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1.	OpenAI Acquires Ex-Apple Designer Jony Ive’s AI Device Startup for $6.5 Billion By Stephanie Palazzolo Source: The Information

OpenAI is acquiring io, an AI device startup started by former Apple design chief Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, for close to $6.5 billion, according to a person with knowledge of the deal. The news confirms The Information’s report last month that OpenAI was considering buying the startup.

The startup’s 55 employees will join OpenAI, the person said, while Ive will take charge of creative and design at OpenAI. But Ive won’t become an OpenAI employee. Instead, Ive’s design firm, LoveFrom, will remain independent from OpenAI. The collaboration signals OpenAI’s desire to develop AI-powered  consumer devices.

OpenAI already owned a 23% stake in io, due to an agreement signed in the fourth quarter of last year, the person with knowledge said. To buy out the rest, OpenAI is paying $5 billion in equity. OpenAI’s startup fund is also an investor in io, they said. The company expects the deal to close this summer.

io’s other investors include Emerson Collective, Sutter Hill Ventures, Thrive Capital, Maverick Capital and SV Angel, according to a person with direct knowledge of the investments.

It’s still not clear what exactly the consumer devices io and OpenAI are building will look like. The Information previously reported that potential designs included a “phone” without a screen and AI-enabled household devices. The Information first reported that Altman and Ive were collaborating on a device and that io was in talks to raise funding from Emerson Collective and Thrive Capital.

2.	Coreweave Raises $2 Billion in Upsized High-Yield Bond Offering By Miles Kruppa Source: The Information

Coreweave, the debt-laden data center builder, sold $2 billion in high-yield bonds, $500 million more than expected, a sign investors will continue to fund the costly buildout of artificial intelligence computing power.

The funds will be used partly to repay Coreweave’s outstanding debt, the company said Wednesday. Coreweave carried about $8 billion in debt when it went public earlier this year. Its junk bonds carry an interest rate of 9.25% and mature in 2030.

S&P Global gave Coreweave a B+ credit rating, which is the higher end of junk bonds, ahead of the offering. S&P said the rating reflected positives such as the company’s “solid market position” and negatives including the cash-intensive nature of the AI buildout and Coreweave’s “significant customer and supplier concentration.”

Shares in Coreweave surged 19% Wednesday. The stock is up more than 150% since its IPO in late March.

3.	Microsoft Says Apple Hampered its Efforts to Launch an Xbox Store for iPhones By Aaron Holmes Source: The Information

Microsoft planned to release a mobile app that would have let iPhone users purchase Xbox games last year, but has been unable to do so because Apple wouldn’t let it collect payments through the store without taking a cut, Microsoft said in a court filing on Tuesday.

Microsoft submitted the filing to the California judge overseeing a lawsuit brought by Fortnite maker Epic Games against Apple. Epic earlier this year won an injunction requiring Apple to let developers collect payments through iPhone apps without paying Apple a cut of the transaction. Epic claimed in a filing earlier this week that Apple has evaded that ruling by refusing to allow Fortnite back on its app store. Apple on Tuesday approved Fortnite and restored the game on the app store.

Microsoft said in its filing Tuesday that Apple previously wasn’t allowing it to set up an Xbox store without imposing a commission, but noted that the court’s ruling last week in favor of Epic now “allows Microsoft to explore this possibility.” Apple is now seeking to overturn the court’s ruling in favor of Epic, which Microsoft argued should be denied by the judge.

Microsoft has been planning a mobile Xbox store since as early as 2022, The Information previously reported.

4.	Blue Owl Commits More Money to OpenAI Data Center in Texas By Anissa Gardizy Source: The Information

Crusoe, which is developing OpenAI’s data center in Abilene, Tex., expanded its joint venture with asset manager Blue Owl Capital, raising $11.6 billion to help fund the rest of the project, the companies announced on Wednesday.

Crusoe and Blue Owl previously announced a $3.4 billion joint venture for the first phase of the Abilene project, which consisted of two data centers where Oracle planned to rent 100,000 Nvidia chips to OpenAI. The original joint venture raised more than $2 billion in construction debt from J.P. Morgan.

With the expanded joint venture, Crusoe plans to grow the Abilene campus to 400,000 chips for Oracle and OpenAI. Construction on the second phase of the project began in March, the company said.

5.	Tesla Shows Off Optimus Robots Doing Chores By Rocket Drew Source: The Information

Tesla released a compilation video Tuesday of its Optimus humanoid robots that it says autonomously performed a variety of tasks, including throwing a trash bag into a bin and vacuuming the floor. Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk posted the video with the caption “the biggest product ever.”

Musk has said that Tesla will produce over a million Optimus robots in 2030, but until recently, Tesla has shared little evidence to back up that projection. In April, Tesla posted a video of Optimus walking, and earlier this month showed a video of Optimus dancing. Tuesday’s video gives a more comprehensive look at Optimus’ capabilities.

The video says that all the behaviors are powered by the same robotic AI model, which Tesla trained using videos of people doing these tasks. While using a single model for multiple skills is an increasingly popular approach in robotics, teaching a model those skills from video recordings is relatively uncommon, in part due to challenges with translating a person’s motions into a robot’s body. Startup Skild AI, which trains AI models to power robots, also uses video demonstrations as one source of data.

6.	Google Starts Testing Ads in ‘AI Mode’ Search By Erin Woo and Catherine Perloff Source: The Information

Google is starting to experiment with showing ads in its chatbot-style AI Mode search tab, ads chief Vidhya Srinivasan announced on Wednesday at the company’s Google Marketing Live conference.

AI Mode, which has been in preview for people who opted in, launched to everyone in the U.S. who uses Google search on Tuesday. Ads in the format look like sponsored links below chatbot answers. Google is also expanding ads in AI Overviews, its AI-generated answers feature on the main search page, onto desktop in the United States and will roll it out to more countries later in the year, Google said. Advertisers, however, cannot pick whether or not their ads will appear in the AI overviews product: Google will automatically route some ads to this format, said vice president of global ads Dan Taylor.

Google is having to convince investors that it can evolve its search ads business, still the majority of its revenue, as it disrupts its own search experience via AI. Google also announced a suite of features to convince marketers to use AI to spend more on ads, including a “Smart Bidding Exploration” that uses AI to identify new keywords to advertise against and tools for using Google generative models like Veo to generate ad creative material.

“In the last year or so…. searches are getting longer and more complex,” Taylor told The Information. “[People] don’t just want to come in and type red shoes anymore. They’re like, tell me all of the different variety of tennis shoes that the rappers are wearing today. And … what colors are popular right now.”