Meta has signed a new long-term agreement to spend up to $27 billion on Dutch cloud provider Nebius‘ AI infrastructure, the company announced on Monday.

Nebius’ shares surged 14% in premarket trading.

Over the next five years, Nebius will provide $12 billion of dedicated capacity across a number of locations, including on what the company says will be one of the first large-scale deployments of Nvidia’s latest AI-specialist Vera Rubin chips.

Meta has also committed to purchase additional available compute capacity from Nebius, worth up to a total of $15 billion over five years.

Netherlands-based Nebius has emerged as a leading European player in the rapidly developing AI cloud computing space. The company has seen its share price increase more than 400% since listing in New York in 2024.

“We are pleased to expand our significant partnership with Meta as part of securing more large, long-term capacity contracts to accelerate the build-out and growth of our core AI cloud business,” Arkady Volozh, founder and CEO of Nebius, said in a statement.

Citi said Monday it was initiating coverage of Nebius with a buy/high risk rating, which it noted was supported by a “differentiated view on AI datacenter [total addressable market] growth, margin improvement and NBIS’s capital-efficient scaling.”

Meta is part of a group of hyperscalers planning huge spending as they race to build out infrastructure to power the AI boom.

The company said its AI-related capital expenditure would hit between $115 billion and $135 billion this year, as part of a combined $700 billion in spending by hyperscalers including Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft.

It comes as investors pile into the AI cloud computing sector. U.K.-based AI data center startup Nscale announced it had raised $2 billion at a $14.6 billion valuation last week, from investors including Nvidia.

The chip giant also announced it would invest $2 billion in Nebius last week, which saw the Dutch company’s stock pop 16%.

Nebius was founded in 2022 after a restructuring of Russian company Yandex’s operations based outside of its home market and listed in New York in 2024. Its share price rose more than 200% in 2025 and has increased by 35% so far in 2026.

The company also inked a deal to deliver computing resources to Microsoft, worth up to $19.4 billion over five years, in September.

Google said its fiber internet unit called GFiber is combining with Astound Broadband and forming an independent provider, with Google remaining as a minority shareholder.

The new company will be majority owned by investment firm Stonepeak and led by the existing GFiber executive team, “utilizing their expertise in high-speed fiber innovation to manage the combined network footprint,” Google said in a press release on Wednesday. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

Google Fiber, launched in 2010, was an early effort by Google to build ultra-fast fiber-optic broadband networks in the U.S., starting with a gigabit-speed rollout in Kansas City in 2012. Google proposed building gigabit fiber connections to homes, far faster than typical U.S. internet speeds at the time.

Since then, some planned expansions were canceled and the company focused on select markets rather than a costly and time-intensive nationwide rollout.

The spinout comes at a time when demand is growing for high-capacity networks fueled by the increasing popularity of artificial intelligence services. The external capital will help the new entity expand across the country, the company said.

“This partnership with Astound and Stonepeak is the next step in our decade-long mission to redefine what customers can expect from their internet provider,” GFiber CEO Dinni Jain said in the release.

GFiber has been part of Google’s “Other Bets” segment, which includes non-core assets such as the Waymo robotaxi division and drug discovery business Isomorphic Labs. In 2025, the combined segment generated $1.54 billion in revenue, or less than 0.5% of Alphabet’s total sales, and recorded an operating loss of $16.8 billion.

The shift toward fiber infrastructure has become increasingly important as demand grows for networks that can support cloud computing, streaming and emerging AI services. U.S. tech giants are also rolling out a rapidly expanding network of transcontinental subsea cables, seeking to keep pace with growing bandwidth demand.

Astound is a major U.S. cable operator and broadband platform, which was acquired by Stonepeak in 2021 for $8.1 billion. Stonepeak specializes in infrastructure and real estate.

A Google spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

WATCH: Google’s capacity advantage

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr lashed out at Amazon on Wednesday for opposing SpaceX’s orbital data center plans while it’s falling short of its own satellite “deployment milestone.”

“Amazon should focus on the fact that it will fall roughly 1,000 satellites short of meeting its upcoming deployment milestone, rather than spending their time and resources filing petitions against companies that are putting thousands of satellites in orbit,” Carr wrote in a post on X.

Amazon declined to comment.

Amazon last week urged the FCC to reject a SpaceX application for permission to launch a constellation of up to 1 million low Earth orbit satellites, which would function as a data center network in space to support artificial intelligence projects.

Amazon characterized the application as a “lofty ambition rather than a real plan,” noting SpaceX has provided scant details around how it will “deliver on these grand claims.”

SpaceX’s Starlink service currently dominates the internet-from-space market. Amazon has been vying to compete with Starlink via its Leo satellite service, previously branded as Kuiper. The company has invested more than $10 billion into the effort, and has sent up at least 200 satellites since last April via a variety of launch partners, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

In late January, Amazon asked the FCC for a waiver or 24-month extension, to July 2028, to meet a deadline that requires it to deploy roughly 1,600 internet satellites by July 2026. At the time, the company blamed delays beyond its control, including a “shortage in the near-term availability” of rockets and manufacturing disruptions.

Amazon noted in its request that the FCC has previously granted similar extensions. The FCC last month approved a separate petition from Amazon to deploy 4,500 internet satellites, which would more than double the size of its constellation.

Starlink has around 9,000 satellites in orbit today and roughly 9 million customers. It recently received authorization from the FCC to put another 7,500 satellites into orbit.

Scientists have decried the SpaceX proposal to launch one million satellites into orbit, citing a wide range of issues, including light pollution, orbital debris and other harms to the broader orbital environment, as well as increased risk of “Kessler syndrome,” a scenario in which debris and clutter in space can cause a chain reaction that makes low Earth orbit unusable.

Amazon pointed to these concerns from astronomers and environmental groups in its petition, and said SpaceX’s application “risks worsening international backlash” from regulators who are concerned about monopolization of space resources.

“Granting the application would worsen matters further, forcing every other operator in Low-Earth Orbit to plan around a constellation that may never exist, distorting international spectrum and orbital coordination proceedings, and lending regulatory legitimacy to what amounts to a publicity and narrative-shaping exercise,” Amazon wrote in its request to the FCC.

The FCC hasn’t yet approved SpaceX’s request, but in separate remarks to Reuters on Wednesday, Carr said he doesn’t expect Amazon’s petition to “get much traction.”

Carr is a longtime public fan of SpaceX who has mocked environmental concerns from those calling out Musk’s company for launches that harmed public lands and endangered species’ habitat.

He also accused the FCC, under former President Joe Biden, of “regulatory harassment” of SpaceX when the agency found the company’s Starlink WiFi service was not fit at the time to fulfill the program needs of a rural broadband initiative.

Just outside Ireland’s capital, Dublin, a data center has become the first in Europe to turn to an independent, so-called “islanded,” microgrid to keep its servers running.

Europe is looking to cash in on the AI boom while tackling power connection delays that have persisted for decades. The European Commission estimates the bloc needs at least 1.2 trillion euros ($1.39 trillion) in investments by 2040. In some cases, companies can’t wait for bottlenecks to be eased and are turning to their own sources of power.

The Dublin facility, operated by power supply solutions provider AVK and digital infrastructure developer Pure Data Centre Group, could mark the continent’s first step toward a privately powered ecosystem.

Microgrids are localized energy systems that can generate, store, and distribute power. The systems are already being widely used in the U.S., where a boom in data centers in red-hot areas like Texas and Virginia has seen an increasing need for off-grid power.

AVK and Pure DC say their Dublin installation is the first data center in Europe to be operated by a live microgrid.

“As these data centers get bigger and we see AI workloads and that data becoming more of a feature in our day-to-day lives, that only puts more stress on the grid. So we have to drive to a different solution,” AVK CEO Ben Pritchard told CNBC.

The systems are not without their challenges. Regulatory hurdles could slow deployment, and the long-term success of microgrids likely depends on whether their power sources are both reliable and sustainable.

Ireland is one of two European countries to have enforced a moratorium on new data center applications as the energy-intensive facilities put pressure on the nation’s grid. The facilities consumed a staggering 22% of the small country’s power in 2024.

Ireland’s national grid operator warned in late February that meeting power demand could be “challenging” as consumers use electricity in new ways. It identified data centers as a key driver of that demand growth.

But late last year, Irish authorities eased the moratorium, as the AI boom saw sentiment U-turn on their economic potential.

All new data centers connecting to the grid must now provide dispatchable power — electricity that can be turned on or off depending on the national grid’s needs — or have the capacity to store energy. They must also source at least 80% of annual demand from renewable electricity generated in Ireland, according to guidelines set by the country’s regulator CRU.

“The alternative in Ireland was to wait, literally wait for an unknown time to be able to get a grid connection, and still today you’re not able to get a grid connection. So creating a microgrid enabled us to move our project forward,” Pure DC President Dawn Childs told CNBC.

Childs, who was appointed a Dame in the U.K. for her services to engineering, added that the project is intended as both an immediate and a long-term solution. “If we have to stay as an islanded solution, we absolutely can … However, to get the most sustainable solution and to provide services back into the grid in Dublin, in the most constrained area of Ireland, it would be our desire to get a grid connection.”

The Dublin data center, which can run both cloud and AI workloads, has a total capacity of about 110 megawatts. Total projected investment in the site is about 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion).

The facility is currently powered by natural gas engines with the ability to switch to Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO). The site has also trialled biomethane as a power source.

If the Dublin data center does eventually secure a grid connection, it will be able to offer dispatchable power and provide up to 20 MW of battery storage, Childs said.

The global microgrid market was worth around $29 billion in 2025, with Europe’s market expected to grow by nearly 10% per year due to its aging infrastructure, according to estimates from Global Market Insights. While investments are made in modernizing the national grid, companies are expected to increasingly turn to more immediate solutions for power.

Microgrids are already being used to power industrial sites and plants in Europe, but there aren’t many instances of them powering data centers when compared to the U.S.

In addition to AVK, companies such as ABB and Siemens are racing to develop the technology, with Schneider Electric opening a microgrid testing lab in Massachusetts last year to test the systems in real-world conditions.

Siemens sees “potential opportunities” for implementing microgrids at data center locations and is currently in discussions with several customers, a company spokesperson told CNBC. The topic is particularly relevant for the U.S. market, but it is also having similar discussions in Europe, they said.

Siemens is also interested in the use of microgrids to support electric vehicle charging infrastructure and port decarbonization.

AVK, which is expected to reach at least a billion-dollar valuation by 2030, initially focused on standby and backup power generation before expanding to become a full power solutions provider.

According to the company’s CEO, discussions and plans for microgrids were underway in Europe, but the U.S. market quickly overtook the 27-nation bloc. “It’s just that the U.S. has such a high demand that we’ve seen the rollout a little bit quicker than we’ve seen here in Europe,” Pritchard told CNBC, adding that the company is now seeing a new type of investor who is specifically interested in microgrids and not necessarily the data center itself.

“They’re infrastructure funds who are looking to build, own and operate microgrids and supply power to the data centers,” Pritchard said. He expects this type of asset class to mature over the next three to five years.

One of the biggest challenges facing the market is how microgrids are deployed sustainably, as much of the discussion on the tech has revolved around the use of gas turbines or fuel cells, Diego Diaz Hernandez, a partner at McKinsey, told CNBC.

“Making these assets grid participants in theory and in practice are very different questions,” Diaz Hernandez said.

“Technically speaking, it’s very feasible to do so, and we’ve seen examples of that in the U.S. [where] grid operators are requiring 50 or even 100 hours of flexibility out of the entire year in order to ease the pressure on the grid. So they’re not asking for a lot, but actually having the regulation and policy in place to allow for that to happen is a big question.”

Ensuring the power supply is reliable, as well as overcoming regulation, will also be key, Hernandez said. He noted that in the U.S., around 30% of data centers are adopting microgrid or other behind-the-meter solutions, like fuel cells and gas turbines — power sources that don’t require a connection to the main grid. In Europe, the share was just 5–10% 18 months ago, but has since already risen to about 20%, he added.

Challenges aside, the burden on data centers to provide their own sources of power is clearly growing. Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump said data centers “need some PR help” amid concerns about their impact on electricity prices.

Swedish legaltech Legora has raised $550 million at a $5.55 billion valuation in a Series D round, the company announced on Tuesday, as investors pile money into European AI startups.

The round was led by Accel, with participation from existing investors Benchmark, Bessemer Venture Partners, General Catalyst, ICONIQ, Redpoint Ventures and Y Combinator.

New investors including Alkeon Capital, Bain Capital, Firstmark Capital, Menlo Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Sands Capital and Starwood Capital were also involved.

Legora’s Series D is its third raise in the past year.

The announcement comes on the back of a bumper start to the week for European AI companies.

U.K.-based AI infrastructure Nscale said on Monday that it had raised a $2 billion Series C and on Tuesday former Meta AI chief Yann LeCun’s new AI startup Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs announced it had picked up over $1 billion. U.K. autonomous driving startup Wayve hit an $8.6 billion valuation in February after raising a $1.2 billion Series D.

Record funds were ploughed into European AI startups in 2025, with $21.7 billion invested, according to dealcounting platform Dealroom. Just over two months into 2026, AI startups in the region have raised more than $9 billion.

“Over the past year, the pace of adoption in the U.S. has exceeded our expectations, as leading firms and in-house teams move decisively from experimentation to embedding AI across their organisations,” Max Junestrand, CEO and cofounder of Legora, said in a statement.

“This funding enables us to accelerate our U.S. growth – investing in talent and infrastructure, strengthening our presence in key markets, and ensuring we can support customers on the ground as they integrate AI into their core workflows.”

Legora is expanding its footprint in the U.S. with new offices in Houston and Chicago, alongside its existing presence in New York and Denver. The company expects to open additional local hubs and grow to more than 300 employees across its U.S. offices by the end of 2026, it said.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to label Anthropic a “Supply-Chain Risk to National Security” on Friday resulted in more questions than answers.

“It’s all very puzzling,” Herbert Lin, a senior research scholar at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, told CNBC in an interview.

Anthropic is the only American company ever to be publicly named a supply chain risk, as the designation has traditionally been used against foreign adversaries. But the company hasn’t received any official declaration beyond social media posts.

A formal designation will require defense vendors and contractors to certify that they don’t use Anthropic’s models in their work with the Pentagon.

The dispute centered around how Anthropic’s artificial intelligence models could be used by the military. The Department of Defense wanted Anthropic to grant the agency unfettered access to its Claude models across all lawful purposes, while Anthropic wanted assurance that its technology would not be tapped for fully autonomous weapons or domestic mass surveillance.

With no agreement reached by Friday’s deadline, President Donald Trump directed federal agencies to “immediately cease” all use of Anthropic’s technology, and said there would be a six-month phaseout period for agencies like the DOD.

Experts told CNBC the supply chain risk designation is highly unusual, especially since the U.S. and Israel began carrying out strikes in Iran just hours later. A group of retired defense officials, policy leaders and executives wrote to Congress on Thursday, defending Anthropic and calling the Trump administration’s designation a “dangerous precedent.”

Anthropic’s models are still being used to support U.S. military operations in Iran, even after the company was blacklisted, as CNBC previously reported.

Talks between Anthropic and the DOD are now reportedly back on, according to the Financial Times, but there are still big questions hanging over the issue as of Thursday.

Why is the U.S. government still using Claude?

Stanford’s Lin doesn’t understand why the DOD is still using Anthropic’s models in sensitive settings if they pose such a threat. If the Trump administration really sees Anthropic as a risk to national security, he said, it wouldn’t make sense to phase out the models over an extended period of time.

“OK, wait a minute, they’re a really dangerous player for U.S. national security, so you’re going to use them for another six months? Huh?” Lin said. 

Michael Horowitz, a senior fellow for technology and innovation at the Council on Foreign Relations, said it’s “especially notable” that Anthropic’s models were used to support the U.S. military action in Iran. He said “there’s no clearer signal” of how much the Pentagon values the technology.

“Even in a situation where there is this intense feud between the company and the Pentagon, they are using their technology in the most important military operation that the United States is conducting,” he said. 

Transitioning away from Anthropic toward a new vendor takes time and comes at a significant cost in terms of efficiency, said Jacquelyn Schneider, a Hargrove Hoover fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

Until recently, Anthropic was the only AI company approved to deploy its models across the agency’s classified networks. OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI received clearance, but their systems can’t be deployed or adopted overnight.

What’s the actual threat?

By designating Anthropic a supply chain risk, the DOD is suggesting that the company is “really bad” for U.S. national security, Lin said. But he stressed that the agency hasn’t clearly outlined what kind of threat the company poses. 

“They don’t point to any technical failing, they don’t point to any hack,” Lin said. “They say things like ‘They’re arrogant,’ and ‘We don’t want you telling the DoD what to do in some hypothetical situation that hasn’t happened yet.'”

Lin said the other punishment that Hegseth was threatening to impose on Anthropic, invoking the Defense Production Act, also contradicts the idea that the company threatens national security. 

The Defense Production Act allows the president to control domestic industries under emergency authority when it’s in the interest of national security. It could essentially compel Anthropic to let the Pentagon use its technology. 

Horowitz said he thinks the clash between Anthropic and the DOD is “masquerading” as a policy dispute. 

Months earlier, venture capitalist and White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks criticized the company for “running a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering,” after an essay published by an executive, and conservatives have repeatedly accused Anthropic of pushing “woke AI.”

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei took a different approach than other tech executives, avoiding getting cozy with the Trump administration in its early days.

“This feels to me like a dispute that is about politics and personalities,” Horowitz said. 

Is an official designation on the way?

Anthropic hasn’t been designated a supply chain risk by any official measure, and there’s an open question as to if or when the company should expect one. Defense contractors have to decide whether they will follow Hegseth’s directive on social media or wait for more formal guidance. 

Several executives told CNBC that their companies are moving away from Anthropic’s models, and a venture capitalist said a number of portfolio companies are switching “out of an abundance of caution.” But others, including C3 AI Chairman Tom Siebel, said he doesn’t see a “need to mitigate” the technology “until it gets litigated.” 

Schneider said businesses are rational, and if they think it’s high risk to work with Anthropic, whether it’s formally declared a supply chain risk or not, they’re going to hedge and look for other partners.

“There’s all sorts of decisions that have been made within the Trump administration that, by law, require more codification,” Schneider said. “Even the example of moving from DoD to [Department of War]. That by law needs more codification, but all the contractors are using DoW.”

Even so, Samir Jain, vice president of policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said social media posts likely aren’t enough to actually cause a designation.

“There’s a process that the statute requires, including an actual finding that Anthropic presents national security risks if it’s part of the supply chain,” he said in an interview. “I don’t think, factually, that that predicate could possibly be met here.”

Anthropic said in a statement Friday that it will challenge “any supply chain risk designation in court.”

Does this have anything to do with the U.S. strikes on Iran?

For Schneider, the war in Iran now looms large over the spat between Anthropic and the DOD. She said she’s left wondering whether the two conflicts were happening in parallel, or if they were somehow related. 

“Obviously, you’re not going to walk away from technologies that are deeply embedded in your wartime processes right before you go to war,” Schneider said.

She said planning a military operation of that magnitude would have required “a lot of sleepless nights,” so she was surprised the DOD was willing to spend such a “remarkable amount of energy” on a public clash ahead of the initial attack.

What happens next?

As the war in Iran stretches into its sixth day, Anthropic’s path forward with the DOD remains a big mystery.  

Horowitz said he would bet that the six-month off-boarding period will become a “a locus for some re-examination” within the Pentagon, especially since members of Congress and broader public markets have shown so much interest in the dispute. 

Lin expressed a similar sentiment, and said he wouldn’t bet on Anthropic’s models being out of the DOD a year from now.

Schneider is less convinced. 

“I wish I had a more definitive thought about where this is all going to go, but everything is so unprecedented,” she said. When it comes to historical examples or analogous cases, Schneider said: “I don’t have those. It’s just super limited.”

The DOD declined to comment. Anthropic didn’t provide a comment.

WATCH: Anthropic tops $19 billion in annual revenue rate

In the aftermath of the Israeli-U.S. strikes on Iran, American allies in the Persian Gulf are hearing a sound that Ukrainian soldiers have long come to dread: the foreboding hum of the Shahed-136 ‘kamikaze’ drone. 

Originating from Iran, the Shahed has already become a fixture of modern warfare, with Tehran’s strategic partner, Russia, utilizing the technology in its years-long invasion of Ukraine. 

Now, the drones — the most advanced of which is the long-ranged Shahed-136 — have become central to Iran’s retaliation strategy against the U.S. and its regional allies, with thousands unleashed so far. 

At first glance, the Shahed is unremarkable compared with cutting-edge weapon technologies, with one analyst referring to it as “the poor man’s cruise missile.” 

But while American allies have managed to intercept the vast majority of incoming drones with the help of U.S.-provided defense systems such as the ‘Patriot’ missiles, many Shaheds still managed to hit their targets. 

The United Arab Emirates Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday that out of 941 Iranian drones detected since the start of the Iran war, 65 fell within its territory, damaging ports, airports, hotels and data centers.

Analysts say the key to their effectiveness lies in the numbers. The drones are relatively cheap and easy to mass-produce, especially compared to the sophisticated systems used to defend against them. 

Those factors make the drone ideal for swarming and overburdening aerial defenses, with each drone intercepted also representing a more valuable defense asset expended. 

“The Shahed‑136, among other unmanned aerial systems, has allowed states like Russia and Iran a cheap way to impose disproportionate costs,” said Patrycja Bazylczyk, analyst with the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC.

“They force adversaries to waste expensive interceptors on low‑cost drones, project power, and create a steady psychological burden on civilian populations.” 

U.S. government reports describe the Shahed-136 as a one-way attack unmanned aerial vehicle produced by Iranian entities tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Compared with ballistic missiles, the drones fly low and slow, deliver a relatively modest payload, and are limited to mostly fixed targets, said Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told CNBC.

Public estimates suggest Shahed drones can cost between $20,000 and $50,000 apiece. Ballistic and cruise missiles, by contrast, can cost millions of dollars each.

In that sense, the Shahed and its equivalents “basically serve as ‘the poor man’s cruise missile’ offering a way to strike and harass adversaries “on the cheap,” said Taleblu.

For Iran, which faces both international sanctions and limitations on acquiring advanced weapons, that cost advantage is significant.

Meanwhile, air defense systems used by Gulf states and Israel can cost between $3 million and $12 million per interceptor, according to U.S. Department of Defense budget documents.

This cost discrepancy raises a serious issue for Iran’s enemies: Air defense systems have finite numbers of defense missiles, with each target intercepted representing a valuable asset expended.

Thus, in a war of attrition, the drones could be used by Tehran to wear down air defenses, opening them up to more damaging attacks, analysts say.

“The logic is to expend drones early while preserving ballistic missiles for the long haul,” said CSIS’s Bazylczyk.

She added that Iran’s ability to sustain mass‑drone use will depend on its stockpiles, how well it can protect or restore its supply chain, and whether the U.S. and Israel can meaningfully disrupt the flow of components or production sites. 

The U.S. has long sought to disrupt Iran’s production of the Shahed-136, and recently imposed new sanctions targeting suspected component suppliers across Turkey and the UAE.

However, Russia’s production of Shahed drones shows that such systems can be manufactured at scale during wartime and amid targeted sanctions. 

U.S. officials claim Iran had launched over 2,000 drones in the conflict as of Wednesday. However, the country is understood to have large stockpiles and may be capable of producing hundreds more each week, military experts reportedly told The National newspaper.

“Gulf countries are at risk of depleting their interceptors unless they are more prudent about when it fires those interceptors,” said Joze Pelayo, a Middle East security analyst with the think tank Atlantic Council.

“The depletion is not imminent, but it remains an urgent issue,” he said, noting. However, attacks on multiple fronts by Iranian allies such as Hezbollah and the Houthis could put stockpiles at risk of being depleted within days, he added.

Some analysts have suggested that Iran has drawn from Russia’s extensive battlefield experience with the drones, including modifications such as anti-jamming antennas, electronic warfare-resistant navigation, and new warheads.

Those warheads typically carry 30 kg to 50 kg of explosives and can pack a punch, particularly when used in large swarms, with advanced versions capable of a range of up to 1,200 miles.

Michael Connell, a Middle East specialist at the Center for Naval Analyses, said that the Shahed-136 has proven so effective that the U.S. has reverse-engineered it and deployed its own version on the battlefield against Iranian targets. 

In its Iran attacks over the weekend, the U.S. Central Command confirmed that it had used such low-cost one-way attack drones modeled after the Shahed for the first time in combat. 

With drones becoming a fixture of the modern battlefield, methods for dealing with them are also evolving.

According to Taleblu from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Ukraine has found some success in downing drones with fighter jet cannon fire, a more sustainable deterrent than missile interceptors.

Ukraine also recently pioneered the development of cheaper mass-produced interceptors, which Kyiv claims can stop the Shahed.

Gulf states are also expected to adopt more sustainable approaches. The Pentagon and at least one Gulf government are reportedly in talks to buy the cheaper Ukrainian-made interceptors.

Meanwhile, Qatar’s Ministry of Defense says it is also using its air force jets to intercept Iranian attacks, including Shahed drones, alongside ground-based air defenses.

Electronic warfare targeting the Shahed’s GPS, as well as short-range missiles and directed-energy systems such as Israel’s Iron Beam, are also significantly cheaper to operate than traditional interceptors.

Still, analysts say Gulf states currently lack fast, high-volume anti-drone capabilities. Developing and deploying such systems will likely take years, said Atlantic Council’s Pelayo.

“Countries in the Gulf hosting U.S. bases, such as Bahrain, Kuwait, and the UAE, benefit from an extended ability to repel drone attacks through the American-operated system, but it is still not enough against mass and sustained attacks.”

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan sees the artificial intelligence boom gaining so much steam that he’s projecting AI chip revenue next year “significantly in excess of $100 billion.”

After the chipmaker reported better-than-expected results for the fiscal first quarter and issued a strong forecast for the current period, Tan said on his company’s earnings call that demand is picking up from large customers that are increasingly in need of Broadcom’s help in designing custom silicon.

“We have also secured the supply chain required to achieve this,” Tan said, regarding the 2027 sales target.

AI revenue in the first quarter more than doubled from a year earlier to $8.4 billion, while total sales increased 29% to $19.3 billion. The company expects AI semiconductor revenue of $10.2 billion this quarter.

Broadcom shares popped more than 5% in extended trading on Thursday after Tan’s comments.

Chip companies like Broadcom have faced a number of headwinds in recent months, including a shortage of the high bandwidth memory crucial for custom accelerators, and capacity constraints at the most advanced levels of chip manufacturing and packaging.

Broadcom helps its customers translate their chip designs into silicon, providing back-end support before the processors are sent off to be manufactured at huge fabrication plants by companies like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

It’s a role that’s fueled Broadcom’s growth as more tech giants design in-house accelerators for AI. Tan said custom AI deployment is entering its “next phase” and is expected to speed up, as the company helps six key customers design their chips. Chief among those are Google, Meta, Anthropic and OpenAI, with Fujitsu and ByteDance likely as the final two.

Google was the first to the in-house chip game in 2015, with its tensor processing units designed alongside Broadcom. Google has made its chips available to cloud customers since 2018, with key customers now including Apple and Anthropic. Broadcom expects even stronger demand from next-generation Google chips in 2027.

Meta is also reportedly in talks to use Google’s TPUs, and Broadcom assists the social media company with developing its own MTIA accelerator. Analysts have cast doubt on the future of Meta’s custom silicon program, but the “MTIA roadmap is alive and well,” Tan said on the earnings call.

During the question and answer portion of the call, Bernstein Research analyst Stacy Rasgon pushed Tan on the specific sources of the projected $100 billion in AI chip revenue. He counted 3 gigawatts of capacity at Anthropic, 3 gigawatts at Google, at least 2 gigawatts with Meta, and 1 gigawatt from OpenAI, among others. Tan said the dollars per gigawatt “vary, sometimes quite dramatically,” but that his estimates were “not far” off.

While Tan said that the AI revenue boost would come from “just chips,” Broadcom makes much more than just AI accelerators. Ben Bajarin of Creative Strategies said it includes digital signal processors, data processing units and networking switches.

It’s “everything in that bucket,” Bajarin said.

— CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed to this report.

WATCH: Broadcom CEO on Ai revenue