Microsoft lays off 268 Xbox staffers across Halo and other studios, as part of an ongoing gaming “reset”; Activision will take over Halo and two other games
Deals to sell off Ninja Theory fell through over the summer. … Microsoft is laying off around 260 Xbox employees today …
OpenAI launches GPT-6 Sol and Luna, saying Sol makes about half as many mistakes as GPT-5.6 Sol and Luna matches GPT-5.6 Sol's performance at ~1% of the cost
GPT-6 Sol and Luna arrive less than three months after GPT-5.6, with OpenAI claiming major accuracy gains, dramatic cost reductions …
Anthropic launches Claude Opus 5.5, its first model since Dario Amodei's “pace the frontier” essay, and says it has enhanced safeguards to combat risky behavior
Claude Opus 5.5 comes with improvements to certain behaviors, like attempting to escape testing environments.
In his UN General Assembly speech, President Trump says the US is “officially” renaming AI to “super intelligence” because “artificial” makes it sound fake
The president claims the word ‘artificial’ makes intelligence fake.
ShinyHunters claims it used an Oracle PeopleSoft zero-day to hack FBI-related services and steal employee and applicant data, and also defaced the FBI jobs site
A sample of 5,000 alleged agents seen by 404 Media includes names, addresses, phone numbers, and details on FBI employees' spouses.
Qualcomm unveils the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, both on TSMC's 2nm process, with two 5GHz prime cores and six 4GHz performance cores
Extreme by name, extreme by nature — Qualcomm has announced not one, but two new flagship mobile chipsets at its annual Snapdragon Summit …
YouTube rolls out tools for microdramas, an AI storytelling assistant for script analysis, video A/B-testing, and more, as it battles Netflix over top creators
Google-owned platform rolling out better tools for digital producers that could help it keep more of their content exclusively
Microsoft unveils the $1,149+ Surface Pro 12-inch and the $1,199+ Surface Laptop 13-inch with Snapdragon X2 Plus, and a new Surface Mouse with built-in haptics
The company is launching its new “entry premium” Surface Pro and Surface Laptop, both starting at over $1,000.
A sample of FBI data allegedly stolen by ShinyHunters includes granular detail on officials' job assignments on China, Russia, cartels, cyber, and other issues
FBI data allegedly stolen by the hacking group ShinyHunters carries granular detail about scores of bureau officials' job assignments …
Discord is rolling out its updated age-verification policy this week, sorting users into either the Adult or Teen group based on account age, activity, and more
It will offer several privacy-focused options for users who aren't automatically confirmed as adults.
San Francisco sues Trump Media & Technology, claiming its Truth API service violates California's Unfair Competition Law by creating an insider trading market
The city attorney argued that the service, available for up to $100,000 a month, could allow wealthy traders to manipulate the market …
Anthropic says Claude autonomously discovered a new enzyme system in the DNA of bacteriophages, somewhat similar to CRISPR, the first result from its new biolab
It took nearly 1,000 Claude agents 21 hours and 210 million tokens to uncover the ‘novel enzyme system.’
A live blog of Meta Connect 2026, where a new pair of Meta Glasses without cameras onboard and a new VR headset are expected
More smart glasses and possibly a VR headset are expected today — Meta Connect used to be all about VR, but in recent years, the event has come to be the launchpad …
Australian PM Anthony Albanese says an OpenAI agent gained unauthorized access to a public-facing Medicare portal in June, accessing public and non-public files
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has revealed that an artificial intelligence agent developed by OpenAI infiltrated …
Sources: Apple is developing prototypes for a screenless health and fitness tracker similar to Whoop but hasn't decided whether to release the product
Apple Inc. is developing a screenless health and fitness tracker similar to Whoop Inc.'s wrist-worn device, part of an effort to rethink …
Nat Friedman says Meta built Muse “from scratch” but was “heavily inspired” by OpenClaw, as users compare the two, including calling Muse “OpenClaw for normies”
Early adopters of Meta's Muse have been speculating that the reason the AI works …
OpenAI says ChatGPT Voice can now be powered by GPT-6 Astra, Sol, and Luna, use plugins like email and calendar, and be used in ChatGPT Work on web and mobile
We heard you loud and clear. ChatGPT Voice can now: - Use plugins like your email, calendar, and Slack. - Be powered by GPT-6 Astra, Sol, and Luna. - Be used in ChatGPT Work on web and mobile, so you ...
The US criticizes Australia's digital duty-of-care proposal, which has a provision that would require social media platforms to let users opt out of algorithms
The US government criticized Australia's plan to clamp down on social media algorithms and harmful content online …
Binance acquires a $100M stake in Circle, and both companies sign a five-year deal that pays the crypto exchange to promote the USDC stablecoin on its platform
Binance bought $100 million of Circle shares as the companies signed a five-year deal that pays the crypto exchange to promote the USDC stablecoin on its platform.
Q&A with Jensen Huang on AI creating more jobs than it destroys, pushing back against AI doomerism, Chinese open models, the Hugging Face acquisition, and more
This is an edited transcript of “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the episode wherever you get your podcasts.
Sources: Scott Bessent is emerging as a frontrunner for the AI czar position; other names include WH OSTP Director Michael Kratsios and OPM Director Scott Kupor
THE SCOOP — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is emerging as a frontrunner for President Donald Trump's new “AI czar” …
Disney raises Disney+ and Hulu prices, the fourth price hike in as many years; the ad-free tiers will each cost $21.49/month, an increase of $2.50
Subscribing to a bundle is now almost exactly half the price of individual plans for each streamer.
Gallup survey of 37 countries: in 34, positive AI sentiment outweighed the negative; 90%+ of people in China and 66%+ in Nigeria say AI will improve daily life
A Gallup poll found that a majority of people surveyed across 37 countries said they were curious or excited about artificial intelligence, more than scared or worried.
Rabbit launches OS3, a cloud AI agent that connects to local apps and files on Windows, Mac, and Linux and works via web, Telegram, iMessage, or its R1 device
Two years after trying to sidestep mobile apps with dedicated AI hardware, Rabbit is launching OS3, a cross-platform agent that lives on the screens you already use.
OpenAI says it plans to let third-party groups conduct technical safety evaluations of its AI models during the training, evaluation, and deployment phases
OpenAI plans to let third-party groups vet its artificial intelligence models for safety risks in earlier phases of the development cycle …
Microsoft plans to invest more than $10B through 2030 in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE, including a $7.9B UAE investment it announced last year
Microsoft Corp. pledged about $2 billion in additional spending in the Middle East, providing the first significant update on its business …
Firecrawl, which provides web scraping tools for AI agents, raised a $75M Series B led by Smash Capital, with participation from YC, Altos Ventures, and others
Firecrawl Inc., a provider of web scraping tools for artificial intelligence agents, today announced that it has raised $75 million in funding. — Los Angeles-based venture capital firm Smash Venture...
Sam Altman and Dario Amodei tell the UN Security Council that governments and industry should coordinate on AI safety standards and critical decisions
OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman and Anthropic PBC CEO Dario Amodei urged world leaders to work together on artificial intelligence …
Six major banks, including BofA and Capital One, warn that increased autonomy for agentic commerce chatbots could lead to more scams, fraud, and disputes
Agentic commerce could increase the amount of scams, fraud and disputes, the banks warn in a new report.
Colorado-based Enveda, which uses AI to discover new drugs in the natural world, raised a $311M Series E at a $2B valuation, double its valuation a year ago
Enveda, a biotech startup that uses AI to discover new drugs in the natural world, has raised a $311 million Series E at a $2 billion valuation.
Go.AI, which offers on-premises AI hardware and software tools for regulated organizations like banks, raised an $85M Series A led by Updata Partners
Go.AI, which sells AI hardware appliances to banks, raised $85 million in Series A funding, CEO David Moscatelli tells Axios Pro exclusively.
Ofcom opens an investigation into Pornhub owner Aylo to determine whether it has complied with OSA requirements to prevent under-18s from accessing porn
Britain's media regulator Ofcom said on Wednesday that it had opened an investigation into whether adult content platform Pornhub …
New York-based Ande, whose AI agents help businesses arrange corporate events for employees or customers, emerges from stealth with $52M in seed and Series A
Personal AI agents like Instinct and Muse have promised to take away the hassle of booking hard-to-get restaurant reservations, Broadway tickets and sporting events.
The UK CMA proposes rules requiring Google and Android OEMs to offer search choice screens on first use and via yearly prompts, new AI assistant rules, and more
It would also require smartphone makers to give users a choice of AI assistants. — The UK's Competition and Markets Authority …
Apple quietly updates its press release to say new Photographic Styles texture and grain controls are limited to iPhone 18 Pro models and the iPhone Duo
Data security startup Cyera raised $400M from Goldman Sachs in a Series G extension, bringing its total funding since June 2025 to $1.94B
Data-security startup raises more than $1.9 billion in 15 months as Wall Street AI anxiety leads to an investor surge — Wall Street is getting nervous about artificial intelligence.
Carnegie China: China passed the US as the top destination for elite AI talent in 2025, rising from 2022's 27.1% share to 40.6%; the US fell from 46.4% to 34.2%
Chinese AI researchers have increasingly opted to stay and work in their home country, leading China to become the top destination …
Sources: Mirendil, founded by former Anthropic researchers to build self-improving AI, is in talks to raise ~$1B led by Kleiner Perkins at a $5B valuation
Mirendil, an artificial intelligence startup launched by former Anthropic PBC researchers, is in talks to raise a new round of funding …
TikTok US joins child safety initiative Lantern, which says members like Meta and X shared 2M+ signals of potentially violating behavior from 2023 through 2025
Eight months after it was spun out of TikTok, the social media platform's U.S. unit, known as TikTok USDS Joint Venture …
Pilgrim, whose device combines air sampling and genomic sequencing to detect biological threats, raised a $25M seed led by Buckley at a $150M valuation
Pilgrim has raised $25 million and has developed a 50-pound device that detects biological threats — Two Anthropic leaders are investing …
Sources: Flock Safety is weighing a potential sale and has held preliminary talks with outside advisers
THE SCOOP — Flock Safety, which is facing scrutiny over the proliferation and alleged abuse of its cameras, is weighing whether to sell itself, according to people familiar with the matter.
DoorDash agrees to a $131.5M settlement with NYC's DCWP to resolve a year-plus investigation into its compliance with the city's 2023 delivery driver pay law
OpenAI says GPT-6 Sol costs $2/1M input and $10/1M output tokens, and GPT-6 Luna costs $0.10/1M input and $0.50/1M output tokens, both ~50% cheaper than GPT-5.6
Nat Rubio-Licht /The Deep View:
Xbox has become a shell of its former self, weighed down by job cuts and studio closures, as it focuses on franchises like Halo and reaching “a billion people”
The latest changes at Microsoft's gaming division signal a further retreat from the Xbox brand.
Patreon co-founder Sam Yam says he is joining OpenAI to lead Creator Product, alongside Patreon's Head of Product Drew Rowny and Head of Engineering Shannon Ma
1/ I'm joining @OpenAI to lead Creator Product after over 13 years since starting @Patreon. Coming with me are my favorite crew Drew Rowny and Shannon Ma, Patreon's (now former) Head of Product and He...
HypeAuditor: OpenAI doubled its sponsored Instagram posts promoting ChatGPT from 61 in June to 122 in July, rising again to 141 in August, as it seeks new users
AI's reputation is in hot water. Can influencers save it? — OpenAI has been ramping up its creator marketing efforts as AI safety concerns take center stage.
Google releases Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS and Gemini 3.8 Flash-Lite TTS, its “most expressive audio generation models yet”, with support for more than 100 languages
Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS and Gemini 3.8 Flash-Lite TTS are our most expressive audio generation models yet.
Portuguese surveillance drone maker Tekever announces the first close of a $580M Series D led by UC Investments and Baillie Gifford at a $6.4B valuation
Tekever, a Portuguese developer of surveillance drones, is seeking acquisitions after the first close of a funding round that targets raising $580 million.
Global AI glasses shipments, including display-less and AR and AI glasses, rose 263% YoY in H1 2026, driven by Meta and EssilorLuxottica's display-less lineup
AI glasses market accelerates in H1 2026, driven by display-less devices, Meta's dominance and growing AR & AI adoption.
Alibaba says it plans to build its first cloud regions in Turkey, Finland, and the Netherlands over the next 12 months, amid escalating US-China AI tensions
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is accelerating its data center expansion in Europe and the Middle East, propelling …
Apple announces new $350 Beats 360 headphones, with IPX4 rating, swappable ear cups, a replaceable battery, ANC, Find My support, and more
a16z invests $35M in Horowitz Andreessen Academy, an independent, unaccredited two-year alternative to college; Anthropic, Meta, and others will provide compute
OpenAI says it will give its AI cyber defense system Daybreak and GPT-5.6 Sol to the Ukrainian government for free to help it protect civilian infrastructure
The tech giant OpenAI will share its AI cyber defence system Daybreak for free with the Ukraine government to help …
At its Accelerate conference, Amazon says it is opening its seller tools to third-party AI agents, starting with Claude, in beta for US merchants
Amazon announced new AI tools for its independent sellers Wednesday, led by a plugin that lets them run their Amazon businesses from Anthropic's Claude or Amazon's own Quick assistant.
German publisher C.H.BECK takes a majority stake in Noxtua, which develops AI tech to research, analyze, and draft legal documents and raised a $100M+ Series C
The German legal AI company is deepening its ties with European publishers as it expands across the continent and takes on US competitors.
London-based AI life sciences startup Basecamp Research raised a $140M Series C led by S32, with participation from Anthropic, taking its total funding to $225M
Basecamp says it will use the funding to train a new generation of its AI models. — A UK life sciences startup using AI …
Source: 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner, is in talks to raise $3B for its second growth fund and has already raised $2B of that target amount
Investment firm 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner, is in talks to raise $3 billion for its second growth fund …
Sony Music becomes the first music company to join ARIAM, which advocates for responsible AI adoption in the creative industry and includes the NYT and Disney
Sony Music Group has joined the Alliance for Responsible Innovation in the Arts & Media (ARIAM), becoming the first music company …
Sources and Nscale's US SEC filings: ByteDance accounted for nearly 75% of Nscale's sales in 2025 and used Nscale's facility in Norway to access Nvidia AI chips
Chinese tech giant was AI cloud provider's largest customer last year but is not prominently named in pitch to stock market investors
Source: a CoreWeave-tied data center raised $1.1B in junk bonds at 98.5 cents on the dollar to yield 9.25%, ~2.7 percentage points above similarly rated debt
A data center developer sponsored by affiliates of Blue Owl Capital Inc. raised $1.1 billion through a junk-bond offering to finance …
Sources: China's SASAC, which oversees state-owned companies, is surveying the number of Broadcom switches in state-backed data centers amid a domestic AI drive
Survey comes amid drive to boost domestic players and reduce reliance on foreign AI infrastructure
NADI, a new DARPA-like Dutch government agency, launches a €40M challenge to accelerate chip design with AI in collaboration with its German counterpart SPRIND
A new Dutch government agency set up to achieve strategic innovation will work with its German counterpart to pursue breakthroughs …
Kalshi Klear, the company's internal clearing house, files for CFTC approval to add margin trading as it seeks to attract institutional liquidity
Sources: AI training data startup Micro1 raised $100M+ at a $4B valuation, up from $500M in September 2025; two frontier AI labs and xAI co-founders invested
At the beginning of last year, Ali Ansari's company, Micro1, was a recruiting business with $7 million in ARR. It's now generating over $500 million in ARR and two xAI cofounders invested its latest ...
Anthropic and OpenEvidence partner to offer a specialized version of OpenEvidence's AI search tool for physicians in about 100 low- and middle-income countries
Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic and medical knowledge platform OpenEvidence are collaborating to bring AI-powered …
Sources: Xi Jinping is unlikely to bring corporate executives to his DC summit with Trump; industry officials expected them at a dinner with top US tech CEOs
A profile of Noah Shinn, founder of AI assistant Instinct, who soft-launched it as an invite-only site for VCs and is reportedly fundraising at a $10B valuation
Noah Shinn was publishing influential AI research before he graduated from college. Now, at the ripe age of 23, he's taking on Mark Zuckerberg.
Anthropic says Opus 5.5 matches Fable 5.1 “on most tasks” while costing about 40% less to run than Opus 5; Opus 5.5 costs $4/1M input and $20/1M output tokens
Ask about this article... According to Anthropic, Opus 5.5 matches Claude Fable 5.1 “on most tasks” while costing about 40 percent less to run than Opus 5.
Sources: multiple staff at the UK's AISI have been signed off work with stress, as tight model release schedules and AI fears lead to low morale and burnout
Seattle-based satellite startup Hubble, which is working to enable global Bluetooth connectivity, raised $200M at a $1.6B valuation, for $300M in total funding
Satellite startup Hubble Network raised $200 million in a new funding round, taking the company's valuation to $1.6 billion …
Chinese chip foundry CanSemi, focused on automotive, industrial, and IoT chips, files for an IPO on Shenzhen stock exchange's ChiNext, seeking to raise ~$919M
Chinese chip foundry CanSemi Technology Inc. is seeking to raise about 6.16 billion yuan ($919 million) in an initial public offering …
Alibaba's T-Head unveils the Zhenwu V900 AI accelerator, which it says triples its predecessor's performance and can scale to clusters of up to 500K units
Analysis: 30 Chinese tech stocks with the largest overseas revenue exposure returned 36% YTD, outperforming the 8% return from domestically dependent peers
China's push for global AI supremacy is increasingly benefiting companies that supply the rest of the world, with investors favoring …
Cisco Talos releases CAIRN, an open-source framework designed to classify and analyze AI-integrated malware by tracking AI metadata and behavioral fingerprints
Ema, which uses AI agents to automate corporate processes across HR, IT, and finance, raised a $77M Series B led by Creaegis, taking its total funding to $140M
Ema, a startup that uses teams of AI agents to automate corporate processes across HR, IT, and finance, has raised $77 million …
A Facebook co-founder proposes creating an “Office of AI Supervision” to embed teams inside frontier AI labs, with a three-year term to avoid regulatory capture
Both industries change rapidly and reach throughout the economy, requiring officials to weigh the benefits of innovation against risks
In his UN General Assembly speech, Trump rejects a “globalist scheme to control” AI, saying the US is “leading now over China by a lot and everyone else”
Financial Times:
Anthropic reported disrupting a Beijing-aligned operation to monitor religious leaders and diaspora communities, including a DC-based advocacy group for Tibet
Anthropic uncovers a Beijing-aligned operation targeting my organization among other dissidents.
Sources: in a London presentation, SpaceXAI says Grok Bot hit 418,000 users as of September 14, up 24% from the week prior; SpaceXAI launched it in mid-August
Bessemer raised $5.75B, allocating $4B to growth-stage funding, including young companies raising large rounds at high valuations, and $1.75B for early-stage
Bessemer Venture Partners is set to announce $5.75 billion in fresh funding to support a broader shift towards more growth stage investments …
Finnish neocloud startup Verda raised $189M led by Emergence at a $1B+ valuation and aims to raise up to $1.5B in equity and debt in 2026 and up to $10B in 2027
Adobe launches its free Premiere video editing app on Android, nearly a year after its iOS launch, to replace Premiere Rush, set to lose support on September 30
Microsoft says it will give DARPA on-site access to its latest quantum computing hardware, including the Majorana 2 chip, at its new Maryland research center
Sources: the Cyberspace Administration of China is investigating DeepSeek and Moonshot over alleged data leaks to Anthropic via Claude and has questioned staff
Snorkel AI, which offers an “agentic data development platform” with humans and AI agents to create and vet data, raised $350M at a $3.5B valuation
At its Made on YouTube event, YouTube unveils Custom Feeds, an LLM-powered feature that lets users generate and save tailored homepage video feeds, for US users
In YouTube's latest update, viewers can tweak what the algorithm shows on their front page and curate it to a specific vibe.
Anthropic raises its five-hour usage limits by 20% on Pro, Max, and Team plans, and gives subscription users a rate limit reset
Anthropic's newest Claude model aims to make frontier AI cheaper, faster, and safer, while giving subscribers more breathing room before those frustrating usage limits kick in.
Internal data: Meta's Muse surpassed 500,000 total users, including 250,000 DAUs, with 2M+ prompts submitted in the week after its September 8 US launch
Jyoti Mann /The Information:
Chamelio, which is building AI tools designed to execute routine legal workflows and escalate only the cases that require human judgment, raised a $26M Series A
Sources: DeepSeek and Moonshot are among the companies briefing the UN Security Council on AI risks and international security during the UN General Assembly
Laurie Chen /Reuters:
Coachella promoter Goldenvoice renews its livestreaming partnership with YouTube through 2030, choosing it over competing bids from Netflix and Amazon
Lucas Shaw /Bloomberg:
Sources: after a deadly school strike in Iran, US Central Command changed its targeting process, integrated open-source data, and upgraded Palantir's Maven
Survey: US public perception of data centers has sharply deteriorated since January, with 54% viewing them as bad for the environment, as local opposition rises
Brian Kennedy /Pew Research Center:
A livestream of the Meta Connect 2026 opening keynote
Meta on YouTube: