September 2026 arrived with a bang. In the span of seven days, the AI industry dropped a series of numbers so large they stop meaning anything—until you realize what they represent: a global race to control the compute, the chips, and the networks that will power the next decade.
Anthropic signed a $35 billion cloud deal. Nvidia invested $3.5 billion in MediaTek. The first AI agent smartphone hit the market. And the telecom industry finally got an AI model that speaks its language.
Here’s what happened.
Anthropic’s $35 Billion Compute Gambit
On September 1, Bloomberg reported that Anthropic had agreed to a $35 billion cloud computing deal with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia. The project involves a Texas data center being developed by Hut 8, a bitcoin miner turned data-center operator. Nvidia will hold a 15-year lease on the facility.
This is one of the largest cloud deals in AI history. And it follows a pattern: Anthropic has been on a compute-buying spree all year—$10 billion with Volta, $5 billion with AMD, and reportedly $1.25 billion per month with SpaceX.
The message is unmistakable: the AI labs are not just building models. They are building empires. And the cost of entry is measured in tens of billions.
Nvidia’s $3.5 Billion Chip Alliance
On the same day, MediaTek announced a partnership with Nvidia backed by a $3.5 billion convertible bond investment. MediaTek shares jumped 10% on the news, capping a gain of nearly 200% for the Taiwanese chipmaker this year.
The deal centers on MediaTek adopting Nvidia’s NVLink Fusion platform, which lets companies build custom AI chips that integrate with Nvidia’s data center infrastructure. The two firms will also collaborate on chips for PCs and automotive platforms.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called MediaTek “one of the world’s great semiconductor companies”. MediaTek’s CEO said the investment “strengthens a collaboration that spans cloud AI infrastructure, local AI computing and automotive in the era of physical AI”.
This is Nvidia’s defensive play. Every major AI lab is building its own chips to reduce reliance on Nvidia. By locking in MediaTek, Nvidia ensures it remains central to the ecosystem—even as customers try to escape.
The First AI Agent Smartphone
On September 1, ZTE’s Nubia brand announced that the world’s first AI agent smartphone, the NaviX Ultra, had received network access approval and will launch this month.
This isn’t another voice assistant. The NaviX Ultra integrates AI agents directly into the system底层 architecture, capable of understanding complex user contexts and executing automated tasks across applications. It’s the result of a deep collaboration between Nubia and ByteDance, powered by the “Nubia Doubao Phone Large Model”.
Market analysts see this as a turning point—the transition from traditional smartphones to AI-native phones. The question isn’t whether every phone will have an AI agent. It’s how fast.
OTel 2.0: Telecom Finally Gets Its Own AI
For years, telecom operators have struggled with AI models built for general purposes, not for networks. AT&T’s OTel 2.0 changes that.
Released in partnership with Dell and AMD, OTel 2.0 is the largest and best-performing open-source model built specifically for telecoms. It understands telco language, 3GPP standards, and the complexity of modern networks—built from the ground up rather than adapted after the fact.
Since release, OTel 2.0 has been downloaded more than 5 million times, building on OTel 1.0 models that were downloaded nearly 30 million times. AT&T processed more than 1 trillion tokens to generate roughly 440 billion training tokens.
This is what open telco AI looks like at scale. Not a pilot. A production-ready model built for the realities of the network.
The Infrastructure Gold Rush
While the models and chips grabbed headlines, the infrastructure behind them told a different story.
Schlumberger announced it would acquire cooling equipment manufacturer Kelvion for $4.1 billion, expanding its data center business amid surging demand for AI-driven power and cooling infrastructure.
Crusoe, an AI data center startup, signed a five-year cloud contract with trading firm Jane Street valued at around **$13 billion**. The company has been discussing raising around $3 billion at a roughly $30 billion valuation.
Nokia opened its first R&D center in Saudi Arabia, focused on developing AI-powered network automation software. The center will develop capabilities for self-configuring, self-healing networks—part of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 push to become a global tech hub.
Ericsson and Mobily signed an MoU at LEAP 2026 to advance autonomous networks, supporting Mobily’s ambition to achieve Level 4 network autonomy.
Netcracker and Google Fiber won a TM Forum Excellence Award for AI-native autonomous operations that transformed customer experience and accelerated service delivery. The solution reduced activation times from days to hours.
PwC and Palantir expanded their strategic alliance to help organizations scale enterprise AI, focusing on M&A transformation and ERP modernization.
Adobe made its creative tools available in Slack, letting users describe what they want and having Slackbot call the right Adobe tool to complete the task.
The companies winning aren’t the ones with the best demos. They’re the ones building the factories that make the models possible—the compute, the chips, the networks, the cooling.
This was the week the AI industry stopped being a technology sector and started being an infrastructure sector. The numbers are staggering. The stakes are higher than ever. And the race is just beginning.
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