Today in AI – April 28, 2026

📖 2 min read

China Blocks Meta’s $2 Billion Acquisition of Manus

Beijing has officially blocked Meta’s $2 billion takeover of Manus, the Singaporean AI startup with Chinese roots that went viral earlier this year for its autonomous agent capabilities. The move sends a chilling signal to Chinese tech founders looking to partner with Western companies. Meta had been eyeing Manus as a shortcut to bolting agentic AI into its ecosystem, but Chinese regulators shut it down on national security grounds. The deal’s collapse could reshape how cross-border AI M&A works going forward.

Google Commits Up to $40 Billion to Anthropic

Google is going all-in on Anthropic. According to Bloomberg, the search giant plans to invest up to $40 billion in Claude’s parent company – an initial $10 billion at a $350 billion valuation, with another $30 billion contingent on hitting performance targets. The deal cements a multi-funder equilibrium in the foundation model race, with Amazon, Google, NVIDIA, and Microsoft all appearing on Anthropic’s cap table. For anyone tracking where AI infrastructure dollars are flowing, this is the signal.

AlphaGo Creator Raises Record $1.1B Seed for Ineffable Intelligence

David Silver – the man behind AlphaGo and former head of reinforcement learning at Google DeepMind – just closed the largest seed round in European AI history. His London-based startup Ineffable Intelligence pulled in $1.1 billion at a $5.1 billion valuation, backed by Sequoia, Lightspeed, NVIDIA, and Google. The mission: build a “superlearner” AI that discovers knowledge without relying on human data, using pure reinforcement learning. Silver believes the current LLM paradigm is taking the wrong path – and he has the war chest to prove his thesis.

DeepSeek’s New Model Gets a Shrug from Markets

DeepSeek previewed its next-generation AI model, but the market reaction has been notably subdued compared to the Chinese startup’s blockbuster debut last year. Investors appear to have already priced in incremental improvements, and with the U.S. State Department pushing a global campaign alleging widespread IP theft by Chinese AI firms including DeepSeek, the geopolitical headwinds are real. The hype cycle giveth and the hype cycle taketh away.

Meta Cuts 8,000 Jobs While Pouring Billions Into AI

The layoff-to-AI-spending pipeline continues. Meta confirmed it is cutting roughly 10% of its workforce – about 8,000 employees – with terminations starting May 20. Another 6,000 open roles are being eliminated too. The cuts come as Meta ramps AI infrastructure spending aggressively, including signing a deal with Overview Energy for up to 1 gigawatt of space-based solar power for its data centers. The technology does not actually exist yet, but that is not stopping anyone in this race.

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