Good morning. I’m thrilled to share some of the eminent folks who will be speaking at this year’s Fortune Brainstorm Tech, June 8 to 10 in Aspen, Colorado.
Joining the 25th anniversary celebration of our flagship tech summit is an array of big thinkers from across industries.
We’ll have all things AI, of course. Anthropic’s Claude Code chief Boris Cherny will be there, as will SambaNova CEO Rodrigo Liang, Snowflake chief Sridhar Ramaswamy, and Adaption Labs CEO Sara Hooker.
And did we mention Brian Schimpf? All systems go for the Anduril CEO.
We’ll also have leaders of some of the biggest corporations on the planet. UPS CEO Carol Tomé will join us, as will Booking Holdings chief Glenn Fogel and Hyatt CEO Mark Hoplamazian.
Expect emissaries from the ever-changing world of media. Among them: Tubi chief Anjali Sud, Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone, and Twitch chief Dan Clancy—plus Grant LaFontaine, CEO of the addictive shopping streamer Whatnot.
Expect views from the smart money, too. Bloomberg Beta’s Karin Klein and CapitalG’s Mo Jomaa are among the illustrious investors in this year’s mix.
It doesn’t end there. Liquid Death chief Mike Cessario will murder conventional marketing. Noble Mobile CEO Andrew Yang will break down the math of digital addiction. Campus founder Tade Oyerinde will school us on new models for education. Lunar Outpost chief Justin Cyrus will take us to the moon. Future Dynamics CEO Cathy Hackl will open our eyes and Base Power CEO Zach Dell will bring the heat. We’ll even hear from Aaru CEO Cameron Fink, a tech wunderkind if there ever was one.
And there’s no anniversary celebration without a little sizzle. Tech icons Steve Case and Meg Whitman return to our esteemed gathering, as does Brainstorm’s founding editor, David Kirkpatrick.
Plus: Olympic snowboarder Shaun White will join us. Real estate star Ryan Serhant and Mr. “Assistants vs. Agents” himself, Warner Bailey, will, too. And I’m not going to promise that AI actress Tilly Norwood will make a cameo, but I’m not not, either.
There’s only one way to rub shoulders with all of these folks—register your interest before it’s too late.
Today’s news below. —Andrew Nusca
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Amazon AI is generating $15 billion per year
There’s ARR, and then there’s Amazon ARR.
In a new letter to shareholders published Thursday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote that the new king of the Fortune 500 is now generating an annual run rate of $15 billion for the AI activities within its cloud computing unit.
“We have never seen a technology more quickly adopted than AI,” he wrote, adding later: “We’re not investing approximately $200 billion in capex in 2026 on a hunch.”
The executive's letter is part offense, part defense. Offense, of course, because Amazon is Amazon. (“Wherever possible, invent the next inflections,” Jassy writes. Noted.) Defense because Amazon shareholders, like those of its biggest tech peers, have grown wary of the possibility that they will see adequate returns on the astonishing sums of money that the company is sinking into AI initiatives.
Just a few weeks ago, Amazon shares traded for less than $200—the same price they were at in 2024. This week, Amazon shares jumped to $232. After all, who wants to miss out on a gold rush? —AN
Anthropic may design its own chips
Anthropic, the Nikola Tesla to OpenAI’s Thomas Edison, is reportedly exploring the possibility that it may design its own AI chips.
Why would the colossally funded company behind the Claude chatbot wanna burn cash on hardware? Because there’s a shortage—and Anthropic has no desire to be left behind using what’s already on the market.
“The plans are in early stages,” according to Reuters, “and the company may still decide to only buy AI chips and not design any.” Rival OpenAI, of course, is already working with Broadcom on chips that will roll off the production line later this year.
It is certainly a consideration for a tech CEO breathing rare air. The price tag for designing an advanced AI chip is, oh, about a half a billion dollars, per Reuters.
For now, Anthropic is using silicon from a number of suppliers, including Google’s TPUs and Amazon’s Trainium chips. Both are principally manufactured by TSMC. —AN
xAI challenges Colorado AI anti-discrimination law
Another day, another lawsuit from one of Elon Musk’s corporate interests.
xAI, the AI lab that recently merged with SpaceX, has filed a lawsuit challenging landmark Colorado legislation that aims to protect consumers from “algorithmic discrimination” in high-risk artificial intelligence systems.
The law—set to take effect on June 30—requires providers to regularly assess the system’s discriminatory impact, disclose those results to the state within 90 days, and notify users who might be using the system to make “consequential decisions” about things like healthcare and housing, among other stipulations.
The way xAI sees it, the law would force it to “promote the state’s ideological views on various matters, racial justice in particular” in its Grok chatbot. The company claims the law violates First Amendment speech protections, an argument previously made by the White House to support its attempts to ban AI regulation at the state level.
One thing both sides surely agree on: The fate of Colorado’s legislation will influence what happens elsewhere in the U.S.—AN
More tech
—Big banks are freaking out about the threats that could come if Anthropic’s new Claude Mythos model fell into the wrong hands.
—Google commits to using multiple generations of Intel CPUs in its AI data centers.
—Hackers have been exploiting Adobe Acrobat Reader since last year.
—SpaceX lost nearly $5 billion last year on $18.5 billion in revenue.
—Visa launches a payments platform that supports AI agents working across multiple card networks, including those of competitors.
—EFF leaves X, alleging that its posts get less than 3% of the views they once did.
—Samsung invests $4 billion in a new chip packaging plant in Vietnam.
