Artificial intelligence leader Nvidia (NVDA) announced two new $2 billion investments into Coherent (COHR) and Lumentum (LITE), whose stocks jumped on Monday, as the AI giant looks to scale up its fast-growing networking business.

The partnerships allow Nvidia to secure the companies' photonics products that could make next-generation AI data centers more efficient.

Meanwhile, Apple (AAPL) announced a $599 entry-level smartphone, the iPhone 17e, as well as two new iPad Airs as part of its three-day product release ahead of a March 4 event.

Playing out in the backdrop is the clash between Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) and the Pentagon that got a new twist over the weekend when OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) landed a deal with the Department of Defense, coinciding with the US strikes in Iran.

The deal came just after President Trump ordered all government agencies to cease using rival Anthropic's (ANTH.PVT) technology amid a dispute between the two parties over the government's use of Anthropic's models. The Pentagon demanded to use Anthropic's models for "all lawful purposes," to which Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the company would rather cut ties with the government than cross two red lines: using models for mass surveillance of US citizens and using them to develop fully autonomous weapons.

In response, President Trump effectively shut Anthropic off from any government contract, posting on Truth Social, "We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!"

OpenAI argued that its deal to deploy advanced AI systems in classified environments included similar guardrails to those that Anthropic sought. CEO Sam Altman told his staff on Thursday that the company shares Anthropic's red lines.

Follow along for the latest updates on the tech sector.

Nvidia (NVDA) said it struck two strategic partnerships with photonics companies Coherent (COHR) and Lumentum (LITE) on Monday in an effort to develop and secure access to state-of-the-art optics technology for the next generation of AI data centers.

Nvidia agreed to invest $2 billion in Coherent to support the company's future operations as it expands its US manufacturing capabilities. As part of the agreement, Nvidia made a multibillion-dollar purchase commitment and received rights to access advanced laser and optical networking products in the future.

The Santa Clara-based company also announced a similar partnership with Lumentum, also investing $2 billion to support research & development and a new fab based in the US.

Nvidia has been rapidly scaling up its networking business and is betting that the relatively smaller photonics industry can help it make large-scale AI networks more energy efficient, reducing a bottleneck on artificial intelligence growth.

“Computing has fundamentally changed,\\" Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement. \\"In the age of AI, software runs on intelligence with tokens generated in real time by AI factories for every interaction and every context. With Coherent, NVIDIA is pioneering next-generation silicon photonics to enable AI infrastructure at unprecedented scale, speed and energy efficiency.”

Nvidia stock fell 1.2% in premarket trading following the announcement, while Coherent shares jumped around 8% and Lumentum stock also surged over 7%.

Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD (1211.HK) stock jumped 4% on Monday after the company said it would reveal \\"disruptive technology\\" at an event later this week. This comes after BYD said global sales tumbled in February.

BYD announced that the upcoming event will occur at its Shenzhen HQ via an official WeChat post, though no other details were provided, according to Chinese EV blog CnEVPost.

Rumors suggest BYD's new details could be linked to a large-scale deployment of megawatt-level flash-charging infrastructure.

✨????????This is BYD's megawatt flash charging. It adds 2 km of range per second and can cover 400 km in just 5 minutes. pic.twitter.com/XQEhnZYElj

— ????????XuZhenqing徐祯卿 (@XueJia24682) March 2, 2026

The disruptive technology teaser comes after BYD reported a big sales drop for the month of February.

On Sunday, BYD said new energy vehicle sales, which include hybrids and EVs, fell to 190,190 units, down 41% compared to a year ago, according to CnEVPost. February's total is also down 9.5% sequentially compared to a year ago.

Read more about BYD's charging efforts and sales here.

Apple (AAPL) on Monday announced its iPhone 17e, the company's latest entry-level smartphone, as well as two new iPad Air, as part of an expected three-day schedule of new product releases.

The 17e is Apple's most recent attempt to attract customers looking for a relatively inexpensive iPhone with a starting price of $599 with 256GB of storage. That's $200 less than the base iPhone 17, which costs $799. It's also a step up in memory from last year's iPhone 16e, which also started at $599, but came with just 128GB of space.

There are a few trade-offs that come with the 17e, though. You'll get a smaller 6.1-inch display versus the 6.3-inch panel found on the iPhone 17, and rather than Apple's Dynamic Island at the top of the screen that houses the phone's front-facing camera and can display information like sports scores and the status of your Uber, the 17e gets the old camera cutout.

The iPhone 17e also only gets a single rear camera, instead of two like the iPhone 17.

In addition to the iPhone 17e, Apple also debuted its latest iPad Air running on the company's M4 processor, up from the M3 chip in the prior generation.

Available for $599 with an 11-inch screen or $799 for a 13-inch panel, the iPad Air also gets Apple's N1 and C1X wireless modem and cellular chips.

Apple says the latest Airs are up to 30% faster than the iPad Air with an M3 processor and 2.3x faster than the model with an M1 chip.

Read more here.

On Saturday, OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) appeared to stage a major coup against rival Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) by striking a deal with the Defense Department that came just after the Trump administration effectively severed all US government ties with Anthropic over a dispute about AI use safeguards.

OpenAI said it managed to secure a deal with protections similar to those Anthropic sought, stating in a press release, \\"We think our agreement has more guardrails than any previous agreement for classified AI deployments, including Anthropic’s.\\"

Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network.

In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome.

AI safety and wide distribution of…

— Sam Altman (@sama) February 28, 2026

Those red lines, according to OpenAI, are no use of OpenAI technology for mass domestic surveillance, no use of OpenAI technology to direct autonomous weapons systems, and no use of OpenAI technology for high-stakes automated decisions.

\\"We retain full discretion over our safety stack, we deploy via cloud, cleared OpenAI personnel are in the loop, and we have strong contractual protections,\\" OpenAI said. \\"This is all in addition to the strong existing protections in U.S. law.\\"

The deal raised several questions about how OpenAI was able to come to a deal that included these guardrails when Anthropic could not, whether pressure from the Trump administration played a role in the agreement, and whether the deal comprehensively addresses the central AI safety risks.

President Trump on Friday ordered the federal government to cease all use of Anthropic's technology, amid the ongoing standoff between the AI company and the Department of Defense (DOD).

In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote, \\"I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology. We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!\\"

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL NEVER ALLOW A RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY TO DICTATE HOW OUR GREAT MILITARY FIGHTS AND WINS WARS! That decision belongs to YOUR COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, and the tremendous leaders I appoint to run our Military.

The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic…

— Unofficial Trump on X (@trump_repost) February 27, 2026

Anthropic is seeking to put guardrails in place that would prevent the DOD from using its models for the mass surveillance of Americans or to develop fully autonomous weapons. The DOD has pushed back, saying it should have access to Anthropic's technology for all lawful purposes.

In his post, Trump said there will be a six-month phase-down period for agencies such as the DOD that use Anthropic's products. He also threatened that if the company doesn't \\"get their act together, and be helpful\\" during the phase-out period, he will \\"use the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow.\\"

Read the full story here.

SpaceX (SPAX.PVT) is looking at confidentially filing paperwork for an initial public offering as early as next month, according to Bloomberg.

The move to file with the SEC in March would keep Elon Musk's rocketry company on track for a June offering, ahead of other potential mega-IPOs this year from frontier AI developers OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) and Anthropic (ANTH.PVT).

After acquiring Musk's xAI company in February, SpaceX is now valued at $1.25 trillion. Through the IPO process, the company may look for a valuation of more than $1.75 trillion. Such an offering would immediately place SpaceX among the \\"Magnificent Seven\\" and other Big Tech giants as among the largest companies in the world.

The SpaceX IPO would raise as much as $50 billion, outstripping Saudi Aramco's record $29 billion IPO, according to Bloomberg.

In December, Bloomberg reported that SpaceX had told employees the company was entering the regulatory \\"quiet period\\" required ahead of a public offering, and that the IPO would be aimed at funding an “insane flight rate” for its developmental Starship rocket, a base on the moon, and data centers in space.

Microsoft (MSFT) and OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) jointly reaffirmed that their partnership hasn't changed despite the ChatGPT maker's new agreement with Amazon (AMZN).

\\"The partnership remains strong and central,\\" a statement on the Microsoft blog read. \\"Microsoft and OpenAI continue to work closely across research, engineering, and product development, building on years of deep collaboration and shared success.\\"

The companies reasserted that their IP relationship, commercial and revenue-sharing relationship, and AGI processes remain unchanged.

Azure remains the exclusive cloud provider for stateless OpenAI APIs, Microsoft said, following Amazon's announcement on Friday that it will be the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI Frontier.

The clarification was intended to reassure Microsoft shareholders and enterprise customers of the partnership as OpenAI's complicated web of investors and deals expands.

OpenAI is entering the fray. In a note to employees, CEO Sam Altman said the company is working toward establishing a contract with the Department of Defense that would give the DOD access to its AI models, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The catch? Altman says he wants to institute the same guardrails that have put the department and its rival Anthropic at loggerheads: no using models for mass surveillance of Americans and no using them to develop fully autonomous weapons.

Sam Altman says OpenAI is working toward establishing a contract with the Department of Defense.

In a note to employees, Altman says he wants to institute the same guardrails that have put the department and its rival Anthropic. pic.twitter.com/ObIhRnLgvz

— Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) February 27, 2026

The news comes just hours before a 5:01 p.m. ET deadline set by the DOD for Anthropic to agree to allow the Pentagon to use its models as it sees fit or face the consequences. The department has said it will either label Anthropic a supply chain threat, which would force vendors that work with the DOD to stop using its models, or institute the Defense Production Act, which would force Anthropic to give the Pentagon full access to its models.

Thursday evening, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote in a blog post that while the company is still working to negotiate with the DOD, he and his company \\"cannot in good conscience accede to their request.\\"

OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) said on Friday that it has received $110 billion in new investments, including $30 billion from SoftBank (SFTBY), $30 billion from Nvidia (NVDA), and $50 billion from Amazon (AMZN), to help scale its artificial intelligence products.

As part of the announcement, OpenAI and Amazon announced a strategic partnership to co-create a system for AWS customers to build generative AI applications and agents using OpenAI models. AWS will be the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI Frontier, Amazon said in a statement.

OpenAI also expanded its partnership with Nvidia, receiving 3 gigawatts of dedicated inference capacity and 2 gigawatts of training on Vera Rubin systems. Nvidia and Amazon stocks fell in premarket trading.

The close of the fundraising round valued OpenAI at $730 billion pre-money, a good step up from the $500 billion valuation reported in October that demonstrates how high expectations have run for the AI startup's technology.

Markets have become jumpy in recent weeks as spending on AI technology has continued to ramp up, companies have entered complex webs of financing with one another, and competition among OpenAI, Anthropic, and Alphabet has increased.

CoreWeave (CRWV), an AI cloud-computing company that counts hyperscalers like Google parent Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) and Microsoft (MSFT) as both clients and competitors, saw its shares slump as much as 10% in after-hours trading after the company announced a slight earnings beat but predicted a massive jump in spending for 2026.

On an earnings call with analysts, CEO Michael Intrator said capital expenditures would increase from $15.4 billion in 2025 to at least $30 billion in 2026. The company also said that its net loss in the fourth quarter surged to $284 million from $36 million last year and noted issues with its revenue backlog.

From Reuters:

CoreWeave has positioned itself as a more specialized and cost-effective alternative to the big tech companies, attracting clients ​ranging from ​AI labs to large enterprises.

But it ​still relies heavily on large ‌clients such as Microsoft and OpenAI, which remain critical to its growth trajectory, and faces significant revenue backlog risk.

CoreWeave faces lingering concerns regarding its backlog risk, debt and cost of capital, D.A. Davidson analyst Alexander Platt noted.

Revenue backlog was $66.8 billion as of December 31, CoreWeave said, up from $15.1 ‌billion a year earlier.

CoreWeave has fielded criticism for being part of a web of circular AI funding between companies like Nvidia (NVDA), Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), and the still-private OpenAI (OPAI.PVT).

Read more here.

Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) CEO Dario Amodei issued a statement Thursday evening, saying his company won't submit to the Department of Defense’s demands that it be allowed to use its AI technology as it sees fit, within the law.

The Defense Department and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have threatened to force Anthropic to give the Pentagon full use of its models under the Defense Production Act — or, conversely, declare it a supply chain threat and force other Pentagon vendors who work with the AI company to stop using its software.

“These threats do not change our position: we cannot in good conscience accede to their request,” Amodei said in his statement.

Anthropic and the Pentagon have been in an ongoing standoff about how the DOD will use its Claude AI. The company says that while it already works with the Defense Department, including within the government's classified networks and by advocating for strong chip export controls to China, it wants assurances that the DOD will not use its models for the mass surveillance of Americans or for fully autonomous weapons.

Earlier Thursday, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the DOD had no desire to surveil Americans or develop fully autonomous weapons.

\\"This is a simple, common-sense request that will prevent Anthropic from jeopardizing critical military operations and potentially putting our warfighters at risk. We will not let ANY company dictate the terms regarding how we make operational decisions. They have until 5:01 PM ET on Friday to decide,\\" Parnell wrote in a post on X.

In a separate statement, an Anthropic spokesperson said the DOD's latest contract language doesn't address the company's concerns.

\\"The contract language we received overnight from the Department of War made virtually no progress on preventing Claude's use for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons,\\" the spokesperson said.

\\"New language framed as compromise was paired with legalese that would allow those safeguards to be disregarded at will. Despite DOW's recent public statements, these narrow safeguards have been the crux of our negotiations for months.\\"

Anthropic's deadline to respond to the Pentagon's demands to allow it to use the company's AI model for \\"all lawful purposes\\" expires at 5:01 p.m. ET on Friday.

The AI firm and its CEO, Dario Amodei, have been locked in a standoff with the Pentagon about whether the company will continue to limit the Department of Defense's use of the model. Specifically, Anthropic is asking for assurances that the Pentagon won't use its technology to perform mass surveillance of Americans and produce autonomous weapons.

According to The New York Times, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has threatened to invoke the Defense Production Act to force Anthropic to allow the Defense Department to use the AI models as it sees fit. He's also threatened to label the company a supply chain risk, which would prevent the Pentagon from using the company's models.

Labeling Anthropic as a supply chain risk would force the Pentagon's various vendors to cut ties with the company.

In a post on X, chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell pushed back against Anthropic's demands.

\\"The Department of War has no interest in using AI to conduct mass surveillance of Americans (which is illegal) nor do we want to use AI to develop autonomous weapons that operate without human involvement.\\"

Parnell claimed the assumption that the Pentagon will use Anthropic's tools for the mass surveillance of Americans or to develop autonomous weapons is a fake narrative \\"peddled by leftists in the media.\\"

The global memory shortage is set to impact everything from consumer electronics to enterprise devices, and the smartphone industry, in particular, will face serious headwinds from the dearth of chips.

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), the smartphone market will see its largest year-over-year decline ever in 2026, plummeting 13% to its lowest levels in a decade.

\\"What we are witnessing is not a temporary squeeze, but a tsunami-like shock originating in the memory supply chain, with ripple effects spreading across the entire consumer electronics industry,” Francisco Jeronimo, vice president of worldwide client devices at IDC, said in a statement.

“The global smartphone market, particularly Android manufacturers, faces a significant threat,\\" he added.

Memory chips are a key component in data centers. But a small number of global manufacturers, including Micron (MU), Samsung (005930.KS), and SK Hynix (000660.KS), means there's only so many to go around. And because data center memory offers higher margins, chipmakers favor it over memory for consumer electronics.

The result: fewer available devices, higher prices, or degraded products with less memory. For consumer electronics companies, that translates to fewer sales.

Yahoo Finance's Francisco Velasquez reports:

The AI supercycle isn't just holding steady — it's getting a massive second wind.

In a new note to clients, Morgan Stanley research analyst Shane Brett raised his forecast for semiconductor capital equipment spending to $143 billion in 2026, up from a previous estimate of $136 billion. The new outlook would represent a 23% increase from the prior year.

He also revised his 2027 forecast to $182 billion, up from $161 billion.

This revision paints a picture of an infrastructure race that is accelerating, even as skeptics wonder when these massive capital expenditures will yield a clear return on investment. And according to Brett, the spending increase is creating a new set of winners.

\\"The market is entering the phase of the cycle where [semiconductor process equipment] returns begin to rival those of memory stocks,\\" Brett said.

Read the full story here.

Yahoo Finance's Francisco Velasquez reports:

C3.ai (AI) is learning the hard way that \\"conviction\\" doesn't pay the bills.

\\"We did not deliver this quarter, full stop,\\" CEO Stephen Ehikian told Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid. \\"I'm not going to sugarcoat that ... that's on me.\\"

In a remarkably blunt post-earnings admission, Ehikian stated that \\"the reality is we were just burning too much money.\\"

To stop that burn, the company slashed 26% of its workforce, a calculated bid to \\"restructure our cost basis\\" and find the \\"maximum flexibility\\" that Ehikian said is required to capture AI scaling and survive the very market he claims is stronger than ever.

The market's verdict was swift and unforgiving. C3.ai stock cratered nearly 20% following the release as investors looked past the rhetoric and focused on a revenue miss that underscored a complete departure from previous guidance.

Read more here.

Apple's next product rollout starts on Monday.

A big week ahead. It all starts Monday morning! #AppleLaunch pic.twitter.com/PQ9gM2Gl2r

— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) February 26, 2026

The company is expected to unveil new MacBooks, a new lower-cost iPhone, and potentially a new iPad Air, according to MacRumors.

Apple is not expected to livestream a rollout announcement like it typically does during its WWDC event, which is held in September and usually features the announcement of its latest iPhone lineup.

Nvidia (NVDA) made a fortune on its specialized graphics processing units (GPUs) used to power artificial intelligence servers. But on the earnings call Wednesday, CEO Jensen Huang said he's ready to push ahead into making the CPUs, or central processing units, that Intel (INTC) and AMD (AMD) are known for.

Reuters reports:

The CPU is now making a comeback — increasingly seen as an equivalent ​if not better option as AI companies shift from training their models to deploying them — a shift that Nvidia plans to be a big part of.

\\"We love CPUs as well as GPUs,\\" Huang said on a call with analysts on Wednesday for the company's fourth-quarter results.

He assured them that Nvidia was not only ready for the CPU's return to the spotlight but also that Nvidia's own CPU offerings for data centers, first released in 2023, would outcompete rivals.

Last month, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, Huang also said the ‌number of high-performance Nvidia CPUs being used in data centers ⁠would explode and that he wouldn't be surprised \\"if Nvidia becomes one of the largest CPU makers in the world.\\"

Read more here.

Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT), and Amazon (AMZN) ticked modestly lower in the wake of Nvidia's earnings report, even as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang expressed his vote of confidence in their future cash flows and, therefore, capex spending.

The three hyperscalers moved between 0.1% and 0.4% lower in extended trading, while Nvidia stock pared initial gains during the earnings call to rise 0.5%.

\\"I am confident in their cash flow growing,\\" Huang said of the hyperscalers on the earnings call. \\"The reason for that is very simple: We have now seen the inflection of agentic AI and the usefulness of agents across the world and enterprises everywhere. You're seeing incredible compute demand because of it in this new world of AI. ... In this new world of AI, compute equals revenues.\\"

Other chipmakers, including Intel (INTC) and AMD (AMD), also moved lower in extended trading.

Big Tech giants can't get enough of Nvidia's chips.

Nvidia (NVDA) on Wednesday reported fourth quarter results that topped forecasts and signaled demand for its most advanced chips remains insatiable.

And a growing portion of that demand is coming from the so-called hyperscalers like Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta, who now account for more than half of the company's sales in its data center segment.

\\"Data Center revenue for the fourth quarter was a record $62.3 billion, up 75% from a year ago and up 22% sequentially, driven by the major platform shifts – accelerated computing and AI,\\" Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said in a statement.

\\"For the fourth quarter, hyperscaler revenue increased and remained our largest customer category at slightly over 50% of Data Center revenue, while growth was led by the rest of our Data Center customers as revenue diversified.\\"

The last time the company specified was portion of its data center sales were to these customers, the company said it was \\"approximately\\" 50%.

And while these are small percentage moves, the dollars at this scale are notable, and the increasing portion of sales going to these customers shows where these companies' massive capex plans show up.

Nvidia (NVDA) earnings and revenue both topped Wall Street estimates, sending the stock higher in after-hours trading.

The company also offered Q1 guidance between $76.44 billion and $79.56 billion, above Wall Street's estimates of $72.8 billion without factoring in revenue from China.

;cpos:2;pos:1;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;outcm:mb_qualified_link;_E:mb_qualified_link;ct:story;\\" class=\\"link yahoo-link\\">Read the full earnings breakdown here >

$NVDA Q4 earnings
???? Revenue: $68.1B vs $65.8B expected
???? EPS: $1.62 vs $1.53 expected
???? Data center revenue: $62.3B vs $60.2B expected pic.twitter.com/8JtpnBldlF

— Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) February 25, 2026