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Jon Keegan

Report: SoftBank $100 billion Stargate investment stalled by tariff chaos

At a splashy announcement of the “Stargate” AI mega data center project at the White House the day after Inauguration Day, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son stood alongside OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle CTO and cofounder Larry Ellison.

Son turned to President Trump and said that his company would “immediately start deploying $100 billion with a goal of making $500 billion within the next four years.”

But Trump’s tariffs appear to have thrown a wrench in the works, and that money hasn’t materialized yet. Bloomberg is reporting that tariff uncertainty has prevented any Softbank financing from going forward. Last month, it was reported that SoftBank was seeking to borrow $16.5 billion to help pay for the project.

The report also said that fears of an oversupply of AI computing infrastructure may be “bogging down discussions.”

But Trump’s tariffs appear to have thrown a wrench in the works, and that money hasn’t materialized yet. Bloomberg is reporting that tariff uncertainty has prevented any Softbank financing from going forward. Last month, it was reported that SoftBank was seeking to borrow $16.5 billion to help pay for the project.

The report also said that fears of an oversupply of AI computing infrastructure may be “bogging down discussions.”

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Amazon closes at all-time high

Fresh off strong earnings Thursday, Amazon saw its stock price end the week at a record closing high of $244.22.

The stock is up 10% so far this year.

The e-commerce and cloud giant beat analysts’ revenue and earnings, and its massive gain was responsible for more than all of the positive return delivered by the SPDR S&P 500 ETF on Friday.

tech
Rani Molla

Google uses an AI-generated ad to sell AI search

Google is using AI video to tell consumers about its AI search tools, with a Veo 3-generated advertisement that will begin airing on TV today. In it, a cartoonish turkey uses Google’s AI Mode to plan a vacation from its farm before it’s eaten for Thanksgiving.

Like other AI ad campaigns that have opted to depict yetis or famous artworks rather than humans, Google chose a turkey as its protagonist to avoid the uncanny valley pitfall that happens when AI is used to generate human likenesses.

Google’s in-house marketing group, Google Creative Lab, developed the idea for the ad — not Google’s AI — but chose not to prominently label the ad as AI, telling The Wall Street Journal that consumers don’t actually care how the ad was made.

Google’s in-house marketing group, Google Creative Lab, developed the idea for the ad — not Google’s AI — but chose not to prominently label the ad as AI, telling The Wall Street Journal that consumers don’t actually care how the ad was made.

tech
Rani Molla

Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft combined spent nearly $100 billion on capex last quarter

The numbers are in and tech giants Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft spent a whopping $97 billion last quarter on purchases of property and equipment. That’s nearly double what it was a year earlier as AI infrastructure costs continue to balloon and show no sign of stopping. Amazon, which reported earnings and capital expenditure spending that beat analysts’ expectations yesterday, continued to lead the pack, spending more than $35 billion on capex in the quarter that ended in September.

Note that the data we’re using here is from FactSet, which strips out finance leases when calculating capital expenditures. If those expenses were included the total would be well over $100 billion last quarter.

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