⚠️Hash Chain News Hourly Quick News Summary:

Reporting Period: 10:00 - 11:00
🔥 Anthropic in talks to acquire UK startup Fractile, whose inference chips’ valuation hits $1 billion
According to Beating monitoring, Anthropic is negotiating to purchase inference chips from London startup Fractile, with mass production expected to enter data centers as early as next year. Fractile was founded at the end of 2022. Its core solution is to replace GPU-dependent HBM with SRAM, reducing data movement and lowering inference power consumption and costs. The agreement is still at an early stage; scale is unknown, and there is a risk the talks could fall apart. However, potential orders have become a key selling point for Fractile’s latest funding round, which is seeking more than $100 million at a valuation exceeding $1 billion. Founders Fund, 8VC, and Accel are all in talks. Previously, Fractile had only raised $15 million. Anthropic is deliberately diversifying chip supply: it has rented cloud servers from Google and Amazon. Last autumn, it committed $30 billion to rent Nvidia servers from Microsoft Azure, and more recently it also agreed to purchase Google’s self-developed chips. Reuters previously reported that Anthropic is also considering designing inference chips in-house. Inference cost is a pain point for Anthropic; last year, the gross margin of its inference business was below expectations. A surge in Claude Code demand led to a shortage of computing power, with some users being rate-limited. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently said he regrets not investing in Anthropic earlier.
🔥 Wasabi Protocol: Users can now safely interact with contracts and withdraw remaining funds
On May 3, Wasabi Protocol released a security incident update stating that users can currently safely interact with the protocol and its contract to withdraw remaining funds. The project team said they are working as hard as they can behind the scenes to advance the related handling work, but because the incident is still in an ongoing investigation stage, they are temporarily unable to disclose more details. They will share the latest progress with the community as soon as conditions allow.
🔥 Iran’s latest negotiation proposal: No longer requires the US to lift the Strait of Hormuz blockade first
On May 3, Xinhua News Agency reported that, according to a message from US media on the 2nd, under Iran’s latest negotiation proposal, Iran no longer demands that the US lift the Strait of Hormuz blockade before the two countries’ representatives hold face-to-face talks.
🔥 Buffett: This is not an ideal environment for Berkshire Hathaway’s capital deployment
On May 3, Buffett, in an interview with CNBC, said that for Berkshire’s capital deployment, the current market environment is not ideal. Berkshire has an excellent management team that can act opportunistically and wait patiently for the right targets. On May 2, Berkshire held its annual shareholder meeting—the first meeting after Buffett handed over the CEO role to Greg Abel earlier this year. The financial report shows its cash reserves have reached a record close to $400 billion. Buffett said that while the outside world appears to be holding steady, in fact they will take active action at the right time; the delay in deploying capital is partly because overall market valuations are too high. When asked about the right timing, he said to wait until “nobody wants to answer the phone,” and opportunities will come naturally.
🔥 Berkshire Hathaway CEO: Large-scale data center construction will drive growth in the utility industry
On May 3, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel said at the annual shareholder meeting that the company takes a cautious stance on AI, emphasizing that AI must create incremental value. He pointed out that the increased electricity demand brought by data center construction is creating huge growth opportunities for utility companies, but energy demand is still below peak-load capacity. This was the first shareholder meeting after Buffett’s handover, and the latest financial report shows cash reserves are approaching $400 billion.
🔥 Buffett: I’ve never seen people with such a gambling mindset as they do now
On May 3, Buffett, in an interview with CNBC, likened the market to “a church with a casino attached,” saying that the current rise in interest in short-term options trading and prediction markets is no longer investing or speculation, but gambling. He added, “We’ve never seen people with such a gambling mindset as they do now.” Buffett also mentioned a US soldier who used confidential information about Venezuela’s military operations to profit about $400,000 in prediction markets; the US Department of Justice is currently prosecuting the case. Berkshire Hathaway held its annual shareholder meeting on May 2, and the latest financial report shows its cash reserves have reached a record close to $400 billion.
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