To "cut a deal" is a common (American?) English idiom meaning to "make a deal".

But agree that it's better to avoid using idioms on a site that has many visitors for whom English is not their first language.

Do you mean that Bloomberg should have used a different title or Hacker News should have modified the title?

I think Bloomberg’s at fault: “cut a deal” isn’t usually that ambiguous because it’s clear which state transition is more likely. But here it’s plausible they could’ve been ending some existing training-data-sharing agreement, or that they were making a new different deal. Also the fact it’s pluralised here makes it different enough to the most common form for it to be a bit harder to notice the idiom. But since we can’t change the fact they used that title, I would like HN to change it now.

I agree, very weird choice of words.