26/02/2026

BIZ & FINANCE THURSDAY | FEB 26, 2026 17 AMD clinches US$60 billion AI chip deal with Meta

US Defence Dept gives Anthropic until tomorrow to drop AI curbs WASHINGTON: The US Defence Department has given AI company Anthropic until tomorrow to agree to unrestricted military use of its technology or face being forced to comply under emergency federal powers, a senior official said on Tuesday. Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei met personally with Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon on Tuesday, with the company saying he “expressed appreciation for the department’s work and thanked the secretary for his service”. At the heart of the conflict is Anthropic’s refusal to let its Claude models be used for the mass surveillance of US citizens or in fully autonomous weapons systems. “We continued good-faith conversations about our usage policy to ensure Anthropic can continue to support the government’s national security mission in line with what our models can reliably and responsibly do,” the company said in a statement. But after the meeting, the Pentagon delivered a stark ultimatum: agree to unrestricted military use of its technology by 5.01pm tomorrow (6am on Saturday in Malaysia) or face being forced to comply under the Defence Production Act. The Cold War-era law, last used during the Covid pandemic, grants the federal government sweeping powers to compel private industry to prioritise national security needs. The Pentagon also threatened to label Anthropic a supply chain risk, a designation usually reserved for firms from adversary countries that could severely damage the company’s ability to work with the US government and reputation. The senior Pentagon official pushed back on the company’s concerns, insisting the Defence Department had always operated within the law. “Legality is the Pentagon’s responsibility as the end user,” the official said, adding that the department “has only given out lawful orders”. Officials also confirmed that an exchange regarding intercontinental ballistic missiles had taken place between Anthropic and the Pentagon, underscoring the sensitivity of the applications at the heart of the dispute. The Pentagon confirmed that Elon Musk’s Grok system had been cleared for use in a classified setting, while other contracted companies – OpenAI and Google – were described as close to similar clearances, piling competitive pressure on Anthropic to fall in line. Anthropic was contracted alongside those companies last year to supply AI models for a range of military applications under a US$200 million agreement. Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI employees in 2021 on the premise that AI development should prioritise safety – a philosophy that now puts it on a collision course with the Pentagon and the White House. – AFP

o Agreement allows Facebook owner to buy up to 10% of semiconductor firm

SAN FRANCISCO: Advanced Micro Devices said on Tuesday it has agreed to sell up to US$60 billion worth of artificial intelligence chips to Meta Platforms over five years in a deal that allows the Facebook owner to purchase as much as 10% of the chip firm. AMD shares rose more than 8% to close at US$213.84 on Tuesday. The company had signed a similar pact with OpenAI last year, which was hailed as a vote of confidence in its chips and software, significantly boosting its stock price. A recent slew of chip supply agreements underscores huge appetite for processors from the AI industry. Meta has separately struck a deal with AMD’s larger rival Nvidia to buy millions of AI chips. The partnership underscores the deepening ties among some of the AI industry’s top players amid rising concerns around circular deals. Meta and OpenAI are set to own a stake in one of their most significant suppliers at a time when rival chipmaker Nvidia is eyeing investments in some of its largest customers, including the ChatGPT parent. AMD will supply six gigawatts’ The sweetened offer was the latest installment of a bidding war set to reshape Hollywood and US media, and has drawn White House attention, with President Donald Trump insisting he will have a say on the outcome. In a significant development, Warner Bros Discovery’s board said Tuesday that Paramount’s revised bid “could reasonably be expected to lead to” a superior proposal to the existing Netflix deal – a key legal threshold that would allow for more formal negotiations with Paramount. Warner Bros said Paramount’s revised offer includes a purchase price of US$31 per share in cash, a one-dollar-per-share increase from its earlier offer, which was valued at around US$108 billion. Paramount has also offered to cover the US$2.8 billion termination fee Warner Bros would owe Netflix if it walked away from their deal, and pledged a US$7 billion fee payable to Warner Bros should the Paramount transaction fail to close due to regulatory hurdles. Questions are swirling over whether politics will influence the outcome of the battle, with Paramount run by David Ellison and the transaction financed largely by his father, Oracle tycoon Larry Ellison, a longtime Trump ally. Trump has said he will be

In addition to the stock price targets, there are “technical and commercial considerations” for each tranche of the warrant that Meta needs to fulfill. “Meta is making a big bet on AMD,” Su said. Meta plans to continue to buy chips from other vendors and develop its in-house processors at the same time, Santosh Janardhan, Meta’s infrastructure head, said in a call with reporters. Nvidia shares edged lower while Broadcom dropped nearly 2%. Broadcom is a provider of custom chips and though it does not identify its hyperscaler customers, it is considered by analysts to be a key supplier to Meta, helping the company design and manufacture the processors, known as ASICS. Meta has also been in talks with Google about using the company’s tensor processors for AI work, sources have said. The scale at which Meta is building data centres and infrastructure requires multiple chip vendors and approaches, Janardhan said. “All of the chip makers end up having sort of a seat at the table,” Janardhan said. – Reuters

worth of chips to Meta, starting with one gigawatt of the company’s forthcoming MI450 flagship hardware in the second half of this year, AMD CEO Lisa Su told a news briefing. Investor worries about the AI market also extend to the long wait for significant payoffs from Big Tech’s relentless spending to expand data center infrastructure. Capital expenditure from Alphabet, Microsoft , Amazon.com and Meta is expected to total at least US$630 billion this year, according to Reuters calculations, with most of the spending focused on data centers and AI chips. In addition to the AMD’s flagship graphics chips, Meta also plans to buy central processors, including a variant that will be customised for the social media platform’s needs. The custom CPU will be tuned to deliver powerful performance while keeping energy consumption as low as possible, Su said.

The deal will include two generations of AMD’s CPUs. “So no question Mark is very, very ambitious in what he wants to accomplish, and we want to use every aspect of our technology to really help Meta to accomplish that,” Su said, referring to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Meta helped contribute to the MI450 design that is optimized for a computing process known as inference, which is when a chatbot such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT responds to a user’s queries. Industry analysts expect the market for inference hardware to dwarf the size of the market for the equipment needed to build the large models AI runs from. As part of the agreement, AMD will issue a warrant for 160 million shares with an exercise price of one cent. The warrant will vest over the course of the deal and will do so after AMD stock price hits rising performance targets up to US$600.

Warner Bros opens door to Paramount NEW YORK: Warner Bros Discovery said on Tuesday it has received a revised acquisition proposal from Paramount Skydance, signalling that the offer could open the door to the company rethinking its deal with Netflix.

An aerial view of the Paramount logo displayed on the roof of a Paramount office in Los Angeles. – AFPPIC

acknowledged the new offer but said its deal with Netflix“remains in effect” and that board members“continue to recommend in favor of the Netflix transaction,“ stressing it was not withdrawing its recommendation. Warner Bros shareholders were advised to take no action with respect to the Paramount offer while the review is ongoing. Netflix is offering US$83 billion for its more limited merger but is expected to be prepared to raise its offer to more closely match its rival’s new bid. – AFP

Warner Bros television properties such as CNN and Discovery, which would belong to a newly created publicly traded company if the deal is sealed. The Warner Bros board stressed it had not yet concluded that Paramount’s offer was superior to Netflix’s, and that it would continue talks with Paramount to determine if that bar could be met. If it was, Netflix would have four business days to come back with a counter-offer. Earlier in the day, Warner Bros

“involved” in any decision on the merger, and the US Department of Justice is currently reviewing Netflix’s proposed acquisition. European authorities and other regulators will also have their say. A victory by Paramount would see news outlet CNN – often the target of Trump’s threats and criticism – pass to Ellison family control, amid criticism that their takeover of Paramount-owned CBS brought changes more to the White House’s liking. The Netflix offer does not include