The Morning Download: AI Developers Race for Go-to-Market Supremacy

Good morning. OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI model developers are battling across several fronts and technology is only one of them. The contest for essential but short-lived advantages in AI models and infrastructure remains crucial, but so does the race for go-to-market supremacy.

As the two AI giants plan for IPOs as soon as this year, they are building channels into one market after another, which together form the architecture for a quick acceleration of revenue.

Anthropic is nearing a $1.5 billion joint venture with Wall Street firms, the Wall Street Journal reported last night. The deal between the AI startup and a handful of firms including Blackstone and Goldman Sachs would create a joint venture to sell AI tools to private-equity backed companies. An announcement is expected as soon as today. OpenAI has also been in talks to form a rival joint venture with private-equity firms that spreads adoption of its own AI tools. Last Wednesday, CNBC reported that PwC landed a deal to become OpenAI’s first resale partner and largest enterprise user.

And as we note below, they also are signing big deals with the government, including the Pentagon.

Last summer, the WSJ Leadership Institute’s Belle Lin reported that Thrive Holdings, a company created by Thrive Capital, and ZBS Partners, invested $100 million into an entity set up to infuse artificial intelligence into information technology services companies.

Anthropic and OpenAI can’t reach their ambitious revenue targets simply by hiring a big salesforce and dispatching them to knock on C-suite doors. They need big partners who can help them sell to entire markets, not just individual companies. While the AI companies offer the technology, those partners will provide masses of customer relationships and deep knowledge of what they need and how they work.

One or two deals won’t be sufficient. They need numerous deals spanning multiple markets. There’s no guarantee that such an architecture will allow those companies to reach IPO-level revenue this year. But there’s no way to get there without it, which puts their business leadership on par with the developers behind their best technology.

It isn’t a case of one-or-the-other, but both. While the models may have a short-lived lead in a wildly competitive race, the ability to create a breakthrough model can confer an almost magical status upon the brand, an essential go-to-market weapon.

Cerebras Systems plans up to $3.5 billion IPO. The chip startup will offer 28 million shares in its planned initial public offering at a price of $115 to $125 a share, WSJ reports. Cerebras makes processors customized for running advanced AI models and has entered into deals with Amazon and OpenAI among others. The company had planned to go public last year, but canceled its plans in October.

Top AI companies agree to Pentagon deals for classified work. The Defense Department Friday said it completed agreements with eight technology companies to use their AI capabilities in classified settings, the WSJ reports. The companies included Amazon, Microsoft and Google, all of which have long-established relationships with the Pentagon, but also OpenAI, Nvidia and Reflection, which specializes in open-source models.

Missing is AI startup Anthropic which rejected a Pentagon’s contract earlier this year in what spiraled into a monthslong feud.

Apple raises price of Mac Mini, an AI power user favorite. The entry level desktop computer now starts at $799, and comes with 512 gigabytes of storage. Previously Apple sold a version for $599 that came with 256 gigabytes. Mac Minis have been flying off Apple’s shelves in recent months as users tap the device for private, “always-on” artificial-intelligence agents, such as OpenClaw.

Card-carrying agents. Payments giant Visa in its quarterly call outlined a scenario in which AI agents might act as supercharged versions of card-wielding humans. While people can swipe or tap or click only so many times a day, an AI agent has no such limitations. “Agents will create significantly more transactions,” Visa Chief Executive Ryan McInerney told analysts on the earnings call.

The quest to use AI to help find new drugs. Pharmaceutical companies are investing billions in AI partnerships with tech firms like Nvidia to accelerate drug development. However, AI hasn't yet dramatically improved clinical trial success rates despite years of promises, the WSJ reports. Instead, the payoff is coming from streamlining back-office tasks or speeding up manufacturing.

But early progress is emerging.

• AI tools also speed up the time it took Recursion Pharmaceuticals to design a new, experimental cancer drug to around 18 months, from an industry average of about four years.
• Japanese drugmaker Takeda submitted an AI-discovered psoriasis pill  for U.S. regulatory approval.

Colorado's tech leaders fear their state is becoming like California. A collection of more than 300 business leaders say burdensome regulations are hindering growth—and that as a result, dozens of companies are skipping town, the WSJ reports. Part of their complaints concerns an AI regulation bill they compare to legislation passed in the European Union. A new, slimmer version of the bill was introduced on Friday.

Coatue Management joins data-center bandwagon. The AI investor, which has large stakes in Anthropic and OpenAI, launched a venture to buy land that will be developed for AI data centers, the Journal reports. The new firm, Next Frontier, is already at work on one of its first big projects, which is buying land in Indiana for a data-center campus.

Bumpy roads ahead for the bandwagon. Coatue’s effort, and recent data center projects announced by “Shark Tank” judge Kevin O’Leary and former Energy Secretary Rick Perry come as growing local resistance to projects becomes a bipartisan issue, the New York Times reports.

President Trump said Sunday that the U.S. would start guiding commercial ships out of the Strait of Hormuz where they have been trapped by the war between the U.S. and Iran, in an arm’s-length effort to unblock the vital supply route. (WSJ)

GameStop Chief Executive Ryan Cohen made an unsolicited offer to buy eBay for about $56 billion and said he saw a path to make the e-commerce company a much bigger competitor to Amazon.com. (WSJ)

The U.S. cost of primary aluminum from smelters is nearly 90% higher than a year ago. The war in Iran is driving up prices by effectively choking off shipments from the Persian Gulf countries, which supply about one-fifth of the aluminum consumed in the U.S. (WSJ)

State and local governments across the U.S. are seizing on a juicy new target for plugging budget holes and easing housing shortages: second homeowners. (WSJ)

The WSJ CIO Journal Team is Steven Rosenbush, Isabelle Bousquette and Belle Lin.

The editor, Tom Loftus, can be reached at thomas.loftus@wsj.com.