AI Daily: OpenAI in over $10B computing partnership with Cerebras

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.

PARTNERSHIP: OpenAI announced it is partnering with Cerebras to add 750MW of ultra low-latency AI compute to its platform. Terms were not disclosed. The company stated, “Integrating Cerebras into our mix of compute solutions is all about making our AI respond much faster. When you ask a hard question, generate code, create an image, or run an AI agent, there is a loop happening behind the scenes: you send a request, the model thinks, and it sends something back. When AI responds in real time, users do more with it, stay longer, and run higher-value workloads. We will integrate this low-latency capacity into our inference stack in phases, expanding across workloads.” Sachin Katti of OpenAI added, “OpenAI’s compute strategy is to build a resilient portfolio that matches the right systems to the right workloads. Cerebras adds a dedicated low-latency inference solution to our platform. That means faster responses, more natural interactions, and a stronger foundation to scale real-time AI to many more people.”

PURCHASE RULES: China is working to set rules on how many advanced AI chip companies can buy from foreign makers such as Nvidia (NVDA), Nikkei Asia’s Cheng Ting-Fang, Lauly Li, Cissy Zhou, and Yifan Yu report. The Chinese central government is working on rules that will likely regulate the total volume of cutting-edge AI chips local companies can purchase, effectively allowing some sales by Nvidia instead of banning them outright, the report says.

LIMITED THREAT: RBC Capital analyst Srini Pajjuri initiated coverage of Nvidia with an Outperform rating and $240 price target. The firm sees “limited threat” to Nvidia’s full-stack AI dominance, despite the recent progress by ASICs and AMD (AMD), the analyst tells investors. The firm expects any hyperscaler capex spending slowdown to be gradual and believes that valuation is already discounting a potential slowdown to an extent, adding that it has higher conviction in Nvidia’s order book than that of peers.

FUNDING ROUND: Berlin-based customer service AI startup Parloa announced it has raised $350M in Series D funding, bringing its valuation to $3B. The round was led by General Catalyst, with continued support from Parloa’s existing investors, including EQT Ventures, Altimeter Capital, Durable Capital Partners, and Mosaic Ventures. Closing just seven months after its Series C, this round brings Parloa’s total raised capital to more than $560M in less than four years.

LAWSUIT: Oracle (ORCL) is being sued by bondholders who claim they suffered losses because the company failed to disclose it needed to sell significant additional debt in order to create its AI infrastructure, Reuters’ Jonathan Stempel reports. The proposed class action lawsuit was filed in a New York state court in Manhattan on behalf of shareholders who purchased $18B of notes and bonds that Oracle issued in September, two weeks after the company announced a $300B, five-year contract to supply Microsoft-backed (MSFT) OpenAI with computing power, the author notes. The investors involved in the suit allege they were blindsided when the company returned to the capital markets just seven weeks later seeking $38B of loans to fund two data centers to support the OpenAI deal, the author says.

AI TRAINING: Wikipedia Foundation, the operator of Wikipedia, has announced, “In the AI era, Wikipedia and its human-created and curated knowledge has never been more valuable. Today, Wikipedia is among the top-ten most-visited global websites, and it is the only one to be run by a nonprofit… Tech companies that rely on Wikipedia content must use it responsibly and help sustain Wikipedia for the future. One key way to do this is through the Wikimedia Enterprise platform. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Enterprise is a commercial product for large-scale reusers and distributors of content from Wikimedia projects. Over the past year, several companies – including Ecosia, Microsoft, Mistral AI, Perplexity, Pleias, and ProRata – became new Wikimedia Enterprise partners, joining existing partners such as Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOGL), and Meta (META). They can access content from Wikimedia projects at a volume and speed designed specifically for their needs, while directly supporting our nonprofit mission.”