AI briefing: this week

This week at a glance

Four days into the week, the AI race has become a finance and construction race. Google is backstopping a roughly $19 billion lease so Anthropic gets 401 megawatts of Kentucky data-center capacity, Anthropic's updated IPO paperwork showed about $33 billion in revenue over the first nine months of 2026 alongside much larger future computing commitments, and Fal, which rents out the computing power that runs other companies' AI, raised $1.3 billion at a doubled $16 billion valuation. Salesforce agreed to buy call-center voice-AI maker Cresta, reported at about $2.7 billion. On the product side, Tencent launched Hy4 as a new open-source heavyweight, and Moonshot AI released the weights of Kimi K3.1 Pro - a 2.8-trillion-parameter multimodal model - for anyone to download. ChatGPT learned to make animated GIFs, Apple Intelligence finally got a China launch date with Alibaba's Qwen inside, and OpenAI said ChatGPT now handles a fifth as many searches as Google.

Key stories of the week

1. Google backstops a $19B lease for Anthropic's Kentucky data center.
2. Anthropic's updated IPO filing: huge real revenue, even larger future computing bills, and its own warning that AI may soon speed up AI research.
3. Tencent launches Hy4, and Moonshot releases Kimi K3.1 Pro's weights - the open-source tier keeps getting stronger.
4. OpenAI says ChatGPT now handles a fifth as many searches as Google; ChatGPT also learns to make GIFs.
5. Salesforce agrees to buy voice-AI company Cresta, reported at about $2.7B.

This week's briefings