DATA CENTERS

Alibaba joins AI infrastructure race

The surge in AI data center demand shows no signs of slowing.

Alibaba’s cloud division announced a host of plans to expand its AI ambitions, including the development of new data centers in several countries, at its annual Apsara Conference on Wednesday. 

The data centers will launch in Brazil, France and the Netherlands, with additional sites coming later this year in Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Dubai. 

Earlier this year, the company said it would invest roughly $53 billion in developing AI infrastructure over the next three years. 

• However, Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu said at the conference that spending would exceed that amount, as the speed of development and demand for AI infrastructure “has far exceeded our expectations.” 

• Wu noted in his opening remarks that he anticipates global AI spend to top $4 trillion over the next five years. 

Beyond data centers, Alibaba also touted a host of new partnerships, including a deal with Nvidia to integrate its suite of development tools for physical AI applications, such as humanoid robots and self-driving cars, into its cloud platform. 

Additionally, the company debuted its largest model yet, called Qwen3-Max, boasting more than 1 trillion parameters, which the company claimed outperformed rivals like Anthropic's Claude and DeepSeek-V3.1 in some metrics. 

While Alibaba’s primary business has long been ecommerce, like many tech giants, the firm is seeking to stake its claim in AI and emerge as a considerable competitor. And, like many in the market, inking partnerships, investing in expensive data center infrastructure and building bigger and better models seem to be its strategy for doing so. 

The strategy has at least caught investors’ eyes, as the company saw its share prices jump in both the U.S. and Hong Kong markets following the news.

If the multibillion-dollar data center deals of this week from Project Stargate and Nvidia have told us anything, it’s that compute is the new gold. Alibaba’s increased spending on its AI infrastructure could signal that it, too, is feeling pressure to compete. That pressure could be coming from both U.S. competitors and fellow Chinese firms. According to Bloomberg Intelligence, AI spending by Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and JD.com could exceed $32 billion this year alone. 

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PRODUCTIVITY

Microsoft brings Anthropic to Copilot

OpenAI is no longer Microsoft’s only child. 

On Wednesday, Microsoft announced that it’s adding Anthropic’s models to its Copilot Studio. Users can now choose between Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4 or Opus 4.1 and OpenAI’s GPT-4o. 

Anthropic’s models, launched Wednesday in early release cycle environments, will fully roll out in the next two weeks. 

• To start, users will be able to leverage Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.1 for research tasks.

• Additionally, Opus 4.1 and Claude Sonnet 4 will be available to create and customize “enterprise-grade” agents. 

• “And stay tuned: Anthropic models will bring even more powerful experiences to Microsoft 365 Copilot,” Charles Lamanna, president of business and industry for Copilot, wrote in a blog post. 

Though Microsoft and OpenAI still walk arm-in-arm, bringing rival Anthropic into the mix could signal that the company is seeking to broaden its horizons. 

Microsoft and OpenAI’s partnership first began in 2019 when the company invested $1 billion in the startup, followed by an additional $10 billion investment in 2023. The move united two of AI’s power players when the race was first heating up, and allowed Microsoft to carve out a significant niche in AI for the workplace, powered by OpenAI’s models.

That relationship has since grown tense as OpenAI has skyrocketed in popularity, and reached a boiling point when OpenAI tried (and failed) to acquire AI coding platform Windsurf in June. The waters have settled in recent weeks, with the two reaching a tentative agreement to revise the terms of their partnership which would allow the startup to restructure itself. 

Microsoft, too, has been working on beefing up its own in-house models. Earlier this month consumer AI chief Mustafa Suleyman said the company was making “significant investments” in its own infrastructure to train AI.

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AI ETHICS & LIKENESS

Stan Lee hologram sparks fan debate

A new interactive hologram, "The Stan Lee Experience," premieres this week at L.A. Comic Con, and it's generating significant buzz among Marvel fans. 

The project is a collaboration among Kartoon Studios’ Stan Lee Universe, spatial computing company Proto Hologram, and Hyperreal, the studio behind ultra-realistic digital humans, and has been pitched as an immersive tribute to the late Lee. 

Yet the news has been met with backlash from Marvel fans, who have taken to social media to label the project “ghoulish” and “distasteful.” 

"Even in death, they won't let the guy rest," one wrote on a reddit thread. "It's all pretty dystopian."

"This is wrong and incredibly disrespectful," another wrote. "There's a reason we say 'Rest in Peace’ when someone passes away.” 

Creators said the project is intended as a means of paying homage to Lee, and extending his “voice and spirit” to fans.

Bob Sabouni, head of Stan Lee Legacy Programs at Kartoon Studios, wrote in a press release that the project upholds the “integrity” of Lee’s voice. 

“We’ll never put words in his mouth,” he said.

Chris DeMoulin, CEO of Comikaze Entertainment, parent company of L.A. Comic Con, told The Deep View the team was hopeful sentiments would change once fans had a chance to experience the hologram for themselves. 

“Those of us who helped create this all worked with Stan personally, and we believe it is fun and true to his spirit, and will help extend Stan's legacy to new generations,” he said. “We can't wait to get direct fan feedback on the entire Stan Lee Experience this weekend, and in the future.”

The controversy joins broader debates on the ethics of repurposing likenesses with AI and follows projects like William Shatner’s interactive AI-powered video archive. In 2021, the “Star Trek” icon partnered with StoryFile to let fans ask questions and interact with.

LINKS

• Al Gore’s nonprofit Climate TRACE uses AI to track sources of soot pollution

• Trump Administration tests using AI to deny services to Medicare patients 

• Agentic AI startup Mimica raises more than $26 million in latest funding

• AI models are now advanced enough to pass the hardest level of CFA exams

• Oracle sells $18 billion in investment-grade bonds, its second-largest deal this year

• Constellation Research CEO: “Global market for AI is growing”

• Google Search Live: Google Lens can now “see what your camera sees,” allowing users to show live footage of their surroundings, ask questions and get real-time responses.  

• Memories.ai Video Marketer: An agentic tool that helps brands and marketers find influencers, predict trends and analyze internet virality. 

• Visuals: An AI tool that generates custom visualizations from raw data. 

• Atla: This evaluation tool helps developers automatically detect, diagnose and fix errors in AI agents. 

• Jotform WordPress Agent: This recent Jotform launch can quickly embed an AI chatbot on WordPress sites to answer FAQs, guide site visitors and capture leads.

• Guidde: AI-powered tool to auto-generate step-by-step video guides, docs, and voiceovers with a free browser extension*

• DeepMind: Senior Staff AI Product Designer, Gemini Assistant

• OpenAI: Data Infrastructure Engineer

• Anthropic: Engineering Manager, Inference

• Salesforce: AI Forward Deployed Engineer

GAMES

POLL RESULTS

Do you think massive data center investments will pay off?

• Yes, demand will catch up (36%)

• No, it’s too much, too fast (24%)

• Maybe, depends on real-world use cases (40%)