Tech stocks today: Anthropic rejects Defense Department AI demands, OpenAI raises $110 billion

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The standoff between Anthropic and the Department of Defense escalated on Thursday when the artificial intelligence startup’s CEO, Dario Amodei, said the company would cut ties with the government rather than lift restrictions on its AI model’s usage.

“We cannot in good conscience accede to their request,” Amodei wrote in response to the Defense Department’s demands to use the AI model for “all lawful purposes.” The government has given Anthropic until 5:01 p.m. on Friday to answer its request to use models as it sees fit.

The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told his staff that the ChatGPT maker was working on a deal to help resolve the feud between the startup’s rival Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) and the Department of Defense. “We would like to try to help de-escalate things,” Altman wrote in a note to employees.

OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) also announced on Friday that it raised $110 billion in a record-breaking funding round and counted SoftBank (SFTBY), Nvidia (NVDA), and Amazon (AMZN) among its backers. The startup’s latest fundraising round values the company at $730 billion pre-money.

The effects of artificial intelligence were felt elsewhere in the corporate world on Thursday, when Block co-founder Jack Dorsey announced the payments company was laying off 40% of its staff, or 4,000 employees. In a note to the company, Dorsey said AI tools were changing how companies were run but gave few details about how Block intends to use AI to replace employees.

Also on tech investors’ minds was the lingering hangover from Nvidia’s (NVDA) fourth quarter earnings, as well as the upcoming product launch from Apple (AAPL) that will begin on Monday.

Follow along for the latest updates on the tech sector.

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Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) CEO Dario Amodei issued a statement Thursday evening, saying his company won’t submit to the Department of Defense’s demands that it be allowed to use its AI technology as it sees fit, within the law.

The Defense Department and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have threatened to force Anthropic to give the Pentagon full use of its models under the Defense Production Act — or, conversely, declare it a supply chain threat and force other Pentagon vendors who work with the AI company to stop using its software.

“These threats do not change our position: we cannot in good conscience accede to their request,” Amodei said in his statement.

Anthropic and the Pentagon have been in an ongoing standoff about how the DOD will use its Claude AI. The company says that while it already works with the Defense Department, including within the government’s classified networks and by advocating for strong chip export controls to China, it wants assurances that the DOD will not use its models for the mass surveillance of Americans or for fully autonomous weapons.

Earlier Thursday, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the DOD had no desire to surveil Americans or develop fully autonomous weapons.

“This is a simple, common-sense request that will prevent Anthropic from jeopardizing critical military operations and potentially putting our warfighters at risk. We will not let ANY company dictate the terms regarding how we make operational decisions. They have until 5:01 PM ET on Friday to decide,” Parnell wrote in a post on X.

In a separate statement, an Anthropic spokesperson said the DOD’s latest contract language doesn’t address the company’s concerns.

“The contract language we received overnight from the Department of War made virtually no progress on preventing Claude’s use for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons,” the spokesperson said.

“New language framed as compromise was paired with legalese that would allow those safeguards to be disregarded at will. Despite DOW’s recent public statements, these narrow safeguards have been the crux of our negotiations for months.”

Microsoft (MSFT) and OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) jointly reaffirmed that their partnership hasn’t changed despite the ChatGPT maker’s new agreement with Amazon (AMZN).

“The partnership remains strong and central,” a statement on the Microsoft blog read. “Microsoft and OpenAI continue to work closely across research, engineering, and product development, building on years of deep collaboration and shared success.”

The companies reasserted that their IP relationship, commercial and revenue-sharing relationship, and AGI processes remain unchanged.

Azure remains the exclusive cloud provider for stateless OpenAI APIs, Microsoft said, following Amazon’s announcement on Friday that it will be the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI Frontier.

The clarification was intended to reassure Microsoft shareholders and enterprise customers of the partnership as OpenAI’s complicated web of investors and deals expands.
OpenAI is entering the fray. In a note to employees, CEO Sam Altman said the company is working toward establishing a contract with the Department of Defense that would give the DOD access to its AI models, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The catch? Altman says he wants to institute the same guardrails that have put the department and its rival Anthropic at loggerheads: no using models for mass surveillance of Americans and no using them to develop fully autonomous weapons.

The news comes just hours before a 5:01 p.m. ET deadline set by the DOD for Anthropic to agree to allow the Pentagon to use its models as it sees fit or face the consequences. The department has said it will either label Anthropic a supply chain threat, which would force vendors that work with the DOD to stop using its models, or institute the Defense Production Act, which would force Anthropic to give the Pentagon full access to its models.

Thursday evening, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote in a blog post that while the company is still working to negotiate with the DOD, he and his company “cannot in good conscience accede to their request.”
OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) said on Friday that it has received $110 billion in new investments, including $30 billion from SoftBank (SFTBY), $30 billion from Nvidia (NVDA), and $50 billion from Amazon (AMZN), to help scale its artificial intelligence products.

As part of the announcement, OpenAI and Amazon announced a strategic partnership to co-create a system for AWS customers to build generative AI applications and agents using OpenAI models. AWS will be the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI Frontier, Amazon said in a statement.

OpenAI also expanded its partnership with Nvidia, receiving 3 gigawatts of dedicated inference capacity and 2 gigawatts of training on Vera Rubin systems. Nvidia and Amazon stocks fell in premarket trading.

The close of the fundraising round valued OpenAI at $730 billion pre-money, a good step up from the $500 billion valuation reported in October that demonstrates how high expectations have run for the AI startup’s technology.

Markets have become jumpy in recent weeks as spending on AI technology has continued to ramp up, companies have entered complex webs of financing with one another, and competition among OpenAI, Anthropic, and Alphabet has increased.
CoreWeave (CRWV), an AI cloud-computing company that counts hyperscalers like Google parent Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) and Microsoft (MSFT) as both clients and competitors, saw its shares slump as much as 10% in after-hours trading after the company announced a slight earnings beat but predicted a massive jump in spending for 2026.

On an earnings call with analysts, CEO Michael Intrator said capital expenditures would increase from $15.4 billion in 2025 to at least $30 billion in 2026. The company also said that its net loss in the fourth quarter surged to $284 million from $36 million last year and noted issues with its revenue backlog.

From Reuters:

CoreWeave has fielded criticism for being part of a web of circular AI funding between companies like Nvidia (NVDA), Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), and the still-private OpenAI (OPAI.PVT).

Read more here.
Anthropic’s deadline to respond to the Pentagon’s demands to allow it to use the company’s AI model for “all lawful purposes” expires at 5:01 p.m. ET on Friday.

The AI firm and its CEO, Dario Amodei, have been locked in a standoff with the Pentagon about whether the company will continue to limit the Department of Defense’s use of the model. Specifically, Anthropic is asking for assurances that the Pentagon won’t use its technology to perform mass surveillance of Americans and produce autonomous weapons.

According to The New York Times, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has threatened to invoke the Defense Production Act to force Anthropic to allow the Defense Department to use the AI models as it sees fit. He’s also threatened to label the company a supply chain risk, which would prevent the Pentagon from using the company’s models.

Labeling Anthropic as a supply chain risk would force the Pentagon’s various vendors to cut ties with the company.

In a post on X, chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell pushed back against Anthropic’s demands.

“The Department of War has no interest in using AI to conduct mass surveillance of Americans (which is illegal) nor do we want to use AI to develop autonomous weapons that operate without human involvement.”

Parnell claimed the assumption that the Pentagon will use Anthropic’s tools for the mass surveillance of Americans or to develop autonomous weapons is a fake narrative “peddled by leftists in the media.”
The global memory shortage is set to impact everything from consumer electronics to enterprise devices, and the smartphone industry, in particular, will face serious headwinds from the dearth of chips.

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), the smartphone market will see its largest year-over-year decline ever in 2026, plummeting 13% to its lowest levels in a decade.

“What we are witnessing is not a temporary squeeze, but a tsunami-like shock originating in the memory supply chain, with ripple effects spreading across the entire consumer electronics industry,” Francisco Jeronimo, vice president of worldwide client devices at IDC, said in a statement.

“The global smartphone market, particularly Android manufacturers, faces a significant threat,” he added.

Memory chips are a key component in data centers. But a small number of global manufacturers, including Micron (MU), Samsung (005930.KS), and SK Hynix (000660.KS), means there’s only so many to go around. And because data center memory offers higher margins, chipmakers favor it over memory for consumer electronics.

The result: fewer available devices, higher prices, or degraded products with less memory. For consumer electronics companies, that translates to fewer sales.
Yahoo Finance’s Francisco Velasquez reports:

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Yahoo Finance’s Francisco Velasquez reports:

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Apple’s next product rollout starts on Monday.

The company is expected to unveil new MacBooks, a new lower-cost iPhone, and potentially a new iPad Air, according to MacRumors.

Apple is not expected to livestream a rollout announcement like it typically does during its WWDC event, which is held in September and usually features the announcement of its latest iPhone lineup.
Nvidia (NVDA) made a fortune on its specialized graphics processing units (GPUs) used to power artificial intelligence servers. But on the earnings call Wednesday, CEO Jensen Huang said he’s ready to push ahead into making the CPUs, or central processing units, that Intel (INTC) and AMD (AMD) are known for.

Reuters reports:

Read more here.
Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT), and Amazon (AMZN) ticked modestly lower in the wake of Nvidia’s earnings report, even as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang expressed his vote of confidence in their future cash flows and, therefore, capex spending.

The three hyperscalers moved between 0.1% and 0.4% lower in extended trading, while Nvidia stock pared initial gains during the earnings call to rise 0.5%.

“I am confident in their cash flow growing,” Huang said of the hyperscalers on the earnings call. “The reason for that is very simple: We have now seen the inflection of agentic AI and the usefulness of agents across the world and enterprises everywhere. You’re seeing incredible compute demand because of it in this new world of AI. … In this new world of AI, compute equals revenues.”

Other chipmakers, including Intel (INTC) and AMD (AMD), also moved lower in extended trading.
Big Tech giants can’t get enough of Nvidia’s chips.

Nvidia (NVDA) on Wednesday reported fourth quarter results that topped forecasts and signaled demand for its most advanced chips remains insatiable.

And a growing portion of that demand is coming from the so-called hyperscalers like Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta, who now account for more than half of the company’s sales in its data center segment.

“Data Center revenue for the fourth quarter was a record $62.3 billion, up 75% from a year ago and up 22% sequentially, driven by the major platform shifts – accelerated computing and AI,” Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said in a statement.

“For the fourth quarter, hyperscaler revenue increased and remained our largest customer category at slightly over 50% of Data Center revenue, while growth was led by the rest of our Data Center customers as revenue diversified.”

The last time the company specified was portion of its data center sales were to these customers, the company said it was “approximately” 50%.

And while these are small percentage moves, the dollars at this scale are notable, and the increasing portion of sales going to these customers shows where these companies’ massive capex plans show up.
Nvidia (NVDA) earnings and revenue both topped Wall Street estimates, sending the stock higher in after-hours trading.

The company also offered Q1 guidance between $76.44 billion and $79.56 billion, above Wall Street’s estimates of $72.8 billion without factoring in revenue from China.

Read the full earnings breakdown here >
Nvidia stock (NVDA) climbed 1.4% on Wednesday as investors eagerly awaited (or braced for) the AI giant’s fourth quarter report.

While Nvidia is widely expected to clear expectations, markets have been jumpy around artificial intelligence lately, making the report critical for sentiment across a host of other AI companies and the broader market.

Bloomberg reports:

Read more here.
Samsung’s (005930.KS) latest line of Galaxy S26 smartphones features a variety of new AI features as the company seeks to expand its lead in artificial intelligence over Apple (AAPL).

Yahoo Finance’s Daniel Howley reports:

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Yahoo Finance’s Jake Conley reports:

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Bloomberg reports:

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Nvidia stock (NVDA) is poised to see its smallest post-earnings swing in three years after the company reports after the bell on Wednesday.

Nvidia options imply a move of about ‌5.6%, or $260 billion in market capitalization, in either direction on Thursday, according to Option Research & Technology Services (ORATS).

Nvidia stock advanced 0.8% in premarket trading on Wednesday ahead of the report as traders priced in their expectations.

“We feel generally pretty favorable in terms of Nvidia for the quarter and even for the guidance,” FBB Capital Partners director of research Mike Bailey told Yahoo Finance. “I think the real question mark is sentiment.”

“You know, Nvidia’s stock has been right around with the market for … three to six months,” Bailey added. “To us, that suggests investors really don’t have massive expectations built up for the quarter.”
PayPal (PYPL) stock spiked 6% in afternoon trading after Bloomberg reported that payments processor Stripe (STRI.PVT) is reportedly interested in acquiring all or some of the legacy fintech company.

PayPal has reportedly been fielding unsolicited buyout offers after its stock suffered a major slide that wiped out 20% of its value year to date. People familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that Stripe was among the suitors that expressed preliminary interest in the company but that deliberations are still in the early stages.

On Tuesday, Stripe published an annual letter disclosing a tender offer agreement that values the company at $159 billion, a 74% increase from Stripe’s $91.5 billion valuation a year ago. The sale of employee shares makes the privately held company one of the industry’s most valuable companies.

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