Good morning. Here's what happened overnight and what you need to know today.
1.
Saudi defence: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited the White House for the first time since the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, meeting President Donald Trump amid military fanfare and investment announcements. In the Oval Office, Trump strongly defended the crown prince, berating an ABC reporter after she asked about the US intelligence finding that he ordered the killing. “He knew nothing about it,” Trump said. “You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking something like that.” The crown prince called Khashoggi’s death “painful” saying Saudi Arabia “did all the right steps” to investigate Khashoggi’s death. “It’s painful and it’s a huge mistake,” he said. Trump also lashed out at the reporter after she asked why he didn’t simply release the Epstein files, calling her “a terrible person” and suggesting ABC’s licence should be revoked. Trump said Saudi Arabia would invest USD600 billion in the US, while the crown prince said the pledge would rise to nearly USD1 trillion. Trump confirmed plans to sell F-35s to the kingdom despite Pentagon and Israeli concerns. The pair also discussed nuclear cooperation, AI chips and a possible defence pact. Prince Mohammed said normalisation with Israel depends on securing “a clear path of a two-state solution.” (Bloomberg)(Reuters)(NYT)
2.
Claude loop: Microsoft and Nvidia will invest up to USD15 billion ($23.1 billion) in Anthropic, bringing the Claude maker closer to two major backers of its rival, OpenAI. Nvidia will contribute up to USD10 billion and Microsoft up to USD5 billion. In return, Anthropic has committed to spend at least USD30 billion on Microsoft’s Azure cloud, including one gigawatt of server capacity using Nvidia’s Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin chips. Claude models, including Claude Sonnet, will also be added to Microsoft’s Foundry platform. The deal comes amid growing scrutiny of circular AI deals, where firms fund startups that then spend heavily on their infrastructure. It follows OpenAI’s USD38 billion cloud deal with Amazon. Microsoft, which holds a 27% stake in OpenAI’s for-profit arm, began using Anthropic’s models earlier this year. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the new capacity would support training and joint sales. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said he “can’t wait to go accelerate Claude”. Meanwhile, Google launched Gemini 3 to boost its AI app and search capabilities, aiming to close the gap with OpenAI. (Capital Brief)(Microsoft)(Bloomberg)(The Information)
