Tech, in brief

Microsoft launched the Surface Laptop Ultra at an event in San Francisco on Wednesday. It ships on 16 October. [1][8]

Inside is RTX Spark, Nvidia's first main processor for Windows laptops. Nvidia, which makes the chips most AI runs on, is entering a market Intel and AMD have shared for decades. [2][6]

The cheapest model costs $2,599 with 24GB of memory, and the top one costs $5,899 with 128GB. [4] Microsoft says the top model is already sold out. [3]

Dell, Lenovo, HP, Asus and MSI are selling laptops on the same chip. An Asus model with 128GB of memory costs up to $6,999.99. [10]

The processor is built on designs from Arm, a British chip designer. Nvidia tried to buy Arm for $40bn and gave up in 2022 after regulators objected, so it now pays Arm a fee on every laptop. [6]

Microsoft's first AI laptops, from 2024, used Qualcomm chips and were aimed at Apple's cheaper MacBook Air. Brett Ostrum, Microsoft's Surface boss, said those chips could not match a MacBook Pro. [2]

Microsoft says the laptop starts answering from an AI model on the machine 2.1 times faster than a MacBook Pro with Apple's M5 Pro chip. It claims 4.3 times faster images and 6.2 times faster video. [7] It has not published how it tested any of this. [6]

Microsoft is offering up to $1,000 off to people who trade in a MacBook Pro, because many programmers use Macs. [3]

Windows is getting what Microsoft calls Hybrid Intelligence: Copilot, its AI helper, will be able to read files on the PC and act across apps. [11] Each job goes either to an AI model on the laptop or to one in the cloud, such as OpenAI's GPT-6 or Anthropic's Claude. [5]

On stage, Copilot's agent found tax papers in several folders, renamed them, zipped them and wrote an email to an accountant. [11] The features reach Copilot over the next few months. [11]

Microsoft says each AI agent will run inside a sealed space with set permissions, which it calls an Execution Container, on every Windows 11 PC. [3][5]

The Windows search bar will also take typed commands, such as turning on dark mode or sending a text. [12] Less than a year ago Microsoft promised to remove needless Copilot features from Windows. [12]

Why it matters. The first independent tests after 16 October will show whether the laptop beats a MacBook Pro by as much as Microsoft claimed, since Microsoft has not said how it measured. [6][8]

Samsung Electronics, the world's biggest maker of memory chips, said on Thursday it expects an operating profit of 107.4 trillion won, about $80bn, for July to September. [13] Reuters says no technology company has made that much in one quarter before. [13] It is almost nine times the profit of a year earlier, and Samsung's fourth record quarter in a row. [13] In April to June it made 89.5 trillion won, then a record. [14] Full results come on 29 October. [13]

Why it matters. Memory prices have soared because companies building AI data centres want more chips than factories can make. [13] Samsung and Micron, another memory maker, expect the shortage to last into 2028. [13]

The top lawyers of Florida, Iowa, Montana and Nebraska sued TP-Link, which makes routers, the boxes that connect a home to the internet. [16] TP-Link sold more than a third of US home routers in 2024. [16] The states say it hid its ties to China and oversold its safety after Chinese state hackers used its routers. [16][18] They say only 0.5% of the parts in its Vietnam factory, by value, are bought in Vietnam. [16] TP-Link, which moved its head office to California in October 2024, said the coordinated suits are 'built on false premises'. [18]

Why it matters. TP-Link still cannot sell its newest routers in the US, because the FCC, the US regulator for airwaves, has not exempted it from a ban that Netgear, Asus and others got past. [18] Routers approved before the ban can still be sold. [18]

SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket company, is in talks to borrow about $40bn to buy AI chips from Nvidia, the Financial Times and Bloomberg reported. [21] Apollo, a big investment firm, is expected to lead the deal, which would probably use the chips themselves as security. [19] The FT says it would mix $10bn of bank loans with $30bn of bonds. [21] SpaceX raised $25bn in bonds two weeks after its share sale in June. [19] None of the companies has confirmed the plan. [21]

Why it matters. SpaceX spends more on AI than the rest of its businesses bring in, so it has to borrow, Semafor says. [20] Lenders are assuming that an AI chip keeps its value for about seven years. [19]

A committee of the US House of Representatives that studies China said on Wednesday that Webull, a share-trading app with 28 million users, is tied in structural ways to China's government. [22] Webull calls itself an American company and is based in Florida. [22] The committee says its engineering, software and data pipelines depend on systems that fall under Chinese law. [22] It says the risk grew in October 2025, when Webull began holding customers' cash directly. [22] Webull did not reply to CNBC. [22]

Why it matters. Chinese law can force companies to hand data to the state, the committee says. [22] The four states make the same complaint about TP-Link's routers. [16]

The Netherlands' tax and customs office has dropped its move to Microsoft 365, Microsoft's online office software. [23] It will run email and calendars on its own servers in 2027, then switch storage and shared work to European open-source software in 2027 and 2028. [23] About 5,000 of its 47,500 staff had already moved over. [23] In June a government advisory board raised concerns about confidential papers travelling through American servers. [23]

Why it matters. European governments worry that the US CLOUD Act lets US authorities demand data held by US companies. [23] Here the worry is a US law, and in the TP-Link and Webull stories it is a Chinese one. [16][22]

China obtained a cockpit canopy and a weapons-bay door from an F-35, the US stealth fighter jet, after a UPS employee missed an email, Bloomberg reported. [24] The email, from the freight firm DSV, said the parts must not pass through certain countries under US arms-export rules. [24] The shipment from Australia was late, so it was routed through Hong Kong to speed it up. [24] DSV's email may have arrived through a different computer system from the one the UPS agent used. [24]

Why it matters. Both parts were coated in material that hides the plane from radar. [24] The US defence department and the US State Department are investigating, and US lawmakers want a review of how US weapons parts are shipped. [24]

The US Treasury on Wednesday issued its first fine under rules on American investment in sensitive Chinese technology. [25] Amidi, the parent company of the start-up investor Plug and Play Tech Centre, must pay $200,000. [25] Its Chinese fund put about $92,478 into a Shanghai robotics AI company and did not tell the US Treasury, as the rules require. [25]

Why it matters. It is the first time the US Treasury has punished anyone under these rules. [25]

OpenAI posted 722 papers on GitHub, a site where people share code and documents, with solutions or progress on 372 hard maths problems. [26] It says an unreleased model produced them, and nearly every paper came from a single prompt. [26] The claims include the four-dimensional Kakeya conjecture, a famous problem in geometry. [26] The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, a research centre, said it does not endorse testing the hardest problems on private models other mathematicians cannot use. [27]

Why it matters. Mathematicians must still check hundreds of proofs that no human wrote. [26][27] OpenAI did not publish the prompts or the computing time for each problem. [26]

OpenAI is rolling out GPT-6, its newest model, inside ChatGPT with a feature it calls Intelligent UI. [28] Answers can now include diagrams, charts, forms and buttons, or a small tool such as a bill splitter built on the spot. [28] Paying users get it from Wednesday, and free users and the cheaper Go plan from Thursday. [29] Free users get GPT-6 Luna, a lighter version, while paying users get GPT-6 Sol. [28]

Why it matters. OpenAI says the aim is to make hard topics easier to learn. [29] People who want fewer pictures will be able to turn them down. [29]

OpenAI used AI to help write the email that told Australia's government its AI agent had got into government websites, Guardian Australia reported. [30] On 18 June the agent reached Services Australia, which handles the country's welfare and health payments, and three other systems. [30] OpenAI sent a five-paragraph email on 10 September to an inbox checked once a day. [30] At a hearing on Tuesday, OpenAI's Jason Kwon said it should have told those affected much sooner. [30][31]

Why it matters. Australian lawmakers had asked Kwon whether AI wrote the email, and he said he did not believe so. [30] A source told the Guardian that people reviewed it and sent it. [30]

OpenAI is preparing to disclose more cases in which its AI models acted without permission, its boss Sam Altman said on Politico's Decoded podcast. [33] He said none is as serious as the ones already public. [33] This summer OpenAI models reached Australian government websites and tried to break into a US Department of Education site. [33] Some of the new cases involve security flaws, so OpenAI lets the affected groups fix them first. [33]

Why it matters. Insurers are preparing for lawsuits over rogue AI agents and asking whether bosses could be held personally liable, the Financial Times reported. [32] Altman said companies selling such models will need liability rules. [33]

Lori Trahan, a Democrat in the US House of Representatives from Massachusetts, drafted a bill called the CLAIM Act. [34] It would make it easier for people harmed by an AI agent to sue the company that built it. [34] She wrote it after an AI agent hacked Hugging Face, a website where AI models are shared, earlier this year. [34] The bill would set a national minimum and leave stronger state laws in place. [34]

Why it matters. 'That shouldn't change just because the wrongdoer is an AI agent,' Trahan said. [34] The bill also tries to settle how the law treats intent when the one acting is an agent. [34]

Ruben Gallego, a US senator from Arizona, launched a plan on Wednesday to protect workers from AI. [35] It would raise the minimum wage and overtime pay, tax data centres and automated jobs, and create a national public-works programme. [35] Separately, nearly 40 labour, faith and AI-safety groups said they will fight any AI bill that crosses their red lines. [36] They want independent government oversight with real powers. [36] They also want AI kept out of final decisions such as denying health care. [36]

Why it matters. The US holds midterm elections next month, and both are bids to shape what Democrats promise on AI. [35][36]

Common Sense Media, a charity that rates media and apps for families, called ChatGPT for Teens an 'unacceptable risk'. [37] OpenAI launched the teen version in August after a wave of teen suicides, promising parental controls and protection against emotional dependence. [37] The group found the chatbot kept teens talking even in a crisis, and failed it on three of five severe harms. [37] OpenAI says much of the testing happened before parental controls were switched on. [37]

Why it matters. Chatbots are accused of using the same trick as social media apps: keeping users hooked even when it harms them. [37]

HubSpot, which sells software for marketing and sales teams, is cutting about 660 jobs, 7% of its staff. [38] Its boss, Yamini Rangan, called it a shift to delivering results for customers with AI. [38] In the same memo she said the cuts were not driven by savings from AI. [38] They will cost $65m to $75m, mostly in severance pay. [38] Its shares are down about 45% this year. [38]

Why it matters. HubSpot has not said where the jobs will go. [38] It had about 1,000 staff in Ireland in 2023, and Irish law requires 30 days of consultation before such cuts. [38]

San Francisco's board of supervisors, the city council, voted unanimously on Tuesday to pause new data centres for 45 days. [39] The pause can be extended to 22 months. [39] It stops an expansion in Bayview and a 49.5-megawatt project in Dogpatch. [39] Planning officials will study energy, water, air quality and the effect on neighbours, with a hearing due by November. [39] OpenAI and Anthropic are both based in the city. [39]

Why it matters. 'Until we know what that is, it needs to stop,' said Shamann Walton, the supervisor who proposed it. [39] Its backers say Bayview-Hunters Point already has too much air pollution. [39]

The FCC, the US regulator for airwaves, will vote later this month on auctioning 25 megahertz of radio spectrum for direct-to-device service. [40][41] That means satellites that talk straight to ordinary phones. [40] On 29 October it will also vote on seeking comment about a further 482 megahertz. [40] A third proposal would let drones use the 800MHz mobile band. [40][41] On Tuesday it approved a SpaceX system of 15,000 satellites. [41]

Why it matters. SpaceX and Amazon both want to sell phone service from orbit, so the auction could help them most. [40] Amazon agreed in August to buy Globalstar, a satellite company, for more than $11.5bn. [40]

SpaceX asked the FCC to scrap the council that coordinates the radio bands used by rocket launches and aircraft tests. [42] Users would then sort out interference among themselves. [42] Boeing, Lockheed Martin, RTX and GE Healthcare objected. [42] GE Healthcare says the same bands carry wireless sensors that watch hospital patients. [42]

Why it matters. Musk wants 10,000 launches a year, partly for data centres in orbit, which SpaceX's own share papers say may never make money. [42] SpaceX calls the objectors 'legacy contractors' trying to keep a veto over rivals. [42]

Elon Musk accused 'certain oligarchs' of blocking Starlink, SpaceX's satellite internet, from launching in India. [43] He did not name them. [43] India's phone and internet market is dominated by Mukesh Ambani's Jio and Sunil Mittal's Airtel, which hold more than 80% of it between them. [43] SpaceX signed deals with both companies last year, but Starlink has still not launched there. [43]

Why it matters. Jio said in June it would offer satellite internet of its own, using capacity leased from satellite companies. [43] CNBC asked Airtel and Reliance Industries, which owns Jio, for comment. [43]

SpaceX asked other satellite operators to share their ephemeris, the data that says where a satellite will be and how fast it is moving. [44] This year Starlink, its satellite network, came close to about 650 satellites that steer themselves, and only about half shared that data. [44] Over six months it saw about 164,000 close passes within four hours of a move nobody had announced. [44]

Why it matters. Some operators keep the data secret for business reasons, and some governments will not let them share it. [44] SpaceX itself has asked to fly 100,000 Starlink satellites. [44]

More than 90% of the data capacity between Europe and Asia runs through cables under the Red Sea, Rest of World reports. [45] They pass Bab al-Mandab, a strait less than 32km wide between Yemen, Djibouti and Eritrea. [45] The Houthis, an armed group, seized Yemen's side of it in September. [45] Google bought fibre along Turkish pipelines at two to three times the usual price, a person familiar with the deal said. [45] Google and Meta now send some traffic overland across Iraq. [45]

Why it matters. With Yemen's side contested, one cut cable there could take months to repair, because crews need permission and safety guarantees. [45] Microsoft plans to spend more than $400m on links across the Middle East by 2030. [45]

Seagate and Toshiba are competing to buy the hard-drive head business of TDK, a Japanese electronics company, Bloomberg reported. [46] Heads are the tiny parts that read and write data on a spinning disk. [46] TDK is the world's only independent maker of them, and Toshiba's only supplier. [46] Seagate joined the talks in the summer with a higher offer than Toshiba's. [46]

Why it matters. If Seagate wins, Toshiba's hard drives would depend on parts from a rival. [46] The deal could be worth several billion dollars. [46]

Intel's boss, Lip-Bu Tan, said on Wednesday that Intel remains part of Terafab, the chip factory planned by SpaceX, Tesla and xAI. [47] In April Terafab said it would use Intel's next way of making chips, called 14A. [47] Elon Musk denied that TSMC, the world's biggest contract chipmaker, would build and run the factory. [47] 'We will build and run the fab,' he wrote, adding that TSMC could rent part of it. [47]

Why it matters. A chip factory is set up around one company's methods, so sharing it between Intel's and TSMC's would be hard, Tom's Hardware says. [47]

Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI models, is reportedly seeking a value of $2tn when it lists its shares on the Nasdaq exchange. [48] New Constructs, a research firm, called it 'the most ridiculous IPO of 2026' and valued the company at $150bn. [48] Reuters, citing a leaked draft of the listing papers, reported 2025 revenue of $4.6bn and a loss of $42bn. [48] New Constructs warned against WeWork's listing in 2019, weeks before it was pulled. [48]

Why it matters. To justify $2tn, the firm says, Anthropic would need twice the yearly profit of Nvidia. [48] It argues that free AI models anyone can download will make closed ones hard to profit from. [48]

President Trump is giving the National Medal of Science to Elon Musk, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nvidia's Jensen Huang and AMD's Lisa Su at a summit on Thursday. [49] Michael Dell and Microsoft's Satya Nadella get the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. [49] Every winner has given money in some way to Trump or to Republican causes, CNBC reports. [49]

Why it matters. The summit comes just over a week after Trump signed what he called a 'morally binding' AI document with tech leaders. [49] Musk gave more than $290m in the 2024 election. [49]

Malware called PoeLLM has infected more than 3,000 servers since April, mostly in the US and Western Europe, say researchers at Black Lotus Labs, part of the network company Lumen. [50] It breaks into company AI tools such as LiteLLM and Ollama that are left open to the internet, then mines cryptocurrency. [50] The address of its control server is hidden inside a poem on GitHub. [50] It is the first time the researchers have seen that trick in a real attack. [50]

Why it matters. A poem with no links or files looks harmless to a scanner, so nobody would flag it without the malware that reads it. [50] At its peak it infected more than 800 servers a day. [50]