AI Bubble Watch: Meta Spends Over $14 Billion

Meta Platforms (META) historically go big or go home with acquisitions. Its savvy purchase of WhatsApp and Instagram continues to pay off, strengthening the firm’s platform.This time, Meta invested even more. It announced a $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI. That brought tech star Alexandr Wang to the hired staff list. Meta is reportedly planning to hire GitHub’s ex-CEO, Nat Friedman. It also plans to bring Friedman’s business partner, Daniel Gross, to the company.Meta reportedly wanted to acquire Perplexity in May, when the AI firm had a valuation of $14 billion. Rumors are circulating that Apple (AAPL) wants to buy Perplexity. The iPhone supplier does not have a solid Apple Intelligence product that may compete with ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft’s (MSFT) CoPilot, or Elon Musk’s Grok on the X platform.Softbank Wants to Spend $1 TrillionSoftbank (SFTBY) might want to invest up to $1 trillion in building an industrial complex in Arizona. This rumor would please the U.S. President. Unfortunately, an investment of this size could sink Masayoshi Son’s Softbank.Softbank wants tax breaks to build factories, involving Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM). TSM needs to diversify from Taiwan, in case tensions with China worsen. Still, TSMC already has a $165 billion investment plan with Samsung.The bullish development lifted chip stocks. AMD rose by 8.22% in the last week. Nvidia (NVDA) traded flat, while Marvel (MRVL) is up 56% from a 52-week low.