Afternoon Brief, September 30th 2026
The FTC confirmed an investigation into AI companies over consumer risks. Micron reported another jump in memory revenue. A Senate vote left data-center cost legislation short of passage. CoreWeave put Nvidia's Rubin hardware into a customer's production workload.
The FTC confirms an investigation into OpenAI and Anthropic
The Federal Trade Commission confirmed Wednesday that it is investigating OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI companies over possible dangers to consumers. An agency spokesperson confirmed the inquiry to AP but declined further comment. Neither named company immediately responded to AP's requests.
The disclosure establishes federal scrutiny beyond the industry's voluntary safety commitments. It does not establish a violation or announce a remedy. The agency has not publicly explained the investigation's full scope. SourcesB
Micron reports $54.23 billion in quarterly revenue and forecasts another increase
Micron reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $54.23 billion after the market closed, up from $41.46 billion in the preceding quarter. net income reached $37.70 billion. Its first-quarter revenue is $61.5 billion, plus or minus $1.5 billion.
Cloud Memory contributed $16.28 billion and Core Data Center contributed $18.00 billion to quarterly revenue. Together they account for most of the total, although those reporting segments are not a direct measure of AI spending alone. Management says its customer agreements give it confidence to increase investment. The reported quarter establishes demand already converted into sales; the next quarter's increase remains a forecast. SourcesA
The Senate blocks a bill on who pays for data-center power infrastructure
The Senate voted 57-43 to advance the Ratepayer Protection Act, falling short of the 60 votes needed to clear the procedural hurdle. The bill would require state utility regulators to consider whether large electricity users, including data centers, should bear the incremental infrastructure costs of serving them.
That distinction limits what the proposal would do: requiring regulators to consider a standard does not itself require them to adopt it. Wednesday's vote leaves even that federal requirement stalled. Households still depend on the rules and decisions in their own utility jurisdictions to determine how expansion costs reach their bills. SourcesB
Cognition starts running production work on CoreWeave's Rubin systems
CoreWeave announced availability of Nvidia Vera Rubin systems, with Cognition named as the first customer running production workloads. Nvidia says Cognition's early tests delivered up to 4.8 times the of a GB200 NVL72 baseline on selected software-engineering tasks. This is a customer-and-vendor result for that workload, not an independent comparison of completed tasks per dollar.
CoreWeave also introduced Forge, connecting model training and evaluation with production feedback. The offering combines Weights & Biases, OpenPipe and marimo, with isolated execution environments for now . The infrastructure news supplies a concrete deployment alongside the performance claim: a coding-agent provider is already using the new systems. Nvidia's Vera offering on CoreWeave is still described as forthcoming. SourcesA