Microsoft hits Australia, Getty Images deal & more (November 3, 2025)

Good morning,

Big AI deals are redefining both data and infrastructure, from Microsoft’s $9.7B sovereign cloud expansion in Australia to Perplexity’s fresh licensing partnership with Getty Images. At the same time, geopolitical tensions around chips and billion-dollar bets on human-aligned AI continue to shape the ecosystem’s balance of power.

Let's dig in👇

💰 Money Moves

💰 Microsoft signs $9.7B AI cloud deal with Australia’s IREN

Microsoft signed a $9.7 billion cloud and AI infrastructure deal with Australian firm IREN to expand sovereign compute capacity across the region. The agreement marks one of Microsoft’s largest international AI investments, boosting Australia’s data center and model-hosting capabilities. This partnership signals how nations are building local AI infrastructure to reduce dependency on U.S. and Chinese providers.

🧠 Perplexity strikes multi-year licensing deal with Getty Images

Perplexity announced a multi-year content licensing partnership with Getty Images to integrate licensed visuals directly into its AI search results. The deal gives Perplexity access to Getty’s vast photo library for accurate, attribution-driven visual responses. This move reinforces a broader trend toward copyright-compliant AI search and signals how image-rights deals are becoming key differentiators among generative platforms.

🚀 New Launches

💰 Former x AI researcher targets $1B for human-first AI lab

A former xAI researcher is reportedly raising up to $1 billion for a new lab focused on “human-first” intelligence. The effort emphasizes developing models with built-in safety, interpretability, and value alignment rather than pure scale. If successful, it could signal a pivot toward smaller, ethics-driven labs competing with tech giants’ billion-parameter behemoths.

🤝 AWS and OpenAI announce multi-year strategic partnership

AWS and OpenAI have signed a major multi-year cloud deal that expands OpenAI’s infrastructure across Amazon’s global data centers. The partnership strengthens AWS’s position in AI hosting and gives OpenAI deeper compute redundancy as its enterprise footprint grows. This move cements the cloud-AI symbiosis driving hyperscaler competition with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

💬 Trump says Nvidia’s Blackwell AI chip “not for other people”

Donald Trump stated that Nvidia’s next-gen Blackwell AI chips should be reserved for U.S. use, reigniting debate over tech nationalism in AI hardware. His remarks add tension to the ongoing chip export restrictions targeting China’s AI sector. As the AI arms race intensifies, chip access has become both an economic and diplomatic weapon.

🧰 Tools of the Day

→ Multifactor – A password manager built for secure sharing with humans & AI.
→ Odyssey-2 – Interactive video model that brings motion and engagement to life.
→ Pianolyze – Learn any piano song using AI & ML, right in your browser.

✍️ Prompt of the Day

“You’re my strategic communications advisor. Summarize this week’s AI partnerships [paste links] into a 3-bullet executive brief highlighting competitive advantage, potential risks, and geopolitical impact.”

⚡ Quick Hits

→ 82% of Enterprise leaders now use generative AI weekly, according to Wharton
→ Cisco unveils server rack that brings compute power closer to the edge
→ Analog Devices unveils CodeFusion Studio 2.0 to streamline embedded AI
→ Co-Diagnostics to integrate proprietary AI technology into its Co-Dx™ Primer Ai™
→ AI in Healthcare shows generative tools transform real-world clinical decisions
→ Creative OS is Canva’s AI Visual Suite that drives Australia’s creative education

🧾 TLDR

AI’s global chessboard keeps shifting, Microsoft’s sovereign cloud deal and Perplexity’s visual licensing move show how infrastructure and data access are now power levers. Ethical AI labs are rising while chip politics heat up again, drawing lines between collaboration and control. The common thread: the AI boom is maturing into a full-spectrum contest of scale, trust, and governance.

Cheers,
David