The Floor
On the same Sunday, Maryland became the first US state to ban algorithmic price discrimination in grocery stores and a Chinese court ruled that companies cannot fire workers to replace them with AI. Neither government was waiting for its national legislature. The federal preemption architecture designed to silence the states made the states the architecture.
Sources: GameStop is preparing to make an offer for eBay after quietly building a stake; GameStop had a market cap of ~$11B as of May 1, while eBay had ~$45B
Retailer's CEO Ryan Cohen has been eyeing a major deal, in part to clinch a huge payday — GameStop is preparing to make an offer for eBay …
Study: OpenAI's o1 correctly diagnosed 67% of emergency room patients using electronic records and a few sentences from nurses, vs. 50-55% for triage doctors
Researchers say results mark a ‘profound change in technology that will reshape medicine’ — From George Clooney in ER …
Ask.com shutters, as its owner IAC “continues to sharpen its focus”; a dot-com era icon, Ask Jeeves launched in 1997, a year before Google
“As IAC continues to sharpen its focus, we have made the decision to discontinue our search business, which includes Ask.com.
Maryland becomes the first US state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores, as other states including CO, CA, MA, IL, and NJ consider similar bills
Critics say Maryland's new law banning rapidly change product costs based on consumer data is full of carveouts
Investigation: Nobitex was founded by two brothers from Iran's elite Kharrazi family; the crypto exchange processed hundreds of millions beyond US sanctions
Two brothers from the elite Kharrazi family, using an alternative surname, started up Nobitex in 2018.
How Amazon's expansion into fashion helped Jeff Bezos enter fashion's inner circle, as he and Lauren Sánchez Bezos become underwriters for this year's Met Gala
The Amazon founder and Lauren Sánchez Bezos have become front-row fixtures through business expansion and charitable giving
Analysis: after Trump's World Liberty raised $550M from investors, tokens worth hundreds of millions in USD were privately sold in “white glove” transactions
The pitch was straightforward: Invest in the cryptocurrency venture of Donald Trump and his family …
Apple has stopped offering a 256GB storage option for the Mac mini globally; Mac mini now starts at 512GB for $799 in the US
Amadeus IT Group, which operates the world's largest travel booking system, plans to acquire French biometrics company Idemia Public Security, for €1.2B in cash
Spanish travel technology firm Amadeus (AMA.MC) on Wednesday announced a plan to acquire French biometrics company Idemia Public Security …
A group sympathetic to Iran claims responsibility for DDoS attacks on Ubuntu and its parent Canonical, hampering communications about the CopyFail vulnerability
A Chinese court ruled that companies cannot terminate staff just to replace them with AI, following a similar ruling by another Chinese court in December 2025
A Chinese court ruled that companies cannot terminate employees just to replace them with artificial intelligence systems …
An evaluation by NIST's CAISI says DeepSeek V4 Pro lags behind leading US AI models by about eight months and is the most capable Chinese AI model to date
In April 2026, the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) evaluated the open-weight AI model DeepSeek V4 Pro ("DeepSeek V4").
A profile of music AI startup Suno, valued at ~$2.5B with 2M+ paying users and $300M annualized revenue as of February, as it battles record labels and artists
The music AI startup is battling record labels and angry artists as it upends how millions of people create songs.
A profile of OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar, who sources say helped keep OpenAI's Microsoft deal on track and has privately suggested waiting until 2027 for an IPO
The chief financial officer is managing Sam Altman—and ambitions for one of the biggest IPOs ever. She has pulled off impossible ones before.
A profile of BlackBerry's QNX division, whose operating system controls safety features in 275M cars and accounts for half of BlackBerry's revenue
John Wall has spent nearly his entire career working for the same company. And when he tells people where he works, nobody has any clue what he's talking about.
A look at Atlassian and Twilio earnings beats, with early signs of Atlassian's AI response success and Twilio becoming a picks-and-shovels layer for AI agents
So this week two of the more important bellwether names in B2B software reported earnings. And neither of them just “beat.”
Sources: OpenAI employees have raised alarms internally over failures to alert law enforcement when users describe plans for real-world violence to ChatGPT
OpenAI's chatbot dispenses advice on weapons and role-plays mass shootings. The carnage is raising scrutiny on when and how companies intervene.
Analysis: Asian suppliers account for ~90% of Nvidia's production costs, up from 65% in 2025, as latest wave of collaborations shifts from chips to physical AI
The list of Asian stocks that benefit from business partnership with Nvidia Corp. is getting longer, as the region further integrates …
Palo Alto Networks agrees to acquire Portkey, which develops AI gateway tech to manage and secure AI agents; sources say the deal values Portkey at $120M-$140M
Cybersecurity giant Palo Alto Networks is acquiring AI infrastructure startup Portkey to bolster its defences for autonomous AI systems.
A slew of top Boston Dynamics execs have left the Hyundai-owned company in recent months, as sources say it faces pressure to speed the delivery of humanoids
In recent months, a slew of top executives at Boston Dynamics have left the company, which Hyundai bought a majority stake in back in 2021.
JLL: Japan's $23B data center market is set to grow ~50% by 2030, with 90% of sites concentrated in densely populated regions, prompting pushback from residents
Japan is getting ready for a huge surge in AI facilities — and complaints from nearby residents
Nintendo's share price has fallen by ~45% since August 2025, as rising memory chip costs drive investor concerns over profit margins for the Switch 2
Higher memory chip costs fuel fears of price rise for Switch 2 and cast shadow over console's success — The latest Super Mario movie released …