Google is in talks with Marvell to build custom AI inference chips as it diversifies beyond Broadcom
Google is in talks with Marvell to build custom AI inference chips as it diversifies beyond Broadcom

Summary: Google is in talks with Marvell Technology to develop two new AI chips – a memory processing unit and an inference-optimised TPU – adding a third design partner alongside Broadcom and MediaTek in its custom silicon supply chain. The discussion…

Stanford’s AI Index finds China has nearly closed the performance gap with the US despite spending 23 times less
Stanford’s AI Index finds China has nearly closed the performance gap with the US despite spending 23 times less

In short: Stanford’s 2026 AI Index Report finds the performance gap between the best American and Chinese AI models has collapsed to 2.7%, down from 17.5-31.6 percentage points in May 2023, despite the US spending 23 times more on private AI investment…

Meta targets 20 May for 8,000 layoffs as it redirects billions toward AI infrastructure
Meta targets 20 May for 8,000 layoffs as it redirects billions toward AI infrastructure

In short: Meta will begin companywide layoffs on 20 May, cutting approximately 8,000 employees (10% of its 78,865-person workforce), with additional cuts planned for the second half of 2026. The restructuring, which follows earlier rounds that brought …

Europe is pouring tens of billions of public money into VC. The hard part is making it work
Europe is pouring tens of billions of public money into VC. The hard part is making it work

The European Investment Fund is raising a €15 billion fund of funds called ETCI 2 that aims to unlock up to €80 billion in scaleup funding across Europe. Germany’s WIN initiative is targeting €12 billion by 2030. France’s Tibi programme has pledged €7 …

Nvidia’s Huang warns DeepSeek running on Huawei chips would be ‘horrible’ for the US
Nvidia’s Huang warns DeepSeek running on Huawei chips would be ‘horrible’ for the US

In short: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang warned on the Dwarkesh Podcast that DeepSeek optimising its AI models for Huawei’s Ascend chips instead of American hardware would be “a horrible outcome” for the United States, as the Chinese AI lab prepares to launch…

Anthropic’s Amodei meets Wiles and Bessent at the White House in first step toward resolving Mythos standoff
Anthropic’s Amodei meets Wiles and Bessent at the White House in first step toward resolving Mythos standoff

In short: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei met White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday in what the White House called “productive and constructive” talks over access to Mythos, the frontier AI model capable of fi…

Palantir, Thales, and a startup are competing to build the FAA’s predictive air traffic AI
Palantir, Thales, and a startup are competing to build the FAA’s predictive air traffic AI

In short: The FAA is developing SMART (Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories), an AI system that would extend air traffic conflict prediction from 15 minutes to two hours, with Palantir, Thales, and Air Space Intelligence competing for …

Cursor is raising $2 billion at a $50 billion valuation as AI coding tools become the fastest-growing software category
Cursor is raising $2 billion at a $50 billion valuation as AI coding tools become the fastest-growing software category

In short: AI coding startup Cursor (Anysphere) is in talks to raise at least $2 billion at a $50 billion valuation, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital, and Nvidia, nearly doubling its November 2025 valuation of $29.3 billion. The company has…

Three more senior executives leave OpenAI as the company kills its side quests
Three more senior executives leave OpenAI as the company kills its side quests

Summary: Three senior OpenAI executives, former CPO Kevin Weil, Sora head Bill Peebles, and enterprise CTO Srinivas Narayanan – departed on the same day as the company shuts down “side quests” including Sora (discontinuing 26 April) and dismantles Open…

NVIDIA didn’t invest in Xanadu, but it made its CEO a billionaire anyway
NVIDIA didn’t invest in Xanadu, but it made its CEO a billionaire anyway

Christian Weedbrook, the founder and CEO of Toronto-based Xanadu Quantum Technologies, became a billionaire this week without NVIDIA investing a single dollar in his company. His 46.4 million multiple-voting shares were worth approximately $1.5 billion…