Chinese AI darling DeepSeek unveiled an updated version of its cost-and-latency-optimized Flash model on Thursday, with a new version 4.1 that includes architectural improvements more significant than you would expect in a point release because the changes might open the door to larger, smarter, and less resource-intensive models. At 763 billion parameters, the point release is more than 2.5x the…
Tiffany Hsu / New York Times : MIT launches the LLM Election Observatory, a dashboard tracking how nearly a dozen AI models tailor responses to political queries during the 2026 US midterms — Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming a go-to stop for voters looking for information about political races. Researchers are studying the effects.
T-Mobile : Get iPhone 18 Pro on Us at T-Mobile — America's Best Network — Only T-Mobile customers get the latest iPhone lineup — including iPhone Duo, iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max — with the best benefits in wireless, 5G Advanced capabilities for faster speeds and EIP Flex 36, a path to a new iPhone with $0 out-of-pocket upfront
Aditya Kalra / Reuters : Official doc: India's Serious Fraud Office urges the government to probe Xiaomi over alleged business model irregularities and foreign investment law violations — India's Serious Fraud Office has recommended Xiaomi be investigated for alleged irregularities in its business model and compliance …
Jeff Mason / Bloomberg : President Trump rejects warnings of AI-driven human extinction, saying the US leads China by a year and will be “in a very bad position” if it doesn't win in AI — President Donald Trump brushed aside warnings from artificial intelligence researchers that the technology is becoming …
Ann Cao / South China Morning Post : Tencent-backed AI chipmaker Enflame's shares surged 188% in their Shanghai debut, giving Enflame a market cap of $26.3B, after raising ~$910M in an IPO — The Tencent-backed company sees share price surge, highlighting Enflame's role in Beijing's push for domestic chips amid US export restrictions
Christian Terry / Click2Houston.com : A US judge finds TikTok liable for lying about its safety standards and exposing minors to inappropriate content, in a 2025 lawsuit filed by Texas AG Ken Paxton — State will now proceed to trial to determine relief and penalties — AUSTIN, Texas - A U.S. District Judge has found TikTok liable …
Wall Street Journal : Sources: Kalshi plans to seek US regulatory approval to start offering single-stock perpetual futures; Coinbase filed similar regulatory paperwork last week — Platform known for prediction markets has seen perpetual futures surge in popularity — A risky type of trade that has exploded …
Mark Spoonauer / Tom's Guide : An interview with Apple CEO John Ternus and Greg Joswiak on making the iPhone Duo, minimizing the crease, uninspiring Android foldables, the price, and more — 'I was like, yes, that's it...this is what I want' — Apple's first foldable phone is finally coming in the iPhone Duo …
Elias Schisgall / Wall Street Journal : Adobe says it hit 1B MAUs, with freemium MAUs surpassing 100M in Q3, up 70%+ YoY, as it increasingly focuses on expanding its freemium AI offerings — The software company's profit and revenue rose in the third quarter — Adobe lifted its full-year guidance and said it hit …
Bloomberg : Sources: Sam Altman told OpenAI employees that the company is considering slowing cutting-edge AI development, and he hopes other AI companies will do the same — OpenAI is considering slowing down the development of cutting-edge artificial intelligence, and the ChatGPT maker's Chief Executive …
Maxwell Zeff / Wired : Sources: OpenAI asked members of Congress for guidance on whether orchestrating an industry-wide slowdown in AI development would be legal under antitrust law — Substantive coordination on safety between AI labs may risk running afoul of antitrust law, the people say …
GPT-6 Astra shipped a few weeks ago as, in OpenAI's own words , its most aligned model yet, the first to hit the "Critical" cybersecurity threshold under the company's Preparedness Framework. That classification is worth taking seriously. It's also worth asking what it actually rests on. The answer is containment, the assumption that a model's capabilities and its access to the outside world can b…
Parmy Olson / Bloomberg : Only 4% of the startups in YC's 2026 spring batch had a native mobile app as their main product, down from 15% in 2013, as startups focus on AI and agents — Artificial intelligence has made it easier than ever to build an app. New releases on Apple Inc.'s App Store surged by about 80% earlier …
The Information : Source: AI assistant Instinct is looking to raise $1B in new funding after recently raising $250M, as it seeks more computing power amid capacity constraints — The year-old startup behind Instinct, a personal AI assistant that's caught fire with Silicon Valley insiders, is seeking more computing power …
Lucinda Shen / Axios : London-based Xapien, which uses AI for background checks and due diligence, raised a $56M Series B led by Spectrum Equity — Xapien, an AI background check and due diligence company, raised $56 million in Series B funding led by Spectrum Equity, CEO Chris Green tells Axios Pro exclusively.
Wall Street Journal : Sources: the Pentagon is in talks to lend roughly $5B to neocloud Fluidstack; Fluidstack is being advised on its loan application by Palmer Luckey's Erebor Bank — Fluidstack, an AI infrastructure company, is being advised on the loan by the bank started by Palmer Luckey, an early supporter of Donald Trump
Bloomberg : Sources: Microsoft plans to expand its data center capacity from 12 GW today to 38+ GW by 2032, with about a third of the 38 GW centered on AI-specific chips — Shortages forced the company to turn away some AI and cloud business. Now it's planning for 38 gigawatts of data center capacity to meet demand.
Anzar Mehraj / Reuters : Adobe reports Q3 revenue up 13% YoY to $6.76B, vs. $6.7B est., AI-first annual recurring revenue up 150% YoY, and forecasts Q4 revenue slightly below estimates — Adobe (ADBE.O) beat Wall Street estimates for third-quarter revenue on Thursday, as demand for its AI-integrated products and tools continued to grow.
Colin Lecher / CalMatters : California Gov. Gavin Newsom signs bills restricting “addictive” social media features for under-16s and limiting minors' interactions with chatbots — - Share on X (Opens in new window) X - Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook - Share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp -
Jordan Novet / CNBC : Oracle reports Q1 revenue up 30% YoY to $19.35B, vs. $19.14B est., cloud infrastructure revenue up 121% to $7.4B, vs. $7.09B est.; ORCL jumps 6%+ after hours — Oracle shares moved 4% higher in extended trading on Thursday after the software vendor issued stronger-than-expected quarterly results.
Reuters : Sources: Altera is preparing to confidentially file for an IPO in the coming weeks; the offering could raise over $2B, with a listing as early as this year — Silver Lake and Intel (INTC.O)-backed chipmaker Altera is preparing for an initial public offering that could raise over $2 billion as early as 2026 …
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch : ID verification service IDScan confirms that a data breach involved the theft of driver's licenses from its systems after hackers offered 153M licenses for sale — ID verification service IDScan has confirmed that a data breach involved the theft of driver's licenses from its systems …
Tibo / @thsottiaux : OpenAI says it will pause new $200/month ChatGPT Pro subscriptions amid “unprecedented” Astra demand; existing accounts, other plans, and API are unaffected — To make sure our current users have an incredible experience and continued access to Astra, we are going to pause subscriptions to our $200 Pro plan. These put the most strain on our systems and we want…
Emma Roth / The Verge : Universal Music Group partners with ElevenLabs to launch a new AI-powered platform that will let users create song remixes, mashups, and more from its catalog — UMG's AI music platform will let users create remixes, mashups, and new takes on tracks.
CNBC : OpenAI unveils ChatGPT for Financial Services, a version of ChatGPT Work made with “design partners” Morgan Stanley and Evercore to research like an analyst — OpenAI is taking aim at some of Wall Street's most labor-intensive tasks with a new version of ChatGPT designed to research companies …
Wall Street Journal : Anthropic details distillation efforts by Chinese companies, like Moonshot and DeepSeek, sending user queries to Claude via “transfer stations” outside China — Anthropic says DeepSeek and Moonshot used thousands of fake accounts and millions of real user queries in ‘distillation’ effort to clone its AI capabilities
Dustin Volz / New York Times : Anthropic says it disrupted several potential plots this year by scientists using its models for research that could have helped develop biological weapons — In a new report, the A.I. start-up added that it could not determine if the research was legitimate or nefarious, leading the company to shut down the work.
Anthropic : Anthropic publishes a threat intelligence report on how it disrupted efforts to misuse Claude for cyberattacks, influence operations, surveillance, and more — Cyber operations Surveillance operations Influence operations Conventional weapons Biological misuse Scams and fraud Illicit distillation
Bloomberg : Sources: PIF is considering combining EA with Savvy Games to better coordinate its gaming assets, but not before Savvy closes its $6B Moonton acquisition — Saudi Arabia's wealth fund is considering combining Electronic Arts Inc. with Savvy Games, people familiar with the matter said …
Kenneth Chang / New York Times : Interview with mathematician Tristan Buckmaster on being drawn into the OpenAI-Anthropic fight; OpenAI says it made progress on another Millennium Prize problem — Tristan Buckmaster was on the path toward an important proof when one of the A.I. giants used its staggering resources to get there first.
IBM and NASA have got together again and released an open source AI model of the Moon that could be used to make new discoveries about Earth’s natural satellite. The NASA‑IBM Lunar Foundation Model has been trained on an extensive lunar observation dataset curated by researchers at the two organizations, and is available now on Hugging Face. It is claimed as the first AI model to integrate observa…
DeepSeek released V4.1-Flash on Thursday. It is a smaller model that the company says beats its own flagship on coding and agent tasks, at a lower price. The Hangzhou lab announced it in a thread on X and published the weights on Hugging Face under the MIT licence. That lets anyone download, modify and run […] This story continues at The Next Web
Grace Kay / The Information : Sources: SpaceX shifts its data center strategy to redesign existing facilities and prioritize power and cooling redundancy, potentially slowing new build-outs — Elon Musk is famous for his “move fast” management philosophy, which he demonstrated most starkly when he built new data centers …
Tim Fernholz / TechCrunch : Maven Robotics, whose wheeled robots travel up to 10 mph and lift up to 30kg using two arms, emerges from stealth after raising $100M — In 2024, Maven Robotics was brand new, and they had nothing—"a cartoon of a robot and a team of people," CEO and co-founder Hamza Derbas told TechCrunch.
Mark Chediak / Bloomberg : TAR, which builds off-grid power systems for data centers, raised a $120M Series A led by Spark Capital at a ~$1B valuation — A startup that builds off-grid power systems for data centers said it raised $120 million in a Series A funding round led by Spark Capital, an investor in artificial-intelligence developer Anthropic PBC.
Robbie Whelan / Wall Street Journal : Positron, which is designing an AI processor called Asimov with a “memory-first architecture” and up to 2.3TB of memory, raised $875M at a $5B valuation — NEA, Atreides and Jim Clark are among investors putting $875 million into firm making chips designed for fast running of AI models
NASA and IBM's latest collaboration is an AI model of the moon made for the Artemis era. NASA and IBM's latest collaboration is an AI model of the moon made for the Artemis era.
Evelyn Cheng / CNBC : Ant International, Visa, and Mastercard plan a new standard for payments made via AI agents, citing McKinsey's projection of $3T to $5T in commerce by 2030 — Fintech company Ant International announced Thursday it has signed on Visa and Mastercard to collaborate on a new standard for payments …
Katherine Doherty / Bloomberg : Sources: Nasdaq is investing $100M in Kraken parent Payward, valuing the cryptocurrency exchange at $21B; Kraken will distribute Nasdaq's tokenized stocks — Nasdaq Inc. is investing $100 million in Payward, the parent of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, as the firm continues to build …