed to train one. A $2 billion cash infusion will certainly help with the company’s training costs, but by comparison, DeepSeek’s R1 model was trained for only $249,000.

tech

Nvidia’s Jensen Huang throws shade at OpenAI-AMD deal

In an interview on CNBC yesterday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang threw some shade at the recently announced megadeal between competitor Advanced Micro Devices and its partner, OpenAI.

The unusual deal calls for AMD to sell multiple generations of its GPUs to OpenAI, totaling 6 gigawatts of computing power, in exchange for stock warrants for OpenAI to buy about 10% of the company.

When asked about the deal, Huang said:

“Yeah, I saw the deal. It’s imaginative, it’s unique and surprising. Considering they were so excited about their next-generation product, I’m surprised that they would give away 10% of the company before they even built it.”

The move diversifies part of OpenAI’s GPU supply chain away from Nvidia, which supplies the vast majority of GPUs for hyperscalers today.

Nvidia Chief’s Not-So-Subtle Dig at AMD

Nvidia Chief’s Not-So-Subtle Dig at AMD

When asked about the deal, Huang said:

“Yeah, I saw the deal. It’s imaginative, it’s unique and surprising. Considering they were so excited about their next-generation product, I’m surprised that they would give away 10% of the company before they even built it.”

The move diversifies part of OpenAI’s GPU supply chain away from Nvidia, which supplies the vast majority of GPUs for hyperscalers today.

The Washington Post’s Geoffrey Fowler tracked prices before and during Amazon’s recent “Prime Big Deal Days” and found the savings to be paltry: on a group of nearly 50 products he’d bought on Amazon over the past six months, he would have saved just 0.6% if he’d bought them during Amazon’s high-profile sale. And those savings, Fowler points out, don’t factor in the annual $139 Prime membership fee.

In a number of cases, some big-ticket items like TVs were actually more expensive during the e-commerce giant’s much-hyped discount days than they are normally.

US government investigates Tesla over reports of Full Self-Driving traffic violations

The probe covers 2.9 million vehicles.

New Tesla Model 3 With Full Self-Driving Activated

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