Nvidia buys $5B stake in Intel

👋 Good morning or evening, wherever you are. It’s Thursday.

NVIDIA and Intel announced a landmark collaboration to design custom CPUs and GPUs for data centers and PCs.

NVIDIA is also investing £2 billion to expand the UK’s AI startup ecosystem, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer calling it the nation’s “Goldilocks moment for AI.”

At the same time the company spent more than $900M to bring in Enfabrica’s CEO and license its interconnect technology, a critical piece for scaling massive GPU clusters.

It feels like the pace of these deals is accelerating.

The scale of money, infrastructure, and talent moving right now is reshaping AI faster than most people realize.

OK let’s keep going ↓

🔥 Creative pulse

Yesterday I shared Magellan Rubin’s Puma ad.

I want to emphasize again that the old playbook is already irrelevant. At minimum, the expectation will be for more brands to launch AI hybrid ads…and only the best teams will be able to successfully run 100% AI ads.

And this is only the start.

Posts, ads, shows, even short films are changing. Soon you won’t notice the difference while streaming, watching, or listening.

PS: If you’re passionate about AI creative, join the club. It’s $5/month and the people inside will pull you higher than you could go alone. One insight or connection inside could change your life.

💡 Here’s what you should know

• Microsoft builds $7B AI datacenter in Wisconsin

  The Fairwater campus will house hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA GPUs to train frontier AI models, supported by sustainable cooling, new solar projects, and workforce development programs across the state.

• Meta in talks to license news content for AI

  The company is negotiating with Axel Springer, Fox, and News Corp to integrate licensed material into its AI products, mirroring deals struck by OpenAI and Perplexity.

• China’s DeepSeek trained its R1 model for $294K

  A Nature paper reveals the Hangzhou-based firm spent under $300K to train its hit model R1, far below U.S. rivals, reigniting debate over China’s AI cost advantage.

• Amazon launches new AI tools to speed up product success

  AI-powered insights, regional low-inventory launches, upgraded Vine reviews, and shoppable A+ Content now help sellers cut risk, lower costs, and bring new products to market faster.

• Amazon Ads debuts agentic AI for ad creation

  A new Creative Studio tool acts as a conversational partner that researches products, develops storyboards, and produces professional video and display ads at no extra cost.

• Oracle named leader in AI agents and conversational AI

  ISG Research ranked Oracle highest across product experience, innovation, and customer value, citing its AI Agent Studio, Fusion Data Intelligence, and OCI platforms.

• Notion 3.0 turns AI into an operator

  Agents now handle real workflows across docs, databases, and knowledge bases, with Custom Agents coming to run entire projects end to end.

• SoftBank Vision Fund cuts 20% of staff to double down on AI

  Masayoshi Son is shifting the $100B fund back to high-risk, high-reward bets, including a $9.7B stake in OpenAI, as part of a broader pivot toward U.S. AI investments.

• DeepMind uses AI to uncover new singularities in fluid dynamics

  A Nature paper details how physics-informed neural networks revealed unstable singularities in fluid equations, offering new insight into century-old problems like the Navier-Stokes equations.

• Google reimagines Chrome with AI

  Chrome now includes Gemini as an in-browser assistant that summarizes tabs, answers questions, and soon performs multi-step tasks, alongside new AI-powered search and safety features.

• Google adds Gem sharing to Gemini app

  Users can now share custom Gems that act as personalized AI assistants for tasks like planning, writing, or research, making collaboration as simple as sharing a Google Doc.

• Databricks launches AI Accelerator for early-stage startups

  Backed by Databricks Ventures, the new program provides up to $250K in funding, product credits, mentorship, and VC network access to pre-seed and seed startups building AI apps and agents.

• Luma AI’s Ray3 video model launches in Adobe Firefly

  Ray3 delivers 10-second HDR cinematic video with greater realism and control, now available to Firefly users ahead of wider release.

• Figure and Brookfield partner on humanoid AI

  The deal combines Brookfield’s $1T real estate footprint with Figure’s Helix model, creating massive pretraining data for humanoid robots and expanding AI infrastructure and deployment opportunities.

💰 The numbers

• Nvidia announced a £2B ($2.6B) investment to accelerate the U.K.’s AI startup ecosystem and expand access to advanced AI infrastructure.

• Atlassian will acquire the dev-productivity platform DX for ~$1B to boost its AI tool-investment insights.

• Nvidia spent over $900M to acquihire Enfabrica’s CEO and team while licensing the AI startup’s technology.

• Notion hit $500M in annual revenue as AI adoption drives enterprise demand and custom agents launch.

• Lyric raised $43.5M Series B led by Insight Partners to expand its AI-driven supply chain intelligence platform.

• Numeral raised $35M Series B led by Mayfield to scale its AI platform automating sales tax compliance, valuing the startup at $350M.

• Markup AI (formerly Acrolinx) raised $27.5M Series A led by Genui Partners and EMH Partners to scale its AI content-compliance tools.

• Walmart said its new agentic-AI system runs at 1% of prior costs and saves over $20M annually, powered by its Sparky AI agent in the Walmart app.

• Vibranium Labs raised $4.6M seed to develop AI-driven outage prevention and incident management solutions.

🧠 Thought starters

Two important shifts are happening in AI creative right now.

Higgsfield is growing rapidly into a full creative platform, and lipsync is already shaping up to be one of its most popular features.

Second, music generation is entering a new phase.

The focus may shift from polish to imperfection, where raw vocals and stripped-down formats like NPR’s Tiny Desk help AI music feel authentic.

Just as SoundCloud and TikTok reshaped discovery, Suno could be the next overlooked path to breakout virality.

😂 Meme of the day

Thanks for reading,

Eddie

Join the AI Creative Club (you’ll find me there). It’s not only for artists and filmmakers…it’s for anyone who recognizes this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn as much as you can about AI to multiply your impact...to become superhuman. Remember, creativity is just intelligence having fun. This club is for ultra curious people, and if you’ve made it this far…you’re pretty damn curious and probably the smartest one in your circle of friends. It would be my honor to have you in there.

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