It’s Monday, September 15th: we’re welcoming London, ON and Durban to the Collective, breaking down Oracle’s $455B AI backlog and the Nebius-Microsoft deal, and spotlighting the Chroma Awards at LA Tech Week.
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Here are a few new chapters joining the Collective this week…
The Collective lands in London this week for our newest Canadian chapter launch in Ontario’s innovation network. Come meet some incredible people in the community and learn what they’re doing with AI!
Founded on three pillars: education, entrepreneurship, and responsible business, South Africa’s newest AI Collective chapter is here. Don’t miss the inaugural event, The Code of Conscience – Ethics in the Age of AI, featuring keynote speaker Dr. Cindy Friedman for a thoughtful dialogue on ensuring AI serves people first.
🌁 Based in SF? Check out SF IRL, MLOps SF, GenerativeAISF, or Cerebral Valley’s spreadsheet for more!
This Week’s AI News Roundup
What you need to know: weekly by AJ Green 🤝
💰 Oracle & Larry Ellison cash in on the AI gold rush
News: Oracle’s stock surged 40% Wednesday after disclosing $455B in signed AI infrastructure contracts — including a record-breaking $300B deal with OpenAI. The boost sent Ellison’s net worth soaring $100B in a single day, overtaking Musk’s $385B fortune.
Details:
Four multibillion-dollar contracts signed last quarter, pushing Oracle’s AI backlog over $500B.
OpenAI accounts for $300B of future revenue — $60B/year starting in 2027.
Oracle expects cloud infra revenue to rise from $18B now to $144B by 2030 — most of it already locked in.
Why it matters: This signals the emergence of a new currency in the AI boom: future compute capacity as collateral. In an environment where capex > revenue and demand outpaces supply, the ability to "lock in" long-term compute deals is a proxy for dominance. It lets Oracle claim #1 in the AI infra stack. It gives OpenAI a way to justify future growth projections. And it gives investors something to price into stocks today.
👀 Nebius Signs $17.4B AI infrastructure deal with Microsoft
News: Nebius Group, a European AI infrastructure firm spun out of Yandex, has inked a five-year, $17.4B deal with Microsoft to supply high-performance GPU compute infrastructure, beginning with a new data center in Vineland, New Jersey.
Details:
The deal could grow to $19.4B if additional capacity is added.
Nebius will deploy dedicated GPU clusters to serve Azure’s surging AI demand, particularly for models like ChatGPT.
This follows Nebius' recent expansion into Israel, Finland, France, and the US, positioning it as one of the fastest-scaling infrastructure companies in AI.
Why it matters: This deal signals Microsoft’s hunger for diversified compute partners amid a global GPU crunch, while cementing Nebius as a breakout AI infrastructure contender. As hyperscalers look beyond the usual suspects like CoreWeave or Lambda Labs, Nebius’ ascent reflects a broader shift toward geopolitical diversification, European AI autonomy, and demand for sovereign cloud solutions in a post-Yandex era.
🥇 RSVP for the Chroma Awards - The “Olympics” of AI Creativity
The Chroma Awards are here - an AI Film, Music Video, and Games competition presented by ElevenLabs, Google Cloud, fal, Freepik, Dreamina, and CapCut, with partners including AI Collective, a16z, LTX Studio, OpenArt, and more. This global stage is designed to spotlight the next wave of AI creativity with $1M+ in free trials and $175K+ in cash prizes.
Exclusively for our community, ElevenLabs is adding $1,500 to any AI Collective winners as an extra prize. RSVP for the kickoff party below and visit www.tech-week.com to learn more.
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About Noah Frank
Noah is a founder, innovation strategist, policy researcher, and community builder at the edge of AI. His work blends governance, product strategy, and revenue design to keep transformative tech aligned with human progress.
About AJ Green
AJ Green is a founder, writer, VC scout, chairman, and respected community leader in the AI and startup space. A former athlete turned tech entrepreneur, AJ is on a mission to make AI the great equalizer scaling startups, connecting ecosystems, and turning disruption into opportunity.