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technology · international · severity 8
AI Investment and Capability Boom Amid Geopolitical Competition
Major AI funding rounds and technological advances are driving intense competition between US and Chinese companies. Anthropic raised $30 billion at $900B valuation; xAI founder launched $5B venture; UK firms raised significant capital; Chinese AI and quantum computing progress accelerated. Geopolitical implications center on US export controls and China's self-sufficiency push.
Sources
- Sources: Anthropic has agreed to the terms of a $30B fundraising at a $900B valuation, with Sequoia, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Altimeter co-leading the round (George Hammond/Financial Times)
- Sources: xAI co-founder Igor Babuschkin plans to raise up to $1B at an up to $5B valuation for a new AI research startup, with General Catalyst possibly leading (Forbes)
- In a policy paper, Anthropic urges the US and allies to enforce export controls, curb distillation attacks, and export US AI to hold the lead over China by 2028 (Anthropic)
- Does China’s Jiuzhang 4.0 computer herald the age of quantum supremacy?
- Japan's Kioxia forecasts 48-fold quarterly profit jump on AI demand
- Kioxia reports record Q4 earnings of ~$3.8B, forecasts Q1 operating profit of ~$8.2B, and says it is planning a US listing; Kioxia shares are up 300% YTD (Bloomberg)
- A profile of Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who is killing projects, cutting staff, and pleasing Wall Street, while steering the company toward an AI-focused era (Bloomberg)
- London-based edtech startup Multiverse raised $70M at a $2.1B valuation from Index and others as it pushes into AI training; it acquired StackFuel in January (Financial Times)
- Sources: HSG, formerly Sequoia China, has set up a $3B continuation fund anchored by its ByteDance stake, offering entry into the company valued at $370B (Bloomberg)
- The UK's HMRC tax authority announces a 10-year, £175M deal with London-based Quantexa to use its AI tech to identify fraud incidents and fix tax return errors (Zoe Kleinman/BBC)
- xAI launches Grok Build, an agentic CLI for coding, building apps, and automating workflows, in beta for SuperGrok Heavy subscribers (Carmen Arroyo/Bloomberg)
- Meta rolls out new features for Ray-Ban Display glasses, including neural handwriting support for all users, and opens up the device to third-party developers (Jay Peters/The Verge)
- Akamai acquires Israeli cybersecurity startup LayerX Security, which develops a browser-based platform to secure employee use of AI tools, for ~$205M in cash (Meir Orbach/CTech)
- UK-based Iceotope, which develops data center liquid cooling tech, raised a $26M Series B co-led by Two Seas Capital and Barclays Climate Ventures (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE)
- Alphabet sold $3.6B of bonds in its debut yen-denominated bond sale, the largest by a non-Japanese company, as AI-driven capital spending accelerates (Atsuko Fukase/Bloomberg)