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Rani Molla

Applied Digital jumps after announcing $5 billion AI factory lease

Applied Digital was up more than 4% premarket after it announced a $5 billion, 15-year AI factory lease from a “US based investment grade hyperscaler” at its Polaris Forge 2 campus, which is expected to begin coming online next year.

On its earnings call earlier this month, the data center company’s management teased the deal, saying it was “in advanced discussions with an investment-grade hyperscaler” to lease capacity at Polaris Forge 2 and “also entered negotiations with two additional hyperscalers for two new locations.”

“What sets us apart isn’t just the size of our pipeline — it’s how fast we can deliver,” Applied Digital Chairman and CEO Wes Cummins said in the press release. “The real constraint in this industry is execution, and our team continues to prove that large-scale, next-generation data centers can be designed, financed, and brought online faster and more efficiently than anyone thought possible.”

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Banks prepare record $38 billion debt financing to fund Oracle-tied data centers

Banks led by JPMorgan and Mitsubishi UFJ are preparing a $38 billion debt offering to fund two Oracle-tied data centers in Texas and Wisconsin, Bloomberg reports. The projects, developed by Vantage Data Centers, will support Oracle’s $500 billion Stargate AI infrastructure push with OpenAI and Nvidia.

The loans — $23.25 billion for Texas and $14.75 billion for Wisconsin — are expected to mature in four years, price about 2.5 percentage points higher than the benchmark rate, and mark the largest AI infrastructure financing to date.

Oracle executives recently said that the company anticipates cloud gross margins will reach 35% and that it expects to see $166 billion in cloud infrastructure revenue by FY 2030.

Oracle is up 1.5% premarket.

The loans — $23.25 billion for Texas and $14.75 billion for Wisconsin — are expected to mature in four years, price about 2.5 percentage points higher than the benchmark rate, and mark the largest AI infrastructure financing to date.

Oracle executives recently said that the company anticipates cloud gross margins will reach 35% and that it expects to see $166 billion in cloud infrastructure revenue by FY 2030.

Oracle is up 1.5% premarket.

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Google rises on official announcement of Anthropic deal worth “tens of billions”

Google has made its deal to expand AI compute to Anthropic, reported earlier this week by Bloomberg, official. In order to train and serve its Claude model, Anthropic has agreed to pay Google Cloud “tens of billions of dollars” to access up to 1 million tensor processing units, or TPUs, as well as other cloud services.

Google, of course, has a 14% stake in Anthropic, making this one of the many circular AI deals happening at the moment.

“Anthropic and Google have a longstanding partnership and this latest expansion will help us continue to grow the compute we need to define the frontier of AI,” Anthropic CFO Krishna Rao said in the press release. “Our customers — from Fortune 500 companies to AI-native startups — depend on Claude for their most important work, and this expanded capacity ensures we can meet our exponentially growing demand while keeping our models at the cutting edge of the industry.”

The announcement has sent Google up again, more than 1% premarket.

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Report: Snap seeking $1 billion to finance its AR glasses division in “existential” fundraise

Snap is down more than 1% this morning following news that the company is attempting to raise $1 billion for its AR glasses unit in what someone told Sources.news was an “existential” fundraise.

A Snap spokesperson countered, “We do not need to raise money to execute against our plans to publicly launch Specs in 2026, but remain open to opportunities that could accelerate our growth.”

Multiple investors are involved in the talks, including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, according to Sources.news. The report also noted that Snap plans to turn the unit that makes its Specs glasses into an independent subsidiary à la Google’s Waymo “that can continue raising capital from investors.”

Snap plans to produce about 100,000 units of next year’s Specs, pricing them around $2,500.

The beleaguered stock saw quite a bit of retail interest last month, amid r/WallStreetBets chatter that its low nominal price made it a potential acquisition target.

Multiple investors are involved in the talks, including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, according to Sources.news. The report also noted that Snap plans to turn the unit that makes its Specs glasses into an independent subsidiary à la Google’s Waymo “that can continue raising capital from investors.”

Snap plans to produce about 100,000 units of next year’s Specs, pricing them around $2,500.

The beleaguered stock saw quite a bit of retail interest last month, amid r/WallStreetBets chatter that its low nominal price made it a potential acquisition target.

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Meta says it’s replacing jobs with tech in new round of layoffs

Meta told employees in its risk division, which is responsible for ensuring regulatory and policy compliance, that some of their roles will be replaced by tech, Business Insider reports.

“By moving from bespoke, manual reviews to a more consistent and automated process, weve been able to deliver more accurate and reliable compliance outcomes across Meta,” Chief Compliance and Privacy Officer Michel Protti told the workers in an internal memo. “As a result, we don’t need as many roles in some areas as we once did.”

The news comes right after Meta laid off 600 employees across its AI team in yet another company reorganization, reflecting efforts to improve its flagship AI model, Llama 4.

Meta is only the latest tech company selling AI to say that AI is helping it save money on human labor.

The news comes right after Meta laid off 600 employees across its AI team in yet another company reorganization, reflecting efforts to improve its flagship AI model, Llama 4.

Meta is only the latest tech company selling AI to say that AI is helping it save money on human labor.

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