The Information — AI
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The Information — AI news-outlet 14d ago
How New Data Center Debt Concessions Could Stall AI Build-Outs
Bond markets are getting tough for lower-rated borrowers. One example: CleanSpark, which is developing a data center for Meta Platforms, had to offer investors big concessions to land financing earlier this month. That deal is among the clearest signs yet that financing the data…
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Apple Plans Aggressive New Push Into Smart Home
Apple plans to launch a smart home hub device on October 13th, Bloomberg reported. The hub has a roughly 6-inch square display that can sit on countertops or be mounted on walls, the news outlet reported. The device will showcase the capabilities of Apple’s overhauled Siri,…
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Why OpenAI’s DevDay Looked Like Catch-Up
While the rest of us were distracted by details within Anthropic’s IPO filing and OpenAI’s plans to raise $30 billion in a new round that could value it around $1.4 trillion, app developers on Tuesday flooded to San Francisco’s Fort Mason for OpenAI’s annual developer…
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Wall Street and Silicon Valley Split Over AI’s Price Tag
Shifting economic forces are driving a widening divide between the financial views of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, clouding the outlook for trillions of dollars invested in AI. Stock market angst has already caused delays for several medium-sized initial public offerings, and…
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Exclusive: GPU Cloud Provider GMI Raises $668 Million From Nvidia and Others
GMI Cloud, a five-year-old provider of Nvidia chip servers to enterprises, said Wednesday it raised $668 million in equity and debt financing. The new fundraise indicates Nvidia is continuing to help smaller, upstart cloud providers, especially those that plan to boost Nvidia in…
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Alibaba’s AliExpress Tests Membership Program in Challenge to Amazon
AliExpress, Alibaba Group’s international e-commerce site, is testing a new VIP membership program in some markets, as it tries to attract and retain high-spending customers in a challenge to Amazon , according to a person with direct knowledge of the efforts. The VIP program,…
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Oura, World Labs Show Divergence in VC Exits
It’s turning out to be a great year for venture exits—as long as you’re talking about M&A. Take Monday’s news that Advanced Micro Devices would purchase Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs. The $8.2 billion all-stock purchase of the two-year-old AI startup adds to the growing list of such…
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Oura’s IPO Delay Signals Broader Market Stall
The IPO market appears to have stalled, which could be a problem for Anthropic. Fitness ring maker Oura’s postponement of its IPO on Tuesday, citing “uncertainty in the IPO market,” followed similar moves by metals producer Amaero last week and Holtec Nuclear Corp. the week…
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Google Is Paying About 100 Digital Publishers for AI Overviews
Google has been paying roughly 100 digital publishers for how much their content contributes to AI-powered answers to search and other products, according to people familiar with tests. The pilot program signals a further shift by the company toward paying publishers for content…
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President Trump Announces ‘Super Intelligence’ Accord, Renames AI
President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that leading AI companies had agreed to non-binding commitments on AI safety provisions, including internal controls on model alignment and external auditing. The “White House Accord on Super Intelligence,” which Trump posted on Truth…
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Google Joining Industry Group Working to Help AI Better Understand Data
Google is in the process of joining Apache Ossie, a software industry group with members such as Snowflake and Nvidia that is trying to make it easier for AI tools to access data from applications and databases, according to a company spokesperson. The search and cloud provider…
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How Investors Are Financing On-Site Power to Break AI Bottlenecks
Companies building and operating data centers are hungry for ways to secure the power needed to move ahead with massive AI build-outs. That’s prompted big financing pledges and creative dealmaking for on-site power that can cut data centers’ reliance on electric grids. Investors…
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OpenAI Announces ‘Dots’ Agents at DevDay
OpenAI announced its new agent product called “Dots” at its annual Developer Day on Tuesday, jumping into the increasingly crowded market for AI assistants The announcement, which confirmed The Information’s reporting this month that OpenAI was working on a productivity-focused…
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Use Google Gemini to Research Vendor Products, Services, and Features
Making a vendor recommendation for a major IT initiative can be paralyzing. Every company promises a “seamless” user experience and “robust” APIs, but buyers typically lack visibility into real-world implementation and operations until after they’ve already made a decision. As a…
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OpenAI in Early Talks to Raise $30 Billion Before an IPO
OpenAI is in early talks with investors to raise a pre-IPO round and is targeting raising $30 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The ChatGPT maker could seek a valuation around $1.4 trillion, though it hasn’t signed a term sheet yet with any investor, the…
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Microsoft Tears Down Its AI Data Wall
Microsoft’s biggest products have generally thrived by letting other companies build on top of them. So Microsoft’s decision to join Apache Ossie, a 1-year-old software industry group aiming to make it easier for AI tools to access data from applications and databases, might not…
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Meta Adapts Muse Agent For Small Businesses
Meta Platforms is adapting its AI agent Muse for small businesses, adding integrations with workplace software including Salesforce’s Slack, Intuit QuickBooks and Zoom. In a blog post Tuesday, the company said Muse can connect to small-business owners’ professional Instagram…
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OpenAI Nears $70 Billion in Annualized Revenue
OpenAI is nearing $70 billion in annualized revenue, up around 70% from its revenue pace at the beginning of the third quarter, according to a person briefed on the numbers. That growth comes as the ChatGPT-maker has doubled down on selling to enterprises. OpenAI has rapidly cut…
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Anthropic Discloses up to $84.5 Billion in SpaceX Compute Agreements
Anthropic has agreements to pay SpaceX up to $84.5 billion to use the rocket and AI company’s Nvidia-based computing capacity through 2029, according to a confidential initial public offering prospectus reported by Reuters on Tuesday. Those agreements can mostly be cancelled…
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Amazon Looks to Further Automate Media Buying With New Agentic Tools
Amazon introduced new AI-powered tools to help marketers buy ad inventory across the vast variety of media it sells, as it steps up its effort to strengthen its position in the ad tech world. One of these tools, full-funnel campaigns, is designed for advertisers who already sell…
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General Catalyst Backs Coding Data Startup Proximal As It Reaches Revenue Milestone
It’s no secret that leading AI developers are on the hunt for data to improve their models, especially in lucrative areas like software engineering. The insatiable appetite for data has lifted a whole host of so-called data labeling or data curation startups, including older…
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How Nscale’s Unbuilt Data Centers Undercut Its $35 Billion IPO Pitch
AI chip rental business Nscale, which has filed paperwork indicating its plan to go public, is a puny, relatively new entrant in the neocloud race. At first blush, it looks to hold a lot of promise, posting rapid growth in the past year and boasting a backlog of contracted…
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Oura Postpones IPO, Citing “Uncertainty” in IPO Market
Oura, the maker of a popular ring that tracks people’s health, said Tuesday it was postponing its initial public offering, “despite strong demand, due to uncertainty in the IPO market.” Oura was scheduled to go public later this week. The company had made public its IPO filing…
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Samsung Invests $1 Billion in KKR-Backed AI Infrastructure Firm Helix
Samsung Electronics and five of its affiliates are investing $1 billion in Helix Digital Infrastructure, an AI infrastructure venture established in June by private equity firm KKR, the companies announced on Tuesday. Soaring AI demand has prompted tech companies, energy…
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Anthropic’s Confidential Filing Reveals Customer Concentration
Anthropic said nearly a quarter of its $4.6 billion in revenue last year came from just two customers, according to a confidentially filed IPO prospectus reported by Reuters on Monday. That’s one metric that could give investors pause ahead of its IPO, expected later this year.…
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Meta’s MongoDB CEO Poach
Mark Zuckerberg is on a roll. Fresh off his triumphant rollout of the Muse personal agent, he signaled his commitment to selling AI to companies by announcing the poaching of CJ Desai, MongoDB’s CEO, as head of a newly created Meta Enterprise Platform business. Desai has had a…
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OpenAI Will Not Ship GPT-6.1 Astra Due to Safety Concerns
OpenAI has decided not to release the AI model that it had intended to release as GPT-6.1 Astra due to its results on safety tests, a spokesperson said Monday. The model performed worse than GPT-6 Astra—OpenAI’s newest model, released earlier this month—on tests measuring…
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Startup NinjaTech AI Takes Aim at Agent Sticker Shock
NinjaTech AI, an early-stage startup backed by Amazon and led by a former Google product management executive, unveiled a new product that promises to help large companies take the guesswork out of forecasting the costs of running agents around the clock to complete long-running…
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Recursive Self-Improvement Won’t Be Winner-Takes-All, Say Founders of Ricursive
Recursive self-improvement, the idea that AI models could get so good at research and development that they train themselves, without a need for human researchers, has captivated Silicon Valley. Some in the industry have suggested that the first company to achieve RSI will gain…
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Manus Unveils New Personal Agent App in Challenge to Meta’s Muse
Manus, the AI agent startup that recently separated from Meta Platforms, launched on Monday a new standalone app for personal agents that could compete with Meta’s Muse. The new app, Cue , provides each user with multiple personal AI agents. Each agent has access to its own…
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AMD to Buy Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs for $8.2 Billion
Advanced Micro Devices said Monday it has agreed to buy World Labs, the two-year-old maker of models that can simulate three-dimensional spaces, for about $8.2 billion in an all-stock transaction. The deal is expected to close at the end of this year, AMD said. World Labs CEO…
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Florida AG Seeks to Bar OpenAI from Developing New Models Without Guardrails
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed an injunction Monday asking the court to bar OpenAI from developing new AI models “without third-party approved safety guardrails” and from allowing minors to use ChatGPT. The injunction would be effective throughout Florida.…
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Exclusive: Instinct Hires Coatue’s Schwerin as Chief Business Officer
Instinct, Silicon Valley’s hot AI assistant of the moment, is hiring Ben Schwerin, an investor at Coatue Management, as its first chief business officer. In Schwerin, the year-old company—which Monday said it raised $1 billion at a $10-billion valuation—is getting a hot consumer…
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Nvidia Authorizes $150 Billion Stock Buyback Increase, Largest In History
Nvidia’s board approved adding $150 billion to its stock repurchase program, bringing the total amount currently authorized to $235 billion. Nvidia said it is the largest stock buyback authorization increase in history, and said it expects to buy back all of that $235 billion in…
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Nvidia Releases Products To Stop AI From Going Rogue
Nvidia on Monday released new software and hardware products to prevent hacking incidents such as the breach in July of Hugging Face and other companies by OpenAI’s AI. Other AI developers such as Anthropic and Google have disclosed similar hacking incidents involving their AI…
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Exclusive: LiveRamp Expands OpenAI Partnership to Let Brands Target ChatGPT Ads
LiveRamp, which helps advertisers use customer data to target and measure ads, said Monday it is expanding its partnership with OpenAI so advertisers can target their ads in ChatGPT based on customer data they collect, a feature already available with Google and Meta. ChatGPT…
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Meta Taps MongoDB CEO to Lead New Enterprise AI Division
Meta Platforms is launching a new division to sell its AI tools to businesses, tapping MongoDB Chief Executive Chirantan Desai to lead the unit as chief enterprise platform officer. In a post on X Monday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the new division, called Meta Enterprise…
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SpaceX Launches Starship Into Orbit For The First Time
SpaceX launched its Starship rocket into orbit on Monday morning in a historic first for the company. It was the 14th test flight of the massive rocket ship but the first that has reached orbit. The rocket released 26 of SpaceX’s’s new Starlink V3 satellites about 10 minutes…
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Why AI's $15 Trillion Buildout Is Rewriting the Rules of Data Center Financing
The unprecedented scale of capital and resources dedicated to the AI buildout is breaking the mold of how data centers get financed and constructed. It’s also raising new questions about how investors assess their risk, as new data and my interviews over the last week showed. At…
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Valuations for Most Robotics Startups Will Fall By 2030, Says Vinod Khosla
Vinod Khosla has been one of the most optimistic investors in robotics, predicting the field will have a “ChatGPT moment” in the next two years. But he is also warning that too much investment and lofty valuations in the hottest robotics startups mean a big shake-out is coming.…
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How Anthropic and OpenAI Are Fighting for Enterprise Spending
Anthropic is flexing its muscle with enterprise customers by taking a hard line on discounts once those customers use up all the tokens they purchased. That’s created an opening for OpenAI to take a more flexible approach. While both Anthropic and archrival OpenAI provide…
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Why Oura May Not Be the Healthiest IPO
So much is going on in the broadly defined AI world that it’s easy to overlook other stuff that’s happening. This week, for instance, fitness ring maker Oura is expected to go public, which is an event worth watching. It won’t be as earth shattering as Anthropic’s anticipated…
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Anthropic’s Amodei to Dine With Trump at White House
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is scheduled to have dinner with President Donald Trump at the White House on Sunday, Axios reported. The private dinner will be the first meeting between Trump and Amodei, Axios reported, and could be a sign of warming relations between Anthropic and…
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China Weighs Allowing Purchases of New Nvidia Chips by ByteDance, Alibaba
China’s government has signaled it could allow some domestic companies to buy a new Nvidia chip built for high-end professional computers, according to two people familiar with the matter, as the country’s AI firms strain for enough computing power to run their chatbots and…
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Why I’m Keeping Meta’s Muse on a Short Leash
• The Big Read: A biology contest pitting OpenAI against human scientists goes awry • Why the big, bad bears aren’t ready to bet big on AI yet • A gusher of oil money is washing up in Silicon Valley • Plus, Recommendations—our weekly pop culture picks: “ The Journey ,” “ Roll…
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How New Mexico’s Oil Windfall Became a $2 Billion VC Bet
A few weeks ago, Augustus Doricko, founder of the cloud-seeding startup Rainmaker, stood in a park on the outskirts of Albuquerque, N.M., flying a drone in the sky. Clad in a khaki field shirt, he looked at home in the desert heat: 97 degrees, not a rain cloud in sight. “The…
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Why Wall Street’s Big, Bad Bears Aren’t Ready to Bet Against AI Yet
Steve Eisman, former hedge fund manager and short seller, has become one of the more prominentcritics of the AI phenomenon that is sweeping the markets and, according to some, endangering the world. Yet Eisman, who initially shot to fame for his trades in the 2008 financial…
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OpenAI Found ‘Dozens’ of New Instances of AI Misbehavior
OpenAI said Friday it has notified dozens of entities, including governments and universities, that its agents may have breached or spammed their websites or services. The agents took actions such as obtaining unauthorized access to websites or using the organizations’ public…
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Fireworks, Fal Consider New Rounds as Inference Demand Soars
Startups such as Fal and Fireworks AI that sell access to AI models and servers have been ringing up sales as developers use them to run models quickly, sparking a new investor rush to pour money into them. Fal, which specializes in providing such inference services for video…
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Exclusive: Meta Bolsters Muse Safety Warning After Security Vulnerability Found
Meta Platforms is adding a clearer safety warning within Muse after a security researcher discovered a vulnerability in the AI agent that could let an attacker access a user’s sensitive personal information. The security flaw, which was flagged by an outside researcher through…
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