• The Big Read: AI promises to cure cancer. Scientists feel existential dread• The new robotics ‘arms race’: Who can do the craziest hype video?• Plus, Recommendations—our weekly pop culture picks: “Dan Taberski’s Manifesto,” “A Tender Age” and “The End of Oak Street” With surprising swiftness, ...

Eric Topol is a prominent cardiologist known for his research into deploying AI and other technologies to improve healthcare. He considers himself a Demis Hassabis superfan, and when I spoke to him, he enthusiastically recounted scoring a blurb from the Google DeepMind chair for “Super Agers,” ...

The Department of Justice said Friday that TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have agreed to pay $400 million to settle a lawsuit regarding their alleged violation of federal children’s privacy laws. The DOJ originally filed its complaint in 2024, alleging that TikTok had violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by allowing children aged under 13 to join the platform and by

OpenAI explored its own investment in or acquisition of Lancium, the power developer behind its Stargate facility in Abilene, Tex., last quarter, The Information reported Friday . Ultimately, Nvidia invested billions of dollars in the firm . The OpenAI interest shows the length to which the AI model makers are going to ensure they have ready access to the computer servers necessary to run AI

Nvidia is racing to lock up data center capacity for its AI hardware before its rivals do. On Friday, the company announced it had acquired a minority stake in Cloverleaf Infrastructure, its third equity investment in rapid succession in firms that secure real estate and electricity access for ...

OpenAI has announced an integration with Apple Messages on the Mac that allows ChatGPT to read, search and send messages. Mac users will be able to ask ChatGPT to analyze users’ messages, such as who are their most frequent contacts. The integration is happening in the midst of a tense situation between Apple and OpenAI. Last month, Apple filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that former

Marc Stad, the founder of Dragoneer Investment Group, is buying a controlling stake in the Minnesota Timberwolves and Minnesota Lynx professional basketball teams, according to The New York Times’ Athletic publication. Stad is buying the interest at a $4.5 billion valuation from Marc Lore, the former Walmart executive who now runs delivery startup Wonder. The owner of Grubhub and Blue Apron

A couple months ago, a humanoid robot was dispatched to the top of Ecuador’s Mount Chimborazo, the surface point farthest from the center of the planet. It was a stunt arranged by Geologic Dome, a nonprofit that uses AI and robotics for nature conservation, which had obtained the robot from the ...

Barclays has been losing tech bankers lately.Last night I reported that Tim Luke, a veteran semiconductor analyst and banker, is leaving the British investment bank to join Morgan Stanley. His position as a vice chairman in technology investment banking will further strengthen Morgan Stanley’s ...

This was not the day to be a Walmart shareholder. Stock of the venerable retailer tumbled 9% after the company reported a dip in comparable sales for its U.S. stores in its fiscal second quarter ending July, even as the e-commerce part of its business grew 23%. The results were fine, really, ...

Nvidia has agreed to pay $6 billion to license AI model-development software from startup Poolside, the startup told investors in a letter first reported by Newcomer . Poolside was an early developer of a coding AI agent and pivoted to developing data centers before releasing its own open source AI model using Nvidia server chips. The startup’s letter said Nvidia would make offers to hire 109

Anthropic and OpenAI had better hope more companies don’t follow the example of AT&T.The telecommunications firm plans to keep its employees’ spending on Anthropic and OpenAI models flat in the coming years by using more open-source models such as Nvidia’s Nemotron, according to Mark Austin, an ...

Shares of Walmart fell 9% after the retail giant reported a sharp slowdown in growth of comparable sales at Walmart U.S., even as Walmart’s online sales continued to grow strongly. Overall, Walmart’s revenue grew 5.9% to $187.9 billion. Walmart said comparable sales at its U.S. business grew just 2.6% in the 13 weeks ended July 31, compared with a 4.1% growth rate in the preceding quarter.

Nvidia plans to begin small-batch shipments of an AI chip specially tailored for Chinese customers by the end of the year, according to two employees, in what would represent a new route to China for the company. Several Chinese customers have already placed orders for the chip, which is a ...

It’s no secret that AI-powered robots aren’t so good yet. They struggle with a broad range of simple tasks, from untangling cables to chopping vegetables. Nonetheless, morale is high among roboticists who are flush with venture cash as they work toward a “ChatGPT moment” when robots become ...

Alibaba Group CEO Eddie Wu said on an earnings call Thursday that the company expects the annualized revenue run rate for its AI-related products to reach $10 billion in the current quarter through September, up from $7.3 billion in the previous quarter. Alibaba’s revenue in the quarter through June increased 9%, thanks mostly to a 45% growth in its “AI cloud and compute services” business

UBS is hiring Nicole Su from JPMorgan to lead its AI investment banking efforts, according to an internal memo reviewed by The Information. Su, most recently an executive director at JPMorgan, will join the bank later this month as its head of emerging AI technology banking in the Americas, according to the memo. She will be based in Menlo Park, Calif., and will report to Laurence Braham,

Prices for Nvidia’s Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin chip systems are set to rise about 17%, The Information reported Saturday . The price jump adds to a growing array of cost surprises for cloud providers and other data center developers, including unexpected power delays , political fights , the revocation of state tax incentives , and other technical challenges facing new facilities.

A joint venture established by Anthropic and Wall Street firms such as Blackstone has made its first acquisition since its July launch as it looks to boost the growth of Claude, Anthropic’s chatbot, among businesses. Anthropic’s venture, Ode, plans to announce Thursday that it is buying an AI ...

No one would ever call payment processing a glamorous business, although if anyone could make it interesting, it’s Stripe’s founders, the Collison brothers (they’re Irish, and one of them has a podcast set in a pub!). Stripe has been out of the limelight for a while, but that’s changed in recent ...