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Happy Thursday! Cars, robots, rockets. Why not one company? Musk’s biggest moonshot yet could be a $3.5 trillion merger.

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Tesla and SpaceX are studying a combination that could create a company valued at roughly $3.5 trillion, making it the largest merger ever discussed at that scale. Independent directors at both companies formed special committees, while Musk endorsed the idea but said he couldn't participate in negotiations because he's conflicted. The proposed structure would bring Tesla's vehicles, batteries, AI and robotics together with SpaceX's launch, satellite and space businesses, but ownership terms, valuation, exchange ratios and timing remain unsettled. SpaceX's profitability and expected public-market valuation strengthen the strategic case, while Tesla's vehicle demand, margins, autonomy efforts and energy products complicate the math. Governance is the central test: directors must show that the process protects outside shareholders despite Musk's influence over both companies, with shareholder votes, disclosures and regulatory review still ahead. The combination would also unite businesses with very different regulatory and operating risks, from consumer autos to aerospace, national security and satellite communications (read more).

Anthropic is pairing its closely watched IPO process with a public-benefit fund that will receive 5% of the company’s shares, giving investors a direct stake in the Claude maker’s societal-good ambitions. The company can add another 2% of shares after each 50% increase in its valuation, so the fund could grow alongside Anthropic’s market value. Proposed uses include large nonprofit donations and direct payments to specific populations, though recipients, governance rules, distribution timing, and final IPO terms remain undisclosed. Anthropic began the process with a confidential SEC filing on June 1, but it has not announced an offering size, share price, valuation, or listing date. The company is also giving the external watchdog METR employee-like access to hardware, office space, and internal tools, with permission to publish findings without Anthropic’s approval, adding an independent-scrutiny angle to its investor pitch. The promise will ultimately be judged alongside revenue, compute costs, dilution, and the mechanics of turning a percentage of equity into measurable public benefit (read more).

Blackstone is treating AI as an infrastructure economy, spreading its exposure across data centers, power, cooling, chips, cloud capacity, financing, and model companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI. Its data-center investments reached about $200 billion in July, up from $55 billion in June 2024, giving the firm a broad position in the physical buildout behind AI software. A $5 billion Blackstone investment with Google will create a U.S. AI infrastructure company powered by Google’s tensor processing units, placing private capital alongside Google’s alternative to Nvidia’s dominant GPU platform. Nvidia has also announced financing platforms with Blackstone and other financial institutions aimed at mobilizing more than $500 billion in third-party capital for AI compute and infrastructure. The opportunity is enormous, with Brookings estimating that data-center expansion could require annual investment equal to 3.6% of U.S. GDP through 2032. The risk sits in the details: occupancy, power availability, chip utilization, hardware depreciation, customer commitments, and whether demand keeps pace with the construction spree (read more).

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📈 Ken Griffin Calls AI “Almost Certainly” a Bubble: Citadel founder Ken Griffin warned that AI markets are likely in a bubble as U.S. data-center spending races toward $500 billion annually. The concern isn’t whether AI is useful, but whether soaring valuations and infrastructure spending can ultimately produce enough revenue and cash flow to justify the hype.

🚫 U.S. Government Bans DeepSeek From Federal Systems: Civilian federal agencies have been ordered to stop buying DeepSeek products and remove its technology from government IT systems. The restriction also reaches third-party products using DeepSeek models, putting new pressure on contractors to track exactly where their AI comes from (read more).

🛒 Meta’s Muse Hits 10M Users: Meta’s Muse has surpassed 10 million users, with roughly a quarter using the AI agent for shopping research or purchases. Early retention suggests commerce could become a major use case as AI assistants move from recommending products to completing transactions.

🏗️ BlackRock Warns Against Slowing Data Centers: BlackRock CEO Larry Fink says restricting new data-center construction could raise computing costs, fuel inflation and hurt U.S. economic growth. The warning highlights how AI infrastructure has turned power, land and permitting into increasingly important economic policy issues.

💻 OpenAI Becomes Replit’s Default Model: Replit is moving OpenAI into its default model position, citing performance, cost and partnership terms, while Claude remains available as an option. The switch shows how AI coding platforms are increasingly treating model providers as interchangeable infrastructure rather than permanent partners (read more).

🚗 Gemini Brings Personal Intelligence Into Cars: Google is bringing Gemini Personal Intelligence to Android Auto and vehicles with Google built-in, connecting information from Gmail, Calendar, Photos, Maps and other services to in-car assistance. The deeper personalization could make Gemini far more useful behind the wheel, while significantly raising the stakes around permissions and shared vehicles (see official blog).

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