What's up: Meta signs nuclear power deal; Universal, Warner and Sony are negotiating AI licensing rights; Thoma Bravo’s $34 billion fundraising haul.

Good morning. Modernizing software can be a major headache for businesses. But doing nothing is not an option. Hosting old code can weaken security and slow the adoption of new technology.

Amid a crop of new AI-powered coding tools aimed at addressing the issue, Morgan Stanley opted to build its own, the Journal's Isabelle Bousquette reports.

In January, the investment bank rolled out DevGen.AI, built in-house on OpenAI’s GPT models and trained on its own code base. It can translate legacy code from languages like Cobol into plain English specs that developers can then use to rewrite it.

“We found that building it ourselves gave us certain capabilities that we’re not really seeing in some of the commercial products,” said Mike Pizzi, Morgan Stanley’s global head of technology and operations.

So far this year it has reviewed nine million lines of code, saving developers 280,000 hours, said Pizzi. Read the story.

The race for a slice of the nascent AI agent market is playing out at startups with tech roots in 1980s-era technology. Snowflake said Monday it agreed to acquire startup Crunchy Data, maker of a cloud-based database platform that uses PostgreSQL, an open-source, relational database that dates to the late 1980s. 

The deal is valued at roughly $250 million, according to a person familiar with the matter. Crunchy Data will be part of an offering called Snowflake Postgres, Snowflake said.

The WSJ’s Belle Lin notes that the deal comes less than a month after Snowflake rival Databricks said it was purchasing Neon, a similar database startup, in a deal valued at about $1 billion.

Part of the reason Snowflake and Databricks are interested in database companies is that PostgreSQL can serve as the underlying database for customers to create AI agents with data they store in the companies’ respective platforms, Lin explains.

“The vision here is that Snowflake Postgres will simplify how developers build, deploy and scale agents and apps,” said Vivek Raghunathan, senior vice president of engineering at Snowflake. “With that in mind, it was important to acquire a company that was not just engineered for quick experimentation.” Read the story.

Music companies Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Group are negotiating licensing deals with startups Suno and Udio that could set a new precedent for how songs are used and artists are paid for remixes generated by artificial intelligence.

WSJ reports that the companies want the startups to develop technology to track when and how a song is used. In addition, the music companies want to be active participants in the music-related products that the AI companies release.

👉 The negotiations are a sign of how record labels, movie studios, book publishers and news organizations are trying to protect against the threat that generative AI poses to their business while creating new revenue streams.

Meta Platforms will buy the power generation of a nuclear plant in Illinois for 20 years under a deal with Constellation Energy, WSJ reports. 

Under what’s known as a power purchase agreement, or PPA, Meta will essentially buy the clean attributes of the nuclear power generation to offset its less-green electricity use elsewhere. Meta doesn’t intend to build a data center on-site.

Last year Microsoft struck a deal with Constellation around the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania. In that case, a 20-year power-purchase agreement is spurring the restart of that site’s undamaged reactor.

Neither deal removes power from the grid.

• Nuclear Power Is Back. And This Time, AI Can Help Manage the Reactors

German antitrust officials said tools that Amazon.com uses to highlight competitively priced goods and filter out overpriced listings in its online marketplace could be in breach of competition law, WSJ reports.

Software-focused Thoma Bravo said it raised a total of $34.4 billion across three funds, topping its last big fundraising year in 2022 and showing how top-performing PE firms are still thriving despite a broader industry slowdown, WSJ reports. 

Microsoft cut more than 300 positions Monday, just weeks after one of its largest layoffs in years, Bloomberg reports. 

Walt Disney Co. is laying off several hundred people globally across multiple divisions, including marketing for film and television, TV publicity, casting and development, and corporate financial operations, WSJ reports. 

The cryptocurrency world is in the midst of an all-out MAGA takeover, WSJ reports. But some are wary of politicizing the industry, calling it “against the ethos of bitcoin.”

In its deepening face-off with the Trump administration, Beijing’s trade negotiator has given a preview of Xi Jinping’s chief objective for this trade war: It won’t be like last time. (WSJ)

Ukraine’s weekend attacks against military airfields deep inside Russia signal the long-stalemated war is entering a perilous phase, with both sides seemingly intent on escalation and prospects for a U.S.-brokered peace deal receding. (WSJ)

Federal Emergency Management Agency officials are scrapping a hurricane-response plan and returning to last year's guidance despite program and staff cuts. (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.