AI Daily: Microsoft introduces Copilot Mode in Edge

Catch up on the top artificial intelligence news and commentary by Wall Street analysts on publicly traded companies in the space with this daily recap compiled by The Fly:

COPILOT MODE IN EDGE: Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft (MSFT), said via X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: “Today we’re introducing Copilot Mode in Edge, our first step in reinventing the browser for the AI age. My favorite feature is multi-tab RAG. You can use Copilot to analyze your open tabs, like I do here with papers our team has published in @Nature journals over the last year. And there is a lot more to come, including built-in actions so you can delegate tasks as you browse.”

FUNDING ROUNDS: Anthropic is nearing a deal to raise as much as $5B in a new round of funding that would value the artificial intelligence startup at $170B, according to a person familiar with the matter, Bloomberg’s Shirin Ghaffary and Kate Clark report. Investment firm Iconiq Capital is leading the round, which is expected to total between $3B and $5B, said the person. Anthropic has also been in discussions with the Qatar Investment Authority and Singapore’s sovereign fund GIC about participating in the round, the person said. The new financing would mark a significant jump in valuation for the company and cement its status as one of world’s leading AI developers. Anthropic was valued at $61.5B in a $3.5B round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners earlier this year.

Fireworks AI, a cloud provider startup the rents out Nvidia (NVDA) chip servers to developers using AI models, is in discussions to raise funds at a $4B valuation including the investment, more than seven times its valuation from just a year ago, The Information’s Sri Muppidi reports, citing two people familiar with the matter. The company is in talks with Lightspeed and Index over the funding, the author notes.

ACCESS TO OPENAI TECH: Microsoft is in advanced talks to land a deal that could give it ongoing access to critical OpenAI technology even if OpenAI reaches its goal of building artificial general intelligence, Bloomberg’s Matt Day, Shirin Ghaffary, Dina Bass, and Brody Ford report. Negotiators have been meeting regularly, and an agreement could come together in a matter of weeks, according to three people with knowledge of the situation.

AI STRATEGY: Meta (META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg is mulling more shake-ups to the company’s AI strategy, CNBC’s Jonathan Vanian reports. A decision by Meta to copy a technique by China’s DeepSeek backfired, resulting in the company’s decision to launch a new AI unit and bring in a team of high-profile AI researchers, forcing Meta to overhaul its AI strategy. Executives at Meta as well as the Superintelligence Labs’ high-profile hires are now questioning the company’s current open-source AI strategy, and have considered skipping the release of Behemoth in favor of developing a more powerful proprietary AI model, people familiar with the matter say. A Meta spokesperson said in a statement that the company’s “position on open source AI is unchanged.”