OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the BlackRock Infrastructure Summit on March 11, 2026, in Washington.

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OpenAI on Thursday announced it’s acquiring Astral, a small startup that builds popular open source tools for software developers.

Astral’s team will join OpenAI and help build out its artificial intelligence coding assistant called Codex. The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the acquisition.

“Through it all, though, our goal remains the same: to make programming more productive. To build tools that radically change what it feels like to build software,” Astral’s founder and CEO Charlie Marsh wrote in a blog post.

AI coding assistants have exploded in popularity over the last year, and OpenAI has been racing to grab users and market share from rivals like Anthropic and Cursor, which have their own buzzy offerings for developers.

OpenAI said Thursday that Codex has more than 2 million weekly active users, and that the tool has seen a three-fold increase in user growth since the start of the year.

The company’s acquisition of Astral is still subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval.

OpenAI has made a number of recent acquisitions, including the $6.4 billion deal in May 2025 for Jony Ive’s AI devices startup io. The company announced earlier this month that it will purchase the cybersecurity startup Promptfoo, and it bought the health-care technology startup Torch in January.

In December, OpenAI hired Google’s Albert Lee to lead corporate development, a signal that the company will continue to hunt for M&A targets that can help it gain an edge. 

 WATCH: OpenAI renews focus on enterprise in all-hands meeting amid IPO push

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David Solomon, chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., during an interview for an episode of “The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations” in New York, US, on Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024.

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Goldman Sachs has agreed to acquire Industry Ventures, a venture capital firm with $7 billion in assets under supervision, according to a release from the investment bank.

Goldman is paying $665 million in cash and equity, and up to $300 million more based on the firm’s future performance through 2030, the bank said. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2026.

Goldman Sachs is making the acquisition to bolster its $540 billion alternatives investment platform, part of the self-identified “growth engine” of the investment bank. By identifying and making bets on startups, the venture capital firm can help Goldman create a pipeline of investments for its wealthy clients, as well as provide solutions to tech entrepreneurs.

San Francisco-based Industry Ventures has helped pioneer aspects of the American VC market since its founding 25 years ago, according to Goldman CEO David Solomon.

“Industry Ventures’ trusted relationships and venture capital expertise complement our existing investing franchises and expand opportunities for clients to access the fastest growing companies and sectors in the world,” Solomon said in the release.

“By combining the global resources of Goldman Sachs with the venture capital expertise of Industry Ventures, we are uniquely positioned to serve the increasingly complex needs of entrepreneurs, private technology companies, limited partners, and venture fund managers,” said Hans Swildens, founder and CEO of Industry Ventures.

Industry Ventures has made more than 1,000 investments and said its annual performance was an internal rate of return of 18%.

The bank said it expects that all 45 employees of the venture firm will join Goldman.

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Hailey Bieber attends the Rhode UK launch party with Hailey Bieber at Chiltern Firehouse on May 17, 2023 in London, England. 

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E.l.f. Beauty announced on Wednesday plans to acquire Hailey Bieber’s beauty brand Rhode in a deal worth up to $1 billion as the cosmetics company looks to expand further into skincare. 

The acquisition – E.l.f.’s biggest ever, according to FactSet – is comprised of $800 million in cash and stock, plus an additional potential $200 million payout based on Rhode’s performance over the next three years. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of the company’s fiscal 2026 — or later this year.

“I’ve been in the consumer space 34 years, and I’ve been blown away by seeing this brand over time. In less than three years, they’ve gone from zero to $212 million in net sales, direct-to-consumer only, with only 10 products. I didn’t think that was possible,” CEO Tarang Amin told CNBC in an interview. “So that level of disruption definitely caught our attention.”

In a news release, Bieber said she’s excited to partner with E.l.f. to bring her brand to “more faces, places, and spaces.” 

“From day one, my vision for rhode has been to make essential skin care and hybrid makeup you can use every day,” said Bieber. “Just three years into this journey, our partnership with e.l.f. Beauty marks an incredible opportunity to elevate and accelerate our ability to reach more of our community with even more innovative products and widen our distribution globally.” 

E.l.f. shares dropped about 4% in extended trading after the company announced the acquisition and released results for its fiscal fourth quarter. The company topped Wall Street’s quarterly estimates, but did not offer guidance due to the Trump administration’s changing tariff policy. E.l.f. gets a disproportionate amount of its products from China.

Why E.l.f. is betting on Rhode

Launched in 2022, Rhode has more than doubled its customer base over the past year and generated $212 million in revenue in the 12 months ended March 31. The company’s growth has primarily come through its website, but it plans to launch in Sephora stores throughout North America and the U.K. before the end of the year. 

As part of the acquisition, Bieber will serve as Rhode’s chief creative officer and head of innovation, overseeing creative, product innovation and marketing. The brand was launched alongside two co-founders, Michael and Lauren Ratner, but it was Bieber’s influence and name that turned it into a billion-dollar brand. 

Under her direction, Rhode last year became the No. 1 skincare brand in earned media value — or exposure through methods other than paid advertising — with 367% year-over-year growth.

Rhode is a solid match for E.l.f., which has seen growth skyrocket in recent years in large part to its digital prowess. The company has legions of online fans and is known for TikTok marketing that feels more natural to consumers.

The company is also looking to dig deeper into skincare, which has become more popular with all age groups, particularly E.l.f’s younger, core consumer. In 2023, it acquired skincare brand Naturium for $355 million. Its acquisition of Rhode will allow it to build on its skincare growth and reach a higher income consumer.

“E.l.f. cosmetics is about $6.50 in its core entry price point, Rhode, on average, is in the high 20s, so I’d say it does bring us a different consumer set to the company overall, but the same approach in terms of how we engage and entertain them,” said Amin.

The deal makes sense for E.l.f., and it was a competitive move to snag the brand before rivals did, but it comes at an uncertain and difficult time for the company. Even with expected price increases, China tariffs will likely reduce E.l.f.’s profits over time, and it’s funding $600 million of the deal with debt at a time of high interest rates.

The acquisition is a bet that consumers will keep spending on high-end skincare, even during a potential economic slowdown or recession.

E.l.f. beats earnings estimates

E.l.f. made the announcement as it posted fiscal fourth quarter results, which beat Wall Street’s expectations on the top and bottom lines. 

Here’s how the beauty retailer performed compared with what Wall Street was anticipating, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

• Earnings per share: 78 cents adjusted vs. 72 cents expected
• Revenue: $333 million vs. $328 million expected

The company’s reported net income for the three-month period that ended March 31 was $28.3 million, or 49 cents per share, compared with $14.5 million, or 25 cents per share, a year earlier. Sales rose to $332.7 million, up about 4% from $321.1 million. 

E.l.f.’s sales have increased rapidly in recent years, but investors have grown concerned as that growth started to slow and the threat of tariffs began weighing on its business. The company sources about 75% of its products from China, which currently faces a 30% duty on exports to the U.S. Last week, it announced plans to raise prices by $1 to offset higher costs from tariffs beginning on Aug. 1.

While U.S. duties on Chinese imports are 30% now, that could change as President Donald Trump negotiates with Beijing. As a result, E.l.f. said it isn’t providing a fiscal 2026 outlook “due to the wide range of potential outcomes related to tariffs.”

Amin said E.l.f. paid more than 145% in duties before Trump agreed to slash the levies on Chinese goods, but those costs didn’t come through during the quarter and will show up when the company reports its fiscal 2026 first-quarter earnings.

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The logo of Japanese company SoftBank Group is seen outside the company’s headquarters in Tokyo on January 22, 2025. 

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SoftBank Group said Wednesday that it will acquire Ampere Computing, a startup that designed an Arm-based server chip, for $6.5 billion.

The Japanese giant expects the deal to close in the second half of 2025, according to a statement.

Carlyle Group and Oracle both have committed to selling their respective stakes in Ampere, which will operate as an independent subsidiary and will keep its headquarters in Santa Clara, California, according to SoftBank.

“Ampere’s expertise in semiconductors and high-performance computing will help accelerate this vision, and deepens our commitment to AI innovation in the United States,” SoftBank Group Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son was quoted as saying in a separate statement.

The startup has 1,000 semiconductor engineers, SoftBank said.

SoftBank has been broadening its investments in AI infrastructure, including a partnership with OpenAI announced last month to create enterprise level AI and through its involvement in U.S. President Donald Trump’s $500 billion private AI investment project Stargate. 

“With a shared vision for advancing AI, we are excited to join SoftBank Group and partner with its portfolio of leading technology companies,” said Renee James, Founder and CEO of Ampere. “This is a fantastic outcome for our team, and we are excited to drive forward our AmpereOne® roadmap for high performance Arm processors and AI.”

Softbank acquired British chip designer Arm in 2016 for $32 billion, with the company launching its initial public offering in 2023.  

Renee James, founder and chief executive officer of Ampere Computing LLC, speaks at the ai-Pulse conference in Paris, Nov. 7, 2024.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Chips that use Arm’s instruction set represent an alternative to chips based on the x86 architecture, which Intel and AMD sell. Arm-based chips often consume less energy.

Ampere’s founder and CEO, Renee James, established the startup in 2017 after 28 years at Intel, where she rose to the position of president.

Leading cloud infrastructure provider Amazon Web Services offers a Graviton Arm chip for rent that have become popular among large customers. In October, Microsoft started selling access to its own Cobalt 100 Arm-based cloud computing instances.

Shares of SoftBank were last seen trading down about 2% on Thursday.

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