US giants pour billions into UK AI

👋 Good morning/evening (wherever you are). It’s Tuesday.

Things are heating up in the UK:

• Google’s parent Alphabet is investing £5B ($6.8B) in UK infrastructure and DeepMind research.

• Microsoft is committing $30B (£22B) to build new data centres and supercomputing capacity.

• Nvidia will deploy 120,000 GPUs in partnership with UK data centre operators by 2026.

The UK is fast becoming Europe’s anchor for AI, driven by capital, research talent, regulatory alignment, and a deepening US-UK technology partnership.

OK let’s keep going ↓

🔥 Creative pulse

I want to revisit yesterday’s Porsche spec ad from Stefan Aberer. It’s easily one of the best AI car ads I’ve seen.

Even if you’ve already experienced it, you should check out the comments. That’s your pulse on the AI creative industry.

Watch the video. Posted on LinkedIn.

PS: If you’re passionate (and obsessed) about AI creative…guess what?! I just launched an AI creative club. It’s only $5/month. Skip the Big Mac and use it for this instead. I’m serious, you’ll thank me later.

One piece of advice, tip, or connection in the AI creative club could change your life.

💡 Here’s what you should know

• Hollywood sues MiniMax over AI copyright

  Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros accuse the AI startup of using their characters to power its Hailuo AI platform.

• Paramount adds Scale AI CFO Dennis Cinelli to board

  Cinelli joins as an independent director, expanding the post-merger board to 11 members, as Paramount Skydance looks to infuse more technology and AI expertise into its strategy.

• Whitney Houston estate launches AI-powered concert tour

  Moises’ stem separation tech isolates Houston’s vocals for a seven-city orchestral tour featuring rare footage and live performances.

• Google launches Agent Payments Protocol to secure AI-led commerce

  AP2 creates an open standard for agent-initiated payments, developed with partners like Mastercard, PayPal, Coinbase, and Salesforce, providing a unified framework for secure transactions across cards, stablecoins, and bank transfers.

• DeepMind report forecasts AI scaling through 2030

  If current trends hold, frontier AI models will require $100B+ clusters and gigawatts of power by 2030, enabling breakthroughs in software, math, biology, and weather prediction, with productivity gains of 10–20% in scientific R&D.

• OpenAI, NVIDIA, and Nscale launch Stargate UK for sovereign AI compute

  The partnership will expand UK-based GPU capacity to run OpenAI models locally, starting with 8,000 GPUs in 2026 and scaling to 31,000, supporting critical sectors and the government’s national AI strategy.

• OpenAI sets new rules for teen safety and privacy

  Sam Altman says adults get more freedom while teens face stricter protections, including age checks, parental controls, and intervention in high-risk cases.

• YouTube rolls out Veo 3 and new AI creative tools

  The platform is introducing Veo 3 Fast with sound, Edit with AI for auto-drafts, and Speech-to-Song remixing, aiming to make Shorts more playful and effortless for millions of creators.

• CrowdStrike and Salesforce partner to secure AI agents and workflows

  The integration links Falcon Shield with Salesforce Security Center and brings Charlotte AI into Agentforce, giving enterprises greater visibility, accountability, and real-time protection for mission-critical AI applications.

• Roblox backs Presidential AI Challenge for students and educators

  The initiative invites teams to propose or build AI-driven community solutions, with Roblox providing AI tools, curriculum, and Studio resources to help participants bring their ideas to life.

• Databricks makes first Latin American startup investment

  Through its venture arm, Databricks acquired a minority stake in Brazilian AI consultancy Indicium, marking its debut investment in the region.

• Reve rolls out major update to its AI image platform

  The new Reve Image adds creation, remixing, drag-and-drop editing, and an API, powered entirely by the company’s own models.

• Meta Connect 2025 spotlights AI glasses and metaverse vision

  Streaming September 17–18, the event features Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote on AI glasses, developer deep dives on VR and AI, and new tools for creators and developers.

• Carvana teams up with Shaquille O’Neal to launch AI “Shaqbot”

  The brand’s new campaign features Shaq as ambassador and introduces Shaqbot, an AI assistant built with his voice and personality to guide and entertain customers on Carvana’s platform.

• China tests homegrown AI chipmaking machines

  SMIC is trialing a domestically built 28nm DUV lithography tool from startup Yuliangsheng, a step toward reducing reliance on ASML and overcoming US export controls, though mass production could be years away.

💰 The numbers

• Figure raises $1B+ in a Series C round, pushing its valuation up to $39B.

• Workday acquires Sana Labs for $1.1B to boost its AI-driven learning & knowledge management platform.

• Nothing raises $200M, bringing its valuation to $1.3B, to build an AI-powered operating system.

• CrowdStrike to acquire Pangea for about $260M to secure enterprise AI systems against prompt-layer threats.

• Invisible raises $100M, valuing the Scale AI rival at $2B+.

• CodeRabbit raises $60M, valuing its AI code-review platform at ~$550M.

• Tabs raises $55M in Series B to build AI agents for finance teams.

• Conceivable Life Sciences raises $50M in Series A to launch the world’s first AI-powered IVF lab.

• WorkFusion raises $45M to scale agentic AI in financial crime compliance.

• Doctronic raises $20M in Series A to scale its 24/7 AI doctor platform.

• ComfyUI raises $17M from Pace Capital, Chemistry, and Abstract Ventures to scale its open-source generative tools.

• Hyperbound raises $15M to expand its AI-powered sales tech stack.

• Ray Security raises $11M in seed funding to scale predictive AI data security.

🧠 Thought starters

3 things to think about:

1.) This is the current state of 3D world generation models.

2.) Robots that can fall, recover, and rise again are crossing into a new level of resilience.

3.) At OpenAI’s Seoul launch, leading K-pop producers credited ChatGPT as a creative tool and showed how AI is already shaping Korea’s biggest cultural export.

😂 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.

👋 Connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram, and X (Twitter)

P.S. If this was valuable, forward it to a friend. If you’re that smart friend, subscribe here.

P.P.S. Interested in reaching other ambitious readers like you? To become a sponsor, reply to this email.