Weekly news roundup: Anthropic’s $35B deal, Nvidia buys Hugging Face and AI banned in schools

It’s been a busy week in tech, with Anthropic making a huge bet on AI infrastructure, New York putting the brakes on AI in schools, OpenAI offering a first glimpse of its next-generation Astra model, Nvidia expanding its AI empire with the acquisition of Hugging Face and Uber cutting thousands of corporate jobs.

Here's what you need to know from the week of August 31, plus the latest updates in IPOs and executive leadership.

Anthropic signs $35B AI-compute deal with Lambda

This week, Anthropic signed a $35 billion deal with AI cloud provider Lambda, markinga major step in the race for AI infrastructure. The agreement gives Anthropic access to a significant new pool of computing capacity at a data center in Texas, helping the company secure the infrastructure it needs to keep pace with growing demand for its Claude models.

The agreement is the latest in Anthropic’s increasingly aggressive push to lock in compute capacity.

Just last week, the company announced a separate $45 billion deal with Nscale for AI computing power. Together, the deals highlight a broader shift in strategy among frontier AI companies. Instead of relying on a single hyperscaler, they are diversifying their infrastructure partners and securing compute capacity from multiple providers.

New York introduces AI moratorium in schools

On September 2, New York mayor Zohran Mamdani and schools chancellor Kamar Samuels announced a one-year moratorium on student-facing generative AI tools.

The moratorium will be in place for the 2026-2027 school year and will impact nearly 600,000 public school students. The moratorium will also see AI-literacy and critical thinking programs for high school students, a reduced screen time policy and existing AI education tools prohibited.

The moratorium represents a significant turning point in the way we think about AI in education and raises a much broader question about the future of work. As a younger generation grows up learning not only how to use AI, but also how to question its limitations and potential risks, how will that shape their expectations of technology when they enter the workforce? And how might it influence the ways their future employers choose to adopt AI?

OpenAI teases its Astra model

This week, OpenAI offered a significant preview of its next-generation Astra model.

The model reportedly meets the cybersecurity capability threshold Critical, “meaning that with the right tools and access, it can find previously unknown security flaws and develop ways to exploit them across many well-protected systems.”

OpenAI confirmed that Astra was not involved in the recent Hugging Face incident, but that the company applied learnings from the incident when developing the new model.

“We plan to make Astra available soon,but access to its most advanced cybersecurity capabilities will be more limited,” the company wrote.

Nvidia confirms Hugging Face acquisition

In an Nvidia blog post released on September 3, the company confirmed its acquisition of AI startup, Hugging Face for a reported $13 billion. This is one of the industry's largest AI deals.

“Hugging Face will remain an open platform for the entire AI ecosystem,” wrote Nvidia. “Together, we will make AI more open, more capable and more accessible to people and institutions around the world.”

By bringing Hugging Face into its offerings, Nvidia gains a much stronger position in the developer community and further expands its influence across the AI industry.

Uber cuts 3000 jobs

Uber announced a large layoff of over 3000 jobs, approximately 10% of their global workforce, making it the latest tech company to experience large-scale layoffs.

The decision comes from a desire to simplify the company structure and remove layers of management. The layoff is the company’s first since the pandemic.

Uber shares rose by 2% following the announcement. 

Executive moves

• Bradley Bolivar. Centene appointed Bradley Bolivar CIO effective immediately. Formerly CIO at Fannie Mae, Bolivar has almost three decades of technology leadership experience and will lead the healthcare company’s IT strategy.

IPO watch

The U.S. IPO market remains a key indicator of broader tech sentiment. Here's a look at the latest listings and activity from the past week, based on data from the Nasdaq IPO calendar:

Three Lions Acquisition Corp. (TLACU)

• A blank check company.
• Opening/trading day: Sept. 1.
• IPO price: $10/share.

Rosa Heaton is a content manager and writer for the IT Strategy team at TechTarget.