Amazon drops data center NDAs, and AI agents want your credit card

Amazon is dropping nondisclosure agreements from its negotiations over data center deals with local governments, a shift that follows Microsoft’s move earlier this year. The timing matters because secrecy has helped turn AI infrastructure into a civic fight, not just a corporate one.

Around the country, that fight has already produced hundreds of proposed and enacted moratoriums, from New York to San Francisco. Local officials and residents have been pushing back on the feeling that giant projects are being negotiated behind closed doors and then dropped into their communities as a done deal. Taking NDAs out of the process won’t solve every complaint, but it does remove one of the most obvious sources of suspicion.

The same episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast turns to a different trust problem: a wave of startups wants consumers to let AI agents into their inboxes, files, and credit cards. That only works if websites let those agents through, too. So the real product may not be the agent itself. It may be permission.

Anthony Ha, Sean O’Kane, and Rebecca Bellan also discuss whether ditching NDAs changes how data center deals get done, and they touch on a handful of other topics, including the White House’s plans for its new Super Intelligence Force, Ghost’s $3,499 computer for running AI agents nonstop, and companies like Tab, Underdog, and Hark pitching privacy as the whole pitch. It’s a neat split screen: one side trying to look more open, the other trying to convince people to trust software with the keys to their digital lives.