Good morning. It's Monday, June 1, and we're covering the accelerating demand for AI hardware, the growing cost of competing in the AI race, and SoftBank’s largest AI infrastructure investment in Europe.
Don’t miss this week’s Prompt of the Week ↓
SoftBank announced Friday it will spend up to €75B (~$87B) to develop up to 5 GW of additional data center capacity in France, calling it the firm's largest AI infrastructure investment in Europe. The first phase covers sites in Dunkirk (Loon-Plage), Bosquel, and Bouchain to deliver 3.1 GW of capacity to the Hauts-de-France region by 2031, with French economic minister Roland Lescure framing the announcement as proof of Macron's ambition to position France across the AI value chain.
Months after a deal that reportedly returned billions to investors without a full acquisition, Groq is raising fresh capital to expand its AI inference business. The startup is seeking $650 million from existing backers as demand grows for infrastructure that runs AI applications after training. The move follows Groq’s reported $20 billion technology licensing agreement with NVIDIA in December, which included the departure of senior executives.
Meta Bets on Pendants After $60B Reality Labs Hole
An internal Meta memo viewed by The Information lays out a six-device wearables roadmap aimed at reversing Reality Labs losses ($4B last quarter, >$60B cumulative), centered on an AI pendant entering internal testing in spring 2027 and built on the Limitless acquisition Meta closed at the end of 2025. The plan also expands the smart-glasses lineup with "supersensing" models that keep cameras and sensors running for hours to support all-day AI memory.
Uber exhausted its entire 2026 budget for AI coding tools in just four months, raising concerns about whether increased usage is translating into better products. COO Andrew Macdonald said the company struggles to directly connect adoption of tools like Claude Code to a measurable increase in consumer-facing features. The comments come as Uber reports that autonomous agents now generate about 10% of committed code, while first-quarter 2026 research and development spending rose 17% year over year to $951 million.
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FORWARD FUTURE ORIGINAL
How To Build a SOTA Agent in 2026
By Ethan Wang, Google DeepMind. Founding member of Gemini Spark, the general agent that just launched, and Mariner, the company's first computer-use agent.
Most agent projects that miss the quality bar actually do not miss because the model is too weak. They miss it because the tools are too sophisticated, the system instructions are too crowded, or the team tries to evaluate quality before the plumbing actually works.
This note distills the principles and the sequence — These insights come from developing several state-of-the-art agents. One notable project involved an autonomous music-video director created in just one month through approximately eighty manual iterations. → Read the full article here.
VIDEO
Anthropic Just Dropped Opus 4.8
INFRASTRUCTURE
Dell Earnings Surge Reinforces Strength of AI Infrastructure Boom
Dell Technologies posted a stronger-than-expected quarter driven by surging demand for AI servers, sending its shares up more than 30% on May 29, 2026. The report prompted Wall Street analysts to sharply raise earnings forecasts, with fiscal 2027 estimates increasing from $13.12 to $16.85 per share and fiscal 2028 estimates rising from $15.18 to $20.21. Despite the stock’s dramatic move, valuation multiples changed little because earnings expectations climbed alongside the share price, suggesting the rally is being supported by improving fundamentals rather than speculation.
Dell also said its AI server customer base has surpassed 5,000, up more than 50% in six months, underscoring the breadth of enterprise demand for AI infrastructure. → Read the full article here.
IPOs
SpaceX Bets Billions on AI as IPO Nears
Ahead of its June 12 IPO, SpaceX disclosed that it spent $12.7 billion on AI initiatives in 2025—more than three times its investment in its rocket business—as Elon Musk expands the company's ambitions beyond space exploration. Following xAI’s merger with SpaceX in February 2026, the AI segment recorded a $6.3 billion operating loss, compared with a $657 million loss in the space division.
Much of the spending is funding the Colossus and Colossus II AI data centers and the development of future AI systems, including Grok 5. SpaceX argues the investment positions it to capitalize on a massive AI market opportunity and eventually deploy orbital data centers powered by near-continuous solar energy, though the strategy carries significant execution and financial risks. → Read the full article here.
SEMICONDUCTORS
ByteDance Develops New AI Chips to Reduce NVIDIA Dependence
ByteDance is developing a new AI inference chip modeled on the architecture of Groq’s language processing units as it expands its in-house AI infrastructure and seeks alternatives to NVIDIA hardware. The TikTok owner is also collaborating with Chinese startup InnoStar Semiconductor to integrate advanced memory technology that could eliminate the need for high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a component heavily restricted by U.S. export controls.
The effort reflects China’s broader push for semiconductor self-sufficiency as Beijing discourages reliance on U.S. technology. → Read the full article here. (Paywall)
NEWS
What Else is Happening
AWS Growth Accelerates on AI: AWS revenue rose 28% to $37.6B, its fastest growth in 15 quarters, as Amazon ramps AI investment.
Gemini Spark Launches for Ultra Users: Google's AI agent automates tasks across Gmail, Workspace, and the web using schedules and reusable skills.
UK to Trial AI Age Checks at Borders: 43% of the 6,400+ people claiming to be child migrants were assessed as adults, prompting a 2027 AI age-estimation trial.
AI Voice Scams Become Harder to Spot: FBI says Americans lost $893M to AI-related fraud last year; experts urge verification calls and family code words.
Startup Offers Free Cleaning for AI Data: Shift will clean homes at no cost while recording cleaners' work to train future household robots.
SF Home Seller Accepts AI Stock: A $2.995M San Francisco home will consider OpenAI or Anthropic shares as payment amid the AI wealth boom.
PROMPT OF THE WEEK
The 'Why Does This Matter?' Prompt
I need to remember [task/topic]. Explain why this matters to my goals, stress level or daily life.
