The AI Boom’s Latest Winner: A Brand-New Startup That Just Landed a $10 Billion Deal With Anthropic

Things change fast in the AI world, and the market is evolving so quickly that brand-new companies are able to make a splash in the same way that more established brands can. Case in point: a Bloomberg report says AI giant Anthropic has invested $10 billion for access to computing capacity from a startup called Volta Infra Holdings Ltd. The startling factor here is that Volta was only established at the start of this year, and yet it’s suddenly a key player in the AI game. Though the deal has yet to be made public, Bloomberg learned that Anthropic’s contract centers around access to a data center managed by Volta. This is exactly Volta’s business—it’s all about supplying the behind-the-scenes tech that is powering the AI revolution. The company’s website says it thinks ”Compute should be a utility. Not a bottleneck” and promises it’s “developing, financing, and operating AI factories at global scale.” Not much else has been reported about the California-based startup, though the U.K.’s Times newspaper noted that its cofounder and CEO Ricard Boada Rafart, a Spaniard living in the U.K., set up the company with a single £1 of share capital. Anthropic has been trying to keep up with increasing demand for its AI products like its Claude chatbot, Bloomberg reported, and the deal is the latest maneuver by the large firm to gain access to computer power. Anthropic has also signed deals with other suppliers to gain access to powerful AI computer resources, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX. SpaceX absorbed Musk’s AI outfit XAI prior to its recent IPO, and has long term plans to put AI processing servers in orbit as part of its Starmind project. Volta, for its part, did not acknowledge Anthropic’s interest to Bloomberg. But in a LinkedIn post, Boada acknowledged a “$10 billion strategic partnership with a leading AI lab to develop an AI Factory in Europe, generating approximately $1.7 billion of annual revenue for Volta.” He also explained that the company’s belief is simply that “AI infrastructure needs both technology and institutional capital. One without the other isn’t enough.” Bloomberg says the Volta deal is in partnership with a bitcoin mining firm, Norway’s Bitdeer Technologies Group. Bitdeer’s data center is said to be equipped with Nvidia’s new Vera Rubin AI chips, and Bloomberg notes this maneuver is part of a trend where tech firms pivot away from cryptocurrency mining and toward the AI market. Nvidia’s newest AI chips were also recently at the center of another AI infrastructure deal, where the chipmaker itself invested $5 billion in another small AI startup, Safe Superintelligence. Separate reports say that Volta has also raised $300 million in a funding round led by new investors, including well-known VC firm Andreessen Horowitz LLC and also Nvidia. This funding means the seven month-old startup is valued at a staggering $2.4 billion. Depending on how Anthropic’s rumored investment is structured, this valuation could even skyrocket. Anthropic declined to comment to Inc. Volta directed Inc. to a press release that confirmed the existence of a $10 billion deal but did not add any additional information beyond that reported previously. The deal is a reminder that AI really is the hottest tech game playing out right now. Volta achieved a multi-billion dollar valuation incredibly quickly, simply by solving an important middle-layer infrastructure issue for a leading AI supplier. If your company is looking for new fields to venture into, it would seem that the right moves in AI tech can lead to big wins. There’s a little more to think about here, however. When you buy an AI service from a supplier like Anthropic or OpenAI, you may assume that your data and chatbot queries are handled by that firm alone. The fact is that this is not true for many AI suppliers, and in reality your data could be being shepherded around the globe to wherever the supplier can find computer power at affordable prices. For most of your AI needs, this is not going to be an issue. But for some firms, this could represent a potential compliance complication. Meanwhile, the fact that third party AI compute suppliers are involved should be another reminder that AI models are not necessarily secure, and extra links in the supply chain may increase the risk of data leaking out. This kind of third-party supplier issue has stung other tech firms in the past. Cyber risk management firm FortifyData is keeping a running total of notable leaks this year, and it warns: “Third-party data breaches are no longer rare. They’re becoming the new normal.” Lastly, the news could prompt savvy CEOs to beef-up AI security and safety training for their workforce. Too many users trust AI models implicitly, and you may be surprised at how many of your workers are riskily exposing your own company data by typing it into chatbots. BY KIT EATON @KITEATON

ChatGPT’s Latest Upgrade Isn’t Just a New Model. It’s What Free Users Can Do Without Limits

OpenAI, aware of the ever-increasing role ChatGPT is playing in people’s lives, has tweaked something that will benefit millions on a daily basis: it’s upgraded the default version of the chatbot for free users. And while the new improved GPT-5.6 Luna model will be great, the most important benefit is another new feature: unlimited text-based chats for free users. This could dramatically open up how people use ChatGPT. In its blog post announcing the changes, OpenAI pointed out that there are still a few constraints in place for free unlimited access. While you can query the chatbot using text-based questions as much as you like, and receive the resulting text-based answers, if you’re asking the chatbot to analyze a file, or input an image or voice as a query, there are still limits for free users. Similarly, limits remain if you’re asking the AI to generate an image, and a few other higher-power features. It’s worth keeping in mind that the complex computer power needed to process a user’s chatbot query burns through resources that cost OpenAI money. Giving users free unlimited access to the core AI features is thus a risk for the AI maker, because it will consume a variable percentage of the available resources. It’s a smart move to control this risk by limiting how free users can use the models. Meanwhile, the unlimited access may encourage people to use the AI in more meaningful ways, and more frequently, which will certainly tempt a share of users on the free tier to pay to upgrade their membership so they can access the AI’s full capabilities. Unlimited queries alone would be a great perk for free tier users, but OpenAI is also upgrading the default AI model to its GPT-5.6 Luna system, which it promises is a major improvement because responses containing factual errors are rarer for this system. In fact, the AI maker says that responses with errors are about 62 percent less common than the previous model (GPT-5.5 Instant). Users who pay for the Go tier, costing $8 a month, will gain these upgrades too, along with allowances for more messages with tools, more uploads, more image creation and more voice chats without busting through limits. Go users will also get free unlimited text chats. And both Go and free tiers will get a button that instructs the tool to think more deeply about answering (which may take more time). The higher Plus and Pro tiers (starting at $20 a month and $100 a month, respectively) actually get a better version of the default model, GPT-5.6 Sol. OpenAI says this tool is better at delivering tightly-focused answers with less unnecessary formatting. It also has a more level tone across multiple types of conversation, and it’ll make fewer mistakes because it’s better at accessing source material to look up details. What’s the practical upshot of these upgrades? The whole world may breathe a sigh of relief at the upgrade to GPT-5.6 Luna. In its press push for these improvements, OpenAI explained that one billion people use ChatGPT every week. An email from an OpenAI spokesperson noted that the Luna upgrade also brings “major improvements in factuality to the majority of people who use ChatGPT.” Given the carefree way that many people use this tool for generating content they share online, on social media or for work purposes, the model having an improved grip on facts may lead to less misinformation from hundreds of millions of people. Fewer erroneous answers also will benefit businesses that let their staff use ChatGPT in the workplace. As does unlimited access to text-based queries: for companies on a tighter budget, this could even turbo-charge how you use AI to polish processes and free up worker time for meaningful tasks. Companies who pay for their workers’ ChatGPT access will get still more powerful tools, and an improved experience which has clear benefits. The changes also remind us that things change quickly in the AI world, and companies that are comfortable with using the tech need to pivot quickly to keep up with the fast-evolving tools. AI-savvy CEOs will also see these tweaks to the market-leading AI as a reminder that they need to upgrade their staff training on how to best use AI, along with guidelines on which company data is and isn’t appropriate to share as part of their unlimited queries. BY KIT EATON @KITEATON

With Just 5 Words, OpenAI’s President Admitted the Problem With the New ChatGPT App

Confused about the new ChatGPT desktop app? OpenAI president Greg Brockman thinks it’s messy, too. Brockman addressed the app’s unintuitive user interface in a wide-ranging interview with tech journalist Joanna Stern, released on YouTube this Wednesday. Stern pointed out that the app was “kind of a mess,” and Brockman echoed her, saying, “it’s kind of a mess, we agree.” OpenAI launched a do-it-all app on July 9, transforming what was formerly the ChatGPT app into an everything app, merging it with their standalone coding agent app, Codex, and introducing a “Work” mode alongside “Chat” and “Codex.” The app formerly known as “ChatGPT” became “ChatGPT Classic,” which only has the chat mode. At launch, users struggled to understand the difference between the Chat and Work options, and were frustrated by how unintuitive it was to switch between the different modes. “I am so confused right now,” wrote tech writer and investor M.G. Siegler in a post titled “The ChatGPT ‘Super App’ Sort of Super Sucks.” The next day, Codex engineering lead Thibault Sottiaux acknowledged user complaints in an X thread, and on July 16, OpenAI updated the desktop app with a clearer way to switch between Chat, Work and Codex. But navigation is still not intuitive. The app now has a “Chat/Work” toggle at the top of the app, but to select the Codex mode for coding work, users have to navigate to a drop-down menu on the left sidebar to choose between “ChatGPT” and “Codex.” The default mode is also not consistent across the desktop and web apps. The desktop app defaults to “Work” but the web interface defaults to “Chat,” while “Work” on the web is only available for Pro plans. “I’m almost afraid to ask but… in the web interface, what on earth is the difference between chatgpt ‘work’ and ‘chat’ mode?” posted Lucas Beyer, Meta researcher and ex-OpenAI employee, on X. “Asked ChatGPT Work to summarize it for you (and agree the UI should tell you this directly and you shouldn’t have to come here to ask),” replied Codex engineering lead Thibault Sottiaux. “ChatGPT Work is optimized for work!” Sottiaux and OpenAI describe Work as intended for longer, multi-step tasks where “agents” plan and carry out tasks more autonomously, such as generating research reports. Work follows Codex usage structure, so can draw down more tokens than Chat. OpenAI product engineering lead Akshay Nathan also said this week that ChatGPT tries to push users to the “Work” mode if they are creating a spreadsheet. In his interview with Stern, Brockman said he expects they will phase out the Work tab by the end of the year. “We were hoping to land with zero tabs,” he admitted in the interview. “But I definitely think that by end of year there should be no work tab. You know, that this will be something that will just seamlessly mold into ChatGPT.” In the meantime, don’t ask Brockman to call it a super-app. “We actually don’t really use the word super-app,” he told Stern. “I regret that [it] has become the term of art,” he said with a laugh. BY JULIE LEE

Nvidia Just Bet $5 Billion on an AI Startup Most People Have Never Heard Of. Here’s Why

Nvidia, the world’s leading AI chipmaker, just announced it’s investing $5 billion dollars—a giant chunk of money by any reasonable measure—into a smallish AI startup that most people probably haven’t heard of. It’s an outfit called Safe Superintelligence, SSI for short, based in Palo Alto, California and Tel Aviv, Israel. The investment could nevertheless be hugely important for a number of reasons relating to the future of AI tech. Here’s what’s going on. What is Safe Superintelligence? SSI was founded only in mid-2024, and its co-founder and CEO is Ilya Sutskever, formerly OpenAI’s chief technology officer. Sutskever created a fuss when he left OpenAI because he’d been intimately involved in bringing ChatGPT to the world, and was leading the AI’s alignment team. This part of OpenAI was critical, especially at the time, because it had one main job: making sure that as OpenAI’s products got more sophisticated they aligned with humankind’s needs, rather than evolving into a threat. Sutskever’s departure led to some serious questions about OpenAI’s good intentions when developing future AI models—a debate that’s still bubbling away today, as OpenAI’s Sam Altman stirs the pot by announcing he feels we’re already in a powerful singularity moment. Safe Superintelligence is actually about more than just building AI chatbots like Siri or ChatGPT. The clue’s in the name: it’s not just about intelligence—it’s trying to make “superintelligence.” This, experts have long suggested, is an AI capable of out-thinking even the most agile human mind, in pretty much any area you can imagine. The company’s own website says this may be “the most important technical problem of our time” and it “is our mission, our name, and our entire product roadmap, because it is our sole focus.” Rather than developing ever-smarter AIs and then bolting on safety and security, SSI is developing AI and safety “in tandem, as technical problems to be solved through revolutionary engineering and scientific breakthroughs.” News like the recent international ban of Anthropic’s Mythos 5 model by the U.S. government for national security reasons, and the fact that an OpenAI model went rogue, escaped and then attacked a rival’s AI systems with a hack, show how important safe AI development is becoming. For superintelligent AIs, safety is clearly going to be even more important. SSI has been in and out of the headlines since its founding because although it’s raised sizable investments (topping $3 billion in total by late 2025,) it has yet to release any kind of meaningful product. The new $5 billion from Nvidia, its biggest financial injection yet, has resurfaced many questions about the company. Why does the investment matter? The mammoth investment is a sign that Nvidia, which by many accounts makes the world’s leading AI chips, is interested in a safe future for AI, and that it’s thinking beyond the current AI chatbot paradigm and has an eye on the next generation of superintelligent systems. As part of the deal, SSI will also gain access to Nvidia’s Vera ​Rubin chips. These are next-generation chips that are even more sophisticated than the company’s Blackwell chips, which stirred plenty of media attention when they were revealed in 2024. For certain key processes needed to make AI calculations, the new chips may be between two and five times faster than the Blackwell chips. This kind of raw power should speed the development of SSI’s AI systems significantly. In a press release, Nvidia also revealed the investment and technology deal goes both ways. It noted that the “two companies will also collaborate on the technical advancement of NVIDIA’s current and future compute platforms, leveraging SSI’s unique insights into the future of AI.” This implies that SSI has made powerful and useful progress that Nvidia executives have seen, and they want to make the most of SSI’s developments to keep their own company at the cutting edge of AI. The release quotes Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who praised Sutsever’s expertise and “fundamental breakthroughs at the foundation of modern AI.” He went on to say he was “excited to see what new breakthroughs SSI will discover powered by our Vera Rubin platform.” Why should you care about this? The news won’t directly impact the way you use AI in your own company. But it may remind you that current-generation AI tech isn’t inherently safe or trustworthy. Use these tools in the wrong way, and you could make a disastrous financial decision because of false information an AI told you, for example; or, a third party AI company may leak sensitive data your own staff have shared with an AI tool (as just happened with Anthropic’s Claude model). But the idea of superintelligent AI tools should be a part of your long term business plans. If you’re finding today’s AI tools helpful in building your business, you shouldn’t sleep on the innovative AI models that the future promises. Constantly checking to see if AI matches your needs could become a new business norm. BY KIT EATON @KITEATON