Google Tests Publisher Pay for No-Click AI Answers
AI search publisher licensing is taking shape as news searches ending without a click rose from 56% in May 2024 to 69% in May 2025. Google's reported payment pilot and Microsoft's marketplace test whether sourced answers can finance the reporting behind them.
Anthropic’s 50-Cent IPO Meets the AI Payoff Gap
Anthropic filed for an IPO after its compute and infrastructure cost fell below 50 cents per revenue dollar. Meta planned a $95 billion AI raise, while Apollo found no financial payoff for US companies using AI outside tech.
Rocket Lab's $8 Billion Bet on Iridium's Network
Rocket Lab plans an $8 billion purchase of Iridium as SpaceX agrees to pay up to $17 billion for EchoStar licenses. The FCC has approved the transfer of about 65 MHz to SpaceX, while satellite-to-phone retail service remains limited.
SanDisk’s $1.165 Billion Bet on NAND Access
Enterprise SSDs reached 48% of global NAND shipments in Q2 2026, up from 26% a year earlier. SanDisk extended its Kioxia manufacturing agreement through 2034.
Apple debuts a touchscreen MacBook Pro with a PROLED XDR tandem OLED display, light-up logo, and M5 Pro or M5 Max; the 14" starts at $2,899, the 16" at $3,399
The world's best pro laptop now features an industry-leading tandem OLED display, an intuitive Touch experience …
Google unveils Gemini 4 Carbon, its “strongest model with state-of-the-art cybersecurity” capabilities, ranked #1 on Artificial Analysis' new Intelligence Index
Gemini 4 Carbon is our strongest model with state-of-the-art cybersecurity and long horizon capabilities.
Microsoft reports Q1 revenue up 19% YoY to $92.28B, above $90.69B est., Azure revenue up 48% to $33.17B, above $32.32B est., and net income up 32% to $36.63B
REDMOND, Wash. — October 28, 2026 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the following results for the quarter ended September 30, 2026 …
Alphabet reports Q3 revenue up 25% YoY to $127.58B, below $128.22B est., and Google Cloud revenue up 103% to $30.7B, above $28.7B est.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - October 28, 2026 - Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG, GOOGL) today announced financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2026.
Hackers leak the personal data of 41,000+ DHS employees and contractors, including CBP and ICE agents; DDoSecrets says the data came from DHS' Okta login system
The leaked records include the locations of ICE and CBP facilities, workers' cell phone numbers, and the members of groups tied …
Alphabet's stock falls 12%+, wiping a record $500B from its market cap, after reporting negative cash flow amid its AI spending; the Nasdaq falls 1.4%+
Google owner admits ‘AI mode’ has hurt traditional search as sales and profits undershoot expectations
GitHub says Copilot Fusion, which handles model selection and orchestration, is now generally available, releases the GitHub Copilot app, and more
GitHub has debuted GitHub Copilot Fusion, a new system that handles model selection and orchestration for coding tasks so developers don't have to.
Mistral releases the weights for Mistral Large 4, or Le Chonk, and says it rivals top open models such as GLM-5.3 on the Artificial Analysis Coding Agent Index
Mistral has released the weights for Large 4, along with some impressive Artificial Analysis scores. — ZDNET's key takeaways
Amazon unveils the $500 Echo Show 16, the $200 Echo Time alarm, and the $200+ Alexa Photo Frame, raises smart speaker prices, and previews Alexa Home Map
With its latest devices, including a smart bedside alarm clock, Amazon looks to cement Alexa's presence in every room of the home
Google and Xreal launch the Xreal Aura wired XR glasses, with Android XR and a puck with Snapdragon Reality Elite, for $1,099+ through December, then $1,279+
At the Android Developer Summit on Wednesday, Google's smart glasses partner Xreal launched its new Xreal Aura wired smart glasses …
Reddit rolls out a dual-feed homepage, with For You and Following feeds, joining TikTok, Instagram, and others in offering a For You feed
Reddit is the latest social platform to adopt the “For You” feed popularized by TikTok. The company announced on Wednesday that users will now see two options …
Utah files 14 criminal charges against Kalshi and its co-founders Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara for allegedly breaking Utah's gambling laws
The state of Utah has filed 14 criminal charges, including 13 felony counts, against the prediction market site Kalshi and its co-founders …
Artificial Analysis unveils the Intelligence Index v5 with new coding and science benchmarks; 60% of the Index is based on private test sets or held-out answers
The Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index is our composite measure of model capabilities across tasks reflecting real-world usage today. v5 …
Sources: the US DOJ has inquired about the impact of Nvidia's Hugging Face deal on AI competition, as antitrust enforcers continue to probe Nvidia's conduct
The US Department of Justice has made inquiries about how Nvidia's (NVDA.O) $12.93 billion deal to buy open-source platform Hugging Face …
Sources: Marvell is in advanced talks to buy data center optics maker Lumentum, which has an ~$83B market cap; the deal could be announced as soon as next week
Marvell Technology Inc. is in advanced talks to buy data center optics maker Lumentum Holdings Inc., according to people familiar with the matter …
NY Gov. Kathy Hochul signs bills banning AI chatbots from using “unsafe features” for minors and requiring security features in internet-connected baby monitors
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed two bills further curbing artificial intelligence risks for children …
ServiceNow reports Q3 subscription revenue up 21% YoY to $3.99B and forecasts Q4 current remaining performance obligations below est.; NOW drops 22%+
ServiceNow Inc. shares plunged after the company gave an outlook for quarterly subscription sales that met analysts' estimates …
Samsung reports Q3 revenue up 127% YoY to a record ~$146.3B and a record operating profit up 783% to ~$80.5B, both meeting est.; chip unit revenue hit ~$110B
- Samsung Electronics reported third-quarter earnings on Thursday, with operating profit broadly in line with analysts' estimates
Nvidia debuts Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe, an open-weight model for multilingual audio transcription and translation, and Granary v2, its open-source speech dataset
Nvidia Corp. today released a leaderboard-winning open artificial intelligence model for multilingual audio transcription and translation …
Apple says the touchscreen MacBook Pro has a “newly designed hinge” for stability and an “enhanced six-speaker” system; the 14" model is 3lb and the 16" is 4lb
starts at $2,899Lauren Forristal /TechCrunch:Apple's touchscreen MacBook Pro pushes laptop pricing to a new extremeHartley Charlton /MacRumors:Apple's New Touchscreen MacBook Pro Costs Up to $14,549Ky...
Vladimir Putin praises Elon Musk as a “real genius” and says Russia is in “close contact” with Musk and the US to coordinate Rassvet and Starlink satellites
Elon Musk is a “real genius”, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday after revealing the two are in …
US officials believe Megaspeed executive Alice Huang, who has a close relationship with Jensen Huang, is a Chinese asset; Trump was briefed and took no action
Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, is influential at the White House on technology policy and has developed a close relationship …
DoorDash agrees to acquire Instacart in a ~$17B deal, paying $65 per share, a 26% premium to its October 22 close, as the platform delivery market consolidates
DoorDash (DASH.O) said on Thursday it would buy Instacart (CART.O) in a deal valued at about $17 billion, stepping up its push …
John Ternus says the Mac is “first and foremost” a device “built around the trackpad and keyboard”, but sometimes “it's comfortable and handy to have touch”
An exclusive early look at Apple's new touchscreen MacBook Pro—the computer Apple said would never happen.
Sources: AI coding startup Cognition weighs a new funding round before year's end after receiving offers valuing it at $70B to $80B, up from $48B in September
Just weeks after announcing a new round of funding at a $48 billion valuation, AI coding startup Cognition is fielding new investor interest at a much higher price.
Sources: the Pentagon is treating the late August freezer malfunctions across 6+ military bases as a suspected cyberattack and is working with French police
The Pentagon is treating the spate of mysterious freezer malfunctions that spoiled food at military bases across the United States …
Canada-based Cohere completes the first close of a round that it expects to total up to $5B, with Canada agreeing to invest up to $1.14B, at a $20.5B valuation
Cohere Inc., an artificial intelligence model maker, is in the process of raising a large funding round at a $20.5 billion valuation …
Lawsuit: the parents of a 31-year-old say OpenAI's GPT-4o guided her through an aggressive tapering plan off epilepsy meds, leading to her death in February
Sources: an Accenture staffer's Claude agent ran on a DOD network for two months and appears to have sent info to a third-party site before it was identified
Sources tell WIRED that an Accenture employee's personal Claude agent ran on a DOD network for two months before it was identified and the vulnerability could be patched.
Zillow agrees to pay $212.5M to settle an investor class action over its failed Zillow Offers home-flipping venture, after SCOTUS refused to hear its appeal
Zillow (ZG.O) said on Wednesday it will pay $212.5 million in cash to settle a class action accusing the online real estate marketplace …
Epic Games says it is using AI tools to “develop code and features” for Unreal Engine, including core engine components like the D3D12 rendering layer
In Brief: Following CEO Tim Sweeney's announcement of a “huge pivot” towards AI tools, Epic Games has confirmed that AI tools …
Apple adds a 512GB RAM configuration for the Mac Studio with the M5 Ultra chip, starting at $22,299; the M5 Max model maxes out at 128GB of RAM
OpenAI updates Model Spec to reorganize it around five values: faithfulness to human intent, harm minimization, honesty and transparency, human agency, and care
As our models get smarter and take more consequential actions in the world, it becomes increasingly important that they go beyond …
Seoul-based AI chip startup FuriosaAI raised a $620M Series D at a $2.9B valuation, up from $735M in 2025; South Korea's National Growth Fund contributed $280M
South Korean AI chip startup FuriosaAI quadrupled its valuation to $2.9 billion in a fresh funding round, bolstering its bid to challenge the likes of Nvidia Corp.
The UK FCA, which sued Justin Sun-linked crypto exchange HTX in 2025 for “unlawfully promoting crypto asset services”, says HTX will exit the UK in a settlement
Venture linked to billionaire Trump backer Justin Sun sued by FCA for ‘unlawfully promoting crypto asset services’
Apple's touchscreen MacBook Pro is the first Mac with the Dynamic Island, offering similar functionality to the iPhone; the Dynamic Island launched in 2022
Hartley Charlton /MacRumors:
Apple's touchscreen MacBook Pro is designed for the iPad generation, with an optimized macOS, and the company is right to move on from Steve Jobs' skepticism
Ever since I got my hands on the very first iPad Pro all the way back in November 2015, I've gotten used to a certain type …
Serval, which offers AI agents for enterprise IT operations like access management, raised $150M led by Sequoia at a $3B valuation, up from $1B in December 2025
Serval raised $150 million in a Sequoia-led round at a $3 billion valuation, as the enterprise automation company seeks …
Fragment, which uses AI to resolve purchasing and payment issues across manufacturing datasets, emerges from stealth with $56M from 8VC and others
Procurement startup Fragment is exiting stealth with $56 million raised, CEO Pranav Mulgund tells Axios Pro exclusively.
Q&A with Sam Altman on finding PHP bugs, sandboxing superhuman models as an unsolved safety dilemma, robotics scaling data centers, math, agent swarms, and more
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, joins John to break down how models uncovered critical PHP vulnerabilities …
The CFTC files a legal challenge to block Utah's attempt to restrict prediction market betting, asserting it is the sole US regulator of prediction markets
Oracle pledges to limit new financing to $20B through FY 2030, expects free cash flow to turn positive in H2 FY 2028 and top $30B in FY 2029; ORCL jumps 11%+
Research: professional analysts followed AI agents' randomly assigned “leans” on subjective analytical decisions 86% of the time; 77% used the agents' arguments
Ottawa-based Solink, which uses AI to pull data from already-installed security cameras, raised $100M+ led by Vertu Capital, bringing its total raised to $198M+
Video intelligence company Solink Corp. revealed today that it has raised more than $100 million in new funding.
DoorDash moves its Q3 earnings release from November 4 to before the market opens on October 29, amid reports of an imminent ~$17B deal to acquire Instacart
DoorDash Inc., the food delivery provider in talks to take over Instacart, moved its earnings release date forward by almost a week.
Meta quietly launched Waddle World, a Tamagotchi-like, AI pet-rearing game, in the Philippines in September, calling it a “daily journal disguised as a pet”
Circuit Mind, which uses AI to automate electronics and circuit design, raised $25M, including an $18.5M Series A led by Norwest, and plans a US relocation
Circuit Mind, a startup developing AI software for electronics design, raised $25 million, CEO Tomide Adesanmi tells Axios Pro exclusively.
eBay reports Q3 revenue up 14% YoY to $3.21B, above $3.12B est., GMV up 15% to $23.17B, above $22.32B est., and adjusted EPS of $1.51, above est.; EBAY jumps 4%
Sources: Microsoft is seeking to raise $25B+ in its first US investment-grade bond sale since 2017, when it raised $17B, to fund AI-related capital expenditures
Microsoft Corp. is looking to raise at least $25 billion from its first US investment-grade bond sale in more than nine years …
Email: a hacker attack forced the FEC to temporarily take its filing system offline around 10pm ET on Monday, blocking groups from submitting reports
Source: Dulo, a startup co-founded by Google veteran Sebastian Thrun to build “foundation models for hardware design”, raised a $130M seed
Sebastian Thrun, the computer scientist who pioneered several AI projects at Google, has co-founded a new startup focused on creating AI models …
Collective, which uses AI to automate bookkeeping for solo business owners, raised a $40M Series B and $60M in nondilutive capital from GC's Customer Value Fund
Collective, a financial services platform for solo business owners, secured $100 million in financing, CEO Hooman Radfar tells Axios.
Kalshi raised $1B led by Sequoia and Wellington Management at a $40B valuation, up from a $22B valuation after raising $1B in May, its last raise before an IPO
The prediction market raised $1 billion in a new funding round and landed a market value almost double that of rival Polymarket.
Alphabet reports Q3 YouTube ad revenue up 9% YoY to $11.2B, below est. and 15% growth in Q3 2025; Google ad revenue rose 11% to $82.01B, below $83.6B est.
but growth didn't show much for it between Q3 '25 and Q3 '26. 🤔@richlightshed:🔥 Google just said 1/3 of @YouTube revenues this quarter came from the living room, aka TVs - implying $3.7 billion of qua...
How surging demand from AI hyperscalers has quintupled flash memory prices and shifted market and negotiating power from Apple to suppliers like Kioxia
The iPhone maker for years bullied flash-storage makers into steep discounts—until AI hyperscalers bid up prices and gobbled up supply
OpenAI says it's launching an election “war room” ahead of the US midterms to identify potential spread of misinfo or other efforts to disrupt the elections
Source: Anthropic is “Customer B” cited by SpaceX in a filing as its single largest customer accounting for 34.5% of Q3 revenue, surpassing the US government
Anthropic PBC is SpaceX's largest single customer, a person familiar with the matter said, accounting for more than a third …
Sources: Situational Awareness is pitching clients to invest in Fluidstack alongside it in a round that values the neocloud at $40B, up from $18B in September
Situational Awareness is raising money from its investors to plow into neocloud startup Fluidstack Ltd., just three months …
Google unveils Google Multi-Party Compute (MPC), a digital-asset custody and security service in private preview, set for commercial availability in early 2027
Microsoft reports Q1 capex of $45.2B, up from $34.9B in Q1 2025 and below its own $50B projection, and free cash flow of $18.6B, above $8.54B analyst est.
Deborah Sophia /Reuters:
Sources: DeepSeek and Moonshot AI heavily relied on GPT-6 Astra distillation to train models like Kimi K3.1 Pro and V4.1-Flash 1017, after Anthropic's crackdown
Sources: Bloomberg, Susquehanna, and Jump Trading signed up for Truth Social's fast API feed of President Trump's posts, paying $60K to $100K per month
Alphabet reports Q3 negative free cash flow of $9.07B, worse than expected, capex of $51.36B, below $55.09B est., and keeps its FY capex forecast at $195B-$205B
Alphabet shares slumped more than 10% after the search giant reported a drop in free cash flow during the third quarter …
Microsoft reports Q1 Xbox hardware revenue down 14% YoY, Xbox content and services revenue down 2%, and Windows OEM and Devices revenue down 22%
Tom Warren /The Verge:
Foundry, a manufacturing-as-a-service startup that builds factories with robots powered by physical AI models, raised a $100M Series A led by Marlinspike
Samsung unveils the $229 Galaxy Buds On, its first open-fit, C-shaped cuff earbuds to compete with Sony and Bose, designed with AI's help, shipping November 6
X adds an intrusive promotional animation of an arm reaching across the screen to direct users to a “promote” post button, targeting verified and Premium users
GitHub says it is seeing 7.4B commits per month, up from 2.9B in August, and has added 4M CPU cores and 160PB of storage in 2026 so far to support this growth
GitHub just made “which model should I use” easier for us. — I've been using the Copilot app daily. …Patrick Chanezon:Many announcements at GitHub Universe today! — List of announcements in Jay Pa...
Sierra Club expects US power emissions to hit 2.1B metric tons by 2030, up 42% on 2025 and erasing 15 years of cuts, with off-grid data centers matching Mexico
AI and cloud cybersecurity startup Upwind Security raised $400M led by Bessemer at a $3.8B valuation, up from $1.5B in January, for $830M in total funding
Google reports Search revenue up 12% YoY to $63.25B in Q3 2026, down from 14.5% in Q3 2025, and attributes the slowdown to “lower monetization” in AI Mode
Shares in Google's parent company Alphabet dived by almost ten percent on Wednesday, after the web giant admitted …
A profile of Nscale CEO Josh Payne, who is proceeding with plans for a US IPO that sources say is targeting a $30B valuation despite some investor pushback
Thrive Holdings agrees to acquire ADT in an all-cash take-private deal, valuing ADT at ~$7.6B in equity value, a ~46% premium over its October 27 closing price
How Maynard v. Snapchat, a 2016 lawsuit linked to a car crash involving Snapchat's speed filter, sparked social media's legal reckoning over user safety
STMicro reports Q3 revenue up 17.9% YoY to $3.76B, operating income up 98% to $429M, above $400.5M est., and forecasts $4.15B in Q4 revenue, above $4.10B est.
Dropbox plans to cut ~6% of its staff, or ~200 jobs, costing $27M to $33M in severance and related costs, and says CTO Ali Dasdan will step down on November 18
Airbnb spent $12.6M+ since 2025 to become a top LA political contributor, backing Mayor Karen Bass and pushing for friendlier rules ahead of the 2028 Olympics
Amazon Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Colorsoft review: premium feel, lightweight, nice colors, and snappy performance, but expensive after price increases
Filing: Microsoft recorded $10B in revenue from OpenAI in Q1, nearly 11% of its total quarterly revenue, and has $7.2B in outstanding receivables from OpenAI
Rebecca Bellan /TechCrunch:
Google plans to expand “high-quality ads within AI Overviews in AI Mode” into international markets, as growth in its core search ad business slows
Lauren Forristal /TechCrunch:
National Student Clearinghouse: US computer science enrollment fell 12%+ for undergrads and 10%+ for grad students this fall, as AI reduces coding jobs
Google is rolling out Gemini 4 Carbon to selected cybersecurity defenders through Fairwind at $2/1M input and $10/1M output tokens, rising to $4 and $20 later
Carl Franzen /VentureBeat:
How Silicon Valley billionaires raised $333M+ to try to defeat a 5% California wealth tax; Patrick Collison's $33M is his most serious campaign engagement yet
Q&A with Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar on diffusing intelligence, safety, AI lessons, forward-deployed engineering, Anthropic vs. the US, AI religion, and more
Jio Platforms adds $36B in market value in two trading sessions, hitting a $144B market cap, up from its ~$108B IPO valuation, after India's biggest-ever IPO
Samsung expects capex to rise ~60% to ~$63B in 2026, with HBM capacity sold out through 2027 and 10 long-term supply deals secured with key customers
Samsung's shares fall up to 6.6%, as a lack of a new shareholder return plan, higher capex, and its chip unit's Q3 profit miss weigh on investor sentiment
UpdateSeoul Economic Daily:Samsung Electronics Plans 55 to 75 Trillion Won in Added Shareholder Returns
Wabi, which is building an AI assistant that integrates into group chats and can take actions like booking appointments, raised $55M at a $1.25B valuation
A profile of Tencent Cloud CEO Dowson Tong, who is shifting Tencent's AI focus toward businesses and betting on its Claude Cowork-style assistant WorkBuddy
Bluesky blocks links to a leaked archive containing personal data of 41,000+ DHS employees and contractors, saying it was “shared without their authorization”
Bluesky tells WIRED it blocked links to a leaked archive of information on 41,000 ICE, CBP, and other DHS workers …
SuperMe, which generates AI-powered chats with simulated profiles of prominent industry experts to let users ask questions, raised $20M
Chinese PCB maker Dongshan rises on its Hong Kong debut, after raising ~$1.3B in an IPO, below its $3B goal, at a $30B valuation, amid a tricky IPO market
Alphabet discloses $1T+ in purchase commitments, future leases, and other obligations; its Q3 filing shows $98.5B in contingent commitments, up ~$23B from Q2
Davey Alba /Bloomberg: