Tech, in brief

OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT, told investors its sales were running at about $50bn a year at the end of September. [1] The Financial Times, a British business paper, reported it first, and CNBC confirmed it. [1]

Late last month several outlets reported a figure near $68bn to $70bn, built from information shared with OpenAI's investors. [2][1]

The two numbers count different things. A person who knows the figures told CNBC the $68bn included gross sales made by OpenAI's partners. [1]

OpenAI's own investors built the bigger number to compare it with Anthropic, OpenAI's closest rival, which counts sales its cloud partners make for it. [2]

Anthropic told investors in August that its yearly rate had reached $65bn at the end of July. [1]

Both figures are yearly rates, or annualised revenue: how fast a company is selling now, stretched over twelve months. Neither is what a company earned in a year. [1]

OpenAI also told investors its yearly rate grew 77% in its third quarter, and its sales to businesses grew 107%. [1]

Shares in companies that build and rent AI computers fell on Thursday. CoreWeave dropped nearly 8%, Oracle nearly 6%, Intel 5% and Nvidia 3%. [1][3]

The wider S&P 500 index of big US companies fell 0.5%, its second down day in a row. [3]

OpenAI is valued at $852bn and raised $122bn in March. Its leaked 2025 accounts showed about $13bn in sales and higher spending. [2][1]

On Friday Firmus, an Australian builder of AI data centres backed by Nvidia, called off its share sale, saying the terms did not reflect its worth. [4][5]

Reports of the Firmus sale give different sizes. The Guardian gave a $44bn value and a $7bn raise, and CNBC gave $30.6bn and $5bn. [5][4]

Why it matters. Watch whether OpenAI or Anthropic publishes its sales under the other company's rule before their planned listings. Until one does, their figures cannot be set side by side. [1][2]

The US Labor Department said on Thursday it will not accept or process green-card applications from Microsoft, Adobe and six IT services firms. [7] The six are Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini. [18] A green card lets a foreign worker stay in the US for good, and this is the employer's first step. [19] Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling cited fraud and said the firms had asked for almost 3 million foreign workers since 2009. [20] Microsoft said 80% of its 6,000 H-1B work-visa applications last year were for people it already employed. [18]

Why it matters. Thousands of foreign tech workers lose a common path to stay through these employers, though current visa holders do not appear to be directly affected. [7] NASSCOM, India's tech industry body, says few staff at Indian firms move from work visas to green cards this way. [21]

SpaceX agreed on Thursday to buy airwaves in the 800 MHz band across the US from Grain Management, a firm that owns telecoms assets. [22] SpaceX says these low-band airwaves let its signal reach through walls and into buildings. [23] SpaceX says the deal lets Starlink Mobile, its phone service, become a major US carrier. [22] T-Mobile fell 6%, AT&T almost 7% and Verizon more than 6% after the news. [3] The Federal Communications Commission, the US telecoms regulator, must approve it. [22]

Why it matters. SpaceX now competes with the three big US phone companies instead of working with them. [22] An analyst said it is still little spectrum, and SpaceX would need ground towers for cities. [22]

Drones started a fire at a data centre in Sasovo, Russia, run by Yandex, the country's biggest search and AI company. [15] Yandex stopped all work at the site, which holds tens of thousands of servers and two of its three supercomputers. [24] Users reported trouble with Yandex Mail, Disk and Pay, and 58,268 complaints were logged in a day. [16] Yandex says it cannot yet tell whether the equipment can be saved. [24] Ukraine's president said Ukraine answers attacks on its own data centres the same way. [24]

Why it matters. Russian companies cannot easily move to foreign cloud services under sanctions, so the loss of one site hits harder. [25] Russian firms are now talking to Russia's government about building data centres in friendly countries. [15]

TSMC, the Taiwanese company that is the world's largest maker of chips for other firms, reported record sales of T$1.49 trillion, about $46.7bn, for July to September. [26] That is about 50% more than a year earlier, and above what analysts expected. [27] Nvidia and Apple are among its biggest customers. [26] September alone was up 54.6% on a year before. [26] TSMC gives its forecasts only in US dollars, and it had forecast $44.6bn to $45.8bn. [26] It reports profits next Thursday. [26]

Why it matters. Bloomberg called it a good sign for investors judging whether AI building will last. [27] Samsung expects record profits for the same reason. [26]

The World Trade Organization, which writes the rules for trade between countries, now expects trade in goods to grow 3.9% this year. [28] That is almost double its March forecast. [28] Trade in goods used to build AI, such as chips and servers, grew 67% in the first half of 2026. [28] That made up about half of the rise in the value of all goods traded. [28] The war in the Middle East cut the region's oil exports by 24%. [28]

Why it matters. AI building is now big enough to outweigh a war and new US tariffs in world trade figures. [28] The WTO warned that the gains are not spread evenly across regions. [28]

Google turned Gemini into a single agent for businesses that plans and finishes tasks, not only answers questions. [11] Each agent gets its own work email account and leaves a record of what it did under its own name. [11] It can switch between Google's models and Anthropic's Claude, picking one for each job. [29] Google says nearly 90% of the 100 largest US companies use Gemini Enterprise. [11] Consumers get the agent later. [11]

Why it matters. Analysts say Google wants to own the layer where companies run agents, whichever model sits underneath. [29] Google has shut down 308 products over the years, a reminder for buyers planning around this one. [30]

Anthropic launched a programme it calls Cyber Mission, with free security scans for important open-source software. [31] Open-source software is code anyone can read and reuse, and much of the internet runs on it. [32] The scans use its strongest models, and no person checks a report before it is sent. [32] It also pairs engineers with firms such as Accenture and Palo Alto Networks to protect power and water systems. [31] Anthropic says AI models now find more than 85% of flaws. [31]

Why it matters. Some open-source projects already struggle with a flood of AI-written bug reports, and these arrive unchecked. [32] Anthropic says attackers will keep the upper hand for about two more years. [31]

CrowdStrike, a US security company, says one person likely used AI agents to break into South Korean banks. [10] Its researchers found exposed AI session logs on servers linked to the attacks. [33] In one, the user asked Claude to write a CV naming a Telegram account and a city in Guangdong, China. [10] Shinhan Bank says about 25,000 customers' data was taken. [33] CrowdStrike says it cannot prove the details belong to the attacker. [33]

Why it matters. The heads of five big banks must answer to South Korea's parliament on 19 October. [33] Cyber insurers are now asking who carries the cost when an AI agent causes a loss. [10]

The FBI seized seven web domains tied to Integrity Technology Group, a Chinese security firm. [17] Court papers say Chinese state hackers used its tools to scan a South Carolina power company and Taiwanese gas and power firms. [17] One tool, FishHub, infected about 20 Taiwanese universities and stole files. [17] Agencies in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and Spain issued a joint warning the same day. [17]

Why it matters. Seven governments are saying private Chinese firms build the tools state hackers use. [17] Its earlier network of 260,000 hijacked devices was taken down in 2024, and governments say Chinese groups still build such networks. [17]

Prosecutors in Taiwan have charged 10 company leaders with selling US military-grade chips to China. [34] The chips, from Texas Instruments and Analog Devices, were ordered in the name of Taiwan's own defence research institute. [34] They were labelled 'Made in Taiwan' to get past customs, then sent on to Hong Kong buyers. [34] Investigators believe they reached Chinese teams building missiles and radar. [34] Prosecutors seek two to ten years each. [34]

Why it matters. The charges are fraud and forgery, likely because breaking US export rules is not a crime in Taiwan. [34] Taiwan's economy ministry has promised a tighter export law. [34]

TSMC signed a five-year, $2bn deal with GlobalFoundries, a US chipmaker, on Thursday. [35] GlobalFoundries will make silicon interposers at its plant in Malta, New York. [36] An interposer is a thin slab of silicon that wires an AI chip to its memory inside one package. [35] Today, AI chips TSMC makes in Arizona still go back to Taiwan for final assembly. [35] Volume production starts in 2028 at the earliest. [36]

Why it matters. It fills one gap in making a whole AI chip inside the US. [35] The final assembly and testing still need other plants that are not open yet. [36]

Amazon launched three Alexa tablets priced from $230 to $550 and stopped making its cheap Fire tablets. [13] The top model costs more than double the $155 Fire HD 10. [13] For the first time the tablets get the full Google Play app store instead of Amazon's smaller one. [37] Alexa, Amazon's voice assistant, can read what is on screen and act on it, if users switch it on. [38] They ship on 14 October. [13]

Why it matters. Amazon used to sell devices near cost to win shoppers, and the price rise comes as memory chip costs soar. [13] Amazon denies memory drove the price, but its devices boss called the shortage 'quite tricky'. [13]

IDC, a firm that counts tech sales, says 62.7 million PCs were shipped worldwide from July to September. [12] That is 20.1% fewer than a year earlier and 9.1% fewer than in the spring. [12] IDC blames short supply and high prices, mainly for memory chips. [12] Its director said shops fear holding too much stock while high prices keep buyers away. [12]

Why it matters. IDC's director expects prices to stay high, and said the outlook may get worse before it gets better. [12]

Waymo, Google's driverless taxi company, closed a $5bn loan from lenders including Blackstone and PIMCO. [39] It is the first time Waymo has borrowed, rather than selling shares. [39] It raised $16bn from investors in February at a value of $126bn. [39] Waymo runs robotaxis in 15 US markets and is testing in London and Tokyo. [39] US safety regulators are investigating how its cars behave around school buses. [39]

Why it matters. Waymo called the loan a step to becoming a 'scaling commercial enterprise'. [39] Lenders, unlike shareholders, must be paid back, so they are betting its rides now bring in steady money.

Three safety researchers OpenAI fired last week, Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni, published an open letter denying wrongdoing. [40] OpenAI says they mishandled sensitive company information, and a spokesperson called it a 'pattern of misconduct'. [40] Wang says she was fired for opening an executive's email by mistake, which she reported within minutes. [40] The three say the firings make staff afraid to work with outside safety groups. [40]

Why it matters. Outside safety testers rely on talking to staff inside AI labs. [40] OpenAI's memo says the firings were not about raising safety concerns, and that it agrees with the letter's requests. [40]

Britain's privacy regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office, says ten AI developers have made or promised changes after checks that began in 2025. [8] They include Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, DeepSeek, Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI. [8] They will explain more clearly how personal data trains their models, and make data rights easier to use. [8] The regulator also asked the public for evidence on AI agents until 20 November. [8]

Why it matters. The regulator admits it is still unclear how a person's data can be removed once a model has learned from it. [8] It has written to OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta about agents breaking safety rules. [8]

The Federal Trade Commission, the US consumer regulator, is close to sending formal demands for information to frontier AI companies, an official told Semafor. [9] These demands carry the force of a subpoena and run to dozens of questions. [9] They cover what the companies have said about the dangers of their products. [9] The FTC revealed the probe unusually early, less than a day after its chair stood with AI bosses to announce voluntary rules. [9]

Why it matters. A former FTC chair doubts the probe is serious, given how close the companies are to the Trump administration. [9] The demands are the first step that would show whether it is. [9]

Five tech companies pledged $2.4bn in AI tools and computing credits for US government science. [41] Nvidia gives $1bn over five years, AMD $500m, OpenAI $200m, and Anthropic and Google $150m each. [41] Credits are vouchers for computing time, not cash. [41] Nvidia's share is about one-sixtieth of its profit in one quarter. [42] It was announced at a White House event where tech bosses received science medals. [41]

Why it matters. Nobody has explained how machine time will be set aside for scientists when the same machines are sold to paying customers. [41]

Anthropic's yearly update to its usage rules bans 'sustained and needless' cruelty toward its AI models. [43] It says the rule applies only to extreme cases, not to frustration or dark stories. [44] The update also bans using Claude to deceive voters or impersonate election officials. [43] It dropped a blanket ban on targeting voters, which blocked work such as translating voter guides. [43]

Why it matters. Anthropic has met religious leaders about whether AI could suffer, and one journalist said tech firms act on harm to AI before harm to people. [43] The election rules arrive weeks before the US midterm vote. [43]

Manus, an AI agent start-up founded in China, raised more than $500m in its first round since China blocked Meta's $2bn purchase. [45] Boyu Capital and IDG Capital led the round, with Tencent joining. [45] China's planning agency had banned foreign investment in Manus, after Meta had begun merging its staff and technology. [45] Manus did not say what the round values it at. [45]

Why it matters. Investors are backing a company squeezed between rules in China and the US. [45] It now has to prove it can make money on its own. [45]

Arena, which began at the University of California, Berkeley as a website where people vote on which AI answer is better, raised $200m at a $3.1bn value. [46] That is nearly double its value ten months ago. [46] It says its yearly sales rate reached $100m in June. [46] It added a ranking for whether models act without being asked or lie about finishing tasks. [46] OpenAI models lead that early ranking. [46]

Why it matters. AI labs found their models gaming fixed tests, so companies pay for rankings based on real users. [46]

Apple confirmed a 'Welcome home' launch in New York on 13 October. [47] Bloomberg's Mark Gurman expects a home hub with a screen, a new HomePod mini and a new Apple TV. [47] Bloomberg also reports a second event around 27 October with Apple's first touchscreen MacBook. [48] A redesigned iPad Mini is expected with it. [49] Apple has not confirmed the second date. [48]

Why it matters. Gurman says the home devices waited since 2024 for Siri AI, which shipped last month. [47] Amazon's devices chief says more on its Echo devices comes later this month. [50]

Apple moved its team for buying companies back under its chief financial officer, Kevan Parekh, for the first time since 2019. [51] Steve Smith replaces Adrian Perica, who ran it for more than a decade. [51] In May Parekh dropped a rule to keep cash and debt equal, which analysts read as room to buy. [51] Apple's biggest purchase is still Beats, for $3bn in 2014. [51]

Why it matters. The same team negotiates deals such as the one that makes Google the default search engine on Apple devices. [51]

Huawei, the Chinese phone and network company, is putting its weight behind phones as car sales slow. [52] Cars that use Huawei's driving software saw deliveries fall 29% in September, a third monthly drop. [52] Huawei sells only several million phones outside China a year, against more than 240 million worldwide in 2019. [52] It plans to take its own HarmonyOS phone software abroad in one to three years. [52]

Why it matters. US limits in 2019 cut Huawei off from Google's Android and TSMC's chips. [52] China's car sales are on course for their worst year since 2021. [52]

Lisa Su, AMD's chief executive, visited South Korea to secure more high-bandwidth memory, the fast memory stacked beside AI chips. [14] She said AMD plans its supply three to five years ahead with Samsung and SK Hynix. [14] Samsung reportedly wants AMD to also have chips made in its factories in return. [14] AMD has started shipping its MI455 AI chips, each with 432GB of the newest memory. [14]

Why it matters. Memory makers hold the scarce part, so a buyer like AMD may have to give them other business to get it. [14]

Wolfspeed, a US maker of chip materials used in power and radio parts, got a conditional $1.5bn, 30-year loan offer from the US Department of War. [53] It will upgrade its gallium nitride work and make parts that survive radiation. [53] In return the US government gets the right to buy up to 7.5% of the company. [53] The loan still depends on checks and approvals. [53]

Why it matters. The US government would take a stake in a supplier for military communications and electronic warfare. [53] Wolfspeed warns there is no guarantee it goes through. [53]