Amazon and Others End Secret Data Center Deals: Is It Enough to Rebuild Trust?
Amazon says it will stop using NDAs when negotiating data center deals with local governments, following a similar move from Microsoft earlier this year. Secrecy has fueled community backlash against AI infrastructure, with opposition leading to hundreds of proposed and enacted moratoriums from New York to San Francisco. Meanwhile, a wave of startups is betting that consumers will hand AI agents access to their inboxes, files, and credit cards — if they can get websites to let them in.
On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Anthony Ha, Sean O’Kane, and Rebecca Bellan dig into whether ditching NDAs will change how data center deals get done, why trust may be the real product for personal AI startups, plus a couple of deals of the week.
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Chapters
- 00:00 Intro
- 00:55 Trump’s “superintelligence force” and the great AI rebranding
- 03:19 Amazon drops NDAs on data center deals
- 09:17 Why the AI industry has a communication problem
- 12:51 Personal AI agents: finding money in your inbox
- 15:27 Ghost’s $3,500 computer built for personal AI
- 19:16 Trust is the product: privacy-first agent startups
- 27:36 Lambda’s $4B raise and the neo cloud backlog problem
- 31:22 Uber’s $2.3B move into catering
- 35:10 Outro
via TechCrunch AI