TheChek News Flow

The project would turn Apple into a rival of Amazon, Microsoft and Google

Apple over the past few years considered launching a business renting out its servers to the millions of developers that create apps for the iPhone and Mac, in what would be a hugely ambitious move that would pit it against Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

The idea discussed was for Apple to rent out servers running on Apple’s own chips, said three people involved in the effort. That reflects Apple’s successful development of its own chips, which have given its phones and laptops a big edge over rival devices—and which are also now being used in Apple’s data centers for some artificial intelligence services.

Apple executives think its chips perform so efficiently that developers would end up spending less on its cloud service than they do on major cloud firms now, especially for intensive AI applications. The status of the project is, however, unclear. The biggest proponent of the idea, a cloud executive called Michael Abbott, left the company in 2023. While discussions were still active as of the first half of 2024, it’s not known whether they have continued.

Apple declined to comment.

Even if Apple doesn’t go ahead with the service, the internal discussion demonstrates the strength the company has in semiconductor design, more than other tech companies that have designed their own chips—including Microsoft, Amazon and Google. On Wednesday, The Information reported that Microsoft was scaling back its in-house chip ambitions following delays.

Photos and Music

Apple has tested its chips for servers to process Apple Wallet transactions in the cloud, showing it could save money on internal infrastructure costs, the people said. Apple’s Photos and Apple Music apps have also tried using the chips and saw improved performance in areas like search, said people familiar with the effort.

While Apple has been struggling to keep up in AI, its chips have emerged as a potential bright spot for the company in powering more basic types of AI. It launched its first chip for its iPad and iPhone in 2010 and started adding specialized AI capabilities in 2017. Apple’s chips are efficient at running many types of inference, which means using pre-trained AI models to interpret new information, such as computer vision found in the Vision Pro.

Big tech companies and AI startups are spending tens of billions of dollars annually on Nvidia chips, which were originally designed for graphics processing in gaming, for the intensive process of training large AI models. The launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 has spurred even larger models that require more processing horsepower, mostly using Nvidia chips.

Apple has mostly resisted that push to spend heavily on Nvidia chips for AI training. Instead it has prioritized renting chips from Amazon and Google clouds, spending around $7 billion annually to do so, said people familiar with the company’s cloud spending. Only a small portion of that spending is for AI training, however.

The benefit of using outside clouds for training is that Apple won’t be stuck with a large inventory of Nvidia chips after they’ve trained the models.

But increasingly, as companies seek to make an actual business off the AI models they’ve spent billions training, inference will become a larger portion of AI computing. That’s where Apple thinks it will find an advantage over competitors.

“Apple has been doing AI on their chips for the longest that anyone has been doing it,” said Amit Kumar, CEO of Dragonfruit, a company that uses Apple chips to power a security camera monitoring service for retailers. “While Nvidia was doing gaming, Apple was doing actual AI compute.”

Dragonfruit is one of a growing set of companies turning Apple computers into something like a server. The company buys up Mac minis, a tiny puck-shaped computer without a screen or user interface like a keyboard, and strings them together to create AI machines to analyze camera data at stores. Kumar said that by going with Apple chips, his company gets a massive cost advantage over rivals that use Nvidia chips.

Another company, webAI, offers businesses the ability to efficiently run AI models across any Apple hardware. Apple is also building an open-source framework, MLX, for developers running AI on Apple chips. At the company’s most recent developer conference last month, Apple also opened up its so-called foundation models, allowing developers to run AI on-device within their apps.

Launching a cloud service for developers would help expand Apple’s services revenue, one of Apple’s last remaining areas of growth, at a time when that business is in danger. New laws and court orders threaten Apple’s lucrative App Store fee it collects, and the U.S. Justice Department is challenging the $20 billion default search deal it collects from Google every year.

Instead of having to rely on a large enterprise sales team like a traditional cloud firm, Apple would assign its developer relations team to handle developers who sign up for the service, the involved people said.

Still, launching a cloud service would also be an unusual move for a company that has been so steadfast in its commitment to consumer businesses.

But some large companies have shown the ability to remake themselves. Google, a consumer advertising business for decades, struggled for years to ramp up a cloud-server business but eventually got over the hump. By 2024 Google Cloud accounted for $43.2 billion in sales, more than 12% of Google-parent Alphabet’s total revenue.

Enterprise Traction

Apple has recently gained some traction with some enterprises in new areas. Its Vision Pro headset, for example, has struggled to gain traction among regular consumers—mostly due to its high $3,500 price tag—but has found a foothold in enterprise settings, such as helping airplane technicians repair engines.

During the cloud project’s early years, around 2020, its champion inside Apple was Abbott, a vice president responsible for a number of cloud projects, such as iCloud storage and mail. After his departure, his engineering org was placed under Jeff Robbin, a long-time engineering leader. Adrian Perica, Apple’s vice president of corporate development, who has taken over more of the company’s services business in recent years, would be responsible for running the cloud server business if it ever launched, the people said.

Without Abbott leading the charge, it isn’t clear if the project will proceed, though it still has backers inside the company.

The cloud service idea took root inside Apple with Project ACDC, which stands for Apple chips in data centers. As a first step, Apple last year launched Private Cloud Compute, which uses high-end Mac chips inside Apple data centers to run parts of its new AI system that can’t run on-device, such as more complex requests.

Siri was the first team to try out servers powered by Mac chips for text-to-speech capabilities. The servers provided a performance improvement in accuracy and cost reduction compared to traditional servers with Intel chips, said people involved in the project.

The ACDC team also recruited Photos and Apple Music to try out the system, said people familiar with the effort.

Internally, Apple has referred to its private cloud using its own chips as its own Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing division of Amazon, said people who worked on the project.

Want to keep track of the largest startup funding deals in 2025 with our curated list of $100 million-plus venture deals to U.S.-based companies? Check out The Crunchbase Megadeals Board.

This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week’s biggest funding rounds here.

The pace of large U.S. startup financing announcements was somewhat muted in a shortened Fourth of July workweek. However, there was one big exception with xAI reported to have closed on a whopping $10 billion in debt and equity funding. In addition, we saw some good-sized rounds for startups in wealth management, procurement and biotech, among other areas.

1. xAI, $10B, generative AI: Elon Musk’s generative AI startup, xAI, reportedly raised $10 billion in fresh debt and equity financing consisting of $5 billion in strategic equity investment, with the remainder of the capital obtained through term loans and secured notes.

2. Savvy Wealth, $72M, wealth management: New York-based Savvy Wealth, a provider of AI-enabled tools for financial advisers, announced a $72 million Series B round led by Industry Ventures. Founded in 2021, Savvy has raised $106 million to date, per Crunchbase data.

3. Levelpath, $55M, procurement: Levelpath, a provider of AI-enabled procurement tools, said it raised over $55 million in a Series B round led by Battery Ventures. The San Francisco-based company’s platform uses AI agents to autonomously handle procurement tasks for businesses.

4. Terrana Biosciences, $50M, agtech: Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Terrana Biosciences launched this week with $50 million in initial funding from Flagship Pioneering to develop RNA-based agricultural products to deliver protective and enhanced crop traits without altering the plant genome.

5. (tied) Campfire, $35M, enterprise software: Campfire, a provider of enterprise resource planning tools, announced that it raised $35 million in a Series A round led by Accel. The San Francisco-based company said it has also grown revenue 10x over the past two years.

5. (tied) Field Medical, $35M, medtech: Field Medical, a developer of technology used in cardiac ablation, closed a $35 million Series B financing led by BioStar Capital and Cue Growth Partners. The round brings funding to date for the Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California, company to $89 million, per Crunchbase data.

7. Syntis Bio, $33M, therapeutics: Boston-based Syntis Bio, a developer of oral therapies for obesity, diabetes and rare diseases, secured $33 million in a Series A round led by Cerberus Ventures. The company said it also received up to $5 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health.

8. Ambrook, $26M, agriculture software: Ambrook, a provider of accounting and recordkeeping software geared for U.S. farmers and ranchers, announced that it closed on a $26.1 million Series A funding led by Thrive Capital.

9. Emerald AI, $24.5M, energy software: Washington, D.C.-based Emerald AI, a developer of software aimed to help the electric power system keep up with AI’s soaring energy demand, announced its launch along with $24.5 million in seed funding led by Radical Ventures.

10. Gallant Therapeutics, $18M, animal health: San Diego-based Gallant Therapeutics, a biotech startup focused on stem cell therapies for pets, announced the closing of an $18 million Series B financing led by Digitalis Ventures.

While the holiday week may have slowed the pace of funding announcements in the U.S., we did see some very big rounds overseas. Standouts include:

‘The Man Who Would Be King’ Review: A Very Modern Monarch

Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de facto ruler, is attempting to modernize—not to democratize—the desert kingdom.

Karen Elliott House is one lucky lady. The publication of her biography of Mohammed bin Salman, “The Man Who Would Be King,” comes just as the Saudi crown prince and the kingdom he leads move to the center stage of world history. Israel’s stunning victory against Iran and its regional network of proxies and allies has shaken the old Middle East balance of power. MBS, as bin Salman is universally known, will play a critical and perhaps decisive role in shaping the new regional order. As they ponder their next moves, diplomats and policymakers will be turning to Ms. House’s lively and deeply sourced account to better understand Saudi Arabia’s leader. The rest of us, from seasoned Middle East experts to casual readers, will be entertained and instructed by this comprehensive overview of the kingdom and its leader.

Ms. House knows her subject well. As a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, she first began covering Saudi Arabia in the 1970s. Her reporting on the Middle East and the kingdom won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984, and her 2012 book, “On Saudi Arabia,” remains indispensable.

She now turns her attention to the man responsible for upending the Saudi Arabia she once knew. Her astonishment at the sweeping changes he has brought to the country echoes throughout the book, which is as much an account of what MBS has achieved as it is a biography. Ms. House speaks with Saudi women who can’t believe the freedoms their king has brought about, and to business leaders struggling to grasp the scale and audacity of his ambitions. The changes are vast and remain underreported in the West.

The crown prince has also broken with centuries of tradition and royal protocol. No Saudi ruler before him would be seen riding a dune buggy at a tourist attraction, or posing for selfies at a restaurant, or appearing at a Formula E electric-car race wearing—Ms. House tells us—“a navy-colored Barbour jacket over his traditional Saudi thobe, Tom Ford aviator sunglasses, and a pair of Adidas Yeezy Boost 350 trainers.”

Ms. House compares MBS to the 17th-century Russian czar Peter the Great, and the comparison is apt. Both men are best understood as modernizing autocrats, driven to shake up traditional societies and so enable them to withstand the competition and stress of a rapidly changing geopolitical scene. Like Peter, who built St. Petersburg to serve as Russia’s bridge to the West, MBS hopes that his new city—known as Neom—will make Saudi Arabia a dominant force in technological innovation. And like Peter, who asserted political control over the Russian Orthodox church and personally shaved the beards of aristocrats resisting modernization, MBS has ruthlessly imposed his vision on both religious and tribal leaders skeptical of change.

And of course there is another similarity. Americans—who tend to think modernization and democratization go together—may find this hard to grasp, but MBS has no more interest in democracy than Peter the Great did more than three centuries ago, or than Vladimir Putin does today. Ms. House does not neglect to note the continuing limits on freedom of speech under MBS’s rule, and she does not minimize the human cost of the repression that still exists in the kingdom. But she also captures the joy of a younger generation now free to live something much closer to what their Western peers would recognize as a normal life.

“The Man Who Would Be King” was, of course, written before Saudi Arabia’s foremost adversary, Iran, underwent a series of humiliating losses at the hands of the Israeli and U.S. militaries, thus perhaps opening a new chapter in Middle Eastern history. But Ms. House’s reporting on MBS’s views about his kingdom’s strategic challenges remains highly relevant.

In a world with nearly 200 states, Saudi Arabia is unique. As the site of the two holiest pilgrimage shrines for the world’s approximately two billion Muslims and the home of some of the largest oil reserves on the planet, the desert kingdom, with its population of nearly 37 million, has long played a leading part in world affairs. Its alliance with the United States, forged by Franklin Roosevelt and MBS’s grandfather, King Abdulaziz, has been an anchor of what security and peace the Middle East has known. Its long support for Wahhabi Islam has had major consequences across the Islamic world, its influence on oil prices affects economies everywhere, and the decisions it makes about investing its massive resources will help shape the global future.

Yet for all its global influence, there is very little modern about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is the only country named after its ruling family, the House of Saud, a dynasty that has, with occasional interruptions, held power over much of the kingdom since the 18th century. It only abolished slavery in 1962, and until MBS came to power, only Afghan women under the Taliban faced a more restrictive climate than Saudi women. Civil liberties in a Western sense largely do not exist, and neither the radical Islam that long shaped the kingdom’s political outlook nor the dynastic nature of the Saudi state conform to Western values or liberal ideas. Yet America’s global reach, and the health of what advocates call the “liberal international order,” very much require a close relationship between Washington and Riyadh.

Ms. House skillfully and insightfully depicts the paradox that drives MBS. Saudi society is both supremely self-confident and profoundly insecure. The Saudi population continues to grow. When the population was smaller, the Saudi government could ensure political stability by distributing oil revenue among tribal rulers and city dwellers. But as the population grows, those handouts get more expensive, even as the expanding population and growing prosperity lead to rising domestic consumption of oil, reducing the surplus available for export. As the Saudi population increases and oil revenues stagnate or even shrink, how will the kingdom retain its political stability?

While earlier rulers took small steps to wean the economy from oil, MBS believes the time for half-measures has passed. Saudi Arabia, as MBS grasped years ago, cannot live by oil alone. But to lessen its dependence on oil, the social contract between Saudi citizens and their government has to change. New sources of revenue, like tourism, will have to supplement oil wealth. New industries, like data centers, will need to be welcomed into the kingdom, and new cities to house them will either have to grow from existing ones or, like Neom, be invented.

Will it work? Ms. House is cautious. Comparing his strategy to “playing roulette on a long-spinning wheel,” she says MBS is placing many multibillion-dollar chips on different alternatives to oil. Some will lose, some will win partially, and some, he hopes, will “hit big.” But, she notes, “the ball in this particular roulette wheel is circling so slowly the winning bets won’t be truly paid for decades.” But the MBS she describes is a formidable character bent on imposing his will. Peter the Great faced enormous obstacles building St. Petersburg in the northern marshes, but he persevered. MBS, Ms. House tells us, is equally determined.

We shall see.

Figma listing plans might raise hopes of a rise in IPO activity

When design software company Figma revealed its plans for a stock market listing this week, it felt like a throwback to an earlier era in the tech financing markets.

Chief executive Dylan Field listed the reasons why an initial public offering would be good for his company, which turned to the stock market after an acquisition by larger rival Adobe was blocked by regulators. It was the kind of paean to going public that is rarely heard these days from tech company founders, most of whom have preferred to stay private.

Listing on the New York Stock Exchange, Field said, was a matter of “good corporate hygiene, brand awareness, liquidity, stronger currency and access to capital markets”, as well as giving Figma’s customers a chance to share in the upside.

Field’s accolade to Wall Street will have warmed the hearts of investment bankers hoping to see a recent uptick in IPOs turn into a steady flow, as well as investors in venture capital firms who have been waiting a long time to cash in on the long venture boom. It comes at a time when “exits” — events where venture investments are realised — are starting to pick up.

Through public listings, acquisitions and buyouts, exits by venture reached $67.7bn in the second quarter of this year. That was a big jump from $38.5bn a year before and the strongest showing since the end of 2021.

This has not come a moment too soon. A dearth of exits has been the venture capital industry’s dirty secret, even as artificial intelligence fuels a new investment boom. Since interest rates started to climb in 2021, putting an end to a brief IPO boom, the value of exits has hit a new nadir.

It would be extremely premature, however, to read too much into this year’s rebound. For a start, it comes from an extremely low level. After peaking at $917bn in 2021, the value of exits fell to only $151bn in 2024.

According to hedge fund Coatue, exits fell to only 40 per cent of the value of new VC investments last year — a measure of just how little the industry was returning to its backers, relative to how much capital it is putting to work. With this year’s partial recovery, they have rebounded to roughly match new investments. But a healthy venture investing market, bringing steady returns for investors, would require the value of exits to reach twice the level of new investments, according to Coatue.

The amounts being returned to investors are also tiny relative to the huge value tied up in illiquid private businesses. Estimates of the aggregate value of private unicorns — companies worth more than $1bn — range from $3.5tn-$6tn. 

The large amounts of capital available in the private market continue to give many tech companies little reason to go public. When OpenAI raised $40bn in March, it didn’t just set a new record for the largest private fundraising: it also exceeded the $29.4bn raised in the biggest stock listing of all time, Saudi Aramco’s 2019 IPO.

After the dearth of exits in the last three years, however, investors are ready to grab at any straws of comfort. The strong performance of a handful of recent IPOs, led by cryptocurrency company Circle, have fed hopes of more new listings — though few notable private tech companies are thought to be ready to go public.

Another encouraging sign has been the willingness of some companies that raised money at the peak of the 2021 venture boom to bite the bullet and accept that they are worth far less today. When online bank Chime went public last month, it priced its shares at $27 each, a large discount to the $69 a share in its last private round in 2021. As more “down-round IPOs” like this occur, venture investors will hope that the stigma normally associated with admitting to a tumbling valuation will pass. 

Meanwhile, some venture capital firms have been trying to co-opt private equity techniques to fuel more deals. As the Financial Times reported this week, several firms have been working on corporate “roll-ups” — buying a number of companies in the same industry, then combining them into a single, larger business and cutting overheads. With less leverage and a friendly venture capital face, the backers hope to persuade tech founders that this represents a solid strategic outcome, rather than the kind of short-term financial engineering associated with private equity.

All of this should bring a steady, if slow, recovery in the real returns to investors. But even as the AI investment boom roars, the venture industry is still heavily reliant on profits that only exist on paper.

In the age of Ozempic, patients are downsizing their implants and seeking surgeries that offer subtle enhancement. One surgeon called the trend ‘Park Avenue quiet luxury.’

Vale Genta spent years googling “tiny boob job” before she found a surgeon who could give her the “perky” B cup of her dreams. “I just wanted a little oomph,” said the 27-year-old content creator, who lives in Miami.

So two summers ago, Genta spent $9,000 to get 200-cubic-centimeter implants that took her one cup-size up from her natural A. When she shared details about her implants on TikTok in early June, she was flooded with comments from fans also looking for a tiny enhancement.

“We all want little perky boobs,” Genta said.

Plastic surgery has not always been known for subtlety. But when it comes to breasts, more patients are asking for enhancements that are barely noticeable. Where DDs used to be the goal in operating rooms, now women are requesting Bs and small Cs suited to shifting aesthetics. In the Ozempic era, the aspirational feminine physique has moved away from curvy and voluminous and toward bodies that are fit.

“They call them Ballerina Boobs,” said Dr. Payman Danielpour, a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills. “We’re using subtle, cute, nice implants.” He charges clients around $20,000 for the procedure.

Breast augmentation was the second-most popular cosmetic surgery in the U.S. last year, at 306,196 procedures, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, just behind liposuction.

Between 2013 and 2018, medium-size implants of 300 to 500 cubic centimeters made up 69% of breast-implant sales at Mentor, a leading implant supplier. Surgeons and implant makers now say demand for smaller implants is rising.

The sales of implants 250 cubic centimeters and under grew double digits from 2023 to 2024 at Allergan, the company said.

In Utah, plastic surgeon Dr. Jerry Chidester said implants in the range of 180 to 250 cubic centimeters at his practice had increased 250% from 2022 to 2024.

“On average, instead of women going to a DD cup, they are going to a full C,” said Chidester.

In New York City, Dr. Ira Savetsky said that three years ago he had mostly worked with implants in the 330 to 350 cubic centimeters range, but now mainly did implants sized 190 to 250 cubic centimeters.

Cubic-centimeter measurements don’t quite correlate to cup size because women’s bodies can vary, but Savetsky estimates the desired aesthetic has gone from a small D to big B. Women are seeking breasts that are “understated,” Savetsky said, noting that on the Upper East Side, small implants are now considered “the Park Avenue quiet luxury.”

Surgeons say advancements in the field of breast augmentation have helped contribute to the rise of smaller and more subtle augmentations. Some doctors are trading implants for fat transfers, taking from the stomach or thighs and injecting it into the breast. Chidester said he also worked with harvested fat cells from cadavers. Doctors are also working with “internal bras” for breast lifts, where a scaffold helps with support and eventually dissolves once the body replaces it with collagen.

The entrant of implants from Motiva, a medical-technology company that obtained U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval last September, has also been a “game-changer,” Danielpour said. About one-third of Motiva implants sold in the U.S. from late 2024 through May 2025 were under 300 cubic centimeters, a spokeswoman for parent company, Establishment Labs, said. Newer-generation implants like Motiva’s are well suited to be placed above the muscle, said Chidester, which can yield more natural results because of their “softer, more adaptive design.”

“Times change, styles change, like eyebrows,” said Jennifer Fisher, a jewelry designer and entrepreneur in Los Angeles, who recently downsized her implants. “A lot of my friends considering this surgery now just want a little bit of a lift.”

A fitness-focused lifestyle is changing the coveted female aesthetic.

“People are aspiring to be lean, long and flexible,” said Danielpour, in Beverly Hills. “No one wants to be busting out of their Alo” (as in the yoga brand).

Women with larger implants who have lost weight with GLP-1s “now want breasts proportionate to their bodies,” said Savetsky. Those with natural breasts can also sometimes experience something doctors call “Ozempic breasts.”

“The breasts are becoming super deflated,” said Danielpour. “Everything is sagging, so one way or another, they have to do something. But they say, ‘go as small as you can go.’ They don’t want to look busty.”

Plastic surgery is no longer considered taboo, and many people now speak openly about their surgeries online. On TikTok, the cherry emoji has become the official symbol for smaller implants.

That open dialogue helped convince Jackie Boyle, a 30-year-old dialysis nurse in Boston, to take the plunge and get breast implants last April.

Boyle said she’d wanted breast enhancement surgery since she was 15, and followed other women posting about their #naturalboobjobs on TikTok before she got hers. She opted for 300-cubic-centimeter implants to bring her to a B cup.

“I wanted something where I’d look good in sports bras but not in your face,” she said. Boyle said her new breasts gave her confidence. “You can dress them up and or dress or down. You can wear them without a bra and have nice, little cleavage or wear them with a bra and have a girl’s night out.”

Breast augmentation surgery comes with potential risks. Women with silicone implants have reported complications including pain, distorted breasts and a rare form of cancer. This may be why some women are opting for fat transfers or breast lifts.

Kelsey Rose, a 33-year-old fitness instructor in Miami, got small, 180-cubic-centimeter implants in December. She initially did a fat transfer to her breasts, but the procedure didn’t have lasting results. Her goal, she said, was to have breast implants that were undetectable: “You look at me and you’re like, ‘Did she?’”

Rose believes that fitness as a lifestyle has directly impacted the popularity of smaller breast augmentations. “You don’t really see the classic Pilates girl with big, massive boobs,” she said.

Dr. Anna Steve’s TikTok bio describes her as “specializing in small volume, elegant implants 🍒.” Breast augmentations start at $18,500 at her New York office, where she says 30% of her patients come from out of state.

The plastic surgeon is often swapping D and double-D implants for “perky Bs and small Cs.” But she also works with menopausal women “who gain breast volume and overwhelmingly feel matronly.” Steve has also identified a huge market for small implants in mothers, she said, “who’ve always identified as small-breasted but then lost volume” due to breast-feeding or aging.

Amy Levy, a 48-year-old mom of two in Los Angeles, got small implants in March to take her to a small C cup. She said she’d never considered surgery until perimenopause. “They got absolutely deflated,” she said. Now, she said, they’re full again, but not imposingly so. “They still look and feel like me.”

Racquel Bettencourt, an influencer and swimsuit-brand owner in Miami, decided to remove her implants entirely in November, after struggling for years with pain and discomfort.

“At 24, I had a tiny body and wanted to feel more like a woman,” said Bettencourt, 38. “But now, I’m very happy to be my natural self. I don’t give a s—what they look like.”