Adobe competitor Figma went public Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange in a debut that saw the price of its first public trade nearly triple from the $33 per share the company and its institutional investors offered it up at, to $85, for a valuation of about $50 billion, well beyond the $20 billion the San Francisco-based design software startup agreed to in 2022 to essentially be acquired by Adobe. That deal was nixed by European regulators, who determined the move would stifle competition. Figma shares closed Thursday at $115.50, for a valuation of $67.7 billion. Continue reading Software Firm Figma Stuns with $67.7 Billion Valuation in IPO

Oracle and OpenAI have confirmed the $30 billion per year AI data center contract reported earlier this month. The deal will provide OpenAI’s Stargate project with 4.5 gigawatts of additional data center capacity in the U.S. Oracle is a Stargate partner and has been working in partnership with OpenAI on the Stargate I site, coming online in Abilene, Texas. “This additional partnership with Oracle will bring us to over 5 gigawatts of Stargate AI data center capacity under development, which will run over 2 million chips,” OpenAI explains. The “investment will create new jobs, accelerate America’s reindustrialization, and help advance U.S. AI leadership.” Continue reading OpenAI and Oracle Confirm $30B Annual Data Center Contract

OpenAI is adding Google Cloud to its list of global infrastructure providers for ChatGPT after relying exclusively on Microsoft Azure since the chatbot’s 2022 launch until January 2025 when Stargate was announced. Oracle and CoreWeave are also OpenAI cloud providers. Oracle is a Stargate investor, as is Nvidia, which holds a minority interest in CoreWeave. OpenAI has been active as it heads toward a December deadline for transitioning to a for-profit company. Meanwhile, ChatGPT is integrating a payment system to receive commissions on sales it initiates, and yesterday OpenAI launched a new AI agent that can perform complex tasks within a user’s browser. Continue reading OpenAI Contracts Google Cloud and Debuts ChatGPT Agent

New Jersey-based cloud-computing startup CoreWeave has reached an agreement to acquire crypto miner Core Scientific in a vertical integration move that will see the AI infrastructure provider gain access to more than 1 gigawatt of U.S. data center capacity with an incremental 1 gigawatt of power available for expansion. The all-stock transaction, valued at $9 billion, is expected to close in Q4 pending regulatory approval. According to CoreWeave, the purchase will eliminate some $10 billion in upcoming lease fees, saving around $500 million annually starting in 2027 and helping to “future-proof” the company. Continue reading AI Provider CoreWeave to Acquire Core Scientific for $9 Billion

Nvidia is rolling out DGX Cloud Lepton, a platform that connects AI developers with GPU access available through various cloud providers. Nvidia calls it “a compute marketplace” that offers tens of thousands of GPUs through a global network that features Nvidia Cloud Partners (NCPs). Among them: CoreWeave, Crusoe, Firmus, Foxconn, GMI Cloud, Lambda, Nebius, Nscale, Softbank Corp. and Yotta Data Services — offering Nvidia Blackwell and other architecture GPUs. Developers can tap into GPU compute capacity in specific regions for both on-demand and long-term computing, Nvidia says, adding that it expects leading cloud computing providers to eventually sign on. Continue reading DGX Cloud Lepton: Nvidia’s New GPU Compute Marketplace

AI startup Dumme (pronounced “dummy”) is generating prerelease fervor, with hundreds of creators signing up for a test and a waitlist topping 20,000 for the video editing platform, which automates creation of short-form videos from long-form fare. The Y Combinator-backed company has raised $3.4 million in a seed round following its 2022 launch. Dumme’s pitch is two-fold: you don’t have to be a genius to use it, and the AI-generated results will be better than what a human could achieve manually when it comes to trimming long-form YouTube content for short-form platforms like TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels. Continue reading AI Startup Dumme Makes Easy Work of Editing Short Videos