OpenAI Takes a $150B Haircut

OpenAI neared a $30B bridge round at a $1.25T valuation, down from the $1.4T it pitched, ahead of an IPO. Treasury proposed curbs on US tech investment in China, banks blocked rogue AI agents, and OpenAI launched its Decisions API. Sources: OpenAI nears an up to $30B round led by investors from the UAE and Coatue at a $1.25T pre-money valuation, as an “opportunistic” bridge ahead of an IPO (CNBC) The US Treasury proposes a rule to crack down on US high-tech investments in areas like AI and supercomputing in China, Russia, and other “countries of concern” (AP) DeepSeek and MiniMax have won approval to deploy their models overseas, as Beijing says much of Chinese AI will remain free for export despite its draft export-control proposal (Bloomberg) OpenAI makes Decisions API, its Jev competitor, generally available with new voice and visual modalities, at $0.10/1M input tokens and no output-token charges (TechCrunch) Sources: US banks are restricting third-party AI agents from accessing customer accounts, after some agents appeared to act independently of users’ instructions (Axios) Sources: Major US banks, Morgan Stanley among them, have been blocking third-party AI agents from operating inside customer accounts and making transactions, as Jamie Dimon and Schwab’s Richard Wurster say outside agents aren’t getting in (Reuters) Longreads Matt Cortland used an ElevenLabs voice AI agent to make more than 3,000 calls to pubs across Ireland about the price of a Guinness, then used Claude to build the “Guinndex,” a living consumer price index for a pint (Fortune) Subscribe to the ad-free feed.