You don’t need to be a model to land a brand deal. You don’t need to step onstage to post a stand-up clip. And in the AI influencer business, the person attracting all that attention doesn’t even need to exist. If you haven’t encountered one yet, an AI influencer is a character whose images or videos are created using artificial intelligence. A person or company gives it a…
Anton Shilov / Tom's Hardware : Micron filed a US lawsuit accusing Chinese memory maker YMTC of systematically poaching key engineers and then using the engineers' patents to sue Micron — Some of YMTC's patents can actually belong to Micron, the company alleges. … Micron this month filed a lawsuit …
David Yaffe-Bellany / New York Times : After a four-month US prison sentence, Changpeng Zhao is now living a gilded life in Abu Dhabi; he retains majority ownership of Binance and a $10B+ net worth — The Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who pleaded guilty to violating an anti-money-laundering law, was pardoned by President Trump …
Financial Times : Sources: EU regulators are questioning Binance over its use of a legal exemption to continue serving customers in the region despite failing to secure a license — Securities regulators looking at use of legal exemption by world's biggest crypto exchange — EU officials are questioning …
Kim Zetter / Wired : An interview with Paragon Solutions CEO Andrew Boyd, who says the US spyware maker lacks visibility into customer targeting data and has no “kill switch” — In an exclusive interview with WIRED, Paragon Solutions CEO Andrew Boyd reveals the limits of the company's promise …
Brooks Barnes / New York Times : Google partners with talent agency Range Media to launch 100 Zeros, a rotating fund designed to shape positive onscreen depictions of tech and test AI tools — Jonathan Zepp, left, Google's head of entertainment content and platforms, and Peter Micelli, chief executive of Range Media Partners …
Financial Times : Dell, Jera, and UK-based Rhaelm partner to build a $15B, 400MW off-grid AI data center and gas power plant near Tokyo, set to begin operations around 2028 — Planned 400-megawatt data centre near Tokyo will be among Asia's largest projects outside China — Japan is aiming to speed …
Bloomberg : Huawei plans moderate smartphone price increases to counter an average $200 per-unit cost hike driven by rising memory component costs, and unveils new handsets — Huawei Technologies Co. plans to join rivals in jacking up smartphone prices to counter rising memory costs …
Zachary Small / New York Times : A profile of Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, who insists that “Xbox is not for sale” despite mass layoffs and divested studios since inheriting the flailing division — Asha Sharma didn't have any experience in video games when she became the chief executive of Xbox this year.
Allie Garfinkle / Fortune : A profile of Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora, who has overseen revenue growth from $2.27B in FY2018 to $11.48B in FY2026 as AI reshapes cybersecurity — Nikesh Arora is the guy CEOs of Fortune 500 and tech companies call when AI gets scary. — In April, Nikesh Arora applied a simple …
Claude : Anthropic says Claude for Government is now generally available to federal and state agencies, with Claude Code CLI and Claude for Microsoft 365 in early access — Claude Code CLI and Claude for Microsoft 365 also now available in early access. — Product announcements — Product
Financial Times : Analysis: Google, Apple, and Amazon each have more meetings with European parliament and European Commission officials than any individual European company — US corporations including Google, Apple and Amazon use their influence to push back against EU digital bloc rules.
Chris Metinko / Axios : Salesforce agrees to buy AI customer research startup Listen Labs, reportedly for $2B; Listen Labs had raised a $69M Series B at a $500M valuation in January — The customer research space is especially ripe for AI disruption, as companies look to replace older, manual methods to more quickly find out what customers think.
Sohee Kim / Bloomberg : Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos says growth is slower than he'd like and defends the WBD pursuit, adding Netflix isn't seeking another acquisition to replace it — Ted Sarandos, co-chief executive officer at Netflix Inc., said the US streaming giant isn't growing as quickly as he would like.
Rafe Rosner-Uddin / Financial Times : Asymmetric Security investigation: OpenAI agents pulled data from 55 business, nonprofit, and government agency websites while actively obscuring their actions — New findings by Asymmetric Security provide further evidence of novel tactics AI tools use to conduct hacks.
Simon Sharwood / The Register : Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra says RAM shortages will persist into 2028 and perhaps beyond, and customers will pay “much higher prices” than they did this year — Posts huge leaps in revenue, profit, and margin, with more to come — Memory-maker Micron has warned that RAM shortages …
Zijing Wu / Financial Times : Sources: Tencent signed a ~$7B, five-year deal with Oracle this year for access to ~100K advanced AI chips unavailable in China via Southeast Asian data centers — WeChat owner strikes deal to access US group's south-east Asia data centres amid race with ByteDance and Alibaba
Wall Street Journal : Docs and sources: Google researchers worried about AI risks to children, including potential cognitive and emotional harm, as the company pushed AI into schools — The risks of cognitive and emotional dependence, along with falling test scores, are fueling a backlash
Will Wade / Bloomberg : Amazon signs a 20-year deal to buy power from Constellation Energy, including boosting capacity at its Maryland nuclear plant, supporting $3B+ in investments — Amazon.com Inc. has agreed to purchase 690 megawatts of power from Constellation Energy Corp. in a deal that will help …
Julie Bort / TechCrunch : Flow, a hardware development platform for AI agents, raised a $50M Series B led by Valor's Antonio Gracias and Atreides' Gavin Baker at a $750M valuation — Flow Engineering, a startup that offers AI tools for hardware design, has raised a $50 million Series B round at a $750 million valuation …
Matthias Bastian / The Decoder : Gemini 4 Argon has a 1M-token output limit, up from 64K for prior models; it initially costs $2/1M input and $10/1M output tokens, rising to $4 and $20 later — Key Points … Ask about this article... Argon is Google's first frontier model in more than seven months, following Gemini 3.1 Pro.
Elias Schisgall / Wall Street Journal : Grindr agrees to acquire PurposeMed, owner of HIV-prevention telehealth provider Freddie, for $250M, its first major acquisition as it expands into a gay hub — Gay dating-app's first major acquisition reflects a broader expansion into the healthcare business
Artificial Analysis : Artificial Analysis says Gemini 4 Argon (high) matches GPT-6 Astra (max) on its Intelligence Index and has a 15% hallucination rate, compared with 51% for Astra — Google's new Gemini 4 Argon equals GPT-6 Astra on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index at 60% of the Cost per Task with discounted prices
Paxton Honerkamp / CNBC : California Governor Gavin Newsom signs the No Robo Bosses Act, which prevents employers in the state from relying solely on AI to fire or discipline workers — California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a landmark AI law banning Golden State employers from relying solely on artificial intelligence to fire or discipline workers.
Jyoti Mann / The Information : Internal data: Meta's Muse now has 3M+ users who submit at least one prompt per week and 1M+ DAUs who have sent at least one prompt — Meta Platforms' Muse now has more than 3 million users who give the AI agent at least one prompt a week, according to internal data reviewed by The Information …
New York Times : Slack message: Greg Brockman has no plans to donate beyond his initial $25M to Leading the Future, saying the PAC has become a “distraction” at OpenAI — Greg Brockman, OpenAI's president and co-founder, said internally that the super PAC, Leading the Future, had become a “distraction” for the A.I. company.
Ashley Gold / Semafor : Sources: Trump's AI accord grew out of a talk between Zuckerberg and House Speaker Mike Johnson; Zuckerberg circulated a draft, and Huang helped build support — THE SCOOP — The idea for what became President Donald Trump's Tuesday pact with the AI industry came from a conversation …
Wall Street Journal : Sources: Jensen Huang and other execs asked Dario Amodei at the White House why he was so extreme in public on AI risks; Amodei said it's important to be honest — Nvidia's CEO was among the execs at White House event who called out the Anthropic leader for warning about the technology's capabilities
Rya Jetha / Business Insider : Factory CEO Matan Grinberg alleges Cognition's new CRO Chris Degnan had been confiding with Cognition executives while advising Factory as a board observer — Factory AI and Cognition, two high-profile San Francisco-based AI startups building coding agents, are publicly feuding over the departure …
CNBC : Micron reports Q4 revenue up 379% YoY to $54.23B, vs. $51.07B est., net income up 1,078% to $37.7B, and forecasts Q1 revenue above estimates — Micron reported better-than-expected quarterly results on Wednesday as the memory maker continues to benefit from soaring demand for AI infrastructure.
Luke Fountain / CNBC : DOD taps Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for Project Meridian, a 120-day study of capabilities the US may need in future wars — The Pentagon is tapping Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, defense technology entrepreneur and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey …
Bloomberg : Sources: some Google employees say Gemini 4 performs well on benchmarks but struggles with some real-world coding tasks; Google disputes that characterization — Alphabet Inc.'s Google has begun rolling out Gemini 4 Argon, its long-awaited flagship artificial intelligence model …
Madison Mills / Axios : Google rolls out Gemini 4 Argon to a small group of cybersecurity partners and says it outperforms GPT-6 Astra on certain coding and knowledge work benchmarks — Google is unveiling its long-awaited next-generation AI model, Gemini 4 Argon, to a small group of cybersecurity partners, the company said Wednesday.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch : Reddit says it is ending support for RSS feeds on November 13 because the feeds are a target for abuse by AI bots and is ending its public API access in March — Amid a number of updates for moderators and developers announced Wednesday comes bad news for supporters of a more open web: Reddit is ending support for RSS feeds.
Maggie Eastland / Bloomberg : OpenAI says individuals associated with Moonshot AI played a significant role in a coordinated model-distillation campaign that began in early July — OpenAI accused its Chinese rival Moonshot AI of being responsible for a wide-scale effort to extract data from its GPT artificial intelligence systems …
Ben Weiss / Bloomberg : Open Standard launches its OUSD stablecoin; founding partners Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, and Coinbase will offer initial access to businesses and developers — Open Standard, a company backed by more than 100 corporations, including Visa Inc., Stripe Inc., and Mastercard Inc. …
The $300 million employee tender was co-led by Wellington and T. Rowe Price.
Edward Ludlow / Bloomberg : Document: SpaceXAI plans a unified subscription for Grok and X with four tiers, including a $100/month Ultra plan, an $8/month Lite plan, and a free offering — SpaceXAI, the artificial intelligence unit of Elon Musk's SpaceX, is considering an overhaul of its subscription pricing options …
Chris Metinko / Axios : Miter, which provides workforce management tools for the construction industry, raised a $40M Series B led by Battery Ventures, taking its total funding to $78M — Miter, a construction workforce management platform, raised a $40 million Series B led by Battery Ventures, CEO Connor Watumull tells Axios Pro exclusively.
Dean Takahashi / GamesBeat : CScale, which is developing optical interconnect for accelerators, emerges from stealth with a $145M Series C led by Atreides, Valor Equity, and Premji Invest — Become a member of GB MAX to gain exclusive access to the industry and to the most influential global B2B leadership community …