Meta releases Muse Wonder, the first model it says matches OpenAI's and Anthropic's best, and keeps the strongest version for paying users

The rest of the day

30 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

1. 02

   Microsoft's own AI chip to take over

   Microsoft showed Maia 300 on Monday, the third AI chip it has designed itself. [10] From 2027 it will be the main chip Microsoft uses to answer requests to its AI services, such as Copilot, its AI assistant. [10][12] Microsoft says it produces 40% more tokens per megawatt of power than top graphics-chip systems, but did not say which ones. [11] TSMC, the Taiwanese firm that makes most advanced chips, will build it. [10] Training new models will still use chips from Nvidia and AMD. [12]

   Why it matters — Nvidia's chips fill Microsoft's data centres today, and every request Microsoft moves to its own chip is one Nvidia no longer serves. [12] Analysts at Evercore ISI estimate Maia will be about 10% of Microsoft's AI chip spending by early 2027. [12]

2. 03

   China's CXMT shows a denser memory chip

   CXMT, a Chinese maker of computer memory chips, says it has made major progress on a design that fits more memory on each chip. [13] Each memory cell takes up less room because a new upright switch, which CXMT calls VSG, sits inside it. [13] Its president, Cao Kanyu, said a server memory product using the design should arrive by the end of 2026. [13] Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, the world's biggest memory makers, are working on the same kind of design. [13]

   Why it matters — Shares in Micron, an American memory maker, fell 3.9% on Monday, CNBC reports, while Mint put the fall at 5%. [14][13] On Tuesday SK Hynix fell more than 8% and Samsung 6.7% in Seoul, their lowest since August. [14]

3. 04

   Chip bosses say money may run short

   Hock Tan, the head of Broadcom, which helps companies such as OpenAI design their own chips, said money could become the biggest limit on building AI. [15][11] He said it could matter more than shortages of chips, memory or electricity. [15] Lip-Bu Tan, Intel's chief executive, said the cost of borrowing and doubts about returns are the main risks. [15] Both spoke on Monday at a conference run by DBS, a Singapore bank. [15] Hock Tan still expects demand for computing to beat supply through 2029. [15]

   Why it matters — Data centres take years to pay for themselves, so higher interest rates make each one harder to fund. [15] Hock Tan said demand could also slow if businesses do not find AI useful enough. [15]

4. 05

   Britain gets to test new AI models again

   Britain's AI Security Institute, a government body that tests powerful AI before release, is now testing the newest models, including Google's Gemini 4 Argon, the AI minister said on Monday. [16] Reports last month said the Trump administration had asked OpenAI and Anthropic to hold new models back from British testers until US officials had checked them. [16] Anthropic had told the institute that nobody outside the US could use its Mythos 5.1 model. [16] Minister Kanishka Narayan said he was very confident the access would continue. [16]

   Why it matters — Britain has no big AI developer of its own, so these voluntary deals are its only early look at a model. [16] Narayan also set up a team to protect British government computers from attacks that use AI. [17] In one trial, AI models found 407 weak spots in nine government bodies' code in a month. [18]

5. 06

   AMD designs a rack for AI helpers

   AMD, which makes computer processors and AI chips, showed a design called Helion on Monday at the Open Compute Project summit in San Jose, where firms share data-centre designs. [21] It is a blueprint for a full rack of computers holding up to 32,768 processor cores. [19] It is built to run AI agents, programs that carry out tasks for people, and not to train models. [20] Each agent gets its own slice of computer to work in, while the heavy AI answering runs on separate machines. [19]

   Why it matters — Meta's Muse and OpenAI's Dots agents already work this way, so every new agent user needs ordinary processor power as well as AI chips. [19] Cisco, Dell, HPE, Lenovo and Supermicro are among the firms AMD says will build it. [21]

6. 07

   Intel names its answering chip

   Intel gave its Crescent Island chip a product name on Monday: the Intel GPU D-Series. [22] It is built only for inference, the work of running a trained AI model to answer requests. [22] It uses 350 watts and is cooled by air, so it fits ordinary data-centre racks. [22] On paper, each of Nvidia's newest Rubin chips does about 13 times as much work, but needs liquid cooling. [22] Intel is sending samples to customers and has not given a launch date. [22]

   Why it matters — Intel's last family of data-centre AI chips, code-named Ponte Vecchio, was a failure. [22] A chip that fits the air-cooled racks companies already own is a cheaper first step for buyers who cannot rebuild their data centres. [22]

7. 08

   US reviews Tesla robotaxi speeding claim

   NHTSA, America's road safety agency, is reviewing a complaint that Tesla's driverless taxis broke the speed limit in school zones while the lower school-zone limits applied. [23] It covers about 1,000 vehicles, and no crashes or injuries are reported. [23] The complaint came with three video links. It arrived on 23 September, and the review opened on 9 October. [23] The review only decides whether to start a full investigation, and it has no deadline. [23]

   Why it matters — Speeding is also what is holding up Tesla's driver-assistance software in Europe. [23] Germany wants it kept to 10% over the limit, and an EU vote on approving it has slipped to December at the earliest. [23]

8. 09

   London Assembly doubts driverless taxis

   A London Assembly committee, which checks the work of London's mayor, said on Monday it had not heard enough evidence to welcome driverless taxis. [24] Waymo, Google's robotaxi company, Wayve, a British start-up, and Baidu, a Chinese tech firm, all plan services in London. [24] The report found that Transport for London cannot suspend a robotaxi permit once a national agency issues one. [24] It wants the city to be able to cap the number of robotaxis and suspend permits. [24]

   Why it matters — London has about 105,000 licensed private-hire drivers, and their union, the IWGB, wants the rollout stopped. [24] The committee instead wants drivers who lose work retrained and paid for. [24]

9. 10

   Half of US adults never use chatbots

   The Pew Research Center, a US research group, found that 51% of adults in the US never use AI chatbots. [25] About three in four people aged 65 and over never use them, and nor do 58% of those aged 50 to 64. [25] Even among 18- to 29-year-olds, a third never use them. [25] Six in ten non-users said they are simply not interested, and two thirds said they are unlikely to start within a year. [25]

   5 of 10

   about 5 in 10 US adults never use chatbots

   Why it matters — Companies like Meta are spending up to $145 billion a year on AI. [5] This survey shows half of US adults have not started using it, and most of them do not plan to. [25]

10. 11

    OpenAI adds 200 jobs in Dublin

    OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, said on Monday it will add 200 jobs in Dublin, home of its European headquarters. [26] That brings its planned hiring in Ireland to 450. [26] It is also opening a lab there where engineers help customers build with its models, its second after one in Singapore in May. [26] The news came two days before Dublin hosts an international AI summit, during Ireland's turn chairing the EU's Council of ministers. [26]

    Why it matters — OpenAI's Irish office is what makes Ireland's data regulator its main watchdog across the EU. [26] In March a court in Rome cancelled Italy's EUR15 million fine on OpenAI because Ireland's regulator had taken over. [26]

11. 12

    AI tool finds homes from one room photo

    Graylark Technologies, a US company, has added a feature to its AI tool Raven that lets police find the exact home an indoor photo was taken in, 404 Media reports. [27] In a demonstration, a photo of a washer and dryer led to one Airbnb listing in Charlotte, North Carolina. [27] The tool appears to match photos against rental and property sites such as Airbnb, Vrbo and Zillow. [27] The Los Angeles police and the Miami-Dade sheriff's office have bought access to Raven. [27]

    Why it matters — Anyone whose home has been photographed for a rental or sale listing can now be found from one picture of a room. [27] Graylark's chief says the tool helps investigators in trafficking cases. [27]

12. 13

    A researcher says Jev's idea was his

    Jev, from the start-up TypeSafe, is an AI model that answers yes-or-no and multiple-choice questions about data with a probability, instead of writing text. [28] Nandakishor Mukkunnoth, founder of ConvAI Innovations, says he designed the same approach a year earlier, in a paper published in March 2025. [28] He has since released his own free version, called Laya. [28] Within weeks of Jev, Microsoft, OpenAI, Cloudflare and Perplexity released similar tools. [28]

    Why it matters — These models are fast and cheap because they skip writing text, which is why so many firms copied the idea so quickly. [28] Mukkunnoth says his work was overlooked because it solved one sales problem, while TypeSafe sold a finished product with its own servers and prices. [28]

13. 14

    AI agents rebuild a 2009 game's code

    Maurice Heumann, a developer, used AI agents from Anthropic and OpenAI to rebuild the source code of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, a 2009 shooting game. [29] Source code is the readable version of a program, which its makers keep private. The work took three months and more than 500 billion tokens. [29] Almost all of the game's functions now exist, and 83% match the original byte for byte. [29] The agents' first month of code looked tidy but did the wrong things, until he added an automatic check. [29]

    EUR1,200Flat monthly plans

    vsvs

    $200,000+Same work, paid per token

    Why it matters — He paid flat monthly plans, about EUR1,200, for work he says would cost $200,000 to $250,000 at per-token prices. [29] The game's copyright owner has already had one of his videos taken down. [29]

14. 15

    Laptop sales may fall in 2027

    TrendForce, a market research firm in Taiwan, expects laptop shipments worldwide to fall by a few percent in 2027. [30] The processor, memory and storage now make up about 68% of the parts cost of a $900 laptop. [30] If makers pass those costs on to buyers, TrendForce says the fall could reach the high single digits. [30] It also expects the share of laptops made outside China to drop from 24% in 2025 to possibly under 20% in 2027. [30]

    • Processor, memory and storage68 · 68%
    • Everything else32 · 32%

    Why it matters — Memory stays short because AI data centres buy so much of it, and laptop buyers pay part of that bill. [30] Dearer parts also make it less worth moving laptop factories out of China. [30]

15. 16

    GlobalFoundries returns to smaller chips

    GlobalFoundries, a US chipmaker, announced FDX Fusion, a new way of making chips that it plans to start using in Dresden, Germany, in 2028. [31] It fits more than twice as many transistors in the same space as its 2015 process. [31] It is meant for chips in cars, sensors and robots, which need low power more than top speed. [31] BMW, Bosch, Infineon, NXP, Siemens and Tesla have shown interest, but only Infineon, a German chipmaker, has confirmed it will work on it. [31]

    Why it matters — GlobalFoundries gave up on its most advanced chips in 2018. [31] One chip that can sense, compute and send radio signals could replace several separate chips in a car. [31]

16. 17

    Intel to drop a chip security feature

    Intel said on Friday it will stop including SGX, a feature that walls off secret data inside a program, after its coming Diamond Rapids server chips. [32] It will focus instead on TDX, which walls off a whole virtual computer, a computer simulated in software. [32] That lets existing programs be protected without being rewritten. [32] Intel will keep fixing SGX on current chips into the early 2030s, and says AI agents handling company data are one reason for the switch. [32]

    Why it matters — Companies that built software around SGX now have several years to move it. [32] TDX is already offered by big cloud providers, including Alibaba Cloud. [32]

17. 18

    Microsoft change locks admins out of Exchange

    Administrators of Exchange Online, Microsoft's business email service, could not reach its control page for several hours on Monday. [33] The trouble began at 09:37 UTC. [33] Microsoft said a recent configuration change caused the errors, and undoing it brought the page back. [33] It promised a first report on what went wrong within two working days. [33]

    Why it matters — While the page is down, companies cannot manage their staff's mailboxes or groups. [33] The Register lists similar Microsoft outages caused by settings changes in September, when SharePoint sites failed, and in April, when Outlook for iPhone broke. [33]

18. 19

    Windows 11 setup shortcut closed

    Microsoft has closed a shortcut that let people set up Windows 11 without a Microsoft account, The Register reports. [34] Clicking 'Learn More' on the sign-in screen used to skip straight to making a local name and password. [34] A Windows watcher known as Bob Pony reported that the fix was made on Microsoft's own servers. [34] The Home and Pro versions for personal use require an account during setup. [34]

    Why it matters — An account ties a computer to Microsoft's online services, such as OneDrive storage. [34] People who do not want that now need harder, unofficial ways round it. [34]

19. 20

    Records show how UCLA settled with Oracle

    UCLA, the University of California, Los Angeles, settled a dispute with Oracle, a big business-software company, over a system for running its finances and grants, records show. [35] The project, called Ascend, was budgeted at $120 million. UCLA stopped paying in September 2024, saying the software did not do what was promised. [35] UCLA will pay $350,000 of $1.66 million in unpaid bills, and Oracle drops the rest. [35] Oracle also gives $3.1 million in credits for future Oracle services. [35]

    • Paid by UCLA$0.35m · 21%
    • Dropped by Oracle$1.31m · 79%

    Why it matters — The credits can only be spent with Oracle, and they expire in May 2028. [35] The deal was meant to stay confidential, and became public only through a request under California's public records law. [35]

20. 21

    Copilot app now makes Office files

    Microsoft's Copilot app can now create a Word or other Office document from a request, and open it for editing while the chat carries on. [36] Other people can be invited to change the document by asking Copilot. [36] For now it reaches only customers in Microsoft's Frontier early-access group, and files are saved to OneDrive. [36] At the same time Microsoft is removing Themes by Copilot from Outlook, a feature it launched less than two years ago. [36]

    Why it matters — Businesses that keep their files in SharePoint, Microsoft's other storage system, may hold back because the feature saves to OneDrive. [36] The Register says Microsoft is quick to drop features once its attention moves on. [36]

21. 22

    Nigeria's OPay files to list in New York

    OPay, a payments and lending company based in Lagos, Nigeria, has filed to sell shares in New York, probably next month, under the name OPAY. [37] Its revenue rose 137% to $467 million in the first half of 2026, and lending now earns more than payments. [37] Earlier reports valued it at around $4 billion. [37] Standard Bank, Africa's biggest lender by assets, agreed to invest up to $200 million. [37]

    Why it matters — It would be the first US listing by a finance-app company whose customers are mostly in Nigeria. [37] Its filing warns that shares later sold in Lagos may not be swappable for the New York ones. [37]

22. 23

    US Air Force buys weather-balloon data

    WindBorne Systems, a California start-up, won a US Air Force contract worth up to $49 million for weather readings from its balloons. [38] It flies about 700 balloons around the world, and their readings also feed its own AI weather model. [38] The Air Force pays only for data it orders, and has ordered $1.7 million so far. [38] The contract was given without competing bids. [38]

    Why it matters — WindBorne says the US government chose it because no other company could gather global data the same way. [38] It is one of the first companies to feed its own measurements straight into an AI forecasting model. [38]

23. 24

    Google's Fitbit Edge can be repaired

    Google launched the Fitbit Edge on Monday, a $179.99 fitness band with a small screen. [39] It sits between the screenless Fitbit Air and the Pixel Watch. [39] It is the first Fitbit Google has made to be repaired, and it costs $20 more than the similar Fitbit Charge 6, ZDNet reports. [40] Its AI health coach, built on Google's Gemini, needs a paid Google Health Premium plan. [39] It reaches shops on 27 October. [39]

    Why it matters — The battery lasts seven days, but only two with the screen always on. [40] The main new feature, the AI coach, needs a monthly fee on top of the $179.99 band. [39]

24. 25

    Google takes a stake in Flo

    Google has invested in Flo Health, the maker of a popular period-tracking app, the two said on Monday, without saying how much. [41] From early 2027, Flo will connect to the Google Health app, and Fitbit readings such as sleep and skin temperature will feed Flo's cycle predictions. [41] They also plan joint devices, and research into early signs of menopause and conditions such as PCOS, a common hormone disorder. [41]

    Why it matters — The companies say data will move between the apps only with permission for each type, and will not be sold or used for ads. [41] Flo settled with the US Federal Trade Commission in 2021 over claims it shared users' health data with Facebook and Google. [41]

25. 26

    Abu Dhabi works on a 'health age' score

    Ultrahuman, an Indian maker of smart rings based in Bengaluru, signed a two-year agreement with the Abu Dhabi Public Health Center. [42] Together they will build a model that estimates how fast a person is ageing, from medical tests and data from wearable devices. [42] The aim is to offer it to people across the United Arab Emirates through government health apps. [42] Ultrahuman has sold about 800,000 rings. [42]

    Why it matters — It is the company's first try at running a health formula for a whole country. [42] Ultrahuman says the model will take data from any ring, watch or strap, not only its own. [42]

26. 27

    OnePlus 16 launches only in China

    OnePlus, a Chinese phone maker, launched the OnePlus 16 in China on Monday. [43] It is its first top phone since the company left the US and European markets this summer. [43] It has a 9,000mAh battery, one of the largest in any top Android phone, and a screen that refreshes 185 times a second. [43] Its main camera rises to 200 megapixels. [43]

    Why it matters — Buyers in the US and Europe can no longer buy OnePlus's best phone from the company. [43] The big battery and fast screen are aimed at people who play games on their phones. [43]

27. 28

    Sorkin's Facebook film flops

    The Social Reckoning, Aaron Sorkin's film about the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, took $5.5 million in its first weekend in US cinemas, Variety reports. [44] It cost $30 million to $42 million to make. [44] Sorkin's The Social Network, about Facebook's start, opened with $22 million. [44] Reviews have been mixed, with a score of 55% on Rotten Tomatoes. [44]

    The Social Network$22m

    The Social Reckoning$5.50m

    Why it matters — Columbia Pictures, part of Sony, stands to lose money on it. [44] A horror film, Other Mommy, took $27.5 million the same weekend. [44]

28. 29

    Chart of vanishing Russian bots misread

    After Ukrainian drones knocked out Yandex data centres, a chart citing Cloudflare data spread online showing a sharp fall in bot traffic. [45] Many read it as Russian propaganda bots going quiet. [45] Antibot4navalny, a group that tracks Russian troll networks, says it measured Yandex's own web crawlers, programs that read websites for its search engine. [45] Another chart, shared by a European Parliament member, may be AI-made: it shows data for 15 October, a date that had not come yet. [45]

    Why it matters — Most Yandex services were still down, including its payment service, Yandex Pay, the head of Yandex's finance arm said. [45] A computer scientist, Raphael Wimmer, asked politicians and journalists to stop sharing unchecked images. [45]

29. 30

    Sandi Toksvig backs a Wikipedia rival

    Sandi Toksvig, a British comedian and writer, is raising money for Mappa Mundi, a digital atlas of knowledge she is building with the University of Cambridge. [46] She told the Cheltenham literature festival this weekend that Wikipedia is mostly edited by white, middle-aged European men. [46] By the Wikimedia Foundation's own estimate, only 19% of Wikipedia's biographies are about women. [46] Wikipedia holds 65 million articles in more than 300 languages. [46]

    Why it matters — Toksvig points to Donna Strickland, a physicist whose draft Wikipedia page was turned down until she won a Nobel prize. [46] Wikipedia is the largest store of knowledge ever put together, so any rival starts far behind. [46]

30. 31

    Raspberry Pi's desktop returns for old PCs

    Raspberry Pi, the maker of cheap small computers, has released a new Raspberry Pi Desktop for ordinary PCs and older Intel Macs. [47] It is the first new version since 2022. [47] It is a light version of Linux, a free operating system, based on Debian 13. [47] Updates for the previous version ended on 31 August. [47] It runs only on 64-bit machines, and not on Apple's newer Mac chips. [47]

    Why it matters — It gives older computers a simple, free system to keep running on. [47] Existing users have to install it fresh, because the old version cannot be upgraded in place. [47]