Google Cloud sales double to $30.7bn on AI, but Alphabet's search ads slow as AI Mode answers earn less, and it will spend significantly more in 2027

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44 more stories on this beat.

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

1. 02

   Microsoft leans on OpenAI and rented computers

   Microsoft's Azure cloud sold $33.2bn in July to September, just ahead of Google Cloud's $30.7bn. [11] Microsoft also earned $10bn in those months from its deals with OpenAI, the ChatGPT maker. [15] That is nearly 11% of everything Microsoft sold in the quarter. [15] Yet the two firms now compete for the same customers, TechCrunch notes. [15] Microsoft's contracts for future work rose 73%, to $677bn. [14] Its finance chief, Amy Hood, said some computing from outside suppliers arrived late. [16] Microsoft signed a deal worth nearly $20bn with Nebius last year, for computing into the 2030s. [17]

   Why it matters — So shares in CoreWeave and Nebius, which rent AI computers to Microsoft, fell almost 5%. [17] Two days before, Microsoft offered buyouts to about 60,000 staff, a quarter of its workforce. [18]

2. 03

   Samsung's chips earn as its phones lose money

   Samsung, the South Korean maker of memory chips and phones, gave its full results on Thursday. [19] Its chip business made 106.5 trillion won of operating profit in July to September. [20] AI data centres are buying its HBM4, memory that sits beside AI processors, at higher prices. [19] Its own phone division lost 0.6 trillion won as its costs rose. [19] Its TV and home appliance unit lost 0.2 trillion won. [19] It spent 29 trillion won on new plants and equipment, more than double the quarter before. [19]

   Why it matters — Memory prices up 500% in a year raise costs for PC makers. [27] Samsung expects memory sales to keep growing as new computer chips reach the market. [19]

3. 04

   PC makers move work back to China

   HP, Asus and Acer have moved some PC making back to China, Nikkei Asia reported. [27] Memory chip prices have risen 500% in 12 months, as AI data centres buy so much. [27] Factories in China cost less and have skilled workers and suppliers close by. [27] The PC makers are hiring smaller Chinese firms such as Luxshare. [27] Foxconn, the best-known contract maker, now puts its factories into AI data centre gear. [27] The Chinese firms can also get memory from Chinese chip makers such as CXMT. [27]

   Why it matters — A supplier in Thailand says orders left two new lines that never turned a profit. [27] PC makers had left China in 2024 and 2025 to spread the risk of US tariffs. [27]

4. 05

   Apple's first touchscreen laptop

   Apple showed its first laptop with a touchscreen on Wednesday, a new MacBook Pro. [28] Steve Jobs, Apple's co-founder, once called touchscreen laptops "ergonomically terrible." [30] The 14-inch model starts at $2,899 and goes on sale on 6 November. [28] With every option, the 16-inch costs $14,549, against $10,149 for the last model. [29] The new 16TB storage option alone adds $7,000, with memory in short supply. [31]

   Why it matters — PC shipments fell 20% in July to September, the research firm IDC estimates. [28] IDC estimates Apple's own Mac shipments fell 11% in those months. [28] Touchscreens have not usually made people buy laptops, CNBC notes, so apps will decide this. [28]

5. 06

   Google's new top model goes to defenders first

   Google released Gemini 4 Carbon on Wednesday, two weeks after its last top model, Argon. [22] Google says Carbon is much better than Argon at finding software flaws and writing safe code. [21] Artificial Analysis, an outside testing firm, scored it 59, ahead of Claude Opus 5.5 at 58. [23] It also tops ExploitGym, a test of turning a flaw into a working attack. [21] For now only chosen cyber-defence firms can use it, through Google's Fairwind Program. [21] Google says wider release will follow once it has tested its safeguards. [24]

   Why it matters — Users pay per token, a small piece of text; Carbon costs $2 per million for now. [22] Google will later raise that to $4, the price of Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5. [22]

6. 07

   Chinese labs said to copy OpenAI's model

   The Information, a tech news site, made a claim about two Chinese AI firms on Wednesday. [26] It says DeepSeek and Moonshot trained their newest models on answers from OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra. [26] This is called distillation: asking a strong model many questions and learning from its answers. [25] It lets a smaller model copy some skills while spending far less money. [25] The models named are Moonshot's Kimi K3.1 Pro and DeepSeek's V4.1-Flash. [25] OpenAI, DeepSeek and Moonshot did not immediately answer Reuters' questions. [26]

   Why it matters — OpenAI said on 30 September that people tied to Moonshot ran a copying campaign in July. [25] Anthropic says its new defences cut what copiers collect from Claude by 90% to 99%. [25]

7. 08

   GitHub adds 4 million cores for AI code

   GitHub, the biggest site for storing and sharing code, is adding 4 million computer cores. [33] It recorded 7.4 billion code changes in September, five times more than a year earlier. [32] There were 1.4 billion a month in April and 2.9 billion in August. [33] AI agents, programs that write code on their own, now start over 40% of proposed changes. [33] The flood caused outages: by 7 May, GitHub had worked only about 84% of 90 days. [32]

   Why it matters — Each code change starts automatic checks and tests, so more changes need far more computers. [33] GitHub, owned by Microsoft, expects to finish moving to several Azure regions early next year. [32]

8. 09

   Malaysia seizes AI chips at its airport

   Malaysian customs seized 30 servers holding AI chips at Kuala Lumpur's main airport. [35] The shipment was worth 49.5 million ringgit, about $12.1m. [35] It was labelled as ordinary electronic parts and was passing through without a permit. [35] Officials link it to 5 cases this year by one suspected smuggling group. [35] Since last year Malaysia has required a permit to move high-end AI chips through it. [35]

   Why it matters — US rules stop advanced US AI chips going to China, the most likely destination. [34] Officials have not named the chips, their maker or where they were going. [35]

9. 10

   US officials question Nvidia's Hugging Face deal

   The US Justice Department is questioning AI chip maker Nvidia's $12.9bn purchase of Hugging Face. [62] It has asked Nvidia how the deal could affect competitors. [62] Hugging Face runs a popular open website for hosting and testing AI models. [62] When the deal was announced in September, Nvidia said 18 million people used Hugging Face. [62] They share at least 3 million models and 500,000 datasets there, Nvidia said. [62] Reuters first reported the inquiry on Wednesday, and CNBC confirmed it with a person familiar. [62]

   Why it matters — Hugging Face also sells tools to firms building closed AI, including chip companies. [62] Nvidia's $20bn deal for Groq's assets last year also drew the department's scrutiny. [62]

10. 11

    Nvidia's own processors arrive in Oracle's cloud

    Oracle's cloud began renting out Nvidia's new Vera processors on their own, the firms said Tuesday. [43] Vera is a CPU, the main processor that runs a computer's ordinary work. [43] It is Nvidia's first push to sell its processors alone to a giant cloud company. [43] Oracle also offers Vera Rubin racks, which pair the processors with Nvidia's AI chips. [43] Google Cloud made Vera Rubin racks generally available the week before. [43]

    Why it matters — Most cloud processors today use x86 designs, the kind Intel and AMD make. [43] So Vera puts Nvidia up against Intel and AMD for ordinary computing too. [43]

11. 12

    Waymo passes 500,000 rides a week

    Waymo, Alphabet's driverless taxi company, now gives more than 500,000 paid rides a week. [2] It runs in 15 US metro areas and aims for 1 million weekly rides by December. [2] Pichai said it plans to start in Canada, Germany, Singapore and Spain. [13] Alphabet's Other Bets unit, which includes Waymo, had sales of $372m in the quarter. [13]

    Why it matters — The unit lost more than $2bn in those three months. [13] Its sales are 0.3% of Alphabet's total, while Alphabet pours cash into its growth. [13]

12. 13

    New York sets rules for chatbots and children

    New York's governor, Kathy Hochul, signed a law to protect children from AI chatbots. [46] AI companies must check users' ages, with at least one way that needs no government ID. [46] With children, a chatbot may not pretend to be a real person or claim a romance. [46] It also may not push children to keep secrets from their parents. [46] Firms that break the law face fines of up to $25,000 for each breach. [46]

    Why it matters — People will be able to send complaints to New York's attorney general through a website. [46] In Australia, lawmakers moved a similar ban forward this week. [47]

13. 14

    Australia moves to ban chatbot intimacy

    Australia's lower house passed a "digital duty of care" bill on Wednesday. [47] It would ban AI chatbots that seek to build "emotional intimacy" with users. [47] Prime Minister Anthony Albanese warned that children treat chatbots as their "best friend". [47] The rules would cover social media, games, apps and chatbots. [47] Social media firms would also have to let users switch off suggested posts. [47]

    Why it matters — Australia's Senate debates it next; the Greens back it and the opposition Coalition does not. [47]

14. 15

    xAI offers to buy homes near its turbines

    Agents for xAI, Elon Musk's AI company, are offering to buy homes in Southaven, Mississippi. [48] Owners must agree not to join a lawsuit over noise from xAI's power plant. [48] A realtor spoke of a target of 418 homes; 18 owners have agreed so far. [48] The plant runs 69 temporary gas turbines that power xAI's data centres nearby. [48] xAI has built three data centres around Memphis and Southaven since July 2024. [48]

    Why it matters — Three residents sued in June over noise and vibration that wakes them at night. [48] xAI denies the claims and did not answer the Guardian's questions about the homes. [48]

15. 16

    Fujifilm will make five times more data tape

    Fujifilm, the Japanese film and materials company, will make 5 times more data tape. [39] It will spend 10 billion yen, about $64m, over two years at its Odawara plant. [38] Tape is old, but it holds huge amounts of data cheaply for years. [39] Cartridges can be kept offline, out of reach of ransomware, attacks that lock data for money. [39] Its newest cartridge holds up to 40TB. [39]

    Why it matters — Fujifilm says AI training and use are creating far more data that firms must keep. [38] Tape sales dipped in 2025, so the bigger factory is a bet on AI. [38]

16. 17

    Amazon tells engineers to stop tokenmaxxing

    Amazon told its engineers on Tuesday to stop using AI just to look busy. [41] Some staff were burning extra tokens, AI's units of text, to look good on dashboards. [41] The practice is called "tokenmaxxing". [41] Its note said such usage counts are "deeply flawed" when cut off from real results. [41] Wasted tokens raise computing bills and make software more complex, the note said. [41]

    Why it matters — Amazon will judge work by long-term results for customers instead. [41] The note came from Terk Terkowitz, an Amazon vice-president and senior engineer. [40]

17. 18

    Anthropic shows firms what AI spending buys

    Anthropic, the maker of the Claude AI, launched reports showing companies what their AI spending buys. [44] Managers can see what a team made, what it cost, and where work broke down. [44] Pooled budgets let a group share one monthly spending limit. [45] Anthropic says the reports should not be used to judge individual workers. [45]

    Why it matters — Most of the biggest US companies are not yet seeing major gains from AI, TechCrunch reports. [44] Anthropic is preparing to sell shares to the public and needs big customers to keep spending. [45]

18. 19

    Anthropic says courts should block risky AI

    Anthropic told California's governor, Gavin Newsom, that courts should be able to block risky AI models. [74] Its letter, dated 15 October, answers a working group Newsom set up in September. [74] Outside testers would report risks to the state's top lawyer, the attorney general. [74] The attorney general could then ask a court to pause a model. [74] OpenAI's own letter, on 20 October, backed shutdown controls but not court orders. [74]

    Why it matters — California is looking at stronger AI safety rules, and both labs sent their ideas. [74]

19. 20

    FCC blocks TP-Link's new routers again

    The FCC, the US agency that approves radio gear, rebuffed TP-Link's Wi-Fi 8 routers again. [49] TP-Link is a big maker of home Wi-Fi routers. [49] The FCC said on 15 October that TP-Link gave false or incorrect details on 4 routers. [49] The FCC said 3 of the 4 also used more radio power than allowed. [49]

    Why it matters — US officials are already wary of TP-Link's past ties, Tom's Hardware says. [49] So any mistake in its paperwork weighs more against it. [49]

20. 21

    ServiceNow raises its AI sales target

    ServiceNow, whose software big firms use to run IT and staff requests, reported Wednesday. [36] Its subscription sales rose 21%, to $3,988 million. [36] It raised its target for new yearly AI contracts to $1.7bn, from $1bn in January. [36] It also widened a deal with OpenAI, starting with a ServiceNow add-on for ChatGPT. [36]

    Why it matters — Its forecast for next quarter's subscriptions only matched what analysts expected. [37] Its shares fell 15% after hours following the results. [37]

21. 22

    Amazon's new Echo answers on the device

    Amazon showed five new Alexa devices on Wednesday, including a photo frame and an alarm clock. [50] The new Echo Dot has Amazon's AZ3 chip, which handles voice on the speaker itself. [51] So spoken commands no longer travel to a data centre and back, Amazon says. [51] The Dot also works as an eero Wi-Fi extender, adding up to 1,000 feet of signal. [51] The $250 Echo Studio adds a camera that can watch a room while owners are away. [53]

    Why it matters — The same day, Amazon cut up to 250 jobs in its devices unit, Reuters reported. [52] Amazon has cut more than 57,000 office jobs since 2022, about 16% of its office staff. [52]

22. 23

    Opera runs AI inside the browser

    Opera, a web browser, will ship AI models that run on the user's own computer. [54] Questions and data then stay on the machine instead of going to a company's servers. [54] It uses WebAI, a proposed web standard, in an early test of Opera One. [55] Models include Google's Gemma and Apple's own model on newer Macs. [55]

    Why it matters — Opera says builders can then add AI without paying for every request. [54] Windows computers with Arm chips cannot run it yet. [55]

23. 24

    Nvidia's free model turns speech into text

    Nvidia released a free model that writes down speech in many languages. [56] Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe works in up to 40 languages, on recordings up to an hour. [56] It can tell up to 8 speakers apart, Nvidia says. [56] At 30 billion parameters, the settings a model learns, it runs on a single chip. [56]

    Why it matters — That chip can be in a laptop or a robot, not only a data centre. [56] It is aimed at business meetings and medical notes, two common uses of AI at work. [56]

24. 25

    Google opens Gemini to other apps

    Google opened a way for any business to link its app to Gemini and Google Search. [57] Users can already, for example, design a flyer with Canva from inside Gemini. [57] US developers can now try the Connected Apps Platform in a test version. [57]

    Why it matters — The idea is that people use services through their AI helper instead of each app. [57] ChatGPT and Meta's Muse offer similar links. [57]

25. 26

    Chrome fills forms from your Gmail

    Google's Chrome browser can now fill in online forms with details found in the user's Gmail. [58] It might suggest a flight number, an order number or a card number. [58] It stays off unless users switch it on, and sensitive data is encrypted, Google says. [58] It is rolling out in the US on computers and in Gemini in Chrome on phones. [58]

    Why it matters — TechCrunch says it gives users another reason to keep using Google's browser. [58]

26. 27

    Senators question Meta over its glasses

    On Wednesday two US senators, Ron Wyden and Edward Markey, wrote to Meta about its glasses. [61] They cite 404 Media's 2025 report on men filming massage parlour workers with the glasses. [61] The senators say Meta's own rules let images seen by the glasses' AI train AI. [61] The senators say people filmed by others never agreed to that use. [61]

    Why it matters — Their letter asks Meta to answer for what happens to images of bystanders. [61]

27. 28

    Unions and voters push for AI rules

    The AFL-CIO, a federation of US trade unions, is drafting its own AI bill. [71] Its president, Liz Shuler, says it will cover worker protections and privacy. [71] It hopes the next US Congress will pass it. [71] A Republican pollster's survey of about 500 voters in Ohio and Iowa backed AI safety rules. [72] Ten ideas, such as banning chatbots for children, each won over 70% support. [72]

    Why it matters — Those voters differ from President Trump, who wants AI largely free of rules. [72]

28. 29

    AI costs more in less common languages

    AI models need more tokens, small pieces of text, for some languages than for English. [69] The Coalition for Language Equity in AI Research tested this, Rest of World reports. [69] Among the 20 biggest web languages, less common ones used 1.5 to 5 times more tokens. [69] Across 200 languages, one model used up to 17 times more. [69]

    Why it matters — Most AI firms charge per token, so those speakers pay more for the same help. [69] More tokens also mean slower answers. [69]

29. 30

    A group says Intel's tax breaks cost schools

    Good Jobs First, a group that tracks public money given to companies, criticised Intel's tax breaks. [70] It says the breaks cost communities in Oregon and New Mexico over $1.2bn since 2015. [70] Schools paid for by those local governments bore most of the loss, it says. [70] Intel, the US chip maker, has laid off thousands of workers in those places. [70]

    Why it matters — The breaks continue long after Intel set up its chip plants there, the group says. [70]

30. 31

    Reddit opens on a For You feed

    Reddit, the forum site, now opens on a "For You" feed chosen by its software. [60] A second "Following" feed shows only posts from groups users have joined. [59] Until now Reddit mixed suggested posts into one main feed with users' own groups. [60] After the first time, the app opens on whichever feed the user last used. [60] TikTok made this kind of "For You" feed popular. [59] Instagram, X, Threads and Facebook already lead with such recommendation feeds. [59] The new feeds reach Reddit users around the world over the next few weeks. [59]

    Why it matters — Reddit's boss, Steve Huffman, wants casual users to come back more often. [60] Some testers were already frustrated by the change. [59]

31. 32

    A cloud built for AI agents

    Quake AI, a new cloud company, expects its main customers to be AI agents, not people. [67] It runs 22,000 Nvidia graphics chips, the kind AI runs on. [67] It formed after Rumble, a US video site, bought the German data centre firm Northern Data. [67]

    Why it matters — Quake AI wants agents to find and rent its computers on their own. [67] Other such clouds build full sets of services around their chips instead. [67]

32. 33

    A quantum firm's first product is for AI

    PsiQuantum, which builds quantum computers that use light, is showing its first product. [73] It is not a quantum computer but a switch that steers light signals between AI chips. [73] Data centres are moving from copper wires to glass fibre, because copper limits speed. [73] Buyers care most about how much light the switch loses, measured in decibels. [73]

    Why it matters — PsiQuantum has worked for a decade on quantum computers, and this switch is its first product. [73]

33. 34

    Flock puts cameras back against a city's order

    Flock, which sells cameras that read car number plates, reinstalled two in Dayton, Minnesota. [81] Dayton's council had suspended its Flock cameras on 25 August over privacy worries. [81] The city says it told Flock on 18 September to do no more work. [81] Flock reinstalled the cameras anyway, the city says. [81]

    Why it matters — Residents complained after spotting the two cameras. [81]

34. 35

    An Anthropic manager drops coding tests

    Felix Rieseberg, a manager at Anthropic, has stopped giving job candidates coding tests. [64] He says Claude, Anthropic's AI, now does small coding tests better than people. [64] He called such tests a weak but useful guide to who would do well. [64]

    Why it matters — Jaana Dogan, a Google engineer, said she would rather see how people use coding agents. [64] Most of the tech industry is moving more cautiously, the Register says. [64]

35. 36

    An Edge update breaks Outlook attachments

    An update to Microsoft's Edge browser stopped some New Outlook users opening email attachments. [65] Microsoft said the update "unintentionally enabled an unnecessary configuration." [65] It began rolling out a fix on Thursday and expects it to take 12 hours. [65] Until then, users can save an attachment first and open it by hand. [65]

    Why it matters — The Register says it shows how tightly Microsoft's products are tied together. [65]

36. 37

    Lovable opens a London office

    Lovable, a Swedish company whose AI builds apps, opened its first London office on Thursday. [63] People describe the app or website they want in plain words, and Lovable's AI builds it. [63] About 70 people already work there, and it plans 100 by the end of the year. [63] The London team covers AI research, security, sales and finance. [63] Users have made more than 70 million projects with Lovable, it says. [63] At Huel, a meal-replacement brand, about 300 staff built over 200 internal tools with it. [63] Lovable raised $400m in August, at a value of $13.3bn. [63]

    Why it matters — Britain is Lovable's 3rd-largest market by paying users. [63] The office puts it closer to users and to people it can hire, it says. [63]

37. 38

    Pudu opens its European headquarters

    Pudu Robotics, a Chinese maker of delivery and cleaning robots, opened its European headquarters. [75] The site is in Neuss, near Dusseldorf in Germany, with a showroom and a repair centre. [75] Pudu says it has shipped more than 130,000 machines to over 85 countries and regions. [75]

    Why it matters — It now sells in more than 20 European countries. [75]

38. 39

    A used AI supercomputer goes on eBay

    Core 4 Solutions, an IT seller, listed a used AI supercomputer on eBay for $59.7m. [68] It has 300 racks holding 9,600 Nvidia A100 chips and 4,200 AMD processors. [68] Together the processors have 268,800 cores and about 1.4 petabytes of memory. [68] The A100, an Nvidia AI chip, has since been followed by newer designs such as Blackwell. [68] New Nvidia racks cost up to $7.8m each. [68] Tom's Hardware puts the main parts alone at about $28.1m. [68]

    Why it matters — Older A100 chips are still useful for much AI and science work, Tom's Hardware notes. [68] A buyer would also skip the long waits for Nvidia's newest AI hardware. [68]

39. 40

    Xreal's new glasses run Android XR

    Xreal launched Aura on Wednesday, smart glasses that run Google's Android XR software. [76] They are wired to a phone-like box that does the computing. [76] The glasses show apps and games in front of the wearer's eyes. [76] At 95 grams, they weigh more than Meta's display glasses at 69 grams. [76] The 256GB model costs $1,279, or $1,099 until December. [76] It is on sale in the US, Canada, Japan and South Korea. [76] Google relies on partners such as Samsung and Xreal to make Android XR devices. [76]

    Why it matters — Meta is pushing its own smart glasses, and Apple and Google want to compete. [76] In May, Xreal's boss, Chi Xu, said everyone making smart glasses is losing money. [76]

40. 41

    OpenAI's Dot agent takes text messages

    OpenAI now lets some paying US users text their Dot, an AI agent that does tasks. [80] OpenAI launched Dot agents late last month. [80] Users can send texts, photos or voice notes, and the Dot texts back with updates. [80] It works through iMessage or RCS, the messaging systems on phones. [80] OpenAI says only the owner can text a Dot, and it texts only its owner. [80] What a Dot remembers is shared between ChatGPT and the texts. [80] Anthropic launched a rival agent, Claude Duet, last week, with a US waiting list. [80]

    Why it matters — So the agent can now reach users first, instead of waiting to be opened. [80]

41. 42

    TikTok starts a restaurant guide

    TikTok launched "Must Eat" on Wednesday, a guide to restaurants popular on the app. [79] It draws on more than 40 million posts and comments from across the US. [79] Users can browse by city and filter by cuisine, price, rating and place. [79] Picks are split into "Everyday Eats" and "Elevated Dining" for special nights out. [79] Some restaurants can be booked straight through TikTok, using OpenTable. [79] It starts in New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco. [79]

    Why it matters — That puts TikTok up against Yelp and Google Maps for finding places to eat. [79] Restaurants that go viral on TikTok already win new customers. [79]

42. 43

    Readwise starts selling ebooks

    Readwise, known for saving reading highlights, launched Readwise Books, a place to buy and read ebooks. [78] It takes on Amazon's Kindle and Kobo. [78] Its founders call it "Strava for reading", tracking how long and how fast people read. [78] Friends can see each other's reading, and the home page shows what others are reading. [78] Readwise spent years making deals to sell books from all five major US publishers. [78] It is in a test version, for invited users and existing subscribers. [78]

    Why it matters — Switching is hard, because many readers already own lots of Kindle books. [78] Co-founder Daniel Doyon hopes worry about AI will bring people back to deeper reading. [78]

43. 44

    Akai opens its keyboard's code to modders

    Akai, which makes music machines, will open the code of its MPC Sample Key keyboard. [77] The 37-key machine has not been formally announced yet. [77] Hobbyists with early access are already adding sounds through vibe coding, asking AI to write code. [77]

    Why it matters — Akai is giving modders early access instead of fighting them. [77]

44. 45

    Signs of a new Raspberry Pi Zero

    Code from Raspberry Pi, the maker of cheap small computers, names two unreleased boards. [66] A merged change was titled "Add device tree for Pi Zero 3 W and Pi 4A". [66] The Pi Zero 2 W it would replace launched five years ago with 512MB of memory. [66]

    Why it matters — The new board may use the faster chip from the Pi 4, Phoronix reports. [66]