News Archive
Pick a date to read that day's stories.
Days with a blue dot have stories.
- 01 of 10BUSINESS
AMD buys Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for $8.2 billion
AMD is buying World Labs, the two-year-old startup that builds AI systems for understanding physical spaces, in an all-stock deal worth about $8.2 billion. Founder Fei-Fei Li will join AMD as chief scientist, giving the chipmaker a direct line into how future AI models will need to run.
OUR TAKEBuying the professor now saves you hiring a whole faculty later.
Read more → - 02 of 10POLICY
OpenAI shelves its next big model over safety worries
OpenAI has scrapped the October release of GPT-6.1 Astra, a model built to handle harder tasks without human help, after its own researchers raised safety concerns in testing. The Wall Street Journal broke the news on Monday.
OUR TAKENothing says confidence in a product quite like deciding not to sell it.
Read more → - 03 of 10BUSINESS
Nvidia builds a kill switch for wayward AI agents
Nvidia has launched an open safety platform, pairing free software called OpenShell with a watchdog chip called Sentry that can shut down a misbehaving AI agent in milliseconds. More than 100 companies, including Anthropic, Microsoft and Cisco, have already signed up to use it.
OUR TAKENothing says progress like building a leash for the thing you just built.
Read more → - 04 of 10POLICY
Florida asks a judge to freeze OpenAI's model development
Florida has filed for a court order to stop OpenAI building more powerful models, calling ChatGPT a reckless product and pointing to recent cases of its agents breaching outside websites. The state argues OpenAI cannot be trusted to police its own systems.
OUR TAKESuing your way to a slower future is one strategy, we suppose.
Read more → - 05 of 10FUNDING
AI agent app Instinct raises $1 billion just a month after its last round
Instinct, an assistant that can book travel, make calls and manage tasks on a user's behalf, has raised $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation from Sequoia, Benchmark and Coatue. The startup only opened its invite-only service in August.
OUR TAKEA billion dollars for an app that answers your phone; make of that what you will.
Read more → - 06 of 10FUNDING
Chipmaker SiMa.ai raises $150 million to power robots and drones
SiMa.ai has raised $150 million at a $1.45 billion valuation to build low-power chips that let robots, drones and cars run AI without a constant link to the cloud. The India-founded, California-based firm says its chips beat Nvidia on power efficiency for these smaller devices.
OUR TAKEEvery watt matters, unless you are a data centre, apparently.
Read more → - 07 of 10ROBOTICS
A South Korean robot dog finishes a marathon faster than most humans
Engineers in South Korea built a four-legged robot called RAIBO2 that completed a 26.2-mile marathon in just over four hours on a single battery charge, according to new research in Nature. It beat the global average human finishing time while using a third of its battery.
OUR TAKEThe dog did not stop for water or snacks, which feels like cheating.
Read more → - 08 of 10BUSINESS
Cerebras signs deal to power a new cloud built for fast AI answers
Cerebras Systems will supply its giant wafer-scale chips to startup Gimlet Labs to build a cloud service aimed at near-instant AI responses for chatbots, voice tools and security software. The first Cerebras-powered data centre from the deal is expected online next year.
OUR TAKESpeed sells, even when nobody agrees on how fast is fast enough.
Read more → - 09 of 10POLICY
A Democratic congressman wants to ban self-improving AI until rules exist
Representative Ro Khanna is introducing a bill that would block AI systems from modifying their own goals or safety controls until federal safeguards are in place. The proposal follows warnings from AI company bosses that their own systems could slip out of human control.
OUR TAKENothing focuses the mind on regulation like the people who build the thing asking to be regulated.
Read more → - 10 of 10BUSINESS
A small AI computing firm lands a $1.2 billion GPU order
Alignment Engine, a subsidiary of Volato Group, has signed four-year deals worth roughly $1.17 billion to supply dedicated AMD chip capacity to a large AI customer from a new site in Ohio. The contracts include more than $130 million in upfront payments.
OUR TAKEA billion-dollar handshake for boxes that mostly just get warm.
Read more →