Tesla settles a fatal Full Self-Driving crash lawsuit
Tesla settles a fatal Full Self-Driving crash lawsuit

A settlement is the sound a lawsuit makes when it stops. For Tesla, one just went quiet. The far louder problem, a federal safety investigation, is still talking. Tesla has settled a lawsuit tied to a fatal 2023 crash involving its Full Self-Driving (S…

SpaceX wants its own gas pipeline to fuel Starship
SpaceX wants its own gas pipeline to fuel Starship

Most rocket companies buy their fuel. SpaceX wants to pipe it in. Filings in Texas show the company plans to build its own natural gas pipeline, an unusual move for a space firm, and a telling one. SpaceX calls the line Starpipe. It would run eight mil…

AWS raises GPU prices 20% as the memory crunch bites
AWS raises GPU prices 20% as the memory crunch bites

Renting an AI chip is starting to feel like booking a hotel in a sold-out city. You pay to hold the room, and the rate keeps climbing. On AWS, it just climbed again. Amazon Web Services has raised prices for EC2 Capacity Blocks for ML by roughly 20%, s…

Ex-Anthropic researchers raise $200M for self-improving AI
Ex-Anthropic researchers raise $200M for self-improving AI

Mirendil, founded by two researchers who left Anthropic after barely a year, has raised $200m at a $1bn valuation. The pitch: sell the self-improving AI that the big labs build for themselves and guard from everyone else. The biggest AI labs share one …

OpenAI hires Apple’s Vision Pro chief Paul Meade
OpenAI hires Apple’s Vision Pro chief Paul Meade

Paul Meade, Apple’s Vision Pro chief, is leaving to build OpenAI’s devices. It is the most senior Apple defection yet, and it points the AI hardware talent war straight at Cupertino. Apple does not lose vice presidents to rivals. That is the unwritten …

Nearly 400 local newspapers sue OpenAI and Microsoft over copyright
Nearly 400 local newspapers sue OpenAI and Microsoft over copyright

A coalition that owns nearly 400 local US newspapers has sued OpenAI and Microsoft. The publishers call AI training on their reporting a death knell for local journalism. It is the largest copyright case the local press has brought yet. Local newspaper…

California will tax downloaded software for the first time as part of a $351.7 billion budget deal
California will tax downloaded software for the first time as part of a $351.7 billion budget deal

California Governor Gavin Newsom and top Democratic legislators agreed on a $351.7 billion state budget that will extend sales tax to prewritten software downloaded from the web. The tax is expected to raise $900 million for the state and another $1.1 …

onsemi to buy Synaptics in $7bn bet on ‘physical AI’
onsemi to buy Synaptics in $7bn bet on ‘physical AI’

onsemi is buying Synaptics in an all-stock deal worth about $7bn. The onsemi Synaptics deal bets that AI’s next wave lives not in the cloud, but in cars, factories and robots. The chip industry has spent three years building for AI that runs in giant d…

The hidden cost of complacency and Jay Roland’s mission against corporate America’s technical debt crisis
The hidden cost of complacency and Jay Roland’s mission against corporate America’s technical debt crisis

Corporate America is hemorrhaging money through inefficient IT business processes, and Jay Roland, founder of Varex Solutions, believes that the industry is complacent about it. Technical debt, which is the accumulated cost of deferred IT fixes, miscon…

A Michigan township killed a $2.4 billion Chinese battery plant, and now the company might bankrupt it
A Michigan township killed a $2.4 billion Chinese battery plant, and now the company might bankrupt it

Less than three years ago, residents of Green Charter Township, a rural community of roughly 3,000 people in central Michigan, packed a hall to celebrate what they saw as a victory for local democracy. They had recalled every member of their town board…