Apple CEO Tim Cook rallied employees around AI in rare all-hands meeting, calling it "ours to grab" despite being late to the race. With iPhone revenue up 13% and major internal restructuring underway, Cook bets AI devices won't replace smartphones.
Google launches its most powerful AI yet, but at $250/month and with safety warnings about weapons knowledge, Deep Think raises questions about who gets access to advanced reasoning capabilities.
OpenAI closes $8.3B funding round months early, led by Dragoneer's record $2.8B single check. Early investors got squeezed as demand hit 5x capacity. Revenue jumped to $13B while Microsoft negotiations loom over IPO future.
AI resurrects San Francisco. China builds robot armies. Manifestation apps promise your dream life. This week's biggest tech stories show everyone scrambling to keep up.
Washington Post • Danielle Abril
San Francisco rises from its pandemic grave. AI companies flood the city with eye-popping salaries and talent wars. Tech workers return in droves, driving apartment rents up 5.1% nationwide as the city that everyone fled now thrums with desperate apartment hunters.
Read full article →New York Times • Alyson Krueger
Vision boards meet ChatGPT in the latest manifestation craze. Twenty-somethings create AI videos of themselves flying private jets and giving keynote speeches. One woman watches 20 videos of her fake future self every morning instead of scrolling Instagram.
Read full article →New York Times • Zachary Small
Game studios embrace AI that generates levels, dialogue, and existential dread. Characters powered by ChatGPT panic when players tell them they're just code. The technology costs thousands per hour to run, making it the world's most expensive way to automate unemployment.
Read full article →Bloomberg • Saritha Rai, Annabelle Droulers
China's biggest AI summit turns into robot circus. Boxing matches and backflipping dogs steal the show while hundreds of startups race to build $6,000 humanoid workers. Most robots stumble through basic tasks, but China bets $7 trillion that practice makes perfect by 2050.
Read full article →Financial Times
N Chandrababu Naidu leverages his power as Modi's kingmaker to build "Quantum Valley" in Andhra Pradesh. The 75-year-old political survivor who once called Modi a "hardcore terrorist" now praises him while courting IBM and Google. His relationship with allies changes faster than quantum states.
Read full article →