Microsoft’s Azure just crossed $100bn a year, and the AI bet mostly paid off
Microsoft’s Azure just crossed $100bn a year, and the AI bet mostly paid off

Microsoft went into its earnings facing one question: is the vast AI spending working? The numbers said yes, mostly. Revenue rose 18% to $90bn for the quarter to 30 June, and net income climbed 31% to $35.8bn, the company reported. Microsoft Cloud brou…

OpenAI is giving 100,000 scientists free AI. Here’s how it can afford to.
OpenAI is giving 100,000 scientists free AI. Here’s how it can afford to.

OpenAI made two announcements this week that look unrelated. One is generous. The other explains how it can afford to be. The generous one: OpenAI is giving 100,000 academic researchers free access to its frontier models through 2027, Axios reported. T…

BMW is cutting 8,000 jobs and handing its cars’ brains to Qualcomm
BMW is cutting 8,000 jobs and handing its cars’ brains to Qualcomm

BMW had two messages for staff this week. It is cutting about 8,000 jobs. And it is handing the brains of its future cars to Qualcomm for the next decade. The German carmaker will shed the roles in Germany by the end of 2027 through a voluntary redunda…

How Old Extreme Weather Playbooks Can Save Us From Future Heat

In the U.S., heat claims more lives than floods, tornadoes & hurricanes combined. Lessons from managing extreme cold, floods & hurricanes offer a blueprint for survival.

PwC sells advice on using AI responsibly. Its own reports were written by a careless one.
PwC sells advice on using AI responsibly. Its own reports were written by a careless one.

The world’s biggest consultancies are selling companies expensive advice on how to adopt AI without getting burned. Their own reports keep getting burned. PwC is the latest to be caught. Four of its Middle East “thought leadership” reports were a mess,…

It’s Frighteningly Easy to Jailbreak Some Frontier AI Models

I watched a new tool try to get around the model safeguards of four major frontier companies. You might be surprised by how they performed.

Audi bet its future on EVs. Now it’s selling America a V8 with cupholders.
Audi bet its future on EVs. Now it’s selling America a V8 with cupholders.

Audi spent years betting its future on electric cars. Its new flagship for America runs on a V8, with big cupholders and a ChatGPT assistant. The German brand unveiled the Q9 this week. It is a full-size three-row luxury SUV built, in Audi’s own words,…

OpenAI hit its billion-user goal, just seven months late
OpenAI hit its billion-user goal, just seven months late

ChatGPT is about to hit 1 billion weekly active users. OpenAI wanted to be here seven months ago. The chatbot is on the verge of the milestone, based on figures OpenAI has shared internally, The Information reported. The company had hoped to reach a bi…

AI agents don’t log in like people. That problem just sold for $1bn.
AI agents don’t log in like people. That problem just sold for $1bn.

Every AI agent a company switches on needs an identity to log in and reach data. Enterprises now run millions of them, with almost no way to keep track. That gap just sold for $1bn. The data-security firm Cyera has agreed to buy Oasis Security for arou…

BuzzFeed bet on AI to save it. It just cut another third of its staff.
BuzzFeed bet on AI to save it. It just cut another third of its staff.

BuzzFeed bet on AI to rescue itself. This week it laid off another third of its staff. The bet, it turns out, was never the thing that could save it. The company cut about 180 jobs on Monday, roughly a third of its remaining workforce, the New York Tim…