Does Google even want to win at AI?
Does Google even want to win at AI?

Today on Decoder, I’m talking with Hayden Field, The Verge’s senior AI reporter, about a question that’s been rocketing around the tech industry for the past week: Is Google losing the AI race? That’s because last week Google announced a bombshell reorganization of its AI division, Google DeepMind. Jeff Dean, the company’s chief scientist, is […]

Josh Kushner raised $2bn to buy the companies AI is coming for
Josh Kushner raised $2bn to buy the companies AI is coming for

Almost every AI business sells a product. Someone builds a model or a tool, licenses it, and hopes the customer works out what to do with it. Thrive Holdings inverts that. It buys accounting firms and IT services companies outright, puts its own engine…

CodeRabbit raised $143m to read the code AI wrote
CodeRabbit raised $143m to read the code AI wrote

Code review is the step where somebody reads a change before it ships. A developer proposes an edit, opens what the trade calls a pull request, and a colleague checks it for bugs and security holes. It is slow and unglamorous work. Until recently it wa…

Europe’s drought is shutting down nuclear reactors
Europe’s drought is shutting down nuclear reactors

Nuclear reactors need water. They sit beside rivers and coastlines for a reason. The water carries heat away from the core. When it runs low or runs warm, the reactor has to power down. That is happening across Europe right now. On Thursday, Romania’s …

Why This Prediction Market Banned Teens

Jacob Fortinsky, the CEO and cofounder of the new prediction market Novig, says his outfit isn’t like those other markets. You know the ones.

Accel raised $3.5bn. Europe now gets the same fund as the US
Accel raised $3.5bn. Europe now gets the same fund as the US

Accel is a venture capital firm. It gives money to startups early, usually before anyone else has, and takes a stake in return. It has done this since 1983, and it wrote the first institutional cheque into Atlassian, CrowdStrike, Flipkart and Slack. On…

Nebius revenue grew 454%. Most of the cash came from customers paying in advance
Nebius revenue grew 454%. Most of the cash came from customers paying in advance

Nebius rents out computing power. It buys Nvidia chips, puts them in data centres, and charges companies to train and run AI models on them. The trade calls this a neocloud. It is based in Amsterdam, listed on Nasdaq, and was spun out of the Russian in…

A Pentagon memo tells staff to spend $244m with Palantir. Its subject line is ‘Funding Palantir’
A Pentagon memo tells staff to spend $244m with Palantir. Its subject line is ‘Funding Palantir’

Government software is usually bought by asking several companies to bid. A department writes down what it needs, suppliers compete, and the file records why the winner won. A memo drafted inside the US Defense Department on 4 August did something diff…

AI compute becomes a tradable commodity on 5 October. The price goes public
AI compute becomes a tradable commodity on 5 October. The price goes public

Renting an Nvidia H100 for an hour costs whatever your supplier says it costs. There is no published price. Two companies buying identical capacity can pay very different rates, and neither of them will know. That changes on 5 October. CME Group, the e…

Sachin Bansal’s Navi hires banks for a $315m IPO, four years after his first attempt stalled
Sachin Bansal’s Navi hires banks for a $315m IPO, four years after his first attempt stalled

Navi, the Indian fintech founded by Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal, has hired banks for an initial public offering of about $315m, according to a Bloomberg report. It is the clearest sign yet that Bansal’s second act is finally heading for the publi…