The Internet · 07 Jul 2026

THE INTERNET | Jul 7, 2026

Highlights

AIAnthropic signed a 20-year, roughly $19 billion lease for a 400-megawatt TeraWulf data center in Kentucky, its largest disclosed compute commitment.
AIAmazon is raising at least $25 billion via an eight-part bond sale for its AI buildout and told underwriters it will issue no further debt in 2026.
AIChina's DeepSeek is developing its own inference chip to cut reliance on Nvidia and Huawei, three sources told Reuters.
PAYMENTSKlarna applied for a US industrial-bank charter in Utah, joining Affirm and PayPal in seeking direct bank-rail access beyond buy now, pay later.
PAYMENTSThe UK Payment Systems Regulator said mandatory APP-fraud reimbursement cut scam losses by an estimated £73 million a year, with in-scope reimbursement reaching 97%.
MEDIAThe US Supreme Court let Texas enforce a law requiring Apple and Google app stores to verify users' ages, pending lower-court litigation.

CORPORATE

AIUSAnthropic: The AI lab signed a 20-year lease on Monday for a TeraWulf data center in Kentucky, about an hour southwest of Louisville, with capacity of roughly 400 megawatts and first power expected in the second half of 2027. The lease is initially projected to generate about $19 billion in revenue, according to The Wall Street Journal. TeraWulf is a former Bitcoin miner that has pivoted to AI data-center infrastructure; its stock is up more than 80% this year. [CNBC]
AI Takeaway: A 20-year, 400-megawatt lease booked at roughly $19 billion in revenue prices dedicated capacity that Anthropic previously rented through hyperscaler clouds. The counterparty is a former Bitcoin miner whose stock is up more than 80% this year, signaling that crypto-mining shells with power interconnects are emerging as a distinct AI-landlord class competing with Microsoft, Amazon, and Google for frontier-lab demand.
AIUSAmazon: The company plans to raise at least $25 billion through an eight-part bond sale to fund its AI buildout and has told underwriters it will not issue further debt in 2026, people familiar with the matter told CNBC's David Faber. Amazon disclosed the raise in an SEC filing on Tuesday without stating the amount. The sale follows about $54 billion in US and European bonds earlier this year and a $10 billion raise in Canada in June; a spokesperson said proceeds are for general corporate purposes including capital expenditures. [CNBC]
AI Takeaway: The eight-part sale lifts Amazon's 2026 bond issuance to roughly $89 billion after $54 billion earlier this year and a $10 billion Canadian raise in June, and the stated ceiling on further debt marks a rare capex-funding guardrail. Debt-financed AI buildout at this scale narrows the gap between the hyperscaler cohort and the labs, which fund comparable capacity through equity rounds and multi-year leases rather than the bond market.
USMicrosoft: The company is eliminating 4,800 jobs, about 2.1% of its workforce, with the Xbox division absorbing roughly 3,200 of the cuts through fiscal 2027 and 1,600 eliminated on Monday, chief people officer Amy Coleman and Xbox CEO Asha Sharma told staff. Sharma said Compulsion Games and Double Fine will become independent studios while Ninja Theory and Undead Labs are sold, and management layers will fall from 14 to no more than five. It is the fifth round of cuts since Microsoft's $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard in 2023. [CNBC] [Washington Post]
AICNUPDATEAlibaba: The Chinese e-commerce group will bar employees from using Anthropic's Claude Code for work as of July 10, placing it on a high-risk software list and citing back-door security concerns, CNBC confirmed. The move follows Anthropic's June letter to the US Senate Banking Committee accusing Alibaba of the "largest known distillation attack" on its models; Anthropic's terms already bar Chinese firms and other "adversarial nations." Staff must switch to Alibaba's own assistant, Qoder. [CNBC]
EUGoogle: The company backed Germany-based Proxima Fusion as a strategic investor in a €411 million ($468 million) round that valued the startup at $2.7 billion, alongside lead investors XTX Ventures and East X Ventures and strategic backer RWE. Proxima aims to build Europe's first commercial fusion power plant and to run a demonstrator in the early 2030s; the company said the backing reflects Google's continuing interest in fusion as a long-term source of carbon-free, firm energy. [CNBC]

AI

CNDeepSeek is developing its own AI chip designed for inference rather than model training, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters, a move that could cut its reliance on Nvidia and Huawei silicon. A US export ban has helped Huawei capture roughly half of China's $50 billion domestic AI-chip market, supplying DeepSeek and others, but rivals Alibaba and Baidu are already fielding their own chips and gaining share. DeepSeek's effort is early-stage, with the company holding talks with external chip-design partners. [Reuters]
AI Takeaway: An in-house inference chip would move DeepSeek off Nvidia and Huawei silicon, joining Alibaba and Baidu in eroding Huawei's roughly half share of China's $50 billion domestic AI-chip market. The frontier-lab playbook is diverging by bloc: US labs contract for third-party capacity while their Chinese counterparts vertically integrate the compute substrate under export-control pressure.
CNBeijing is weighing curbs on overseas access to China's most advanced AI models, including unreleased ones, three people familiar with the talks told Reuters. Ministry of Commerce-led meetings over the past month included Alibaba, ByteDance, and startup Z.ai, and discussed limiting both closed- and open-weight models, criminalizing AI-technology theft under national-security law, and restricting who can fund domestic AI startups. Any access limits could raise costs for the many businesses that adopted low-cost Chinese models since DeepSeek's R1 launch. [Reuters]
CNByteDance and Alibaba are pulling features that let users build and chat with AI companions ahead of new Chinese rules governing human interaction with AI, Bloomberg reported. ByteDance's Doubao, China's most popular AI chatbot, will shut its companion function as the two firms prepare for the tightened regulatory regime. [Bloomberg Business]

PAYMENTS

USKlarna applied for a US industrial-bank charter. The Swedish fintech, known for buy now, pay later, filed with the Utah Department of Financial Institutions and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to establish Klarna Bank USA, a federally insured industrial bank led by Gary Harding, former CEO of Milestone Bank and Prime Alliance Bank. CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski called an owned charter "the natural next step." Klarna serves about 30 million US customers, has extended $91.3 billion in credit since 2019, and has been a licensed bank in Europe since 2017; consumer deposits are more than 90% of its funding. It joins Affirm, PayPal, and Payoneer in seeking a charter. [CNBC] [American Banker]
AI Takeaway: A Utah industrial-bank charter would let Klarna internalize deposit and payment functions it now rents from partners such as WebBank, joining Affirm, PayPal, and Mercury in the shift from bank-partner rails to owned charters. With consumer deposits already more than 90% of funding, the move reprices BNPL economics around a regulated deposit base rather than wholesale-funded receivables.
REGULATORYUKThe UK Payment Systems Regulator said its mandatory APP-fraud reimbursement rules are working. An independent review by Frontier Economics found authorized push payment fraud losses fell by an estimated £73 million a year and scams dropped by nearly 35,000 since the mandate, with reimbursement rates rising from 54% to 65% overall and 97% for in-scope claims, a net benefit of £17 million–£29 million. Managing director David Geale said there was no evidence of market exits. Separately, Open Banking Limited reported fraud of about one in 6,000 open-banking payments versus one in 2,500 across the wider UK industry. [Finextra Research] [Finextra Research]
AI Takeaway: An independent review crediting mandatory reimbursement with £73 million in annual fraud reduction — and finding none of the market exits critics predicted — strengthens the case for placing fraud liability on the payment rail rather than the consumer, the prevailing US posture. The UK result hands the EU's incoming PSR/PSD3 regime a working comparator as it weighs similar reimbursement mandates.
EUUPDATECaixabank and BBVA completed their first agent-initiated card transactions. Both Spanish banks executed the purchases through Visa Intelligent Commerce under Visa's Agentic Ready program, using real card credentials and live merchant systems, with BBVA adding Visa Payment Passkeys biometric authentication to meet EU Strong Customer Authentication rules. The pilots followed Visa's announcement at its Payments Forum in Paris that AI agents are already initiating transactions on participating merchant sites. PYMNTS separately argued the larger prize sits in B2B accounts-payable, where card-acceptance fragmentation, not supplier willingness, is the binding constraint. [Finextra Research] [PYMNTS.com]
KRSouth Korea's Toss postponed its US listing. Fintech Toss, operated by Viva Republica, has delayed its planned Nasdaq listing of American depositary receipts within this year, the Seoul Economic Daily reported, citing an unnamed source. Reuters reported last year that Toss aimed to list in the second quarter of 2026 at a valuation above $10 billion; the company declined to comment. [Reuters]
REGULATORYUSThe Supreme Court weakened removal protections for independent federal agencies. In Trump v. Slaughter, the court held on Monday that the president may remove members of the Federal Trade Commission and, by extension, similar independent commissions without cause, while carving out an exception for the Federal Reserve. Scholars told American Banker the decision — one called it a "Brexit moment" — extends to bodies such as the FDIC, SEC, CFTC, and NCUA, and would make bank-regulatory policy more political and prone to swings between administrations. [American Banker]
UKBNPL entrant Float launched in the UK. Operating in South Africa since 2021 with over 2,000 stores, Float offers installment payments that run entirely within a shopper's existing credit-card limit rather than issuing new loans. The company said its technology drives a 134% uplift in average order value across its merchant base, with average orders above £500, and is targeting higher-value verticals including electronics, furniture, and automotive. [Finextra Research]

BLOCKCHAIN

GLOBALA former Tether executive is selling part of his stake in the stablecoin issuer. Richard Heathcote, who oversaw Tether Holdings' investment portfolio until earlier this year, is working with PJT Partners to sell part of his 1.26% holding, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. [Bloomberg Business]

ECOMMERCE

LATAMFresh food is driving demand for Amazon's quick-commerce service in Brazil. Amazon Now, the company's 15-minute delivery service, has seen strong uptake for fresh and frozen groceries — Amazon's debut in the category in Brazil — prompting a 15% expansion of its product range, shopping-experience director Fernanda Grumach told Reuters. Amazon launched the service in eight Brazilian cities and is extending coverage, competing against MercadoLibre and Shopee in a market Walmart exited last decade. [Reuters]
APACShopee launched one-hour essentials delivery in Indonesia. Sea Ltd's e-commerce arm rolled out "Belanja Instant 1 Jam Tiba," guaranteeing delivery of fresh produce, frozen food, over-the-counter medicines, and household goods within an hour, with vouchers for missed windows and discounts up to 50% on its Instant Prioritas tier. Separately, GoTo Group's unit ended a service agreement with Indonesian taxi operator Express Transindo Utama effective July 2. [DealStreetAsia]

MEDIA

REGULATORYUSThe Supreme Court cleared Texas to enforce an app-store age-verification law. The court's brief Monday order, issued with no noted dissents, lets Texas require Apple and Google to verify app-store users' ages and obtain parental consent for users under 18 to download apps or make in-app purchases, while litigation over the law's constitutionality continues in lower courts. The tech companies and a group of students had argued the law violates free-speech rights; Texas is one of 20 states pursuing similar measures. [The New York Times]

MARKETS

6 Jul 2026 close | Retrieved 6 Jul 22:00 UTC | Yahoo Finance

THE INTERNET | Jul 7, 2026

Highlights

CORPORATE

AI

PAYMENTS

BLOCKCHAIN

ECOMMERCE

MEDIA

MARKETS

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