TNB Tech Minute: Apple to Spend $500 Billion on U.S. Expansion

[00:00:01] Here's your TNB Tech Minute for Monday, February 24. I'm Julie Chang for The Wall Street Journal. Apple says it plans to spend more than $500 billion over the next four years to expand manufacturing in the U.S. That money will be spent on a mixture of new and existing initiatives. Today's announcement includes a new factory in Houston that will support Apple Intelligence, the company's generative artificial intelligence system.

[00:00:27] The company also said it plans to hire around 20,000 people over the next four years. Apple's announcement comes as tech companies are working to strengthen relations with President Trump, who is talking up tariffs and other policies that could have major effects on the industry. Trump placed an additional 10 percent levy on goods from China earlier this month. We exclusively report that AI startup Anthropic is finalizing a $3.5 billion funding round

[00:00:53] that values the startup at $61.5 billion. Anthropic is the startup behind the chatbot Claude. It was founded by former OpenAI employees and is considered one of the few AI startups with enough talent and funding to compete with OpenAI. Anthropic was previously valued at $18 billion. The $61.5 billion valuation includes the cash the startup is raising. And Elizabeth Holmes has lost her bid to overturn her conviction.

[00:01:23] Holmes founded the defunct blood testing technology startup Theranos. She was convicted of four counts of defrauding investors in early 2022. Holmes had sought to reverse her guilty verdict and is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence. She can now either petition for another review of her case with more judges from the appeals court or try to petition the Supreme Court directly. For a deeper dive into what's happening in tech, check out tomorrow's Tech News Briefing podcast. Thank you. Thank you.