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In another wild turn for AI chips, Meta signs deal for millions of Amazon AI CPUs

Amazon just scored a major coup with Meta thanks, once again, to Amazon’s own homegrown chips. Meta has signed a deal to use millions of AWS Graviton chips to power its growing AI needs, Amazon announced Friday.

Note that the AWS Graviton is an ARM-based CPU, (a central processing unit, the chip that handles general computing tasks) not a GPU (a graphical processing unit).

 
 

While GPUs remain the chip of choice for training large models

once those models are trained, AI agents built on top of them are causing a shift in the type of chip is needed. Agents create compute-intensive workloads like real-time reasoning, writing code, search, and the the coordination involved in managing agents through multi-step tasks. AWS’s latest version of Graviton was designed specifically to handle AI-related compute needs, the company says.

This deal brings more of Meta’s cash back to AWS instead of competitors like Google Cloud.

Last August, Meta signed a six year, $10 billion deal with Google Cloud, though Meta had, until then, primarily been an AWS customer that also used Microsoft Azure.

We couldn’t help but notice that AWS timed the announcement of this deal right as the Google Cloud Next conference wrapped up, like a virtual smirk at its cloud rival. Google, of course, also makes its own custom AI chips and announced new versions of them at the show.

True, Amazon makes its own AI GPU as well:

The Trainium, which, despite its name, is used for both training and inference — the stage that happens after a model is trained, when it’s actively processing prompts.

But Anthropic had already swooped in with a deal announced earlier this month that commandeered many of those chips for years to come. The Claude maker agreed to spend $100 billion over 10 years to run its workloads on AWS — with a particular focus on Trainium — while Amazon agreed to invest another $5 billion (bringing its total to $13 billion of investment) into Anthropic in return.

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Ultimately, the Meta deal is allowing Amazon to showcase a huge AI customer as a proving point for its homegrown CPUs. These are chips that compete with Nvidia’s new Vera CPU, which is also ARM-based and designed to handle AI agentic workloads. The difference, of course, is that Nvidia sells its chips and AI systems to enterprises and cloud providers (including AWS). AWS only sells access to its chips through its cloud service.

Earlier this month Amazon CEO Andy Jassy took aim at Nvidia and Intel in his annual shareholder letter, saying that enterprises want better price-performance ratios for AI, and that he intends to win deals on that basis. This also means the pressure couldn’t be higher on Amazon’s internal chip building team to deliver, a team that we visited last month in an exclusive tour of their lab.

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Porsche is adding an all-electric Cayenne coupe to its lineup

Porsche will start selling an all-electric Cayenne coupe in late summer, the latest signal from the German automaker that it still sees market demand for EVs.

The Cayenne coupe EV — which has four doors, unlike a traditional coupe — will join several other all-electric variants of the SUV when it comes to market later this year, including the base Cayenne Electric, Cayenne S Electric, and Cayenne Turbo Electric. Porsche does, after all, love its variants.

And it could be its most successful. When Porsche introduced a coupe version of its gas-powered Cayenne in 2019, it took just a year for the sportier version of the crossover SUV to capture 20% of sales within the Cayenne lineup. Five years later, the coupe variant accounts for 40% of Cayenne sales, according to Porsche. In some markets, the coupe accounts for as much as 90%.

In other words, the numbers suggest that the all-electric Cayenne coupe is a worthy bet even with its six-figure price tag.

The Cayenne Coupe Electric (as it is officially branded) won’t replace its gas-powered or hybrid brethren, unlike the Porsche Macan compact SUV, which will only be sold as an EV after this year.

The company says the Cayenne coupe EV will be sold alongside the other fuel variants well beyond 2030, according to a Porsche spokesperson. That could produce some valuable data for Porsche on what flavor of Cayenne coupe consumers actually want to buy — and whether this electric variant proves to be its most popular. (The extra front trunk space alone could influence some buyers, not to mention gas prices.)

None of those questions can be answered, however, until the Cayenne Electric, Cayenne S Electric, Cayenne Turbo Electric, and Cayenne Coupe Electric go on sale globally later this year — about nine months after the EV version was first unveiled.

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When the Cayenne coupe EV does go on sale, it will be offered in three variants: the base version, an S coupe, and a turbo coupe. (If you think that’s a lot, go check out how many versions of its flagship Porsche Taycan EV exist.)

The Cayenne Coupe Electric starts at $113,800, not including the $2,350 delivery fee. Prices rise from there with the Cayenne S Coupe Electric at $131,200, and the Cayenne Turbo Coupe Electric at $168,000. Consumers can, of course, spend even more by adding on options like the lightweight sport package, which includes a carbon roof, performance tires, and motorsports-inspired interior features.

For that kind of money, consumers will get a lot of horsepower and torque tucked inside a crossover body with a sloping roofline that is reminiscent of the iconic 911. All variants of the coupe EV come with an 800-volt powertrain, air suspension, and a shared roof design that features a new windshield and an adaptive rear spoiler. The Cayenne coupe EV is also equipped with the North American Charging Standard port, or NACS, that Tesla popularized, as as well as an additional AC charging port.

From here, some specs change depending on the version a consumer buys. The base coupe EV generates up to 435 horsepower and 615 pound-feet of torque, with a top speed of 143 miles per hour and a zero-to-60 time of 4.5 seconds.

For those who aren’t satisfied, there are two more powerful options that push those performance specs much higher. At the top end, the turbo version generates up to 1,139 horsepower and 1,106 pound-feet of torque — putting it up there with the Tesla Model S Plaid, Lucid Air Sapphire, and Porsche Taycan Turbo GT. The turbo version has a top speed of 162 mph and can travel from 0 to 60 mph in an eye-watering 2.4 seconds.

Porsche hasn’t released EPA estimates for the range these coupe EVs will deliver on a single charge. But early real-world testing is in line with other Cayenne electric variants, which is about 360 miles. Of course, if coupe EV buyers opt for those larger tires — which create more rolling resistance, requiring the battery to work harder — the range could drop about 10%.

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Bob Iger rejoins Thrive Capital as advisor after Disney exit

Bob Iger is returning to Thrive Capital as an advisor, just one month after stepping down as CEO of Disney, a role he held for nearly two decades.

Iger previously served a two-month stint as a venture partner at the firm in late 2022, but left when the Disney board asked him to retake the helm of the media conglomerate, following his initial departure from the company in 2020.

“Bob leads with boldness and conviction because he knows what he is building and why. He is rejoining Thrive at a time when that kind of leadership matters most,” Thrive’s founder Josh Kushner posted on X.

Iger, who already owns a stake in the firm, will work with Thrive’s investment staff and portfolio founders, the Wall Street Journal reported. However, his advisory role will likely not require a full-time commitment.

Thrive manages over $50 billion in assets, according to PitchBook. In February, the firm announced that it raised $10 billion in capital commitments for its 10th fund, the largest in the firm’s 17-year history. Thrive holds significant stakes in OpenAI, Stripe, and SpaceX. The firm also amassed a 7% ownership stake in Cursor, whose potential sale to SpaceX could be worth about $4.2 billion, Bloomberg reported.

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Authorities arrest special forces soldier who allegedly made $400K on Polymarket bet involving Maduro operation

A special forces soldier involved in the operation that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has been indicted by the U.S. Justice Department. His alleged crime? Making numerous bets on the prediction market Polymarket that Maduro would be removed from power, for which he is said to have made upwards of $400,000.

Authorities claim Gannon Ken Van Dyke, who was involved in the “planning and execution” of Operation Absolute Resolve (the stratagem that toppled and captured the Venezuelan leader), made bets on Polymarket about whether the U.S. would deploy forces into Venezuela and remove Maduro from power.

Van Dyke was arrested on Thursday, CBS reports, citing a law enforcement source.

Federal officials say that Van Dyke’s wagers were informed by classified information he had access to as a result of being a government insider. The government notes that Van Dyke signed nondisclosure agreements prohibiting him from ever divulging, publishing, or revealing “by writing, words, conduct, or otherwise . . . any classified or sensitive information” related to the military operations he was involved with.

In December, Van Dyke created a Polymarket account and began making wagers involving “Maduro- and Venezuela-related markets,” officials say. Between December 27, 2025 and January 26 of this year, he allegedly made 13 bets totaling some $33,034 in total on things like “U.S. Forces in Venezuela . . . by January 31, 2026” and “Maduro out by . . . January 31, 2026.” Officials say that, after collecting his winnings, Van Dyke also took steps to cover up his ties to the account that made the wagers.

Van Dyke faces a variety of charges, including violating the Commodity Exchange Act, wire fraud, and making an unlawful monetary transaction.

“Our men and women in uniform are trusted with classified information in order to accomplish their mission as safely and effectively as possible, and are prohibited from using this highly sensitive information for personal financial gain,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “Widespread access to prediction markets is a relatively new phenomenon, but federal laws protecting national security information fully apply.”

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Prediction markets have inspired controversy ever since their launch. But over the past year, the sites have grown in prominence and influence, striking deals with media outlets and sports organizations while also seeing widespread use, including by public officials. Legislation is currently being mulled that would ban public officials from using nonpublic information to make bets on prediction sites.

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Redwood Materials loses COO amid layoffs, restructuring

Redwood Materials chief operating officer Chris Lister is leaving the battery recycling company to retire, TechCrunch has learned — and he’s not the only executive that recently departed.

Lister, a former vice president who led operations at Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory, has been with Redwood since late 2023. He started as the company’s chief supply chain officer and was quickly promoted to the COO role in 2024. The promotion put him closer in the org chart to Redwood founder and CEO JB Straubel, who was Tesla’s longtime chief technology officer and currently sits on the automaker’s board.

Redwood Materials recently informed employees that Lister was retiring, according to an employee who was granted anonymity to speak about the announcement. The company confirmed Lister’s departure to TechCrunch on Thursday. “We wish him the best in his retirement,” a spokesperson said via email.

News of Lister’s retirement comes just a few days after TechCrunch revealed Redwood Materials recently laid off around 10% of its workforce, or roughly 135 employees.

Those cuts were part of a restructuring that Straubel told employees about in an email viewed by TechCrunch earlier this week. He said the shuffle will help support the company’s growing energy storage business. Redwood has recently signed deals with automaker Rivian and artificial intelligence company Crusoe to provide refurbished batteries that can be used as grid storage.

Other executives have left Redwood in recent months, too.

Bradley Mayhew, Redwood’s vice president of integrated supply chain and a former Tesla employee, left the company earlier this month, according to LinkedIn. Guillermo Urquiza, Redwood’s vice president of mechanical engineering — and another former Tesla employee — left in March. And Carlos Lozano, the company’s vice president of manufacturing, left earlier this year for a leadership role at Panasonic, according to LinkedIn.

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Mayhew, Urquiza, and Lozano didn’t respond to requests for comment. Redwood declined to specifically comment on their departures, but noted that Straubel said in his all-staff email that he is trying to reduce layers of management at the company.

Straubel also told employees in his message that “parts of the company have expanded faster than needed” and that he was “more excited than ever with our path ahead as we build the most integrated and cost-effective critical materials and energy storage business in the world.”

“We are confident that we can deliver on our critical projects with a smaller team that is more focused,” he wrote. “We have successfully adapted to changes in the market that have bankrupted many of our competitors.”

Ref link: Redwood Materials loses COO amid layoffs, restructuring