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.
Sam Altman laid out OpenAI's plan: one AI assistant that follows users everywhere, backed by a trillion-dollar compute buildout. The vision is coherent. The execution surface is vast, spanning chips, power, and partner risk across simultaneous bets.
Google launches three security tools to automate defense against AI-accelerated attacks: an agent that patches code, a unified bug bounty, and guardrails for autonomous systems. The bet is that automation can flip the security balance. Execution will tell.
Tech giants are committing billions to small nuclear reactors that won't exist until 2030—while AI's power demands double now. The bet hinges on untested manufacturing efficiencies and fuel supplies that don't yet exist at scale.
A16z analyzed what 200,000 startups actually pay for in AI tools—and the results diverge from traffic rankings. Replit generated 15x more revenue than Lovable despite lower visibility. Copilots outnumber autonomous agents twelve to five. Budgets reveal what clicks conceal.
OpenAI's new Sora 2 app hit #1 in 24 hours—flooded with copyrighted characters and deepfakes. The company's inverting copyright norms: rightsholders must opt out, not opt in. Disney did. Most didn't. Now the legal questions multiply.
An AI studio created a photorealistic digital actress and announced agencies were negotiating to sign her. Within 48 hours, SAG-AFTRA condemned it and actors revolted. The speed of rejection reveals where Hollywood draws the line on AI.
OpenAI's new video app requires consent to use your face but lets studios opt out of copyright protection. Disney already blocked its catalog. Meanwhile, the TikTok clone faces a problem its marketing won't mention: the servers can't handle viral growth.
OpenAI's Sora 2 demands permission for your face but lets Spider-Man appear unless studios opt out. The split policy arrives as year-end conversion deadlines loom and competitors launch rival video feeds—testing fair use through product, not precedent.
Amazon launches new Echo devices with its generative AI assistant baked in—seven months after Alexa+ debuted to cautious early access. The hardware is ready. The question is whether daily use has actually improved enough to justify the rebuild.
OpenAI added buy buttons to ChatGPT's 700 million weekly users. Merchants get sales but lose website visits, email lists, and retargeting. The real story isn't checkout convenience—it's who controls commerce when AI becomes the primary shopping interface.
DeepSeek's sparse attention technique cuts long-context AI inference costs by 10x while slashing API prices over 50%. The technical breakthrough intensifies pressure on OpenAI and Chinese rivals as architectural innovation becomes pricing power.
Nvidia commits $100 billion to fund OpenAI's expansion—money that flows right back to Nvidia through chip purchases. Smart strategy or dangerous circular financing? Analysts split on whether it's brilliant or bubble territory.
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