Good morning, tech enthusiasts. Big Tech is throwing $344B at AI this year, turning the race for intelligence into a full-blown spending spree.

Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet are scaling like there's no ceiling, because in this gold rush, FOMO is more powerful than profit margins. Is this the dawn of a new era, or the makings of the next big bubble?

In today’s tech rundown:

• Big Tech pours $344B into AI spree

• Tesla awards Musk $29B in stock

• Space tech company Firefly eyes $6B valuation

• North Korean ‘deepfake’ IT workers surge

• Quick hits on other major tech news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

BIG TECH

💰 Big Tech pours $344B into AI spree

Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown

The Rundown: The spirit of FOMO has officially gone hyper-scale in Big Tech, as tech giants Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet are reportedly on track to funnel $344B into AI this year, not just to lead but to avoid being left behind.

The details:

• Meta is committing up to $65B toward AI in 2025, and aims to bring nearly 1 gigawatt of computing power online, backed by over 1.3M GPUs.

• Microsoft plans to spend over $30B in capital expenditures this quarter alone to scale its Azure cloud platform and expand data center capacity for AI.

• Amazon leads the pack with more than $100B allocated to AI for AWS, which CEO Andy Jassy calls a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity.

• Big Tech’s combined 2024 capex was roughly $230B, with this year’s figure marking a 60% spike.

Why it matters: Welcome to the new reality in tech: the fear of falling behind in the AI compute arms race has blown past former ideas of corporate restraint, as companies bet that whoever controls AI infrastructure will control the future. It’s a move that could either lay the groundwork for a new industrial era or inflate the next tech bubble.

TESLA

🤑 Tesla awards Musk $29B in stock 

Image source: Daniel Oberhaus/Wikimedia Commons

The Rundown: Tesla has greenlit a colossal $29B, 96M-share stock award for CEO Elon Musk, citing the “ever-intensifying AI talent war and Tesla’s position at a critical inflection point” as reasons for the payout.

The details:

• The grant is contingent on Musk remaining as Tesla’s CEO for at least two years, and the shares must be held for five years post-vesting.

• Tesla’s board justifies the move by citing Musk’s pivotal role in the company’s transition from an EV maker to AI, robotics, and robotaxi leader.

• Musk’s award comes at a time when AI salary offers are breaking records, with elite engineers at AI firms landing nine-figure hiring packages.

• The board’s rush follows a Delaware court ruling in January 2025 that invalidated Musk’s earlier 2018 pay package, citing its excessive size.

Why it matters: This is a staggering pay raise for Musk — already the world’s richest person — as Tesla sales and profits drop, and the company is losing market share (due in part to Musk’s behavior). But Tesla sees keeping him onboard as an existential necessity for the company’s future, even if it’s a risky bet on a single executive.

FIREFLY

🚀 Space tech company Firefly eyes $6B valuation

Image source: Firefly Aerospace

The Rundown: Firefly Aerospace, the Texas-based space tech company, has upped its IPO target to as much as $697M, eyeing a potential valuation north of $6B, as investor appetite grows in the fast-evolving “new space” sector.

The details:

• Firefly’s updated prospectus values it at up to $6.04B if the share price is at the high end of its new $41 to $43 per share range.

• The company’s Alpha and Blue Ghost launch vehicles are positioned for rapid, 24-hour missions, a unique operational capacity in the current launch market.

• Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Wells Fargo are leading the underwriting syndicate, with the offering consisting of 16.2M shares.

• Firefly has $1.1B in contract backlog, including major government deals with NASA, the Department of Defense, SpaceX, and Northrop Grumman.

Why it matters: Firefly boasts tech street cred as the only private company to achieve a fully successful commercial Moon landing this March. Backed by $1.1B in backlog and hefty contracts, the firm posted a staggering 572% year-over-year revenue surge in Q1 2025 and is making big moves in its quest to be the “next SpaceX.”

CYBERSECURITY

🕵🏼‍♂️ North Korean ‘deepfake’ IT workers surge

Image source: Office of the President of the Russian Federation/Wikimedia Commons

The Rundown: Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike uncovered a dramatic surge in North Korean operatives infiltrating Western tech companies under false identities, using remote IT jobs to funnel cash to the regime’s weapons programs.

The details:

• Over the past year alone, CrowdStrike identified more than 320 such incidents, a staggering 220% increase from the previous year.

• These state-trained developers, posing as freelancers or full-time hires, have been onboarded at hundreds of organizations, including Fortune 500 firms.

• Some North Korean contractors use “laptop farms” and US-based accomplices to access company portals from domestic IP addresses and mask locations.

• Employing generative AI and automation, a single worker can juggle multiple jobs, respond to English correspondence, and even automate code completion.

Why it matters: Law enforcement is cracking down, but CrowdStrike warns that new technology still allows North Korean operatives to bypass even advanced hiring checks. This leaves even the most security-minded tech firms exposed to insider threats that easily blend into global, remote teams.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in tech today

Tesla was found partly liable for a 2019 fatal crash involving its Autopilot system and ordered to pay $200M in punitive damages to the victim’s family.

British startup CuspAI is reportedly in talks to raise more than $100M toward its goal of using AI models to discover new materials.

Lyft will expand into Europe by partnering with Baidu to launch Chinese-made Apollo Go robotaxis in Germany and the UK starting in 2026, pending regulatory approval.

OpenAI raised $8.3B in new funding at a $300B valuation as part of its larger plan to secure $40B this year, the New York Times reports.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, speaking at a rare all-hands meeting after the latest earnings, rallied employees by declaring that artificial intelligence is “ours to grab.”

Vietnam’s VinFast launched production at a $500M EV plant in Tamil Nadu, India, as the first step in a planned $2B investment across the country.

Illinois passed a law, signed by Governor JB Pritzker, that bans AI from acting as a standalone therapist and sets strict rules on its use by mental health professionals.

Neuralink is launching UK clinical trials with top hospitals to test its brain implant’s ability to help paralyzed patients control devices with their thoughts.

Electric air-taxi developer Joby Aviation is acquiring the passenger business of Blade Air Mobility for as much as $125M in cash and stock.

A University of Basel-led team extracted traces of the 1918 flu virus from a preserved lung of a Zurich teenager who died during the pandemic’s first wave.

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Rowan, Jennifer, and Joey—The Rundown’s editorial team