BIG TECH
Today
6 stories
BIG TECH$25.9B repayment
SoftBank Pays Off $25.9B Of Its OpenAI Bridge Loan Early
SoftBank is repaying the remaining $25.9 billion balance on the $40 billion bridge loan that financed its OpenAI stake, six months ahead of the March 2027 maturity, shifting the debt behind its biggest-ever bet to longer-term financing.
DEEP DIVE
REGULATION
Senate Holds Make-Or-Break Vote On The Clarity Act Today
REGULATION
Senate Holds Make-Or-Break Vote On The Clarity Act Today
The Senate holds a 2:15pm ET cloture vote on the Clarity Act today, needing 60 votes Republicans don't have alone, with Trump's crypto ethics limits and bank pushback on stablecoins still unresolved.
FOLLOW-UP
IPO
Treasury Yields Push Past 5% Again On Fed Decision Eve
IPO
Treasury Yields Push Past 5% Again On Fed Decision Eve
The 10-year Treasury yield climbed to 5.041% and oil held near $107.55 as traders priced a 92% chance of a Fed rate hike Wednesday, up from 88% odds a day earlier, with futures pointing to a lower open.
FOLLOW-UP
FUNDING
SoftBank's Payoff Shows Who's Really Financing The AI Boom
FUNDING
SoftBank's Payoff Shows Who's Really Financing The AI Boom
SoftBank refinancing its OpenAI bridge loan with bonds and margin loans, not IPO proceeds, is more evidence that debt -- not venture equity -- has become the financing engine of the AI infrastructure buildout.
TRACE'S TAKE
FUNDING
Oracle, Microsoft And The Pentagon, By The Numbers
FUNDING
Oracle, Microsoft And The Pentagon, By The Numbers
Value Add Pulse tallies three numbers from the past week's AI infrastructure coverage -- Oracle's $664B cloud backlog, Microsoft's 38GW power target, and the Pentagon's proposed $5B loan to Fluidstack -- that together price the buildout's capital intensity.
BY THE NUMBERS
AI
Zuckerberg Lobbied Trump Against The AI Standards Body Plan
AI
Zuckerberg Lobbied Trump Against The AI Standards Body Plan
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly advised President Trump against Demis Hassabis's proposed FINRA-style AI standards body, splitting Big Tech just as Anthropic, OpenAI and Google DeepMind keep meeting on the idea.
FOLLOW-UP
Yesterday
12 stories
IPO
Why 2026 Has Fewer IPOs Than 2025 Despite Bigger Ones
IPO
Why 2026 Has Fewer IPOs Than 2025 Despite Bigger Ones
Value Add Pulse compared the 2026 US listing tally with 2025 and found slightly fewer deals despite record-sized offerings, a mix shift toward large asset-heavy issuers rather than a broad reopening.
DEEP DIVE
FUNDING
Eleven US Rounds, $10.8B, Ten Days: September's Real Pace
FUNDING$10.8B across 11 rounds
Eleven US Rounds, $10.8B, Ten Days: September's Real Pace
Value Add Pulse totaled the eleven largest venture rounds of September 5-11 and found roughly $10.8 billion committed, with four deals at $1 billion or more and ten of eleven going to US companies.
BY THE NUMBERS
FUNDING
Anthropic Signs A $13.7B Compute Deal With Trump-Linked Rum Group
FUNDING
Anthropic Signs A $13.7B Compute Deal With Trump-Linked Rum Group
Anthropic agreed to pay Rum Group -- the Rumble-owned infrastructure company that hosts Truth Social and counts Peter Thiel and JD Vance among its early backers -- $13.7 billion over six years for GPU capacity at a Georgia data center still under construction, days after publicly calling for the industry to slow down.
DEEP DIVE
IPO
This Week's Micro-Cap S-1s: Oil Leases, Gold, Two SPACs
IPO
This Week's Micro-Cap S-1s: Oil Leases, Gold, Two SPACs
Four small-cap S-1 filings landed September 10-11: an Alberta oil-and-gas shell, a Malaysian iron-ore resale registration, and two blank-check SPACs targeting a combined roughly $175 million, none tied to venture-scale operating businesses.
BY THE NUMBERS
AI
Anthropic Data Fears Push Nvidia, Palantir To Restrict Models
AI
Anthropic Data Fears Push Nvidia, Palantir To Restrict Models
Data-handling concerns about Anthropic's model training and retention practices have led Nvidia, Palantir and Booz Allen Hamilton to restrict how their employees use Claude internally, underscoring how enterprise trust has become a competitive variable among the AI labs selling to security-conscious buyers.
DEEP DIVE
AI
Apple Ships iOS 27 With Its Biggest Siri Overhaul Yet
AI
Apple Ships iOS 27 With Its Biggest Siri Overhaul Yet
Apple released iOS 27, iPadOS 27 and macOS 27 Golden Gate on September 14 with a beta of Siri AI, an English-only conversational assistant limited to iPhone 15 Pro and newer devices, with five more languages promised for October.
DEEP DIVE
IPO
Chips Sank And Hyperscalers Rose On Amodei's AI Essay
IPONvidia -3%, Micron -6%
Chips Sank And Hyperscalers Rose On Amodei's AI Essay
Markets repriced the AI trade along a single fault line after Dario Amodei's pacing essay: semiconductor names fell hard while Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta gained.
FOLLOW-UP
AI
Microsoft Tells Its Models Not To Hack Or Deceive
AI
Microsoft Tells Its Models Not To Hack Or Deceive
Microsoft published a code of conduct for its in-house AI models that overrides user instructions, hard-blocking cyberattacks, nuclear weapons work and deepfakes, and requiring that authorized humans can shut a system down.
DEEP DIVE
BIG TECH
Waymo Opens Robotaxi Service In Las Vegas, Its 15th City
BIG TECH
Waymo Opens Robotaxi Service In Las Vegas, Its 15th City
Waymo began inviting public riders in Las Vegas on September 14, its 15th commercial robotaxi market, deploying dozens of new Ojai minivans on the Strip after Nevada approved up to 1,000 vehicles.
DEEP DIVE
REGULATION
New York DA Seizes 12 Deepfake Porn Sites
REGULATION
New York DA Seizes 12 Deepfake Porn Sites
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg seized twelve websites hosting AI-generated non-consensual sexual imagery depicting roughly 1,200 people, calling it the largest such seizure to date.
DEEP DIVE
AI
Daydream Turns Your Camera Roll Into A Shoppable Feed
AI
Daydream Turns Your Camera Roll Into A Shoppable Feed
Fashion discovery app Daydream launched two Apple Intelligence-powered features letting iPhone users shop outfits saved in their camera roll and search its catalog of roughly 3 million products through Siri without opening the app.
DEEP DIVE
IPO
Three IPOs Set Terms For A $1.8B Week On Nasdaq
IPO~$1.8B combined
Three IPOs Set Terms For A $1.8B Week On Nasdaq
Holtec Nuclear, Bamboo Insurance and Electra Therapeutics set IPO terms within a day of each other, lining up roughly $1.8 billion of Nasdaq supply alongside Orion180's pricing.
FOLLOW-UP