Welcome to the newest edition of ID Tech’s AI Update. Here’s the latest big news on the shifting landscape of AI and identity technology:
Oracle’s latest quarterly update signalled resilience in the AI infrastructure buildout. Revenues for Q3 of fiscal 2026 came in at $17.2 billion, up 22 percent year-over-year, and it raised its FY2027 revenue target to $90 billion, significantly above the Wall Street consensus of $86.6 billion. Perhaps more importantly, the company reassured investors that many of its big new AI contracts are structured so that clients either pay upfront or provide GPUs themselves. That means Oracle doesn’t have to find even more funding to support those contracts.
Nvidia will invest $2 billion in Amsterdam-based AI cloud provider Nebius, taking an 8.3 percent stake in the “neocloud” provider as part of the deal. The companies say that Nebius plans to deploy more than 5 gigawatts of Nvidia systems by the end of 2030 – a huge infrastructure commitment that sets up Nebius as a key partner for Nvidia’s next-generation hyperscaling efforts. Nebius recently said it expects to reach 800 megawatts to 1 gigawatt of connected power by the end of this year, which helps explain why Nvidia sees it as a serious buildout partner.
Meta has pushed back the launch of its flagship AI system to May at the earliest. Code-named Avocado, the model was previously supposed to come out this month, but rivals have been so fast in advancing their models that the competition would have mashed Avocado into guacamole by comparison. Pace has been something of an ongoing issue for Meta, which had also postponed its Behemoth AI model last year based on the assessment that its performance couldn’t justify an initial May 2025 release.
Meta’s former AI chief, Yann Lecun, has co-founded a new AI startup, Advanced Machine Intelligence, or AMI. His team has raised $1.03 billion at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation, which the Financial Times described as Europe’s largest seed round. The startup says it will focus on building reasoning AI technology trained on “world models”, and that they’ll be targeting applications involving “complex systems” in areas like aerospace, biomedical, and pharmaceuticals.
A string of departures has left xAI with three of its original 12 co-founders. Guodong Zhang announced he was leaving Elon Musk’s AI startup today, with Zihang Dai having left earlier this week. Reuters reports that Musk has been pushing the co-founders out, due to a lack of progress in keeping pace with AI rivals. In a post on his social media platform, X, Musk highlighted new hires, and said that “xAI was not built right first time around, so is being rebuilt from the foundations up,” adding, “Same thing happened with Tesla.”
Anthropic has followed through on its promise to sue the Pentagon over being listed as a “supply-chain risk” after a dispute about how its AI tech could be used by the Department of War. The firm filed lawsuits in two federal courts on March 9, arguing that the move was purely political, and also didn’t make sense, since the Secretary of War simultaneously treated Anthropic as a security threat and as indispensable. “The Secretary’s February 27 Order announcing his ‘final’ decision contains invective against Anthropic, but no explanation of why Claude constitutes a supply chain risk,” the company said in its filings, referring to its flagship AI model. “The only explanation provided by the Secretary for his action is pure retaliation,” it added later.
The chatbot’s take: We asked for some elaboration on the xAI situation:
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By Alex Perala
