The DOJ is investigating Andreessen Horowitz over competing board seats
The DOJ is investigating Andreessen Horowitz over competing board seats

The US Justice Department is investigating Andreessen Horowitz. At issue is whether partners at the venture capital firm improperly sit on the boards of competing artificial intelligence companies. Bloomberg reported the investigation on Monday, citing…

Higgsfield raised $400mn at $5.4bn, four times its January valuation
Higgsfield raised $400mn at $5.4bn, four times its January valuation

Higgsfield has raised $400mn at a $5.4bn valuation. DST Global led the round. Goldman Sachs, Intel Capital, and Liberty Global Tech Ventures all took part, alongside Tribe Capital, Smash Capital, Fifth Wall, Valor Capital, Mirae Asset Capital, and NTT …

OpenAI disbanded the team that assessed catastrophic model risks
OpenAI disbanded the team that assessed catastrophic model risks

OpenAI shut down its preparedness team at the end of July, the Financial Times reports. The team existed to work out whether OpenAI’s models posed catastrophic risks. It also designed the ways to contain them. The work has not disappeared. Responsibili…

OpenAI is funding 13 Axios local newsletters in a three-year deal
OpenAI is funding 13 Axios local newsletters in a three-year deal

OpenAI is paying the startup costs of 13 new Axios Local newsletters, covering both staff and technology. Axios employees also get free credits for OpenAI’s enterprise tools. In return, Axios lets OpenAI train its models on its free published coverage….

Instagram blocked the search terms. Its algorithm serves the videos anyway
Instagram blocked the search terms. Its algorithm serves the videos anyway

The genre is simple enough to describe. A man wearing camera glasses walks up to a woman in the street. He delivers a line and films her reaction without asking. The clip goes to Instagram, tagged as shot on Meta glasses. The woman is now content. Some…

Nvidia is not backing OpenAI’s rent. It is backing the buildings
Nvidia is not backing OpenAI’s rent. It is backing the buildings

A residual value guarantee is a promise about an object, not about a tenant. Someone builds a thing. Someone else rents it. A third party promises the thing itself will still be worth a set amount. If the renter walks, the owner relets or sells. The gu…

A Trump-backed crypto firm is helping sell the very Chinese AI his government is trying to block
A Trump-backed crypto firm is helping sell the very Chinese AI his government is trying to block

A crypto venture backed by Donald Trump and his family is helping to bankroll a platform that resells artificial intelligence from Chinese companies the US government has blacklisted, an arrangement that sits awkwardly beside the administration’s own c…

The US is about to make its allies pick a side in the AI cold war
The US is about to make its allies pick a side in the AI cold war

Washington is preparing to hand its partners an ultimatum, and it is not a subtle one. According to a draft State Department letter reported by Reuters, the US is about to tell friendly nations they must choose between the American and Chinese artifici…

The US is about to tell 35 countries to choose between it and China on AI
The US is about to tell 35 countries to choose between it and China on AI

Michael Martina reported the draft for Reuters on 14 August, citing a US official and an internal document. The letter goes to the 35 signatories of an American “AI Opportunity Statement” from June. Its message is that countries must choose. The wordin…

Anthropic ran 133 million contractor chats with its bioweapon filters off
Anthropic ran 133 million contractor chats with its bioweapon filters off

Anthropic published the Risk Report on 14 August, covering the period to 15 July. Axios got the company on the record and led on the misalignment rating, as did most of the coverage. Anthropic raised its estimate of catastrophic harm from misalignment …