What's up: OpenAI executives rattled by campaigns to derail restructuring; Databricks crosses $4 billion in annual revenue rate; Ralph Lauren's innovation chief on how the designer is using AI.

Good morning. Tech empires are typically built on the foundations of one new technology such as the phone or the PC, and that is hard enough to accomplish. Rarer still is the company that can extend its successful run through multiple waves of innovation. Microsoft under the leadership of Satya Nadella figured out an answer to that challenge.

Oracle, which reports its earnings today, has seen its model challenged several times over. It rose to prominence as a traditional software company selling licenses to businesses. It made a transition to the cloud era, as a provider of both applications and infrastructure, and it is incorporating AI into its business model as well.

Apple, which hosts its annual product event today, is also working to figure out its role in the era of AI. Perhaps, for now at least, that role centers on user experience and distribution. To that end, the company is expected to introduce its iPhone 17 lineup, including an ultrathin model, plus new Apple Watch models. 

A generation ago, big companies seldom had a good answer to disruption by startups. But they have had the opportunity to learn from those experiences, and a new era of leaders is giving them an opportunity to maneuver through increasingly rapid and dramatic upheavals. The challenges, and the stakes, couldn’t be much greater. We will learn something later today about how those efforts are working out.

Ralph Lauren has entered the AI age. David Lauren is intent on propelling the fashion brand his father built into the artificial-intelligence age. Ralph Lauren, where Lauren serves as chief branding and innovation officer, Tuesday launched Ask Ralph, an AI-powered fashion styling helper. He sat down with WSJ Leadership Institute's Isabelle Bousquette to talk about why he anticipates some initial criticism and why luxury brands need top IT talent.

Edited excerpts from the conversation are below. Read more from the interview here.

WSJLI: Do you anticipate criticism?

Lauren: Yeah, but that’s OK. It’s like putting a line on the runway. Part of fashion is exposing yourself with newness and evolving. You’ve got to go on the runway.

WSJ: Back in 2000, you became one of the first luxury brands to sell online. What was behind that decision?

Lauren: [Back then] people didn’t know how to shop [on the internet] yet. People didn’t have the confidence to put their credit card in to buy anything more than $50. We never worried about the story leaking out about RalphLauren.com coming because nobody cared.

WSJ: What kind of shift is AI driving today in luxury retail? 

Lauren: I think today people have accepted that every company has to be a digital company. I think people have accepted that you have to have really good IT teams, which people didn’t have years ago.

Every brand can use any technology today. Using it in a way to help enhance your vision is the key. That’s where the magic happens. And that’s where mistakes can happen. There also has to be patience.

Growing political scrutiny over OpenAI's efforts to become a for-profit company has led executives to consider the unthinkable: leaving its home state of California.

Attorneys general in California and Delaware are investigating OpenAI’s proposed plan, one that has drawn criticism from some of California's biggest philanthropies, nonprofits and labor groups, WSJ's Berber Jin reports. They are asking the state’s attorney general to ensure the new company it creates doesn’t violate the state’s charitable trust law.

The episode illustrates that power doesn't reside in the federal government alone. Individual states still play a major role determining the fate of tech.

Last-ditch option. People familiar with the matter tell the WSJ that OpenAI has discussed potentially relocating out of California as a last-ditch option. An OpenAI spokesman said the company has no plans to leave. With San Francisco a major AI talent hub, such a move could be difficult.

Databricks closed its latest financing Monday, raising $1 billion at a $100 billion valuation. Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi tells the Journal that the financing will add to the company’s war chest for employee recruitment and retention. The company also said its annual revenue run rate will be more than $4 billion going forward as of July. That figure is up 50% year over year.

Dutch chip-equipment giant ASML is pumping more than $1.5 billion into France’s Mistral AI for an 11% stake, leading a round valuing the Paris-based startup at nearly $14 billion—more than double its valuation last year, WSJ reports.

AI coding startup  Cognition AI secured nearly $400 million in a new financing round, valuing the company at  $10.2 billion. Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, an existing backer, was the lead investor in the round, Bloomberg reports.

New York-based startup Pinecone, an early entrant in the vector database AI space, said founder and CEO Edo Liberty is stepping down to take the role of chief scientist. Ash Ashutosh, a former Google global sales director, will helm the company, VentureBeat reports.

Quantum computing firm Infleqtion is set to go public in a SPAC deal led by a Michael Klein-backed blank-check firm that would value it at $1.8 billion, Bloomberg reports.

Intel has named Arm’s engineering chief to head its data center group, among a number of other leadership appointments as it looks to boost its core product business, WSJ reports. Kevork Kechichian will report to CEO Lip-Bu Tan.

The U.S. is telling European countries that it will no longer honor an agreement to identify and fight disinformation spread by foreign governments like Russia and China, FT reports. 

Lawyers for Jeffrey Epstein’s estate have given Congress a copy of the birthday book put together for the financier’s 50th birthday, which includes a letter with President Trump’s signature that he has said doesn’t exist. (WSJ)

Five weeks after President Trump fired the chief of the agency that gathers the country’s labor and price data, his advisers are preparing a report laying out alleged shortcomings of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ jobs data. (WSJ)

Anglo American and Teck Resources agreed to merge their businesses in a deal that will create one of the world’s largest copper producers with a combined market value of more than $53 billion. (WSJ)

American high-school seniors’ scores on major math and reading tests fell to their lowest levels on record, according to results released Tuesday by the U.S. Education Department. (WSJ)

The WSJ CIO Journal Team is Steven Rosenbush, Isabelle Bousquette and Belle Lin.

The editor, Tom Loftus, can be reached at thomas.loftus@wsj.com.