May 1st Newsletter

Author

Da Yu
May 01, 2026

As of close on April 30th, 2026

Markets opened with rates, oil, Fed politics, and consumer balance sheets in focus. The Fed held rates at 3.5%–3.75% in Powell’s likely final meeting as chair, with four dissents—the most since 1992—while Powell said he plans to remain as governor. March core PCE rose 3.2% annually as oil-driven headline inflation hit 3.5%, complicating policy alongside softer-than-expected 2% Q1 GDP growth and jobless claims at a 1969 low. Oil remained a key variable, with NBC reporting U.S. gas prices at $4.23 per gallon after Iran war disruptions pushed Brent to $114.60, while the UAE’s planned OPEC exit could further reshape supply. In tech, Big Tech earnings (Special Earnings section below) were strong but unevenly received as Wall Street analysts projected 2027 capex could exceed $1 trillion.

We’ve published our Monthly AI Deck for April 2026. Check it out here.

Top 5 AI Highlights

[1] 💰 Google will invest up to $40B in Anthropic, including $10B upfront, deepening AI infrastructure ties as Claude demand surges and tech giants race to secure frontier AI leadership. This follows news on Amazon to invest up to $25B in Anthropic early last week. More from Bloomberg.

[2] 🚫 China ordered Meta to unwind its $2B Manus acquisition, escalating AI-tech nationalism and signaling tougher scrutiny of offshore restructurings, Singapore “washing,” and U.S. access to Chinese AI talent. Previously, Meta had to sell Giphy to Shutterstock for $53m, crystallizing a $260m+ loss after UK regulators blocked its acquisition, highlighting antitrust pressure and declining GIF relevance among younger users. Latest from Reuters.

[3] 🛡️ Cohere will merge with Aleph Alpha in a $20B sovereign AI tie-up, backed by the Canadian and German governments and by Schwarz Group’s $600M investment in Cohere’s Series E, targeting non-US, non-China enterprise customers. Details on Financial Times.

[4] 💼 OpenAI and Microsoft revamped their $13B partnership: Microsoft keeps Azure priority and model rights through 2032, while its IP license becomes nonexclusive. The day after, OpenAI announced that it would offer models via AWS Bedrock. Separately, CFO Sarah Friar raised concerns after OpenAI missed its 2025 ChatGPT revenue and user targets, plus monthly revenue targets in early 2026. More from CNBC, Axios, and WSJ.

[5] ⚖️ The Musk-Altman trial began Monday, April 27, and by Thursday had sharpened around three themes: Musk’s $38 million in OpenAI donations, his claim that the nonprofit mission was redirected into an $800 billion for-profit startup, and rising competitive tension with xAI. Musk said Microsoft’s $10 billion investment was the tipping point for his concerns, while also acknowledging that xAI had “partly” used OpenAI models through distillation. Jared Birchall, meanwhile, was questioned on donation restrictions and xAI’s bid to acquire OpenAI. Details from CNBC.

✨Open Source AI Development

[1] 🎁 Xiaomi MiMo introduced MiMo Orbit, an ecosystem program offering 100T free tokens to global AI builders through applications, plus integration support for agent frameworks, aiming to accelerate developer adoption, open-source collaboration, and next-generation AI app development through May 27, 2026. More on X from Xiaomi.

[2] 🧬 Biohub commits $500M to launch Virtual Biology Initiative, uniting global partners and NVIDIA to build open multimodal datasets and predictive cell models, accelerating AI-driven disease research and therapies. See more on Biohub.

[3] 💻 Poolside launched Laguna M.1 and open-weight Laguna XS.2, targeting local agentic coding with strong SWE-bench results, permissive Apache licensing, and offline deployment appeal for developers, enterprises, and government. Details on Poolside.

[4] 🚗 Alibaba is bringing Qwen AI to BYD, Geely, Li Auto, and SAIC Volkswagen cars, enabling voice-based bookings, payments, and deliveries, while ByteDance’s Doubao spans 145 models and over 7 million vehicles. See more on CNBC.

[5] 🕰️ Talkie launches a 13B open weight “vintage LLM” trained on pre-1930 public-domain data, exploring temporal language shifts, prediction experiments, copyright advantages, contamination challenges, and humorous cricket hallucinations. More on Talkie.

Founder’s Corner

% of Rounds Raised by AI Startups in Each Sector

Source: X

What We Read This Week

  • Banker Storm Duncan is offering his $4.8M Mill Valley estate for scarce Anthropic shares, citing trillion-dollar secondary valuation, Claude Code productivity gains, and rising pre-IPO AI frenzy. (Business Insider)

  • Oracle’s $16B Michigan data center financing closed, with Pimco anchoring $14B bonds. Project supports Oracle/OpenAI AI capacity, reflecting Big Tech’s massive debt-funded infrastructure push amid tighter investor scrutiny. (YF)

  • Google Cloud is leaning on proprietary TPUs, Gemini, and DeepMind to narrow AWS/Azure’s lead, touting 48% revenue growth, $70bn run-rate prospects, and stronger AI economics than OpenAI/Anthropic-dependent rivals. (Financial Times)

  • The Vatican is advancing AI rules and cybersecurity, positioning itself as a moral counterweight to misinformation while warning that AI must protect human dignity, transparency, truth, and institutional integrity. (Axios)

  • By 2025, 79 of 500 software firms—over double the 2024 figure—shifted AI pricing from flat seats to usage/outcome models as costs surged, though enterprises fear budget blowouts. (The Information)

  • State regulators approved over 80% of AI-exclusion requests, letting Berkshire, Chubb, and Travelers limit coverage as 800 AI lawsuits in 2025 spur standalone policies covering up to $50M. (The Information)

  • The US Space Force awarded SpaceX, Anduril, Lockheed, and nine others up to $3.2B for Golden Dome interceptor prototypes by 2028, despite the Congressional Budget Office’s $542B cost warning. (Bloomberg)

  • Cognizant will buy Astreya for about $600M, bolstering AI infrastructure and data-center services as enterprise clients accelerate AI adoption, despite weak IT demand pressuring Cognizant’s market value this year. (Reuters)

  • Big Tech is cutting jobs to fund AI infrastructure: Meta plans 8,000 cuts, while Microsoft offers retirement to 7% of U.S. staff—boosting efficiency but risking talent loss. (WSJ)

    Source: Layoffs.fyi

Special Earnings Section

  • Alphabet: Revenue rose 22% YoY to $109.9B, beating estimates, as Google Cloud surged 63% to $20B and enterprise AI became Google Cloud’s primary growth driver. Shares jumped 6%+ after hours, extending April outperformance despite YouTube ads missing expectations and Waymo momentum. (CNBC)

  • Amazon: Revenue rose 17% YoY to $181.5B, beating estimates, as AWS grew 28% to $37.6B, its fastest pace in 15 quarters. Shares initially rose, then fell as much as 7%, before recovering near Wednesday’s closing level. (Yahoo Finance)

  • Apple: Revenue rose 16.6% YoY to $111.18B, beating estimates, as Mac sales reached $8.4B on MacBook Neo demand while iPhone sales missed on chip constraints. Shares fell ~1% after hours despite service strength, China upside, and a new $100B buyback authorization. (Reuters)

  • Meta: Revenue rose 33% YoY to $56.3B, beating estimates, but DAP missed at 3.56B, and Reality Labs lost $4.03B on $402M sales. Shares fell 6%+ after hours as investors scrutinized AI capex, user growth, and metaverse losses. (CNBC)

  • Microsoft: Revenue rose 18% YoY to $82.9B, beating consensus, while Azure growth accelerated to 40% and AI annualized revenue reached $37B. Despite stronger earnings and lower-than-expected capex, shares slipped about 2% after hours as investors weighed margins and leadership changes. (CNBC)

AI Fundraising News (Apr 24 — Apr 30)

  • Actively: AI sales agent company, raised a $45M Series B

  • Aidoc: AI medical imaging company, raised a $150M Series E

  • Aleph Alpha: German AI enterprise language model company, merged with Cohere in a deal including a $600M investment from Aleph Alpha’s backer Schwarz Group into Cohere’s Series E raise

  • Astor: AI investment advisory company, raised a $5M seed

  • Audion: AI digital audio advertising company, raised a $15M Series B

  • Avoca: AI service business automation company, raised $125M+

  • Band: AI agent coordination company, raised a $17M seed

  • Blackstar Computers: AI-native hardware and OS company, raised a $12M seed

  • Casa: AI residential handyman platform company, raised a $20M Series A

  • Certifyde: AI adoption platform company, raised a $2M seed

  • Cleo Labs: AI compliance workflow automation company, raised $1.8M

  • Cloneable: AI heavy industry automation company, raised a $4.6M seed

  • Collov Labs: AI visual reasoning interface company, raised a $23M Series A

  • ComfyUI: AI workflow creation platform company, raised $30M

  • Copperhelm: AI cloud threat remediation company, raised a $7M seed

  • Creati Gen AI: AI video editing company, raised $20M

  • Dehaze: AI patient data diagnostics company, raised a $3.7M seed

  • Era: AI gadget software platform company, raised a $9M seed

  • Fathom Therapeutics: AI drug discovery company, raised a $47M Series A

  • Featherless.ai: AI serverless inference platform company, raised a $20M Series A

  • General Analysis: AI agent security testing company, raised a $10M seed

  • Hightouch: AI marketing software company, raised $150M

  • Human Intelligence: AI physiology research model company, raised $100M

  • Ineffable Intelligence: AI superlearner model company, raised a $1.1B seed

  • JuliaHub: AI industrial engineering automation company, raised a $65M Series B

  • Legora: AI legal collaboration platform company, raised a $50M Series D extension

  • Manifest OS: AI legal workflow agents company, raised a $60M Series A

  • Marloo: AI financial advisor platform company, raised a $10M seed

  • Mosaic: AI deal modeling automation company, raised an $18M Series A

  • Netomi: AI customer support automation company, raised $110M

  • Octen: AI agent web search company, raised a $10M seed

  • Parallel Web Systems: AI agent web search infrastructure company, raised a $100M Series B

  • Pursuit: AI government contract discovery company, raised a $22M seed

  • Redpine: AI agent data access company, raised $8M

  • Rogo: AI financial services workflow platform company, raised a $160M Series D

  • Scout AI: AI autonomous vehicle training company, raised a $100M Series A

  • Segura: AI insurance infrastructure company, raised an $8M seed

  • Sereact: AI industrial robotics software company, raised a $110M Series B

  • Series: AI iMessage social networking company, raised a $5.1M pre-seed

  • Shapes: AI group chat agent company, raised an $8M seed round

  • SkyfireAI: AI drone coordination company, raised an $11M seed

  • Spread AI: AI engineering data platform company, raised a $30M Series B

  • Squaremind: AI robotic skin imaging company, raised $18M

  • Standard Intelligence: AI computer use models company, raised $75M

  • Thoughtly: AI CRM outreach automation company, raised a $5.5M seed

  • TriFetch: AI specialty clinic workflow company, raised a $1.9M pre-seed

  • Verda: AI cloud infrastructure company, raised $117.2M

  • Zamp: AI sales tax compliance company, raised $17M

  • Zig.ai: AI revenue workflow automation company, raised a $3M seed