Ornn, an Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup, raised a $33 million seed round to build a marketplace for trading the computing power that underpins today's AI boom, similar to what exists for oil traders. Why it matters: Investors increasingly want to trade compute like a commodity, betting it could make the historically expensive AI buildout more sustainable and efficient. Catch up quick: Commodity markets let companies use futures contracts to lock in prices for volatile raw materials. - Think airlines locking in jet fuel prices or manufacturers hedging metals prices, which helps them reduce the risk of price fluctuations. - But AI companies don't have an equivalent market for compute, a problem the 20-something founders of Ornn and a…
Elon Musk's surprise Anthropic deal allows him to accomplish two things at once: turn unused compute into revenue before an expected SpaceX IPO next month — and stick it to his archrival, Sam Altman. Why it matters: Musk went from calling Anthropic "evil" to doing business with it in three months, showing how quickly competition can give way to strategic necessity in the AI race. The big picture: The deal helps Anthropic address one of its most pressing problems — a severe compute deficit. The company saw "80x growth per year in revenue and usage" for the first quarter of 2026, CEO Dario Amodei said at a developer conference Wednesday, when it only planned for 10x. - That demand spike gave the AI lab "difficulties with compute,"…
Meta is doubling down on Nvidia AI chips , committing to spend tens of billions of dollars on the chipmaker's newest offerings and sending shares of both companies higher. Why it matters: Even though Meta is already one of Nvidia's biggest buyers, the deal is so big that it stands to boost both companies. Driving the news: Meta will buy millions of chips from Nvidia, ranging from standalone Grace CPUs to next-gen Blackwell GPUs and upcoming Vera Rubin systems, to use across its U.S. data center buildout. - This makes Meta the first Big Tech firm to commit to buying standalone central processing units from Nvidia, which are used to run AI rather than train AI. - This signals a shift toward inference over training, with the latter…