Big day after the midterms, and AI was on the ballot more than anybody planned. Voters in Ohio told Meta no, AI money mostly lit itself on fire, and Google picked the worst possible week to pick a fight with schools. Meanwhile Marvell quietly dropped the biggest chip deal of the year. Let's go.
01 of 03
Google tells schools: take Gemini or lose Search
On Tuesday, Google announced that schools using its K-12 software will not get Google Search unless they opt in to its AI tools. Gemini, Gemini Notebook, and Search are now all "OFF by default" for those schools, per Google's own post. A school can switch each one on separately, but if it keeps AI off, students "will not have access to search" and get a message saying their school blocked it. That is how Google VP for education Chris Phillips explained it to the New York Times, adding that "Search and AI are deeply integrated."
The blowback was instant. Bernie Sanders called it "extortion." Richard Blumenthal said Google is "more concerned with forcing Gemini into schools than enabling students to succeed." Former FTC chair Lina Khan called it "the danger of allowing an unregulated monopolist to control an essential service." NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani said no corporation should get to dictate how we teach kids.
Google's line is that this gives schools "more choice, not less." DuckDuckGo saw an opening and took it, with CEO Gabriel Weinberg pointing schools to its guide for switching the default search engine and plugging its no-AI search page. Google itself says it has about 50 million Chromebooks in schools and more than 150 million Classroom users, so this is not small potatoes.
Here is where I land. Calling a bundle "choice" does not make it choice. Search worked fine without Gemini bolted on for twenty-some years. If Google honestly cannot separate the two, that is an engineering decision they made, and now they are making schools eat it. With Google already losing antitrust cases, I cannot think of a dumber time to hand regulators a gift like this.
Source: TechCrunch
02 of 03
AI money flopped at the polls, and Ohio voted out the data center
The pro-AI super PACs had a rough night. Leading the Future, the group backed by OpenAI President Greg Brockman and Andreessen Horowitz, ran money through its Republican arm American Mission and lost a string of races. American Mission and another PAC, Building the Future, spent $4.8 million behind Darlene Graham for Senate in South Carolina. She lost. American Mission put more than $500,000 each behind Aaron Flint in Montana and Laurie Buckhout in North Carolina. Both lost. Its Democratic arm, Think Big, did back a winner in Florida Rep. Jared Moskowitz.
On the other side, Guardrails Alliance, a group trying to make AI money politically toxic, spent more than $1 million against Rep. Jimmy Gomez in California and more than $1 million against Flint. Both lost. It also put $300,000 behind Angela Gonzales-Torres, who beat Gomez. Anthropic-backed Public First chipped $3 million into a PAC supporting California state Sen. Scott Wiener, who was leading when results were reported. "We know people hate AI billionaires," Guardrails political director Charlie Blaettler told TechCrunch. Fair caveat from the reporting: it is hard to separate AI spending from the broader Democratic wave.
Then there is Piqua, Ohio. That is where Meta planned two buildings totaling about 700,000 square feet on roughly 607 acres off I-75. Tuesday, voters passed a charter amendment banning data centers with a peak load over 25 megawatts, 66.7% to 33.3%, according to the Dayton Daily News. Same day, they recalled the mayor and two commissioners, each by about 70%. Whether the ban kills Meta's already-approved project is still unclear. NBC's exit poll found almost 80% of voters oppose a data center in their neighborhood.
What I want to know is whether the industry actually hears this. Two-thirds of a town showing up to fire its mayor over a data center is not a messaging problem. People see the power bills, the land, the turbines, and they get very little back. Money did not buy the outcome this time. Somebody in Menlo Park should be sweating that more than any regulation.
03 of 03
Marvell bets $115 billion that AI runs on light
Marvell is buying Lumentum in a $115 billion all-stock deal announced Monday. Each Lumentum share becomes 4.5 Marvell shares, a 23.9% premium to October 28 prices, set before Bloomberg reported the talks. Lumentum holders end up with about a third of the combined company. It is not expected to close until the first half of 2028.
The bet is simple. Lumentum makes the lasers and optical parts that turn data into light and push it over glass fiber. As AI clusters get bigger and faster, copper connections between chips run out of gas over even short distances, so the industry is moving to optics. Marvell already builds networking chips and custom AI silicon for the big cloud players. CEO Matt Murphy called the shift "an opportunity that comes along once in a generation."
Wall Street did not love it. Lumentum dropped 18.6% to $684.40 and Marvell fell 12.7% to $171.41 on Monday. With Marvell's slide, the deal is worth a lot less on paper than the headline. The companies pegged it at about $1,132 per Lumentum share, but 4.5 Marvell shares at Monday's close is about $771.
I think the thesis is right and the price tag is wild. Optics is where the bottleneck is going, no argument. But paying all stock and waiting until 2028 means Marvell shareholders carry the risk for a year and a half while regulators poke at it. If AI spending even hiccups, that is a long time to be holding the bag.