Monday, October 6, 2025

OpenAI and AMD announce a deal as part of which OpenAI could take a 10% stake in AMD and deploy up to 6GW of Instinct GPUs over multiple years; AMD jumps 20%+ (MacKenzie Sigalos/CNBC)

MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
OpenAI and AMD announce a deal as part of which OpenAI could take a 10% stake in AMD and deploy up to 6GW of Instinct GPUs over multiple years; AMD jumps 20%+  —  - OpenAI and AMD have reached a deal that could see Sam Altman's company take a 10% stake in the chipmaker



Source: xAI is set to spend $18B+ to acquire ~300K more Nvidia chips for its Colossus 2 project in Memphis; Elon Musk said in July it would have 550K chips (Alexander Saeedy/Wall Street Journal)

Alexander Saeedy / Wall Street Journal:
Source: xAI is set to spend $18B+ to acquire ~300K more Nvidia chips for its Colossus 2 project in Memphis; Elon Musk said in July it would have 550K chips  —  xAI aims to win tech arms race with ‘Colossus’ data centers, thrown up at lightning speed; city divided over massive power and water demands



Asahi restarted production at six Japanese breweries on October 2 after a cyberattack forced it to halt production and shipments for days, and is investigating (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
Asahi restarted production at six Japanese breweries on October 2 after a cyberattack forced it to halt production and shipments for days, and is investigating  —  Asahi Group Holdings Ltd. restarted six of its breweries in Japan on Oct. 2 after a cyberattack forced the beer maker to halt production and shipments for several days.



Sunday, October 5, 2025

Another look at Apple's executive succession, as it increases the spotlight on hardware chief John Ternus; sources: Apple weighed hiring a senior Meta AI exec (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Another look at Apple's executive succession, as it increases the spotlight on hardware chief John Ternus; sources: Apple weighed hiring a senior Meta AI exec  —  Apple is intensifying the spotlight on hardware chief John Ternus as executive succession looms.



How video games are shaping a generation of boys, as a survey says US males aged 15 to 24 now spend ~10 hrs/week on average on games, over 2x the time from 2010 (New York Times)

New York Times:
How video games are shaping a generation of boys, as a survey says US males aged 15 to 24 now spend ~10 hrs/week on average on games, over 2x the time from 2010  —  They've become an important way to spend time with peers.  But they've also become more addictive.



The AI boom is driving memory and storage shortages that may last a decade; OpenAI's Stargate has deals for 900K DRAM wafers per month, or ~40% of global output (Luke James/Tom's Hardware)

Luke James / Tom's Hardware:
The AI boom is driving memory and storage shortages that may last a decade; OpenAI's Stargate has deals for 900K DRAM wafers per month, or ~40% of global output  —  Once-cheap SSDs, DRAM, and HDD prices are climbing fast as AI demand and constrained supply converge to create the tightest market in years.



PitchBook: VC investment in Asia slowed to $48.9B in the first nine months of 2025, just over half of 2024's total, amid uncertainty due to US tariff policies (Pak Yiu/Nikkei Asia)

Pak Yiu / Nikkei Asia:
PitchBook: VC investment in Asia slowed to $48.9B in the first nine months of 2025, just over half of 2024's total, amid uncertainty due to US tariff policies  —  NEW YORK — Asian venture capital dealmaking has slowed down so far this year, as the region faces liquidity shortages …



Saturday, October 4, 2025

How researchers at Microsoft, IBM, and other organizations are using AI to speed up the search for new materials and chemicals for batteries (Andrew Moseman/IEEE Spectrum)

Andrew Moseman / IEEE Spectrum:
How researchers at Microsoft, IBM, and other organizations are using AI to speed up the search for new materials and chemicals for batteries  —  Microsoft and IBM pinpoint candidates from millions of options  —  Andrew Moseman is the online communications editor at Caltech and a freelance contributor to IEEE Spectrum.



Q&A with iRobot founder Rodney Brooks on his startup Robust.AI, which builds warehouse robots, unrealistic expectations around humanoid robots and AI, and more (Om Malik/Crazy Stupid Tech)

Om Malik / Crazy Stupid Tech:
Q&A with iRobot founder Rodney Brooks on his startup Robust.AI, which builds warehouse robots, unrealistic expectations around humanoid robots and AI, and more  —  Every so often, we find ourselves in the middle of a massive technological wave that starts to upend our presumptions and our ideas about the past, present, and future.



An investigation finds rampant caste bias in ChatGPT and Sora; a researcher also finds caste bias in Sarvam AI, which touts itself as a sovereign AI for India (Nilesh Christopher/MIT Technology Review)

Nilesh Christopher / MIT Technology Review:
An investigation finds rampant caste bias in ChatGPT and Sora; a researcher also finds caste bias in Sarvam AI, which touts itself as a sovereign AI for India  —  When Dhiraj Singha began applying for postdoctoral sociology fellowships in Bengaluru, India, in March, he wanted to make sure …



Deputy HHS Secretary Jim O'Neill says the Trump administration doesn't support CHAI, an effort by OpenAI, Mayo Clinic, and others to vet AI tools for healthcare (Ruth Reader/Politico)

Ruth Reader / Politico:
Deputy HHS Secretary Jim O'Neill says the Trump administration doesn't support CHAI, an effort by OpenAI, Mayo Clinic, and others to vet AI tools for healthcare  —  AI is transforming care.  Hospitals are adopting high-tech systems to improve diagnoses and recommend treatments, but there's little formal regulation.



Sources: The Trump administration is drafting a new cyber strategy that would enlist private companies to mount offensive cyberattacks on foreign adversaries (Jamie Tarabay/Bloomberg)

Jamie Tarabay / Bloomberg : Sources: The Trump administration is drafting a new cyber strategy that would enlist private companies to mou...