DeepSeek and Huawei release open-source Ascend AI programming tools to reduce reliance on Nvidia ecosystem

DeepSeek and Huawei have released open-source programming tools for Ascend 950 AI chips, including compute and communication libraries, aimed at making Huawei hardware easier to program and optimize.

Nvidia-backed GMI Cloud raises $668m as contracted revenue tops $600m
Nvidia-backed GMI Cloud raises $668m as contracted revenue tops $600m

GMI Cloud, a Mountain View company that rents out Nvidia GPU servers, has raised $668m in new financing, the company said on Wednesday. That is $223m of Series B equity and a $445m credit facility. The Taiwanese bank CTBC led the credit facility. ARCHI…

OpenAI’s 2017 plan to auction AGI to China and Russia, per The Atlantic
OpenAI’s 2017 plan to auction AGI to China and Russia, per The Atlantic

In 2017, OpenAI co-founders Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever proposed auctioning the rights to the company’s future AGI to governments, including the US, China and Russia. Kevin Roose reports the plan in an excerpt from his book, published by The Atlan…

McDonald’s uses AI to set an optimal price at each store, Reuters reports
McDonald’s uses AI to set an optimal price at each store, Reuters reports

McDonald’s is using an AI pricing engine to recommend what each of its nearly 14,000 restaurants should charge for every menu item, Reuters reported on Tuesday. The engine covers the US and some markets abroad. One factor the engine weighs is an estima…

Bank of England’s Bailey warns the AI boom could bring market shocks
Bank of England’s Bailey warns the AI boom could bring market shocks

AI could set off shocks in financial markets, and the UK has to be ready for them, Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey told the BBC on Thursday. He said the Bank is watching the money flowing into AI “very carefully”. Mitchell Labiak and Faisal Isla…

OpenAI’s Greg Brockman drops his second $25m gift to an AI super PAC
OpenAI’s Greg Brockman drops his second $25m gift to an AI super PAC

OpenAI president Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna, have pulled out of a second $25m donation to Leading the Future, a super PAC that backs pro-AI candidates for Congress. Theodore Schleifer and Mike Isaac reported the move for The New York Times on Wed…

Texas politics may delay Chevron data centre decision, Semafor reports
Texas politics may delay Chevron data centre decision, Semafor reports

A final investment decision on Project Kilby, a huge gas-powered data centre in West Texas, could slip from the end of this year to 2027 because of state politics. Tim McDonnell reported the news for Semafor on Thursday. The project, near Pecos in the …

Good Tape raises fresh funding and launches Explore to uncover stories buried in old interviews

Nordic Makers has invested in Good Tape, the Copenhagen-based AI transcription company used by 3 million people in more than 150 countries. Alexander Aghassipour, co-founder and former Chief Product O…

Meta tells the IRS its AI data centres are experiments, NYT reports
Meta tells the IRS its AI data centres are experiments, NYT reports

Meta tells the IRS that its AI data centres are an experiment that could fail, The New York Times reported on Wednesday. That lets Meta claim a research tax credit on the AI chips it buys. The credit cut almost $4bn off its tax bill last year. Kashmir …

DeepSeek open-sources Huawei chip tools as a simpler alternative to CUDA
DeepSeek open-sources Huawei chip tools as a simpler alternative to CUDA

DeepSeek has open-sourced a set of programming tools for Huawei’s Ascend AI chips. They include a version of TileLang, a programming language DeepSeek offers as a simpler alternative to Nvidia’s CUDA. The Chinese AI lab announced the release on Wednesd…