Low-key dark still-life of a steel ruler, a fountain pen, and a glass paperweight. No people, no logos.

FTC says Amazon hid a surcharge so ad winners paid their own bid. Nvidia invested $3.5 billion in MediaTek convertibles.

September 1, 2026 Aaron Harme

The FTC and 22 states sued Amazon Monday over a hidden “soft reserve” in search-ad auctions. The complaint says Sponsored Products winners paid their own bid about 80 percent of the time by 2024. Tens of billions is allegation language.

Nvidia put $3.5 billion into MediaTek convertibles so custom chips still sit in Nvidia’s rack. Brussels classified ChatGPT as a search engine. Together AI is taking 250 megawatts to Saudi Arabia. The Pentagon added ChatGPT and Grok to GenAI.mil. Claude is still outside.

In this Brief

FTC + 22 states: Amazon hid a “soft reserve”; Sponsored Products paid their own bid ~80% by 2024
Nvidia $3.5B MediaTek convertibles; custom chips still plug into NVLink Fusion
ChatGPT designated a Very Large Online Search Engine; four months, by January 2027
Together AI + Humain: 250 MW in Saudi Arabia; $5B is a company projection
Pentagon GenAI.mil: ChatGPT Mil and Grok for 3 million personnel; Claude still out

The runner-up was a number Amazon typed.

Setup: The Federal Trade Commission’s Monday release says the agency and 22 state attorneys general sued Amazon in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. The complaint alleges deceptive and unfair practices that secretly inflated prices in Amazon’s search advertising auctions for over seven years, and that the scheme has likely extracted tens of billions of dollars from more than one million brands and sellers.

Tens of billions is the complaint’s language, not a court finding. The filing names more than 500,000 small- and medium-sized businesses among the advertisers. The products at issue are Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Display Ads that sit next to keyword search.

Amazon represented a “second price” auction: the winner pays one cent more than the next highest bidder. In practice, the suit alleges, Sponsored Products advertisers paid their own winning bid close to 80 percent of the time.

Beginning in 2019, Amazon allegedly added an undisclosed surcharge internally called a “soft reserve price.” An internal document said the auction had “a surcharge hidden in it.” The executive in charge of Amazon Ads said the price “isn’t set by an actual bidder,” but is a “proxy 2nd price that we calculate.” Another document said Amazon uses an “invented auction participant” to increase prices. The complaint frames that as essentially shill bids.

Sponsored Products advertisers paying their own bid rose from 30 to 40 percent in 2021, to 70 percent in 2022, to about 80 percent in 2024, the FTC says, as the surcharges rose. The complaint says Amazon gave false or misleading answers when advertisers asked if the format had changed, and feared “irrevocable damage to advertiser trust” and a “downward spiral” of lower bids. 2024 notes among senior executives, including the head of Amazon Ads and the chief digital economist, called a “clever non-transparent way to charge first price” an “incredibly effective way to drive revenue.”

Lauren Forristal at TechCrunch puts Amazon’s advertising revenue last year at more than $68 billion. Amazon called the lawsuit misguided, said the complaint “fundamentally misunderstands how advertisers operate,” and said advertisers were properly informed about pricing. Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson said higher ad costs were largely passed on to American consumers. The Commission voted 2-0.

Take: A second-price auction means the winner pays one cent more than the next real bid. Advertisers treat that as the industry standard because it lets them bid closer to what the slot is worth. They are not supposed to pay the number they typed.

A first-price auction charges that number. Bidders then shade, meaning they bid low on purpose. The complaint says Amazon sold the second-price meter and ran something closer to first-price.

I keep tens of billions on the allegation line, and the 80 percent on Sponsored Products, not on every ad product in the suit. Amazon has not been found liable. The second bidder, on the FTC’s telling, was a number Amazon typed.

Longer cut: FTC and 22 states sue Amazon over a hidden surcharge in search-ad auctions.

The custom chip still sits in Nvidia’s rack.

Setup: Nvidia and MediaTek said in a joint release that Nvidia invested $3.5 billion in convertible bonds issued by MediaTek. Convertible means the bonds can turn into MediaTek stock. MediaTek will adopt Nvidia’s NVLink Fusion platform so hyperscalers, cloud providers, and frontier-model labs have a prevalidated path to design custom chips, XPUs in the jargon, and still drop them into Nvidia’s NVLink-connected, rack-scale factories.

NVLink Fusion is the connector kit: a chiplet, a chip-to-chip link called NVLink-C2C, and specialized memory branded NVHBM. Customers keep the differentiated compute. Nvidia and MediaTek handle connectivity, memory, packaging, manufacturing, and the rack.

Anhata Rooprai at Reuters reports the check is part of MediaTek’s $3.9 billion overseas convertible bond offering, a record for the company. MediaTek said Alphabet also took part. It did not disclose Alphabet’s size.

Joe Tigay at Rational Equity Armor Fund told Reuters Nvidia is financing MediaTek so MediaTek can develop products that extend Nvidia’s architecture. Jensen Huang told Bloomberg TV, via Reuters, “This is not circular because obviously they do their own business and we do our own business.”

Rebecca Bellan at TechCrunch lists Amazon, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic among the companies investing in their own chips to be less reliant on Nvidia GPUs. Dion Harris, an Nvidia senior director for hyperscaler infrastructure, told reporters Monday that Nvidia is an AI infrastructure company, and that it expanded beyond pure computing chips years ago. Last week Nvidia announced a similar NVLink Fusion partnership with AWS without a direct investment, TechCrunch reports, as AWS plans to deploy an additional 2 million Nvidia GPUs.

Take: The custom-chip buildout is supposed to get customers off Nvidia. This check buys the house that will still plug those chips into Nvidia’s rack.

AWS already got the socket without a check. MediaTek got the socket plus $3.5 billion because it is the contractor that will put other people’s dies into it. Harris told reporters customers can drop those custom chips right alongside the ones already on the same rack. Alphabet’s size in the same offering is still blank. “Not circular” is Jensen on Bloomberg TV, via Reuters.

The socket stayed Nvidia’s.

Longer cut: Nvidia invested $3.5 billion in MediaTek convertibles as the chip designer adopts NVLink Fusion.

Brussels classified the chatbot as a search engine.

Setup: The European Commission designated ChatGPT a Very Large Online Search Engine on Monday, and Reddit and Roblox as Very Large Online Platforms, under the Digital Services Act. The services declared they reach at least 45 million average monthly users in the EU. After notification they have four months, by January 2027, to comply with the extra VLOP/VLOSE duties: assessing and mitigating systemic risks from the service and its ranking systems, including illegal content, harm to minors, users’ physical and mental well-being, fundamental rights, electoral processes, and public security.

The Commission’s supervision list, updated the same day, puts OpenAI Ireland Limited’s ChatGPT at 159.1 million average monthly active users, Reddit Netherlands B.V. at 57.2 million, and Roblox at 46.6 million. Those figures are as reported by the provider. ChatGPT’s decision PDF is marked not yet available. With these designations the Commission has listed 28 very large online platforms and search engines.

Henna Virkkunen, the EU’s tech-sovereignty vice-president, told Emma Roth at The Verge that ChatGPT, Reddit, and Roblox “will now be held to a higher standard of scrutiny and accountability in the European Union, in line with their large impact on our citizens and society.” Roth prints an end-of-December 2026 clock. The Commission page says four months, by January 2027.

Take: A search engine is a box you type a question into. ChatGPT answers, including by looking things up. The extra DSA duties now attach to that box.

159.1 million is OpenAI Ireland’s own count on the Commission’s list, not an independent census. Reddit and Roblox are platforms on the same day’s list. The Commission has now designated 28 very large platforms and search engines. I keep the clock on the Commission page.

Roth’s December is not the Commission clock.

The constraint is a zoning hearing.

Setup: Niko Gallogly at the New York Times reports, in Claire Carter’s open copy at the Washington Examiner, that San Francisco-based Together AI announced Monday an agreement with Humain, Saudi Arabia’s state-backed AI company, to build a 250 megawatt data center in the kingdom. Together AI told the Times the partnership is expected to bring in $5 billion annually. That is a company projection, not a booked print.

Vipul Prakash, Together AI’s co-founder and CEO, told the Times the collaboration is the result of growing backlash from American communities toward data centers. “More and more, local communities don’t want data centers in their backyards, and there are a lot of cancellations and moratoriums, so U.S. capacity is becoming even more constrained.”

Together AI sells cloud computing so companies and developers can train and run open-source models. Founded in 2022. The company says more than 1 million developers use the platform.

Customers would keep using Together AI’s software while the workloads sit on infrastructure in the kingdom. The Examiner says the Humain deal will nearly triple Together AI’s computing capacity. Prakash said the company will keep looking overseas because “there’s probably more international capacity that gets built than in the U.S.”

Oracle, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services already operate or use data centers in Saudi Arabia in partnership with Humain, the Examiner writes. A company release at LEAP puts the same 250 megawatts as more than $5 billion in gross annualized revenue in the first year, and names power as a central constraint.

Take: Together AI is not short a GPU pitch. Prakash is describing zoning hearings, cancellations, and moratoriums. The 250 megawatts sit in a country that will host the rack.

$5 billion is Together AI to the Times, and “over $5 billion in gross annualized revenue in the first year” in the LEAP release. “Nearly triple” is the Examiner’s gloss of Prakash. The site is an announced build, not a live campus on the pages we opened.

US towns still get a vote.

Claude is still outside the portal.

Setup: Kirsten Korosec at TechCrunch reports that the Pentagon launched ChatGPT Mil, OpenAI for Government, and Grok for Government from Starshield AI / xAI on GenAI.mil. The pitch is generative AI “tailored to warfighter needs” for 3 million civilian and military personnel. GenAI.mil launched last year with Google Gemini, so department employees could use commercial frontier models without sending sensitive data through ordinary consumer channels. Military versions are exempt from consumer data collection.

The portal has onboarded more than 1.7 million unique users out of those 3 million personnel, a department figure via TechCrunch. ChatGPT Mil is the familiar desk: chat, files, projects, custom GPTs, for document-heavy routine unclassified work in admin, logistics, planning, and policy.

DoD said Grok for Government will give productivity, knowledge continuity, and more secure collaboration, from market-research analysis for acquisition staff to supply-chain work for logisticians. TechCrunch notes Starshield AI is the SpaceX secure satellite network that uses Starlink tech.

Anthropic’s Claude is the name missing. TechCrunch says the Trump administration labeled Anthropic a supply-chain risk after it refused unrestricted Pentagon use and insisted on safety guardrails. Anthropic is fighting that in court.

Take: Monday added two more desks to a portal that already had Gemini. ChatGPT Mil is unclassified document work. “Warfighter needs” is the press line. The coverage we opened is not a claim the models are cleared for combat targeting.

1.7 million and 3 million are department figures. Claude is still outside because it would not give unrestricted use. That fight is in court. The unclassified desk got two more models. The one with the guardrails is the one still missing.

Also noted

Karissa Bell at Engadget and Thomas Ricker at The Verge report Instagram is replacing the optional “AI creator” tag with a required “AI-generated profile” label for accounts that feature an AI-generated person. Skip it and posts will not be recommended to non-followers in Reels and Explore. People using AI tools to generate content do not need the badge. Ricker writes that today’s action will not let you filter AI slop off the platform.

Chance Miller at 9to5Mac and Juli Clover at MacRumors report Apple’s Monday supplemental brief alleges Chang Liu fed a confidential power-converter schematic into LTspice at OpenAI, taught an AI agent to run it, then sent evidence-destroy instructions to a colleague after he learned Apple was investigating. Those are allegations, not findings. Arguments October 1 before Judge Edward J. Davila. OpenAI has called the suit meritless and said it does not have, or want, Apple’s trade secrets.

OpenClaw shipped 2.0 after seven weeks, with 933 contributors and 16,000 pull requests.

Monday’s Brief: infostealers stole Claude sessions. SB Energy handed OpenAI $5.5 billion in warrants.