Incumbents Bid Last
Before SpaceX announced it had secured the right to acquire Cursor for $60 billion, Microsoft — the company that owns GitHub, Copilot, and VS Code — considered buying it and didn't make an offer. The incumbent bid zero. The non-incumbent bid sixty. The price of being an incumbent in an AI-displaced category just became legible.
Google introduces its eighth generation of TPUs, including the TPU 8t for training and the TPU 8i for inference, generally available later this year
Alphabet Inc.'s Google Cloud division unveiled the latest generation of its tensor processing unit, or TPU, a homegrown chip that's designed …
Sources: Microsoft considered buying Cursor in recent weeks but didn't make an offer; Microsoft has been working to boost GitHub Copilot's popularity
Prior to SpaceX's announcement this week that it's obtained the right to acquire Cursor for $60 billion, Microsoft looked at a potential deal …
Kalshi suspends and fines congressional candidates Mark Moran of Virginia, Matt Klein of Minnesota, and Ezekiel Enriquez of Texas for political insider trading
Prediction market platform Kalshi said Wednesday it had suspended and fined three candidates for Congress from Minnesota …
OpenAI launches GPT-5.5, designed to handle complex tasks with minimal guidance; the model will be used to power the company's upcoming “super app”
OpenAI is introducing an artificial intelligence model that's intended to be better at completing work without much direction …
OpenAI announces workspace agents in ChatGPT, letting teams create Codex-powered shared agents for complex tasks, and says they are “an evolution of GPTs”
Codex-powered agents for teams. — Create an agent(opens in a new window)Contact sales(opens in a new window)
Apple fixes a bug that stored notifications for deleted messages on iPhone and iPad, following a report that police used it to extract deleted Signal messages
Apple released a software update on Wednesday for iPhones and iPads fixing a bug that allowed law enforcement to extract messages …
TSMC SVP Kevin Zhang says the company plans to open an advanced chip packaging plant in Arizona by 2029 and that construction has begun
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (2330.TW) plans to open a chip packaging plant in Arizona by 2029, an executive told Reuters.
A look at Microsoft's recent wave of executive departures, as it struggles to retain talent and changes its annual rewards and performance programs in response
Leadership reshuffling signals the mounting pressure on Microsoft's AI bet. … It feels like not a week has gone by this year without …
Alibaba launches Qwen3.6-27B, an open-weight dense model with 27B parameters, saying it surpasses Qwen3.5-397B-A17B on major coding benchmarks
· 4226 words · QwenTeam丨Translations:.体中文 — HUGGING FACE — MODELSCOPE — DISCORD
TSMC unveils its process technology roadmap through 2029, aiming to launch a new node yearly for client applications and every two years for AI and HPC
Still no High-NA on horizon. … TSMC revealed its general manufacturing technology roadmap through 2029 at its North American Technology Symposium 2026 on Wednesday.
Sony AI says its autonomous ping pong robot is the first robot to attain expert-level performance in a physical sport after beating some top-level human players
An autonomous robot ping-pong player dubbed Ace has achieved a milestone for AI and robotics in Tokyo by competing …
GitHub says it has begun collecting pseudonymous client-side telemetry from command-line interface (CLI) users and enabled it by default
Opt-out instructions included if you're not keen on GitHub watching you in the name of product improvement — Users of GitHub's command-line interface (CLI) who value privacy, beware.
Around 30K attend a Samsung union rally demanding 15% of operating profits for chip division staff amid the AI boom; the demand totals $27B or $400K+ per worker
Tens of thousands of people gathered outside Samsung Electronics Co.'s main chip hub to demand employees get a greater share of profits reaped from the AI boom.
Microsoft says Copilot's agentic features in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are now generally available and enabled by default for 365 Copilot and 365 Premium
Try Microsoft 365 Copilot — Available on desktop and mobile devices — Today, I am excited to share that agentic capabilities in Word …
LinkedIn names COO Daniel Shapero as its new CEO, succeeding Ryan Roslansky, who will retain his position as EVP at Microsoft
Microsoft has tapped Dan Shapero to be the new CEO of its LinkedIn division, succeeding Ryan Roslansky, who has run the subsidiary since 2020 and last year took …
ServiceNow reports Q1 subscription revenue up 22% YoY to $3.67B, vs. $3.65B est., says conflict in the Middle East weighed on growth; NOW drops 12%+ after hours
ServiceNow reported first-quarter results on Wednesday that narrowly beat Wall Street's estimates as the company said the conflict …
Turkey's parliament passes a bill requiring social media and online game companies to restrict access for children under 15, following a school shooting
Turkish lawmakers passed a bill late Wednesday that includes restricting access to social media platforms for children under 15, state media reported.
Sources: the US DOJ arrested a soldier involved in the capture of Nicolás Maduro for allegedly making $400K+ on Polymarket by betting on his removal from office
The bet was allegedly placed by a commando involved in Nicolas Maduro's capture. — Katherine Faulders, Aaron Katersky, Peter Charalambous, and Alexander Mallin
S-1 excerpts: SpaceX says its total addressable market could be as much as $28.5T, with $26.5T from the AI sector, most of it from AI for businesses
Over the last quarter century, Elon Musk revived space travel, turning cosmic exploration into thriving businesses.
Spotify celebrates its 20th anniversary with a first-ever list of its 20 most streamed artists, albums, songs, podcasts, and audiobooks
But who else made the cut? … It was 20 years ago today that Spotify began to play. And to mark the streaming service's big anniversary …
Elon Musk says Tesla plans to use Intel's 14A process technology to make chips at its Terafab project, which would make Tesla the first major customer for 14A
Tesla (TSLA.O) CEO Elon Musk said on Wednesday the EV maker plans to use Intel's (INTC.O) next-generation 14A manufacturing process …
Sean Plankey, President Trump's pick to lead CISA, withdraws from consideration after resistance from Sen. Rick Scott stalled his nomination for over a year
Spokespeople for the White House, DHS and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
OpenAI releases ChatGPT for Clinicians, a tool for medical tasks like documentation and research, free for verified physicians, pharmacists, and more in the US
Built for clinical work, ChatGPT for Clinicians is now available for free to verified individual clinicians in the U.S.
At a town hall, Asha Sharma said Microsoft is returning to using Xbox for its gaming division, instead of Microsoft Gaming, as “Xbox needs to be our identity”
Xbox is Microsoft's gaming identity moving forward. … Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has had a busy week.
Anthropic's valuation has hit $1T on Forge Global, a leading private marketplace exchange, surpassing OpenAI's valuation on the platform of $880B
- Anthropic's valuation now hovers at $1 trillion on Forge Global, a leading private marketplace exchange. — That is a higher price than OpenAI …
WhatsApp partners with PayU to roll out prepaid mobile recharges in India; it remains a marginal payments player in India despite launching payments in 2020
WhatsApp is adding prepaid phone recharges in India in a move to get more users to transact within the app, even as it struggles …
Anthropic says it has fixed three causes of recent Claude Code quality issues: reduced default reasoning, a caching bug, and a system prompt to reduce verbosity
We traced recent reports of Claude Code quality issues to three separate changes. Here's what happened and what we're changing.
IBM reports Q1 revenue up 9% YoY to $15.92B, vs. $15.62B est., software revenue up 11% to $7.05B, and maintains FY 2026 guidance; IBM drops 7%+ after hours
IBM shares slipped 6% in extended trading on Wednesday after the hardware, software and consulting provider reported stronger …
How Cash App founder Bob Lee's 2023 killing fed into a narrative pushed by tech leaders like Elon Musk about SF's decline until an acquaintance was convicted
The 2023 murder of a tech executive seemed to fit neatly into narratives about street crime in liberal cities, until it didn't.
Microsoft plans to invest AU$25B by 2029 to expand Azure AI supercomputing and cloud infrastructure in Australia, its largest commitment to the country
Microsoft Corp. announced its biggest-ever investment in Australia, pledging to spend A$25 billion ($17.9 billion) …
SK Hynix reports Q1 revenue up 198% YoY to ~$35.55B, vs. ~$36.2B est., and operating profit up 405% YoY to ~$25.4B, vs. ~$25.6B est., as memory prices rise
South Korean memory chip giant SK Hynix posted yet another quarter of record profit and revenue on Thursday, as prices for its products continue to surge amid strong AI demand.
Microsoft announces the first voluntary retirement program in its 50-year history, for US staffers whose combined years of service added to their age totals 70+
Microsoft is also changing its rewards program to recognize ‘high performance.’ — Microsoft is changing up its annual rewards …
Vercel says some customer accounts were compromised prior to its early-April breach, potentially through social engineering, malware, or other methods
App and website hosting giant Vercel on Thursdays said hackers had accessed some of its customers' data before the company discovered …
A poll of 4,000 workers in the US and the UK finds that the highest-earning and most experienced workers are adopting AI in their jobs far faster than others
Texas Instruments reports Q1 revenue up 19% YoY to $4.83B, vs. $4.52B est., and forecasts Q2 revenue above estimates; TXN jumps 10%+ after hours
Texas Instruments Inc. shares surged in late trading after the chipmaker gave a surprisingly strong forecast, helped by booming spending on data centers and industrial equipment.
Meta plans to cut 10% of workers, or ~8,000 jobs, on May 20 and won't fill 6,000 open roles, in an effort to offset its AI spending and boost efficiency
Meta Platforms Inc. plans to cut 10% of workers, or roughly 8,000 employees, in an effort to boost efficiency and offset its heavy spending on artificial intelligence.
Google announces the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, a revamped developer tool built on Vertex AI that manages the full lifecycle of AI agent fleets
no SQL or data model expertise [video]LinkedIn:Guillaume Roques:The era of the helpful chatbot is officially over. We have entered the era of the Agentic Enterprise. …Sujay Solomon:Gemini Enterprise ...
Report: China's 360 Digital Security Group has uncovered ~1,000 previously unknown vulnerabilities, including in Microsoft's Office, using an AI-powered agent
A large Chinese cybersecurity firm is using artificial intelligence to identify security vulnerabilities in widely used software applications …Source:Natto Thoughts.
Internal memo: Amazon is replacing white-collar job titles at its Ring and Blink units with the designation “builder”, and “builder leaders” for managers
During Amazon's (AMZN.O) annual review season now under way, hundreds of employees will see their job titles stripped.
Sources: Bain Capital seeks to sell a stake of 40%+ in Bridge Data Centres in a deal that would value the Singapore-based data infrastructure builder at $5B
U.S. investment firm Bain Capital is seeking to sell a stake of at least 40% in Bridge Data Centres (BDC) in a deal that would value …
Sensor Tower: India's mobile app IAP revenue crossed $300M in Q1, up 33% YoY, with non-gaming apps generating $200M+, much of it captured by global platforms
India's mobile app market is generating record revenue, with in-app purchases crossing $300 million in the first quarter …
Memo: White House says it has info indicating “foreign entities, principally based in China” are engaged in “industrial scale distillation” of American AI tech
Trump official Michael Kratsios says Chinese entities stealing from American labs
Intel reports Q1 revenue up 7% YoY to $13.58B, vs. $12.42B est., and forecasts Q2 revenue and adjusted EPS above estimates; INTC jumps 15%+ after hours
Intel has been a Wall Street darling of late even as the business has yet to find much momentum.
France-based Univity, which seeks to build 3,400 VLEO satellites to reduce Europe's reliance on Starlink, raised €27M, bringing its total funding to €68M
Univity, a satellite internet startup backed by the French state, said on Thursday it had closed a 27 million euro ($32 million) …
Tencent releases Hy3-preview, its first AI model developed under former OpenAI researcher Yao Shunyu; the model features 295B parameters, down from HY2's 400B
The model is relatively small with only 295 billion parameters, bucking a recent trend of large models with trillions of parameters
US child safety group NCMEC received 1.5M reports of suspected CSAM with ties to AI in 2025, a significant surge compared to 67,000 in 2024 and 4,700 in 2023
William Michael Haslach was a lunch monitor and traffic guard at a suburban Minnesota elementary school for years …LinkedIn:Kurt Wagner.
Sources: Microsoft told carbon-removal project developers it is shelving contracts under negotiation; Microsoft has been a major backer of carbon capture tech
In the early days of April, a group of mid-level employees at Microsoft Corp. started making calls that would send tremors through the global market for carbon removals.
Cloudsmith, which is building a cloud-native system to manage software artifacts, raised a $72M Series C, following a $23M Series B in 2025
Cloudsmith, a platform that protects software components, raised a $72 million Series C, CEO Glenn Weinstein tells Axios exclusively.
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says Nvidia has yet to sell H200 chips to Chinese companies and that the Chinese government has not approved such purchases
Nvidia's (NVDA.O) powerful H200 AI chips have not yet been sold to Chinese companies, Commerce Department Secretary Howard Lutnick …
Instagram launches Instants, an app for sharing disappearing photos, in Italy and Spain, after rolling out an Instants feature in its main app in some regions
- Instagram launched a new app in Italy this week called “Instants.” — A hodgepodge of apps like Snapchat, Locket, and BeReal, the app is meant to be “low-pressure.”
Meta unveils Live Chats on Threads for real-time conversations during cultural events, launching first within the NBA Threads community during the playoffs
Anthropic and law firm Freshfields sign a deal to develop specialized legal AI tools for document drafting, contract review, due diligence, and more
Tech group will tap ‘magic circle’ law firm's expertise as it builds products that can be sold to rivals
Texas Instruments stock rose 19% on Thursday, its best day since 2000, after upbeat Q2 guidance driven by high demand for analog chips used in AI data centers
Texas Instruments had its best day on Wall Street since 2000 after the chipmaker reported better-than-expected quarterly results …
Joint statement: Apple, Amazon, and others push back on stricter emissions reporting rules proposed by climate body Greenhouse Gas Protocol to cut greenwashing
The tech giants and dozens more companies are resisting changes proposed by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, a global standard-setter.
Sources: xAI held talks in recent weeks with Mistral and Cursor about a potential three-way partnership; Mistral co-founder Devendra Chaplot joined xAI in March
- Elon Musk's xAI recently announced a partnership with AI coding startup Cursor. — The two companies have also explored …
Filing: Netflix plans a $25B share buyback, adding to a Dec. 2024 program that still has $6.8B for purchases; NFLX is down 13% since its Q1 earnings on April 16
X says it is deprecating X Communities, giving members until May 30 to migrate to XChat, and plans to increase group chat limits to 1,000 in the next two weeks
Vast Data, which makes software infrastructure for managing large amounts of data with a focus on AI applications, raised a $1B Series F at a $30B valuation
OpenAI says “GPT-5.5 matches GPT-5.4 per-token latency in real-world serving, while performing at a much higher level of intelligence”
A new class of intelligence for real work — We're releasing GPT-5.5, our smartest and most intuitive to use model yet …
Shenzhen-based Pudu Robotics, which makes commercial service robots, raised ~$150M, bringing its total funding to $300M+, and says its valuation exceeds $1.5B
Pudu Technology Inc. today said it has it raised nearly $150 million in a new funding round. Following this round …
Sources: SpaceX isn't acquiring Cursor immediately because the deal could delay its IPO; Cursor is no longer proceeding with its reported $2B funding round
Google says Meet's Gemini-powered Take Notes for Me feature can now be used for in-person meetings and adds support for Teams and Zoom
Abner Li /9to5Google:
OpenAI releases Privacy Filter, an open-weight model for masking personally identifiable information in text, with 1.5B total and 50M active parameters
there will be a lot more of these, and it's only going to accelerate.@dorialexander:Most interesting part of the OpenAI privacy model release: it's a sparse MoE encoder (Mixture of Berts?). [image]Sah...
Sam Bankman-Fried withdraws his request for a new trial, saying he doubts he would receive a fair hearing; his broader appeal remains pending
Microsoft announces its first voluntary retirement program, for staff whose years of employment and age add up to 70+; source: 7% of US employees are eligible
Microsoft will offer voluntary buyouts to some U.S. employee, a first for the 51-year-old software giant, as the tech industry grapples …
The UK FCA says it has carried out its first joint operation to disrupt illegal peer-to-peer crypto trading, targeting eight premises across London
Music publishers including UMG, Warner Music, and Sony drop a copyright suit against Verizon following a SCOTUS decision limiting ISP liability in Cox's suit
Publishers representing the bulk of the music industry dropped a copyright lawsuit against Verizon Communications Inc. over music piracy …
Petual, which automates internal audit work and generates auditor-ready workpapers, raised $20M across a pre-seed led by First Round and a seed led by a16z
- Other backers include Cowboy Ventures, Lachy Groom, the founders of Lyft and Opendoor, and other angels.
TSMC says it will hold off on using ASML's most advanced high-NA EUV machines, costing upwards of €350M apiece, for chip production through 2029 to save money
Manila-based Salmon, a consumer finance app targeting underbanked Filipinos, raised $60M in equity and $40M in debt; it raised $310M to date, $160M in equity
The Philippines has millions of unbanked adults, and its consumer lending market is starting to catch up.
The UK's GCHQ believes ~100 countries have procured cyber intrusion software, such as Pegasus, suggesting the barrier to get access to the tech is dropping
Orkes, which helps companies scale their AI and agentic systems, raised $60M, including a $40M Series B led by AVP, bringing its total funding to ~$90M
Orkes, which helps companies scale their AI and agentic systems, raised $60 million, CEO Jeu George tells Axios Pro exclusively.
Air permit docs: new gas projects linked to just 11 US data center campuses could emit 129M+ tons of greenhouse gases per year, more than some small countries
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and Chief Content Officer Matt Booty detail their “return of Xbox” strategy, including daily active players as its “new north star”
Microsoft's new Xbox leader starts to talk strategy for the company's gaming business.
An undergraduate used AI assistants to rewrite leaked source code for Claude Code in a different language, highlighting the uncertainty over copyright and AI
Artificial intelligence tools are making it faster than ever to reproduce creative work. Does copyright even matter anymore?LinkedIn:Sigrid JinLinkedIn:Sigrid Jin:I sat down with Meaghan Tobin and Gr...
GPT-5.5 is priced at $5/1M input tokens and $30/1M output tokens, double GPT-5.4's pricing; GPT-5.5 Pro costs $30/1M input tokens and $180/1M output tokens
After months of rumors and reports that OpenAI was developing a new, more powerful AI large language model for use in ChatGPT …
Sources: Tencent and Alibaba are in talks to invest in DeepSeek at a $20B+ valuation, partly benchmarked against Moonshot's pending round at an $18B valuation
Beehiiv rolls out new creator tools, including metered paywalls, letting creators host webinars for up to 10,000 people, AI analytics, and more
It's been clear for a while that Beehiiv wants to be more than just a newsletter platform. The L.A.-based company announced a slew of updates …
Courier Health, which develops an AI-powered biopharma platform for managing the end-to-end patient experience, raised a $50M Series B led by Oak HC/FT
Lyft agrees to buy London black cab app Gett, its third acquisition in the past year, as the company expands its presence beyond the US
Google says 75% of new code created inside the company is now generated by AI and reviewed by human engineers, up from 50% last fall
Hugh Langley /Business Insider:
Sources: DeepSeek is fundraising to keep its researchers, some of whom have left for rivals whose valuations have soared; it is targeting a $20B valuation
Sources: Thoma Bravo prepares to hand over customer experience management company Medallia to creditors, leading to a ~$5.1B wipeout for Medallia's investors
Private equity firm Thoma Bravo is nearing an agreement to hand over software firm Medallia to its lenders, wrapping up months …
Sources: SoftBank seeks a $10B two-year margin loan secured by its OpenAI shares, with an option for a year extension, as SoftBank aims to become an AI linchpin
STMicro reports Q1 revenue of $3.10B, above $3.04B est., $171M operating income, above $165.8 est., and forecasts $3.45B revenue for Q2, above $3.21B est.
Google Cloud and Wiz debut new AI security agents at Next '26, including Threat Hunting and Detection Engineering agents, to combat automated zero-day exploits
Frederic Lardinois /The New Stack:
Omni, which is building a “semantic translation layer” for enterprise data, raised a $120M Series C led by Iconiq at a $1.5B valuation, up from $650M in 2025
Core Automation, co-founded by ex-OpenAI VP Jerry Tworek, launches to build “the world's most automated AI lab” with talent from OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind
Sources: Micron is pushing the US Congress to pass the “MATCH Act”, which would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese rivals use to make chips
Substack adds translation tools, and says ~100K publishers earn on the platform, including ~30K outside the US; European creators earn $90M+/year collectively
Monk, which automates accounts receivable workflows, raised a $25M Series A co-led by Footwork and Acrew Capital, bringing its total funding to $29M
Dune Analytics: Polymarket's global trading volumes have fallen behind Kalshi in recent months; sources: product delays are contributing to Polymarket's decline
SpaceX's S-1 excerpts list “manufacturing our own GPUs” among the “substantial capital expenditures” it is undertaking, with the size of the expenditure TBD
OpenAI says GPT-5.5's improvements are strongest in agentic coding, computer use, and early scientific research, which require reasoning across longer contexts
Madison Mills /Axios: