The US government is defending xAI’s polluting turbines as vital to the war effort
The US government is defending xAI’s polluting turbines as vital to the war effort

The US Justice Department has taken Elon Musk’s side in a pollution lawsuit, arguing that the gas turbines powering his AI data centre are too important to national security to switch off. In a filing on Monday, the department, joined by the state of M…

Threads hits 500 million users, and adds a feed control even X doesn’t have
Threads hits 500 million users, and adds a feed control even X doesn’t have

Meta’s Threads has crossed 500 million monthly users, the company said on Tuesday, almost exactly three years after it launched to chase Elon Musk’s X. That is 100 million more than last August, and it puts Mark Zuckerberg halfway to the 1 billion-user…

Qualcomm’s CEO says AI agents will be the new app, and 40 new devices are coming
Qualcomm’s CEO says AI agents will be the new app, and 40 new devices are coming

Qualcomm’s chief executive thinks the app as you know it is on the way out, and that the phone in your pocket is about to lose its place at the centre of your digital life. ‘Agents are going to be the new app,’ Cristiano Amon told CNBC’s The Tech Downl…

Anthropic heads to Washington for crisis talks as Fable 5 ban spirals into the ugliest AI policy fight in US history
Anthropic heads to Washington for crisis talks as Fable 5 ban spirals into the ugliest AI policy fight in US history

Anthropic’s senior technical staff will sit down with Commerce Department officials in Washington on Monday in a bid to resolve the escalating crisis over its suspended Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models. The meeting, confirmed by Reuters and Bloomberg, comes…

US order to block foreign access to Anthropic’s top models marks a reversal
US order to block foreign access to Anthropic’s top models marks a reversal

The US government has ordered Anthropic to bar foreign nationals from its two most capable AI models, and rather than try to enforce a nationality rule selectively across a shared cloud service, the company switched them off for everyone. Anthropic dis…

Meta is giving free AI glasses to every blind veteran in America
Meta is giving free AI glasses to every blind veteran in America

Meta is giving free Meta AI glasses to every blind veteran in America. Mark Zuckerberg announced the programme on Friday, offering a pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses, at no cost, to all legally blind US veterans. “Meta AI on these glasses can describe what…

Current’s $80M Series E values the neobank below its 2021 peak
Current’s $80M Series E values the neobank below its 2021 peak

The Current Series E is in. The New York neobank raised $80m, led by Springcoast Partners, at a $1.5bn valuation. That headline hides the real story. In 2021, Andreessen Horowitz valued Current at $2.2bn. The new round sits about a third below that pea…

Coram raises $35M to turn security cameras into autonomous AI investigators
Coram raises $35M to turn security cameras into autonomous AI investigators

Coram AI has raised $35m to turn the security cameras already bolted to walls into something closer to an autonomous detective. The Series B is co-led by the new investor Ansa Capital and Battery Ventures, with UP Partners, 8VC and Mosaic Ventures join…

AI bubble fears are spreading, even as SpaceX readies the biggest IPO ever
AI bubble fears are spreading, even as SpaceX readies the biggest IPO ever

On the day SpaceX prices the largest stock-market debut in history, the market underneath it has a case of nerves. The cause is not rockets. It is AI. Several warning lights are flashing at once. Together they amount to the first serious test of a trad…

What SpaceX’s record IPO really means for the OpenAI and Anthropic listings behind it
What SpaceX’s record IPO really means for the OpenAI and Anthropic listings behind it

The SpaceX IPO is set to price the biggest stock-market debut in history this week, raising about $75bn at a valuation near $1.75tn, with shares trading on Nasdaq from Friday. But the most consequential thing about Elon Musk’s rocket company going publ…