By Alexei Oreskovic
Publication Date: 2026-01-29 10:36:00
Good morning. Regular readers of this newsletter will be familiar with the term “circular deals,” and the debate about whether AI market demand is being artificially inflated by AI firms investing in each other and buying each other’s goods (take Nvidia’s investment in cloud provider CoreWeave, which buys Nvidia chips; Or Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI, which uses Microsoft’s cloud services).
Leave it to Elon Musk to take it to the next level. As Tesla revealed in its earnings on Wednesday (discussed in more detail below), the Musk-led company has purchased a $2 billion stake in xAI, the artificial intelligence startup owned by Musk. Now that’s some extreme circularity. Or is it corporate inbreeding?
Today’s news below.
Alexei Oreskovic
@lexnfx
alexei.oreskovic@fortune.com
Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Fortune Tech? Drop a line here.
Microsoft and Meta earnings get different reactions
Call it a tale of two Ms.
Meta and Microsoft both…