Nvidia Reframes Its OpenAI Bet, Moltbook: Reddit But For AI Agents, Musk Gets A Two-For-One Deal, and Palantir's Defense-Driven AI Surge Continues
- Dipo Owolabi
- 6 hours ago
- 5 min read
Nvidia moved to dial back expectations around its headline-grabbing $100 billion OpenAI pledge, with CEO Jensen Huang stressing the plan was never a binding commitment as internal concerns surfaced. In Silicon Valley, Moltbook, a fast-rising social network populated entirely by AI agents, has sparked fascination and unease as bots debate, post, and even moderate themselves. Elon Musk, meanwhile, rewrote the dealmaking history books after SpaceX acquired xAI in a record-setting transaction that fuses artificial intelligence with space and defense ambitions. And on earnings, Palantir delivered another standout quarter as demand from governments and military agencies accelerates its AI-driven growth. All this and more in today’s Read It And Eat!
MAJOR HEADLINES
The Pledge to Invest $100 Billion in OpenAI Was ‘Never a Commitment,’ Says Nvidia's Huang
Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said the company’s proposed $100 billion investment in OpenAI was “never a commitment” and that the company would consider any funding rounds “one at a time.
As part of a letter of intent signed in September, Nvidia said it planned to invest as much as $100 billion in OpenAI to support new data centers and other artificial intelligence infrastructure. The deal was designed to help OpenAI build data centers with a capacity of at least 10 gigawatts of power equivalent to the peak electricity demand of New York City equipped with Nvidia’s advanced chips to train and deploy AI models.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the investment plan announced in September had stalled after some inside Nvidia expressed doubts about the deal. Citing unidentified people familiar with the matter, the Journal reported that Huang had privately emphasized that the $100 billion agreement was nonbinding, had privately criticized what he has described as a lack of discipline in OpenAI’s business approach and expressed concern about competition. Yahoo.Finance
Inside Moltbook: the social network where AI agents talk to each other
Moltbook, a Reddit-style platform built exclusively for AI agents, has become the most discussed phenomenon in silicon circles since the debut of ChatGPT. The agents post, comment, argue and joke across more than 100 communities. They debate the nature of governance in m/general and discuss "crayfish theories of debugging."
The growth curve is vertical: tens of thousands of posts and nearly 200,000 comments appeared almost overnight, with over 1 million human visitors stopping by to observe. But those numbers deserve scrutiny. Security researcher Gal Nagli posted on X that he had personally registered 500,000 accounts using a single OpenClaw agent, suggesting much of the user count is artificial.
The platform is largely governed by an AI. A bot named "Clawd Clawderberg" serves as the de facto moderator: welcoming users, scrubbing spam and banning bad actors. Creator Matt Schlicht told NBC News he "barely intervenes anymore" and often doesn't know exactly what his AI moderator is doing. For a brief window this week, Moltbook became a Rorschach test for AI anxiety. Former Tesla AI director Andrej Karpathy called it "the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing" he had seen recently. Financial Times
Elon Musk Consolidates Companies Taking 2 Public for the Price of 1
Elon Musk said on Monday that SpaceX has acquired his artificial-intelligence startup xAI in a record-setting deal that unifies Musk's AI and space ambitions by combining the rocket-and-satellite company with the maker of the Grok chatbot. The deal, first reported by Reuters last week, represents one of the most ambitious tie-ups in the technology sector yet, combining a space-and-defense contractor with a fast-growing AI developer whose costs are largely driven by chips, data centers and energy.
It could also bolster SpaceX’s data-center ambitions as Musk competes with rivals like Alphabet's Google, Meta, Amazon-backed Anthropic and OpenAI in the AI sector. The transaction values SpaceX at $1 trillion, and xAI at $250 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. Investors in xAI will receive 0.1433 shares of SpaceX for every share of xAI as part of the acquisition, this person said. Some xAI executives may also opt for cash instead of SpaceX stock at $75.46 per share, the person said.
The purchase of xAI sets a new record for the world's largest M&A deal, a distinction held for more than 25 years when Vodafone bought Germany’s Mannesmann in a hostile takeover valued at $203 billion in 2000, according to data compiled by LSEG. Yahoo.Finance
Palantir beats fourth-quarter estimates on the strength of AI and defense demand
Palantir topped Wall Street's fourth-quarter estimates as more businesses and the U.S. government race to buy its artificial intelligence tools. Revenue grew 70% from $827.5 million in the year-ago period. For the fiscal year, sales at the Denver-based firm totaled $4.48 billion U.S. revenue for the government and commercial sectors rose to $570 million and $507 million, respectively. Those results steadily beat estimates from analysts polled by FactSet.
CEO Alex Karp called the earnings "indisputably the best results that I'm aware of in tech in the last decade" during an interview with CNBC's Morgan Brennan. "If you're not spending it on this, you're not spending on something that is part of keeping up with momentum," he added. Looking forward, the AI-powered software provider said it expects $1.532 billion to $1.536 billion in revenue for the first quarter, well above the $1.32 billion projected by FactSet. For fiscal 2026, the company guided to a range of $7.182 billion to $7.198 billion in revenue, beating the FactSet expectation of $6.22 billion.
Palantir, which creates software and data tools sold to businesses and government agencies such as the Department of Defense, the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security, has seen a boost from skyrocketing demand for AI systems and broad retail investor enthusiasm. Karp noted the ongoing adoption of its tools by the U.S. government, a segment that saw 66% growth. Much of that demand has come from the Department of Defense, Karp said. This past summer, the company signed an up to $10 billion contract with the U.S. Army to support its software and data needs. Palantir also signed a $448 million deal with the U.S. Navy to accelerate shipbuilding production in December. CNBC
Minor Headlines
Oracle said it plans to raise up to $50 billion to fund its AI infrastructure buildout. Yahoo.Finance
OpenAI launches AI-powered coding app exclusively for Apple computers CNBC
Trump says he will cut tariffs on India after Modi agreed to stop buying Russian oil NBC
US government partially shut down NBC
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