{{first_name | Hey}}, welcome back.
Today’s issue is about a major AI deal that could reposition an unlikely player, Databricks’ next move beyond data, and Truecaller’s expanding fight against online scams.
These are today's updates.
Anthropic makes a massive bet on a surprising computing partner
Databricks has spreadsheets in its sights, with more acquisitions on the horizon
Truecaller takes its scam-fighting mission beyond the phone call
Tools, jobs, resources, and last issue’s winning prompt ⬇️
Podcast
In this podcast, Dave sits down with Eoin Clancy, VP of Growth at AirOps, to talk about what's working in B2B marketing right now. Eoin breaks down the three signs that content is AI slop, how AirOps runs their webinar funnel end-to-end, and how they follow up with attendees without ever pushing for a demo.
Neatprompts is where enterprise teams discover what's worth paying attention to in AI. Every week, 100,000+ readers rely on us for actionable insights and practical workflows.
If your product helps businesses adopt, deploy, or scale AI, we'd love to introduce it to our audience.
Top News
Anthropic signed an $11.6 billion, seven-year deal with Akamai for CPU computing capacity, the largest customer contract in Akamai's history. Akamai also handed Anthropic a warrant to buy Series B shares at $111.33 each, convertible into roughly 5% of Akamai's common stock. Akamai's own capital spending tied to this single deal will run about $5.5 billion, more than six times what the company spent in all of 2025. Its stock jumped 17% in after-hours trading.
This builds on a $1.8 billion deal the two companies signed earlier this year. The new contract covers CPU capacity, the computing Anthropic needs to run Claude for its customers, separate from the GPU capacity used to train new models. Anthropic has separately locked in GPU capacity from Google and SpaceX this year.
Akamai built its business on protecting websites from DDoS attacks. Becoming critical infrastructure for one of the biggest AI labs is a real pivot.
Databricks acquired Row Zero, a cloud spreadsheet startup that can scale past a million live rows, and says it plans more acquisitions like this. The deal grew out of an internal discovery. Databricks' own finance team had already adopted Row Zero to pair with Genie, the company's natural-language AI agent, and the executive team noticed. CEO Ali Ghodsi framed the logic on X that spreadsheets, business intelligence, and AI agents belong together.
Terms weren't disclosed. Row Zero raised $10 million last year at a $40 million valuation, a small deal next to Databricks' own $5 billion raise in August at a $190 billion valuation and $7 billion in annualized revenue.
This is Databricks' fourth acquisition in 2026, after Quotient AI and SiftD in March, security startup Panther in June, and PGlite-maker Electric last month. There’s a common pattern across all four acquisitions where instead of building a feature from scratch, Databricks buys the small team that already built it well, then wires it into Genie so customers never have to leave Databricks for basic business tasks.
Truecaller launched Scam Checker on Sunday, a free web and Android tool where anyone can paste a suspicious number, link or message and see related reports, with no app or sign-in. It starts in India, with Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, and Southeast Asia to follow. Truecaller says people run about 14 million web searches a month to check links and numbers.
The launch comes as India, its largest market, squeezes the core business. Apple and Google built their own caller ID, and last week the regulator ordered caller-ID apps to pass user spam reports to telecom operators, which Truecaller called a "one-way exchange." A GSMA survey found scammers reached Indian victims through messaging apps (46%) and SMS (37%) more often than voice calls (32%). Fraud teams built around call data cover the smallest of those channels.
Curious how other companies are approaching launches like this? Check out our Launch Breakdown series for a closer look at what companies are building and how they're bringing it to market.
Signals
Tools
Usereviews.io: Turn customer reviews and feedback into decisions you can act on
CompliancePosture: Search any SaaS vendor's compliance status
ReadPDFOutloud: Listen to books & research papers; math and figures included
Resources
Poll
Choose the prompt you want us to publish next
Market
Funding
Cyera raised $400M to build the trust layer for the agentic enterprise
Snorkel AI raised $350M to build its RSI data engine and frontier data lab
Roles in AI
QA Engineer at SupplyHouse
Think Tank
Master LinkedIn for B2B: Dasha Shakov (Head of Marketing, Proton.ai), Emeric Ernoult (Founder, CEO, Agorapulse), and Finn Thormeier (Founder, Project 33) discuss the importance of LinkedIn for B2B, why social media is the best marketing channel available today, how founder-led and employee content drives growth, and what’s changed about how people use the platform over the last five years.
Prompt of the Day
AI Stakeholder Mapper
When to use this?
Use this when launching AI pilots, securing budget approval, rolling out AI across teams, or aligning business, IT, security, and leadership. It helps you identify key stakeholders, understand their priorities, anticipate resistance, and plan the conversations needed to move projects forward.
You are an enterprise AI strategy and stakeholder management advisor. Help me map the people involved in an AI initiative, understand their interests and influence, anticipate concerns, and create a practical engagement plan to secure alignment and move the project forward.
My initiative
AI project or initiative: [Describe the project]
Business objective: [What are we trying to achieve?]
Current stage: [Idea, evaluation, pilot, implementation, or scaling]
Organization or business unit: [Team, department, or company]
Known stakeholders: [Names, roles, teams, or leave blank]
Key decision or milestone ahead: [What needs approval or action?]
Current challenges: [Misalignment, budget constraints, resistance, unclear ownership, etc.]
Use the information provided to create a stakeholder map.
1. Identify key stakeholders
Identify relevant stakeholders across:
Executive leadership: CEO, CIO, CTO, CDO, CFO, and business-unit leaders.
Business owners and functional leaders who will sponsor, fund, or use the solution.
Technical teams: AI/ML, data, IT, engineering, architecture, and security.
Risk and governance: legal, compliance, privacy, procurement, and responsible AI.
Frontline employees, end users, and teams affected by the initiative.
External partners or vendors, where relevant.
For each stakeholder or stakeholder group, explain their role, likely priorities, decision-making authority, and how the initiative affects them.
Do not invent specific people, reporting lines, or organizational facts. Label inferred roles and assumptions clearly.
2. Map influence and support
Create a table with these columns:
Stakeholder/group Role in initiative Influence Current support Main priorities or concerns What they need to move forward
Classify influence as high, medium, or low, and support as supportive, neutral, resistant, or unknown.
Base classifications on the information provided. If evidence is missing, mark it as unknown rather than guessing.
Identify:
Key decision-makers and budget owners.
Potential champions and internal advocates.
Stakeholders whose approval is required.
People or teams who could slow down adoption or implementation.
Stakeholders who may be overlooked but are directly affected.
3. Identify alignment gaps and risks
Highlight conflicting priorities, unresolved ownership, competing incentives, approval dependencies, and concerns that could delay the project.
For each issue, explain why it matters and suggest a practical way to address it.
Separate confirmed issues from potential risks that need validation.
4. Build an engagement plan
Recommend specific next steps for each high-priority stakeholder or group.
Include:
The objective of the conversation.
The key message or business case to communicate.
Questions to ask to uncover concerns or requirements.
The decision, commitment, or action to request.
The best engagement format, such as a one-on-one, workshop, executive briefing, or technical review.
A suggested timing or sequence based on upcoming milestones.
Tailor the message to each stakeholder's responsibilities. For example, emphasize business outcomes and ROI for finance, integration and reliability for IT, risk controls for legal and security, and usability and training for end users.
Do not assume that every stakeholder needs the same pitch.
5. Create a prioritized action plan
Finish with:
The five most important stakeholder actions to take next, ranked by urgency and dependency.
A suggested 30-day engagement plan with milestones, owners, and expected outcomes.
Three questions I should answer to improve the accuracy of this stakeholder map.
A short executive-ready summary of the alignment status, major risks, and decisions needed.
Keep the output concise, actionable, and appropriate for an enterprise executive. Focus on what I can do in my next meetings and communications.
Never fabricate stakeholder information, financial benefits, commitments, or organizational politics. Clearly distinguish known facts, assumptions, and recommendations. Where information is missing, ask targeted questions or provide a provisional map.Get more such prompts in the Prompting Playbook (free for you)
Stay curious, {{first_name | reader}}
PS. If you missed yesterday’s issue, you can find it here.
