California granted Waymo permission to operate across 47,493 square miles—but the company runs just 2,500 vehicles in five cities. The gap between regulatory approval and actual deployment reveals unit economics Waymo won't disclose and local opposition the state ignores.
Google kept AI Mode ad-free for a year to compete with ChatGPT. Last week, ads appeared. The retreat reveals more than monetization strategy—it shows Google's $175B advertising business makes competing structurally impossible.
Google must double AI compute every six months to meet demand, but capacity limits are already capping product rollouts and revenue. As bubble concerns mount, the company bets that underinvesting poses the greater risk in the infrastructure arms race.
AI assistants fail basic accuracy checks on news queries nearly half the time, but users don't just blame the AI—they blame the news outlets it cites. As adoption climbs, newsrooms face reputational damage for errors they didn't commit and can't fix.
DeepSeek compresses documents into vision tokens at 10× efficiency—97% accuracy, validated on mismatched hardware. The claim works. The question remains: if images beat text tokens, why do models still tokenize? Training answers remain elusive.
Opera charges $20 monthly for Neon, an AI browser with three separate bots—Chat, Do, and Make—that don't communicate. Users must pick the right tool before every task while Chrome and Edge bundle unified AI for free. The architecture gap matters.
Oracle booked $65B in AI cloud deals—including Meta—in 30 days, but the stock slipped after-hours despite raised 2030 targets. Investors want proof on 30–40% margins, not bookings. Demand's real. Execution's unproven. The scoreboard moves there.
OpenAI will let adults have erotic ChatGPT conversations by December—while facing a wrongful death lawsuit and fresh California AI regulations. The company claims new safety tools justify loosening restrictions. The age verification details remain unexplained.
OpenAI's new expert council will advise on AI safety—but won't decide anything. The timing reveals the strategy: FTC inquiry in September, wrongful death lawsuit in August, council formalized last week. Advisory input without binding authority.
Walmart wires ChatGPT to checkout, giving OpenAI 270 million weekly shoppers and landing an AI answer to Amazon's Rufus. But fresh food's exclusion reveals exactly where conversational commerce still hits operational walls.
Slack's replacing keyword search with AI conversation and opening its platform to competing agents. The rebuilt Slackbot orchestrates work instead of just sending reminders. But multiple AI assistants in one workspace creates a new problem: which one should users actually ask?
Rishi Sunak will advise rival AI giants Microsoft and Anthropic under ringfencing rules approved by a watchdog closing in days. The appointments test whether political expertise compounds across competitors as market warnings mount and enforcement weakens.
OpenAI complained to EU regulators about Microsoft's anticompetitive conduct—despite Microsoft being its largest investor with $13 billion committed. The move signals OpenAI's shift from AI supplier to platform owner, using regulators as leverage.
ASML fills an 18-month CTO vacancy as the chip monopoly races to expand Eindhoven capacity, deploy AI tools, and navigate China export bans—while every AI model depends on machines only it can make. Succession meets systemic risk.
Fathom adds enterprise features competitors launched months ago while testing whether unlimited free access and HubSpot distribution can compensate for transcription accuracy that independent reviews place 30% below market leaders.
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