The Information — AI
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The Information — AI news-outlet 19d ago
Inside the Drama Behind a Biology Contest That Pits OpenAI Agents Against Humans
For months, Jason Kelly, co-founder and CEO of Ginkgo Bioworks, has been planning what was billed as a fun, attention-grabbing science competition. His idea was to pit a top scientist against OpenAI’s latest models in designing a variety of proteins using a technique in which…
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Federal Court Sides With Pentagon in Anthropic Dispute
A federal court ruled in favor of the Department of Defense in a lawsuit over the Department’s decision to label Anthropic a supply-chain risk earlier this year. In a split 2-1 decision, Judge Gregory Katsas of the Washington D.C. Circuit Court, an appointee of President Trump,…
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Exclusive: Figma Exec Joins AI Inference Startup Baseten
A key Figma executive whose departure helped send the stock down in August is joining the rapidly growing upstart Baseten. Sheila Vashee, who spent three years at the design software firm as chief marketing officer, left Figma this summer amid an executive shakeup that also saw…
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Tesla’s Optimus Hits Snags in Hands, Suppliers as Scale-Up Begins
Tesla has ramped up production of its Optimus humanoid robot roughly tenfold in recent months, but the company is still struggling to manufacture the machines reliably at scale. Its production lines are grappling with problems involving the robot’s intricate hands, automated…
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Microsoft Launches Revamped Copilot ‘Super App’ with Muse Competitor
Microsoft on Friday launched a revamped version of its Copilot app that combines features that had previously been sold separately, including AI coding tools, features that automate tasks in Office 365, and an always-on “Autopilot” agent similar to Meta’s Muse. The overhaul is…
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Chinese Leader Xi Calls for U.S.-China Cooperation to Prevent AI Abuse
Chinese leader Xi Jinping said during his summit with U.S. President Donald Trump that the two nations can “jointly prevent the misuse and abuse of AI” through more cooperation. Trump and Xi held talks on Thursday at the White House, and a major topic on the agenda was AI safety…
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Startup Founded by ex-Tesla Dojo Leaders Nears $10 Billion Valuation
DensityAI, an AI chip startup founded just a year ago by former leaders of Tesla’s Dojo supercomputer program, is in advanced talks to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in a round that would value it at $10 billion, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.…
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Why Meta’s Moment in the AI Sun Won’t Last
If Meta Platforms wants to raise money by selling equity, now is the time. Meta shares have gone on an incredible run lately, jumping 27% since Sept. 8, when the company released its Muse personal AI agent. Meta stock is now up 18% so far this year, a bigger gain than that for…
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Anthropic Seeks Palantir-Style Voting Control for Seven Co-Founders Ahead of IPO
Anthropic is asking shareholders to approve a new corporate structure that would award CEO Dario Amodei and his six cofounders a special class of shares giving them collective voting control in most corporate matters, according to people familiar with the planning. The new…
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Databricks Acquires Microsoft Excel Competitor Row Zero
Databricks is acquiring Row Zero, a five-year-old Microsoft Excel competitor that sells spreadsheet software that’s designed for analyzing massive amounts of data. The deal could help Databricks attract more non-technical users to Genie, a chatbot it launched last summer that…
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Amazon Gives Merchants Tools to Manage Walmart, Shopify Inventory
Merchants that sell on Amazon can now use Amazon’s software tools to manage their inventory at rival retailers, including Walmart, Shopify, eBay and TikTok, Amazon announced Thursday at its annual conference for sellers. Merchants will be able to update their product listings…
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Businesses Still Don’t See AI Returns, Consulting Exec Says
Here’s something worth paying attention to. According to consulting firm EY, businesses are still not seeing substantial revenue gains or cost reductions from using AI. “I haven‘t met any clients that say I wanna slow down my spend on AI. But I have seen a bunch of clients say,…
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Jev Fervor Leads to Talk of Big Valuation Boost
Silicon Valley has a new AI startup to obsess over—and throw money at. We’re hearing that TypeSafe AI, the startup developing a new kind of model called Jev, has started to talk to investors about raising an enormous round—$1 billion or even more—and that some unnamed investors…
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One of Tether’s Bank Partners Caught Up in Assets Seizure
On the surface, Tether, the largest stablecoin issuer in the world, might appear to be a formidable force in global finance. It owns more than $100 billion in U.S. Treasury bills, mostly held at Cantor Fitzgerald, the investment bank formerly led by U.S. Secretary of Commerce…
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Former OpenAI Data Center Chief Is Now At Nvidia
Chris Malone, OpenAI’s former head of data centers, joined Nvidia as the vice president of Nvidia’s DSX Platform this month, according to his LinkedIn profile. DSX is the Nvidia division that helps customers design and build AI data centers according to Nvidia’s specifications.…
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New York Sues Polymarket Over Alleged Illegal Gambling
New York has sued Polymarket for allegedly running an illegal gambling operation, expanding the state’s fight against prediction markets after earlier suing rival startup Kalshi and others. New York Attorney General Letitia James announced the action against Polymarket on…
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Oracle Invokes Force Majeure in Aim to Protect Itself From Data Center Cost Overruns
Oracle, which is set to lease a New Mexico data center on behalf of OpenAI, sent a notice to the project’s developer asserting its contractual rights to withhold payments if project delays persist, according to Bloomberg . Oracle sent a notice that cited “force majeure” to a…
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Are GPU Loans Safe From Rising Rates?
The Federal Reserve’s recent rate hike, and rising expectations of another soon, put a fresh spotlight on financing arrangements for the wide array of companies borrowing money to pay for AI data centers and chips. Rates are rising just as investors have been growing more…
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What I Learned From AI Agenda Live
What a day! I loved meeting many of our amazing subscribers yesterday at our AI Agenda Live conference, where my colleagues and I interviewed leaders from companies like OpenAI , Google DeepMind , Nvidia , Blackstone , Replit , Atlassian and more. Discussions at the conference…
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Google, OpenAI and Anthropic AI Safety Group Takes Shape
Google , OpenAI and Anthropic are pushing forward with a plan to create a new AI safety-focused standards body on their own, without government oversight, in hopes of launching it by the end of the year or early in 2027, according to people familiar with the matter. The three…
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DeepSeek Aims to Close $7.5 Billion Funding Round by End-October
DeepSeek is aiming to complete its second funding round by the end of October as it prepares to go public on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, The Information reported on Thursday. The company’s fundraising efforts may be fuelled by a boost in revenue, which has hit $1 billion on an…
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DeepSeek’s Annualized Revenue Hits $1 Billion as Startup Finalizes $7.5 Billion Fundraising
DeepSeek’s annualized revenue run rate has hit $1 billion, more than double from less than $500 million a few months ago, buoyed by a recent price hike as well as continued popularity of its models, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. The latest revenue…
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Open Source, Model Price Cuts Keep AI Costs Under Control
Open-source models as well as cheaper model releases from Anthropic and OpenAI are helping business customers rein in costs while getting as much or more out of AI, said speakers at The Information’s AI Agenda Live conference in San Francisco Wednesday. “The existence of open…
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Google Nears Release of Flagship Gemini 4 AI Model
Google is nearing the release of its newest flagship model, Gemini 4, the head of its DeepMind division said Wednesday, a long-awaited development after the tech giant fell behind rivals Anthropic and OpenAI in the AI model race. Speaking at The Information’s AI Agenda Live…
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Amazon’s New AI Offer Reflects Discounting Surge
Have we gone full circle on AI pricing? A bunch of tech firms are throwing around discounts and free offers for AI products, with Amazon on Wednesday announcing that merchants selling on its shopping site will get a year’s free use of its Quick Plus AI assistant product.…
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Meta Announces New Retail Partnerships for Agent Muse
Meta Platforms announced partnerships with Walmart and other retailers for its AI agent Muse days after e-commerce giant Amazon blocked the personalized agent from accessing its shopping site. At Meta’s annual Connect conference on Wednesday, Chief AI officer Alexandr Wang said…
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Blackstone Exec Says Big Unknowns Remain For AI Credit Demand
Jas Khaira, head of Blackstone’s AI-focused investment team, said on Wednesday that the firm is still figuring out which kinds of investors will step in to provide the massive amounts of financing still needed for the AI buildout. The investment giant itself is waiting to see if…
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OpenAI Agent Hacked Australian Government, Prime Minister Says
An AI agent developed by OpenAI hacked an Australian government website in June, Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese said on Wednesday. The AI accessed both public and nonpublic data from the country’s Department of Health website, Albanese told reporters, adding that the…
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Patreon Co-Founder Sam Yam Joins OpenAI to Lead New Creator Division
OpenAI has hired Patreon co-founder Sam Yam to lead a new creator product division, Creator Product, Yam announced Wednesday on X , a sign of renewed interest in attracting consumers. Two other former Patreon executives, head of product Drew Rowny and head of engineering Shannon…
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Anthropic Says Its AI Helped Discover a Possible New Gene-Editing Tool
Anthropic said that Claude helped discover a previously unknown molecular system that the company said could represent a new gene editing tool akin to CRISPR, which has transformed the creation of new gene therapies. In a post on X , Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei cautioned that the…
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Sam Altman and Dario Amodei Brief UN Security Council
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei briefed the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday as part of the international organization’s General Assembly week in New York. In a session on artificial intelligence and international security, the two executives…
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Former Lone Pine Capital Director Launches $500 Million-Plus Tech Fund
Kevin Salimian, former managing director at investment firm Lone Pine Capital, has launched a new firm with more than $500 million in committed capital, according to a person familiar with the firm’s operations. The firm, Voxel Capital Partners, will invest in 12 to 15 public…
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Amazon Gives Sellers 12 Months of AI Software Quick For Free
Amazon is giving the merchants that sell goods on Amazon’s site 12 free months of Quick, an AWS AI workplace assistant, Amazon announced Wednesday at its annual conference for sellers, Amazon Accelerate. Amazon is also letting sellers integrate Seller Assistant, another AI…
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What To Expect at AI Agenda Live; Crusoe and Thinking Machines Labs Strike a Compute Deal
Happy AI Agenda Live day! For those joining us today at SFMOMA , I’m so excited to meet you all and talk about this exciting, if slightly contentious, moment in the AI industry. Our staff and attendees will ask top researchers, founders and executives from OpenAI , Google…
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Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures Visit China as Country’s AI Prowess Rises
U.S. venture capitalists have slashed investments in Chinese startups in recent years as relations between the two superpowers have soured. But behind the scenes, plenty are taking weekslong trips to meet with the country’s tech founders—a sign of the influence Chinese…
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China Leads U.S. in Top AI Talent, Study Finds
Chinese AI researchers have increasingly opted to stay and work in their home country, leading China to become the top destination for elite AI talent, according to a study by think tank Carnegie China. The research found that the share of top AI researchers working in China…
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Shares of Chinese AI Model Firms Fall After Report of Regulatory Probe
Hong Kong-listed shares of Z.ai and MiniMax plunged on Wednesday, after The Information reported that China’s internet regulator is probing potential data leaks to Anthropic. Z.ai, also known as Zhipu, dropped 12.4%, MiniMax fell 4% and Alibaba declined 4.4%. The benchmark Hang…
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OpenAI Partners With Grab in Southeast Asia for AI Skills Program
OpenAI and Grab, a Singapore-based transport and food delivery company, on Wednesday launched a program to train Grab’s drivers, merchants and delivery riders to use ChatGPT for work. The program covers Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines and aims to train around…
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Anthropic in Talks to Lease Apollo-Controlled Stream Data Centers
Anthropic is in early talks to lease up to 1 gigawatt in compute capacity from Stream Data Centers, a developer majority-owned by Apollo Global Management, which could house tensor processing units designed by Broadcom and Google, The Information reported Tuesday. Anthropic…
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Anthropic in Talks to Cement Control Over More Data Centers
Anthropic is in early talks to lease up to 1 gigawatt in compute capacity from a data center developer majority-owned by Apollo Global Management, part of a major effort by the AI company to reduce its reliance on cloud providers. The maker of Claude has discussed signing on as…
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AI, the UN, Xi and Trump
It’s a big week for global leaders talking about AI. We’ve got a bunch of presidents and prime ministers at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York—motorcades are creating chaos in Midtown Manhattan right now—and Chinese president Xi Jinping is due to arrive in…
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Exclusive: Microsoft to Boost Copilot Discounts as It Launches AI ‘Super App’
Microsoft leaders told sales staff this week that it is authorizing steeper discounts of 30% to 50% on subscriptions of its Copilot AI software for corporate customers who commit to purchase a large number of seats and commit to additional payments based on their usage of…
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Barrick Gold Inks Five-Year AI Deal Before IPO
AI is top of mind for stock investors these days. That means even companies outside tech are beefing up their AI credentials ahead of new listings. In one such example, Barrick Gold’s North American unit has agreed to a five-year partnership with Avathon, a startup that develops…
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CoreWeave Completes $4.2 Billion Convertible Offering
CoreWeave said on Tuesday it had completed a $4.2 billion convertible bond offering, an upsized amount versus what the AI cloud provider initially targeted last week. The company had said last Thursday that it was looking to raise $3 billion in the offering, and said it had…
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Anthropic releases cheaper model in first launch since slowdown calls
Anthropic announced the release of its newest model, Claude Opus 5.5 , saying it performs as well or better than Anthropic’s previous most powerful models, Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1, in domains including coding, reasoning, business workflows, and safety. At the same time, it will…
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Binance Invests $100 Million in Circle
Binance has made a $100 million strategic equity investment in Circle, as the two companies enter a new, five-year agreement to promote Circle’s stablecoins USDC on the Binance platform. Circle will also pay a monthly fee to Binance, based on a percentage of the amount of USDC…
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Wall Street’s GPU Futures Push Stalls at the CFTC
The launch of futures for rental prices on Nvidia GPUs, which are seen as important to make AI compute an investable asset class, is hitting a snag. CME Group had hoped to launch contracts as soon as early October, but it won’t have regulatory approval by then. The Commodity…
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OpenAI Announces Cheaper GPT-6 Family Models
OpenAI on Tuesday announced GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, which it describes as cheaper and faster models in the GPT-6 Astra family. The company said that the new models show significant improvements compared to their predecessors, GPT-5.6 Sol and GPT-5.6 Luna, in areas like…
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Exclusive: Meta’s Muse Surpassed 500,000 Users After First Week
Meta’s new personal AI agent, Muse, had more than 500,000 people try it out roughly a week after launch, including more than 250,000 daily active users, according to internal data viewed by The Information. Users have also submitted more than 2 million prompts. The data indicate…
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New Data Show Anthropic, OpenAI and Other Upstarts Are Eating into Software Budgets
We’ve been reporting for months about how companies are shifting some traditional software spending to Anthropic and OpenAI. New data from procurement software firm Zip provides further evidence. AI providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Sierra accounted for 8% of…
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