Plus: OpenAI claims Jalapeño chip beats Nvidia inference; Anthropic rents Nscale data center capacity
Welcome to a Thursday edition where the pace of innovation is matched only by the weight of the questions being asked.
REGULATION
⚖️ SEC probes Situational Awareness fund
Image source: techcrunch.com
The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Situational Awareness, an AI-focused hedge fund. The fund nearly collapsed in late July when its value dropped from about $45 billion to $10 billion.
The details:
The SEC sent subpoenas to banks that provided loans for leveraged trading.
The subpoenas requested details on the timing of trades and communications with lenders.
Situational Awareness has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
Jalapeño outperformed Nvidia’s superchips on an AI inference benchmark test. OpenAI says its new AI chip, Jalapeño, completes tasks more efficiently and returns responses faster than other AI systems.
The details:
Jalapeño is an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) made in partnership with Broadcom.
OpenAI used InferenceX to measure Jalapeño’s performance.
Jalapeño delivered 1.5 to 1.9 times more AI work per watt across GPT-OSS 120B, DeepSeek R1, and Kimi K2.5 1T than the comparison systems.
Anthropic will spend $45 billion to rent AI cloud computing power from Nscale's West Virginia data center campus. The six-year agreement with Nscale represents about 460 megawatts of power capacity.
The details:
Nscale will deploy Nvidia's new Vera Rubin chips to support Anthropic's computing needs.
Nscale was founded in May 2024 by Josh Payne, who previously co-founded Arkon Energy.
Nscale raised over $4.9 billion and reached a $14.6 billion valuation after a $2 billion Series C round.
