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Upbeat signals about the AI business are proliferating. The latest was chipmaking giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s first-quarter report on Thursday, showing revenue growth of 40.6%, above the top end of its projected range. The company raised its full-year growth rate to above 30%. According to TSMC CEO C.C. Wei, “AI-related demand continues to be extremely robust.”
Wei said he based that assessment both on comments from TSMC’s customers—it makes chips on behalf of various chip designers, led by Nvidia—and on the cloud firms that buy chips from Nvidia. That suggests quarterly earnings coming later this month from the big tech firms will echo his upbeat commentary. It’s little wonder that the big tech stocks have gained a lot of ground since late March—Microsoft, the worst performer so far this year among the big names, is up 18%, for instance, while Nvidia is up 20%. The Nasdaq is up 16% in the same period.
Another reason to be bullish is that business users of AI appear to be starting to spend heavily on the technology—which is exactly what the tech industry needed to see. Anthropic’s exploding annualized revenue is one signal of that, supported by anecdotal evidence of the widespread use of its Claude Code. For example, we quoted Uber’s chief technology officer earlier this week saying the company’s use of Claude Code had maxed out its full-year AI budget just a few months into 2026.
We also reported that Microsoft’s LinkedIn was enjoying surging use of a new AI agent that is not cheap to use. Meanwhile, more AI firms seem to be switching to a consumption-based pricing model—here’s our report on Anthropic’s new pricing policy for large businesses, which includes charging for capacity consumed. That’s a positive sign for the industry’s longevity: The early flat-fee pricing options were effectively a subsidy to get people hooked on AI, but that wasn’t a sustainable approach.
To be sure, business customers of AI firms will have to recalibrate their use of AI if they start getting hit with big bills. But one industry consultant told our reporters Anthropic customers weren’t fleeing, despite higher costs, because of the productivity gains they were seeing. What we will likely see is more companies laying off staff as they’re increasingly able to use AI as a replacement. That trend will create its own issues. But for those worried about the risks of heavy AI investment, the news right now appears to be good.
Hastings Signs Off
Netflix’s first-quarter performance was a fraction better than the company had projected, but otherwise the results were pretty much what was expected. What wasn’t expected, however, was Netflix’s disclosure that co-founder Reed Hastings would leave the board this spring.
It’s been three years since Hastings stepped down from the top job, becoming executive chair, although he gave up the executive part a year ago. Now he’s exiting altogether, wanting to spend more time on philanthropy and other things, Netflix said.
That’s a credit to Hastings: Rather than hang around when his heart isn’t in it, he’s moving on. He still has a bunch of stock—about 21 million shares, according to a recent securities filing, worth about $2.1 billion. Once he’s off the board, however, it’ll be harder to track his shareholdings.
In Other News
• SpaceX subsidiary xAI will rent computing power from its data centers to coding startup Cursor, Business Insider reported.
• Meta Platforms is raising prices for its virtual reality headsets $50 to $100 each, citing rising global costs for memory chips.
Today on The Information’s TITV
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