AI Daily: Microsoft, Nvidia to invest in Anthropic

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:

NEW DEAL: Microsoft (MSFT), Nvidia (NVDA) and Anthropic announced new strategic partnerships. “Anthropic is scaling its rapidly growing Claude AI model on Microsoft Azure, powered by Nvidia, which will broaden access to Claude and provide Azure enterprise customers with expanded model choice and new capabilities,” the companies said in a blog post. Anthropic has committed to purchase $30B of Azure compute capacity and to contract additional compute capacity up to one gigawatt. As part of the partnership, Nvidia and Microsoft are committing to invest up to $10B and up to $5B respectively in Anthropic. “For the first time, Nvidia and Anthropic are establishing a deep technology partnership to support Anthropic’s future growth…Microsoft and Anthropic are also expanding their existing partnership to provide broader access to Claude for businesses,” the companies added.

DEALS WITH U.S. COMPANIES: Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth-fund backed AI company Humain is slated to announce a number of new deals with U.S. companies on Wednesday as the Kingdom aims to invest billions of dollars into a plan to become the globe’s third biggest country for AI, Semafor’s Matthew Martin reports. The AI company intends to announce multi-gigawatts data center buildouts in partnership with companies such as Amazon (AMZN), AMD (AMD), xAI, and GlobalAI, with the agreements expected to follow on from an arrangement for the U.S. to clear a large chip sale to Saudi Arabia, the author says, citing people familiar with the matter.

AI DISRUPTION RISK: KeyBanc says online travel stocks sold off yesterday following a Google (GOOG, GOOGL) blog post announcing new artificial intelligence-powered travel tools. The share pressure indicates that investors are concerned about the impact to online travel agency business models, the analyst tells investors in a research note. However, KeyBanc believes the market reaction overestimates the risk of AI-driven disruption and underappreciates the value of online travel platforms. Companies with “global scale, differentiated supply, and superior marketing efficiency are best insulated,” the firm contends. It believes Booking Holdings (BKNG) is best positioned, followed by Airbnb (ABNB), and then Expedia (EXPE).

DEPARTURE: Abidur Chowdhury, a designer at Apple (AAPL) who helped develop the iPhone Air, has left the tech giant for an AI startup, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports, citing people familiar with the move. The designer’s exit made waves internally, especially considering his high profile within the design team, the author notes.