A technician works at an Amazon Web Services AI data center in New Carlisle, Indiana, on October 2, 2025 (Noah Berger/Getty Images)

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What Amazon’s latest data center announcement says about AI right now

The first Amazon data centers in Louisiana will cost $12 billion and require a lot of preemptive defense.

Rani Molla

2/23/26 3:33PM

Another day, another Big Tech data center.

Today Amazon announced plans to spend $12 billion on its first data center campuses in Louisiana.

“Amazon’s $12 billion investment in northwest Louisiana will build next-generation data center campuses to support AI and cloud computing, ensuring opportunities for local communities,” Amazon Chief Global Affairs and Legal Officer David Zapolsky said in the press release. “We’re creating hundreds of high-paying jobs and making substantial investments in local infrastructure.”

Like Meta — which unveiled a $10 billion data center in Indiana earlier this month and is already building a mammoth data center in Louisiana — Amazon’s announcement reads like the standard 2026 AI company template for data centers.

It’s bringing jobs! Amazon says the project will require 1,500 construction workers and 540 full-time employees to operate the facilities. As we’ve noted, for projects that cost this much, the long-term employment footprint is relatively small.

It’s paying for its own electricity! Tech companies have recently been put on notice by the White House over concerns they could pass grid upgrade costs on to local ratepayers, so releases now emphasize privately funded energy infrastructure.

It’s doing a lot for the community! Cue the STEM grants and infrastructure funds.

Why have these announcements become so rote? Because, as The New York Times recently wrote, AI has an image problem. Households are increasingly wary of its environmental and social impact, while investors are scrutinizing the enormous capital outlays required to build it.

We know from recent Big Tech earnings calls that AI demand isn’t slowing. But if the spending sounds confident, the messaging sounds defensive — a sign that the politics and economics of AI are getting more complicated.

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Report: Uber considers full Delivery Hero takeover to take on DoorDash outside the US

Uber appears to be considering upping its competition with DoorDash outside the US, exploring a potential full takeover of Frankfurt-listed Delivery Hero, Bloomberg reports. Earlier this week the US-based ride-hailing service disclosed a 19.5% stake in the food delivery company, but now that could go higher.

The $11.8 billion German company could be particularly vulnerable to a takeover right now, with its CEO having recently stepped down following pressure from activist investors to sell off assets. A full acquisition would give Uber a massive foothold in over 60 countries to combat DoorDash’s European-focused Wolt unit.

Uber has been involved in a lot of deal-making of late, mostly in the autonomous vehicle space, where it now has more than 30 partnerships globally.

Uber extended its losses on the news and is currently down around 1.7%.

Uber Said to Study Full Takeover of European Rival Delivery Hero

Uber has been involved in a lot of deal-making of late, mostly in the autonomous vehicle space, where it now has more than 30 partnerships globally.

Uber extended its losses on the news and is currently down around 1.7%.

Rani Molla5/22/26

Meta released a Reddit dupe. Reddit investors don’t like it.

Fresh on the heels of releasing a Snapchat dupe, which sent Snap down earlier this month, Meta seems to be meddling with Reddit, quietly releasing a Reddit-like Facebook app called Forum yesterday. After news of the “dedicated space built for deeper discussions, real answers and the communities you care about,” Reddit’s stock is down 4.5% today.

Last month, Reddit’s earnings report handily beat analysts’ expectations, but it continues to struggle with the perception that bigger tech companies — including Meta — investing heavily in AI will eat its lunch. The stock is down nearly 40% year-to-date.

Jon Keegan5/21/26

Report: OpenAI’s Q1 revenue was $5.7 billion, beating Anthropic

The neck-and-neck race between OpenAI and Anthropic as the AI companies barrel toward their expected IPOs this year is shaking out some internal numbers for would-be investors to ponder.

The Information is reporting that OpenAI’s first-quarter revenue was ~$5.7 billion, about $1 billion ahead of Anthropic’s revenue for the same period.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Anthropic is on course to more than double its first-quarter revenue of $4.8 billion to $10.9 billion in the second quarter. It is not known what OpenAI is projecting for Q2.

Recently, The New York Times reported that Anthropic’s current fundraising round seeking to raise between $30 billion and $50 billion comes with a valuation of up to $950 billion, putting it ahead of OpenAI’s latest reported valuation of $850 billion.

OpenAI Held $1 Billion Revenue Lead Over Anthropic in First Quarter

Rani Molla5/21/26

Alphabet’s Waymos are still getting caught in floods after recall

Waymo, the self-driving subsidiary of Alphabet, has paused operations in Atlanta after a new report of a vehicle driving into a flooded roadway and getting stuck, TechCrunch reports. The news comes just weeks after the company recalled its fleet of nearly 4,000 driverless cars to deal with a previous flood incident in San Antonio, where the service is also paused.

After that incident, Waymo instituted an “interim remedy” to make the vehicles “exclude additional operating conditions that present an elevated risk of encountering a flooded, higherspeed roadway,” but added that it was still “developing the final remedy for this recall.”

As we’ve noted, Waymo has mostly kept its rollout — now public in 11 cities — to more temperate climates, as severe weather poses more challenges to autonomous vehicles.

Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods | TechCrunch