Category: Business

Amazon.com announced an expanded partnership with AI startup Anthropic late Monday, committing up to $25 billion in new investment that includes $5 billion immediately and up to $20 billion more tied to commercial milestones.

The deal adds to Amazon’s previous $8 billion investment in Anthropic, bringing its total potential stake to $33 billion. In return, Anthropic committed to spending over $100 billion on Amazon Web Services technologies through 2036.

The AI company will access up to 5 gigawatts of computing capacity for training and deploying its Claude AI models on Amazon’s custom silicon. Anthropic currently uses 1 million AWS Trainium2 chips, and will gain additional Trainium2 and Trainium3 capacity as Amazon brings 1 gigawatt online by the end of 2026.

“Our custom AI silicon offers high performance at significantly lower cost for customers, which is why it’s in such hot demand,” said Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, in a statement. “Anthropic’s commitment to run its large language models on AWS Trainium for the next decade reflects the progress we’ve made together on custom silicon, as we continue delivering the technology and infrastructure our customers need to build with generative AI.”

Amazon’s latest AI partnership follows its $50 billion contribution to OpenAI’s $110 billion funding round two months ago, a deal that valued OpenAI at $730 billion pre-money. The e-commerce giant expects to spend $200 billion on capital expenditures this year, with the majority allocated to AI infrastructure development.

Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers and executives, Anthropic has grown its annualized revenue to over $30 billion. The company’s Claude AI models compete directly with OpenAI’s GPT series and Google’s Gemini.

Amazon’s custom chip roadmap includes the Trainium3 processors released in December 2025 and the upcoming Trainium4, which AWS says will deliver 2 exaflops of performance for FP4 data processing.

Cash App launched managed accounts for children ages 6-12 on Tuesday, offering 3.25% interest on savings as the Block-owned fintech platform expands into youth banking. But the accounts include no access to Bitcoin, which is available to older Cash App users.

Parents maintain complete control over the new accounts, approving transfers from up to five trusted contacts they select, according to the announcement. When children turn 13, the managed accounts can convert to sponsored teen accounts with parental consent. The service is not available in New York.

Sponsored accounts for teens do have the option of handling Bitcoin, if parents allow access to the asset. However, the managed accounts for younger kids do not include that crypto functionality, a Block spokesperson confirmed to Decrypt.

Cash App’s timing aligns with shifting savings habits among young people. The company’s Raising Gen Alpha report, based on a Harris Poll survey of parents, found that 89% of Gen Alpha children are actively saving money. Digital and gaming purchases lead their savings goals at 34%, followed by personal technology and toys or collectibles at 32% each.

The survey revealed that 77% of parents have already begun money management discussions with their children, while 50% of Cash App-using parents said they already manage money through the platform on their kids’ behalf.

“Cash App serves more than 5 million teens on a monthly basis, and we’ve heard from parents that they want to start building good money habits with their kids even earlier,” said Block Executive Officer and Head of Business Owen Jennings, in a statement. “We built managed accounts to give kids access to real financial tools and experiences while keeping parents fully involved.”

Cash App, owned by NYSE-traded Block Inc., has expanded beyond its original peer-to-peer payment services to include banking, investment options, and Bitcoin trading. The platform has positioned itself between traditional banking and digital financial services, serving users seeking alternatives to conventional financial institutions.

In addition to offering Bitcoin buying and selling services to eligible customers via Cash App, Block—which was founded and is led by outspoken Bitcoin maximalist Jack Dorsey—has launched other Bitcoin-related products, such as a hardware wallet and modular mining rigs.

Block stock rose after the opening bell Tuesday, recently up about 1.4% on the day to a price just below $75 per share. The company conducted mass layoffs in February, cutting over 4,000 jobs—about 40% of its workforce—in a pivot to embrace additional AI-powered efficiency.

Publicly traded food, grocery, and retail delivery firm DoorDash will use Tempo’s payments and stablecoin-focused blockchain to pay its delivery workers with stablecoins in more than 40 countries. 

The firm, which has to deal with multiple currencies, payment rails, and regulatory requirements, is building on the blockchain network—which was incubated by payments giant Stripe and crypto VC firm Paradigm—to untangle the complexities of global payments. 

“Global payments is complex in terms of what the requirements are for any different country,” said DoorDash co-founder Andy Fang, in a statement. “Figuring out a way to provide solutions to the end customer that feel frictionless, while integrating with rails that are dynamic enough to handle the different requirements of different countries, is at the heart of the complexity.”

The firm’s infrastructure on Tempo will focus on the payout speed, cross-border cost, and transaction flexibility that stablecoins afford its business. 

“If we can get merchants and Dashers their money faster, and do that in a way that’s affordable for them, that’s a no-brainer for the entire ecosystem,” said Fang. 

Settlement with stablecoins can be done in just seconds, whereas typically merchants or Dashers—or those delivering food and products for the firm—have to wait for longer, varying settlement times depending on their country. 

Furthermore, foreign currency spreads and intermediary fees are reduced when operating with stablecoins. 

According to Fang, the firm chose to utilize Tempo instead of other stablecoin infrastructure options because of its “payments focus and enterprise readiness.”

“They have experience not only with crypto from a technology standpoint, but also from an enterprise readiness standpoint, thinking about what would make this technology work realistically for an enterprise like DoorDash,” he said. 

Tempo’s fledgling blockchain—which opened its public mainnet in March—has teamed with a handful of major firms for early design collaboration and payments use cases, including Visa, Shopify, and OpenAI.

The network, which is primarily payments and stablecoin-focused, additionally launched with an agentic payments protocol amid the rise of transactional AI agents. 

Shares in DoorDash (DASH) are down nearly 2% on Tuesday to a recent price of $186, but have jumped around 19% in the last month of trading. 

“Our work with Tempo is focused on building infrastructure to simplify payouts on a global scale,” a DoorDash representative told Decrypt. “We’re in the early stages and taking a thoughtful approach to ensure anything we build is reliable, compliant, and meaningfully improves the payout experience for Dashers and merchants.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated after publication with comment from DoorDash.

Bank of Korea Governor Shin Hyun-song, who began his four-year term Tuesday, delivered his first address in office prioritizing central bank digital currencies and bank-issued deposit tokens while omitting any mention of stablecoins.

Per reports in local media, the governor opened his address by declaring, “In this time of transition, we must again ask what the role of the Central Bank is.”

Shin stated that through the second phase of its retail CBDC and deposit token pilot Project Hangang, the bank would, “increase the usability of CBDC and deposit tokens,” while also highlighting its role in cross-border tokenization effort Project Agora.

Silence on stablecoins

The omission of stablecoins marks a shift from Shin’s earlier position. During his confirmation hearings, he acknowledged a role for private stablecoins, stating that they would, “be able to coexist complementarily and competitively with deposit tokens” and would play a “sufficient role” within the future currency ecosystem.

Meanwhile, KRW1 debuted in February as South Korea’s first fully regulated stablecoin through a partnership between crypto custody service provider BDACS and Woori Bank. The country’s proposed Digital Asset Basic Act, which remains under legislative consideration, would set rules for digital assets including stablecoin issuance.

The governor’s silence on stablecoins comes amid an ongoing tussle between ruling and opposition parties over stablecoin regulation. The Bank of Korea has been actively engaging with the digital currency debate, with Shin previously meeting with bank chiefs in mid-2025 as discussions intensified. In 2023, the central bank partnered with Samsung to explore offline CBDC payments, signaling its commitment to state-backed digital currency solutions.

Beyond digital currencies, Shin outlined sweeping financial market reforms. The governor, who will chair his first policy meeting on May 28, announced plans to actively promote the internationalization of the Korean won, including pushing for 24-hour operation of the foreign exchange market and establishing an offshore won payment system, according to local reports.

On monetary policy, Shin signaled caution, after the central bank maintained its benchmark rate at 2.50% amid geopolitical uncertainties earlier this month. “Given the uncertainty in inflation and growth paths, monetary policy should be conducted in a cautious and flexible manner to ensure stability in prices and financial markets,” Shin said.

OP Labs debuted a privacy offering on Tuesday that’s aimed at bringing more enterprises to Ethereum’s ecosystem, starting with the OP Mainnet, the layer-2 scaling network it created.

The network formerly called Optimism now supports “Privacy Boost,” OP Labs said in an announcement, describing the product as technology that enables private transfers and discreet interactions with decentralized finance applications—while supporting regulatory needs.

Privacy Boost functions as a software development kit and interface allowing software programs to communicate and share data, also known as an API, OP Labs said. The hope is that enterprises use the technology to build real-world applications, the firm added. Additional networks are slated for an expansion of Privacy Boost in the coming weeks, it said.

Renewed interest in digital assets like Zcash may underscore how privacy has returned to vogue within the cryptosphere. Still, for many traditional firms eager to experiment on-chain, the notion that transaction amounts, counterparties, and balances are fully public has always been unworkable, OP Labs co-founder and CTO Karl Floersch told Decrypt.

“We were talking to a payments provider about their public-chain vision, and ultimately, compliance killed their architecture,” he said. “We can’t bring a bunch of these institutions on-chain until we have a very clear-cut solution for privacy.”

In the announcement, OP Labs said its goal is to create a privacy layer that any protocol can plug into, signaling that its ambitions extend beyond its associated network, which already supports leading DeFi applications like lending protocol Aave.

OP Labs’ latest offering comes as networks like Canton, where transaction visibility is limited to relevant parties, court financial incumbents. Last month, for example, Visa declared that it had become the first major payments company to join the DTCC-backed network.

Privacy Boost supports self-custody through zero-knowledge proofs, a cryptographic method for proving that something is true without revealing the known information directly. The technology also leans on Trusted Execution Environments, or TEEs, that allow for fast and private transactions, OP Labs said.

The offering’s TEEs can be tailored to Know Your Customer (KYC) rules—which enterprises often need to abide by—and audit requirements, the firm said. The team behind Starknet, an OP Labs competitor, has touted similar functionality in enabling “private Bitcoin transactions.”

Floersch said a study conducted by OP Labs indicated that, even within crypto, privacy is ranked above other priorities for blockchains, such as fees or throughput. Addressing that gap has been historically difficult, considering that Ethereum was built on an ethos of transparency.

OP Labs said Privacy Boost is the “synthesis” of years of engineering. Last month, the firm said that it was letting go of 20 employees to narrow its focus. Meanwhile, the price of OP Mainnet’s OP token has plunged about 83% to just over $0.12 in the past year, according to CoinGecko.

For institutions, a lack of privacy exposes portfolio positions and trading strategies, OP Labs said. For consumer-facing applications, spending habits and transaction history become public for anyone with an internet connection to see.

“Full transparency introduces legal, competitive, and operational risks,” OP Labs added. “Privacy is no longer an optional feature—it is a prerequisite for mainstream adoption.”

That sentiment is far from new. Last year, Danny Ryan, president of Etherealize, an institutional marketing and product arm for Ethereum’s ecosystem, told Decrypt that Wall Street’s need for on-chain privacy would eventually yield similar fruit for crypto’s Average Joe.