Welcome back to Daily Zaps, your regularly-scheduled dose of AI news ⚡️ 

Here’s what we got for ya today:

• Everything Nvidia unveiled at GTC event

• Amazon cutting 14,000 corporate jobs

• Nvidia to Invest $1 Billion in Nokia

• Claude for Excel

Let’s get right into it!

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BIG TECH

Everything Nvidia unveiled at GTC event

By pitching compute power as national infrastructure, “buying compute by the gigawatt”, Huang positioned Nvidia as the backbone of the coming AI-powered industrial revolution, where intelligence is manufactured, scaled, and deployed like any other essential utility.

Here’s everything Nvidia unveiled at its Washington GTC:

• AI as Infrastructure: At Nvidia’s GTC in Washington, CEO Jensen Huang positioned AI as part of America’s industrial base, calling compute the new infrastructure.

• Physical AI: Introduced “physical AI” — intelligence embedded in factories, robots, and vehicles — powered by Nvidia’s chips and software stack.

• AI Factory for Government: Launched a FedRAMP-aligned platform with partners like Palantir, Lockheed Martin, and ServiceNow for federal and defense workloads.

• Omniverse DSX: Unveiled a digital twin platform to design AI factories — gigawatt-scale data centers that can deploy 500× faster and run 30% more efficiently.

• IGX Thor & Robotics: Debuted IGX Thor, an industrial AI computer for medical and factory automation, part of Nvidia’s DGX–RTX–IGX system.

• Quantum & Supercomputing: Announced NVQlink to connect quantum processors with GPUs and a DOE partnership to build seven AI supercomputers.

• Autonomous Vehicles & 6G: Revealed Drive Hyperion 10 for Uber’s 100,000-vehicle fleet and open-sourced Aerial 6G with Nokia and T-Mobile.

STARTUPS

Claude for Excel

Anthropic has launched Claude for Excel in beta as a research preview, offering an AI assistant that can read, analyze, modify, and build spreadsheets directly within Microsoft Excel. Available first to 1,000 Max, Enterprise, and Teams users, Claude works from a sidebar where it explains every change it makes with “cell-level citations” and links to referenced cells for full transparency. The tool can debug formulas, preserve spreadsheet structure, populate templates with new data, or even create new workbooks from scratch. Sign up for waitlist.

While advanced features like pivot tables and macros are still in development, Claude for Excel already connects to live financial data from sources like LSEG and Moody’s to support real-time modeling and analysis. This release builds on Anthropic’s growing Microsoft integrations—allowing Claude to edit Excel and PowerPoint files, search Microsoft 365 content, and appear in Copilot Studio—and marks a major step toward embedding AI directly into core enterprise workflows.

CAREERS

Amazon cutting 14,000 corporate jobs

Amazon is cutting 14,000 corporate jobs, about 4% of its white-collar workforce, as it ramps up investment in artificial intelligence and automation. CEO Andy Jassy said the company is building over 1,000 AI applications and investing billions in new data centers to expand its cloud and AI capabilities, including the next generation of Alexa.

At the same time, internal reports suggest Amazon plans to automate much of its warehouse network, potentially replacing over 600,000 jobs within the decade as robots take over more fulfillment tasks. While Amazon denies automation will lead to mass layoffs, the shift toward “co-bots” and AI-driven logistics signals a major move away from human labor. Analysts say the company’s aggressive push into AI marks a turning point for both Amazon’s workforce and the future of retail automation.

BIG TECH

Nvidia to Invest $1 Billion in Nokia

Nokia announced that Nvidia is taking a $1 billion stake in the company as part of a new strategic partnership focused on artificial intelligence and next-generation networking. The deal will see Nokia issue over 166 million new shares to fund its AI initiatives and other corporate goals, sending its stock up 26%. As part of the collaboration, Nokia will adapt its 5G and 6G software to run on Nvidia’s chips and jointly develop 6G and AI-driven networking technologies, with Nvidia considering incorporating Nokia’s solutions into future AI infrastructure.

The move expands Nvidia’s growing portfolio of strategic investments—following major stakes in Intel ($5 billion), OpenAI ($100 billion), Wayve ($500 million), and Nscale ($667 million)—as the chipmaker deepens its influence across the global AI ecosystem.