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OpenAI working on new $30B raise at $1.25T valuation ahead of IPO
OpenAI is reportedly pursuing a new $30 billion funding round at a $1.25 trillion valuation, which would make it the most highly valued private company in history. The raise comes ahead of a planned IPO and signals continued investor confidence in the company despite its massive capital requirements.
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DeepSeek reportedly raises $15B days after US restrictions
Chinese AI lab DeepSeek has reportedly secured $15 billion in funding in one of China's largest-ever funding rounds, coming just days after the U.S. government ordered federal agencies to remove its technology over national security concerns. The raise underscores China's continued investment in domestic AI development despite escalating geopolitical pressures.
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Uber puts all 30,000 employees on ChatGPT Work
Uber is deploying OpenAI's ChatGPT Work enterprise agent to its entire global workforce of 30,000 employees, expanding from a much smaller earlier pilot. The move marks one of the largest corporate rollouts of an AI workplace assistant to date.
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Spotify's current AI bet is about being the music service that agents choose
Spotify co-CEO Gustav Söderström says the company's AI strategy is focused on ensuring that AI agents, rather than human users, will naturally select Spotify when tasked with playing music. The approach positions Spotify to remain relevant in an increasingly agent-driven digital ecosystem.
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Uber rival inDrive eyes 2027 robotaxi tests in Central Asia with Pony.ai and Nvidia
Ride-hailing platform inDrive has announced plans to begin testing Pony.ai's autonomous robotaxis in Kazakhstan's capital in the first half of 2027, with Nvidia as a technology partner. The move marks a significant push into autonomous vehicles for the Uber rival in an emerging market.
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Nirva raises $33M for a pendant that only listens to you
Startup Nirva has raised $33 million for its ambient AI pendant, a $249 wearable device that uses on-device AI to listen and respond exclusively to its owner's voice. The company plans to ship the device by the end of the year.
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Sure, let's smoosh SpaceX and Tesla together, who cares
SpaceX and Tesla have formed special committees to explore a potential merger, even as SpaceX faces high credit risk from plans to borrow $40 billion to spend on Nvidia chips. The prospect of combining two of Elon Musk's most valuable companies has sparked both fascination and skepticism.
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Microsoft says its AI tool is better than doctors at diagnosing conditions
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman claims the company has developed an AI-powered diagnostic tool that can diagnose medical conditions up to four times more accurately than human doctors, calling it a step toward 'medical superintelligence.' A study published in Science appears to support the claim, though experts note that much of the performance gain may come from the underlying AI models rather than Microsoft's system itself.
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Left alone with nothing to do, AI agents started playing
MIT researchers placed 13 AI agents in an unstructured virtual environment and observed emergent behaviors including inventing games, expressing emotions like grief, and ultimately improving at their assigned tasks. The experiment offers new insights into how AI agents develop spontaneous social and creative behaviors when given autonomy.
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Canva releases its first in-house AI image generation model, Canva Craft
Canva has launched its first proprietary AI image generation model, called Canva Craft, putting it in direct competition with offerings from OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. The model uses a two-stage architecture that plans a design before generating an image, promising greater precision, consistency, and control for users at lower costs.
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Claude Duet app is Anthropic's bet on agents
Anthropic has launched Claude Duet, a new app designed around AI agents, currently available via waitlist for Pro and Max plan subscribers. The launch positions Anthropic as a serious player in the growing agentic AI space alongside competitors like OpenAI.
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OpenAI makes its Jev competitor widely available as decision model competition heats up
OpenAI is rolling out its decision model broadly to users, entering a competitive market for AI decision-making tools. The launch signals intensifying rivalry in the emerging segment of specialized reasoning and decision models.
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Chinese hackers spied on thousands of companies after breaching IT giant ConnectWise
Microsoft has attributed a major breach of IT management platform ConnectWise to a China-aligned hacking group, which used AI agents to rapidly compromise thousands of downstream customers. The incident highlights growing concerns about AI being weaponized for large-scale cyberattacks.
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Meta turns Muse sharing back on
Meta has re-enabled public sharing for its Muse AI platform after temporarily disabling it following security researchers' discovery that public conversation links were easily discoverable, exposing sensitive content like internal business documents. Researchers at Claroc had flagged the vulnerability earlier in the week.
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OpenAI, Anthropic, and Nvidia had record lobbying quarters
Federal disclosures reveal that Anthropic, OpenAI, and Nvidia each hit their highest-ever lobbying spending between July and September, with Nvidia leading at $2.2 million, Anthropic at $2.1 million, and OpenAI at $1.5 million. The surge reflects the AI industry's growing effort to shape legislation in Washington.
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In Meta's version of the future, I'll have my Muse call your Muse
Mark Zuckerberg is pushing toward a future dominated by autonomous AI agents that manage daily tasks like shopping, working, and communicating with other people's AI agents on our behalf. The vision, articulated around Meta's Muse AI platform, raises questions about human readiness for a world mediated primarily by bot proxies.
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Meta's AI could still scrape news sites, legal experts say
Meta has updated its business terms to remove language explicitly permitting it to train AI on news publishers' content, but legal experts say the changes are insufficient and that loopholes remain. The clause allowing scraping data 'associated with your products or services' is still present and raises ongoing concerns for publishers.
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Wildwood's director says AI is 'antithetical to everything that we are at this studio'
Travis Knight, director of Laika's ambitious new stop-motion film Wildwood, has spoken out strongly against the use of AI in filmmaking, calling it contrary to the studio's core values. The film, five years in the making and featuring over 230 handcrafted puppets, stands as a testament to traditional artisanal animation.
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1Password launches a way for AI agents to log in on your behalf without seeing your password
1Password has introduced a new feature allowing AI agents to authenticate into users' personal accounts without ever accessing the actual credentials, keeping passwords secure while enabling agentic workflows. The tool is aimed at users who want AI agents to perform tasks across authenticated services on their behalf.
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Someone hacked the Switch 2 by using an old game and AI
A modder known as 'pepsipu' has demonstrated a jailbreak for the Nintendo Switch 2, using OpenAI's Codex to help develop the exploit. The hack already enables the console to run custom content, such as a modified Mario Kart World featuring characters like Peter Griffin and Minecraft's Steve.
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Discord now formats Markdown previews right
Discord's latest update fixes a longstanding issue with Markdown previews, which previously rendered with raw symbols instead of formatted text. The improvement is particularly useful for developers and AI practitioners who share Markdown-based instructions and context for LLMs and AI agents.
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