Tech, in brief

Microsoft has pulled out of a deal to be the main customer at Nscale's planned AI data centre in Loughton, Essex, the Guardian and The Next Web report, following the Telegraph. [1][2]

Nscale is a British company that builds data centres and rents the computers inside them to AI firms. It is backed by Nvidia, which makes the chips AI runs on. [1]

UK Power Networks, which runs the electricity grid in London and south-east England, told Nscale it cannot supply enough power to the site until the early to mid-2030s. [1]

The UK government had called Loughton the country's largest sovereign AI data centre in 2025, and it was due to open next year. [1]

Microsoft was the only customer Nscale had named for the site. Microsoft did not comment. [1][2]

Nscale says its relationship with Microsoft remains strong and that it is looking at other power sources and other UK sites. [1][2] The Guardian understands Microsoft stays a customer at Nscale's site in Norway. [1]

Nscale plans to sell shares in New York as soon as this month. Microsoft and Anthropic make up about 85% of its contracts, its filing says. [2]

Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI assistant, agreed in August to spend $45bn on Nscale's computers over six years. [2]

Nscale's flagship site in Norway is six months behind after cooling leaks, a fire and building delays. Only 6.4 of its planned 30 megawatts are running. [4]

Nscale has been seeking a value of about $30bn. Some investors say $16-19bn would sell better, after Firmus, an Australian data-centre builder, called off its own share sale. [3]

CoreWeave, a US company that also rents out AI computers, saw its shares fall 25% last week, their worst week since November. [2]

Investors have also been lowering what they expect from share sales by Nscale and Anthropic, Moneycontrol reported on Monday. [5]

Why it matters. Watch whether Nscale keeps its New York share sale this month, and at what price: a value near $16-19bn rather than $30bn would show how far investors have moved. [3]

Anthropic said on Sunday it will put 5% of its shares into a new Public Benefit Fund, if its shareholders approve. [6] Its board may add 2% more for every 50% rise in the company's value above a level it has not disclosed. [6][8] The fund could give large donations to charities, pay money straight to groups of people, or work on AI's effect on jobs. [7][11] Its shares cannot be used for lobbying or political donations. [6] Business Insider puts 5% at about $48bn, at Anthropic's value in May. [10]

Why it matters. The pledge comes weeks before Anthropic's planned share sale, reported for November, and Anthropic says about 20% of its shares would then be set aside for public purposes. [8][6] It has not said who will choose what the fund pays for; that comes in the coming months. [7]

Samsung will use the 3-nanometre process of TSMC, the Taiwanese company that makes most of the world's advanced chips, to make the base die for Nvidia's next custom memory chips, a Seoul newspaper reported on Sunday. [12] These chips are high-bandwidth memory: stacks of memory that sit beside an AI chip, with a base die at the bottom that controls the stack. [12] Nvidia has asked the three big memory makers, Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, to use TSMC, so its own memory controller sits inside. [12] It would be Samsung's first such work with TSMC. [12]

Why it matters. Samsung runs its own chip factories, and it accepted Nvidia's demand only after an internal review. [12] It will keep its own process for other customers and may make the part itself if TSMC runs short. [12] Nvidia says the design is meant to make memory from all three makers work the same way. [12]

US prosecutors said in a court filing on Sunday that Abdulrahman Alfozan messaged a member of Saudi Arabia's royal family often on WhatsApp. [13] Alfozan, an OpenAI engineer who has since been fired, is charged with hiding a recording device in an executive meeting room in San Francisco. [13] The filing says the royal tried to recruit him to a Saudi AI project. [13] It does not say the royal told him to plant the device. [13] Prosecutors say OpenAI executives met government officials in that room around the time the device was hidden. [13]

Why it matters. Prosecutors want him held without bail at a hearing on Monday, arguing a foreign government could help him flee. [13] His lawyer says nationality is not evidence of flight, and 54 people have written to the court in his support. [13]

Meta explained on Sunday why Instagram shut the account of No Kings, a US protest network, for hours during its rallies on Saturday. [14] Its security systems saw a Claude tool reading profiles, posts and hashtags in bursts about four times the usual rate, and treated the account as a bot. [14] Claude is Anthropic's AI assistant. [6] An automatic re-check restored the account an hour later, but giving the organisers back their access took longer. [14]

Why it matters. No Kings says it held nearly 3,000 rallies to push early voting, and calls limiting talk about voting during an election unacceptable. [14] Chris Murphy, a US senator, called for an investigation. [14][15]

TikTok says it has restored the advertising account for Musk, Alex Gibney's documentary about Elon Musk, and calls the ban an error. [16][17] TikTok told the film's distributor on Friday, 16 October, that the account was being suspended. That was the day the film opened in many more US cinemas. [16][17] TikTok had first said the account kept breaking its rules on political posts. [17] Larry Ellison, a part-owner of TikTok's US business, appears in the film in a text offering to help Musk buy Twitter. [16]

Why it matters. YouTube and Meta had already reversed refusals to run the film's ads, calling them errors. X still has not allowed paid ads for the film. [16]

Disney has agreed to offer jobs to at least 60 staff of Character.AI, the chatbot app that filed for bankruptcy last week, a court filing shows. [18] That is most of the company, and the pay would cost about $60m a year. [18] Most of those offered jobs have said yes. [18] Disney had already agreed to buy some of Character.AI's assets for $20m. Its former boss, Karandeep Anand, is now Disney's first chief technology officer. [18]

Why it matters. Disney's bid is a first offer that another company can still beat with a higher one. [18] The filing says high costs, lawsuits and government inquiries over child safety held the app back. [18]

At a rally in Kentucky on Saturday, Donald Trump said Google would not have taken his call in his first term, and that now they 'kiss my ass'. [19] He was talking about Google Maps showing his new names for the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario. [19] Google has said it follows official US government sources for such names, under a long-standing policy. [19]

Why it matters. Tech companies and Google's boss, Sundar Pichai, have courted Trump in his second term with gifts, praise and donations, The Verge reports. [19] Trump's words suggest the change came from a personal call, not from Google's stated policy. [19]

The US Supreme Court heard Salazar v. Paramount Global last Wednesday, and the justices seemed ready to side with Michael Salazar. [20] He says a Paramount sports website sent the videos he watched to Facebook, through a Meta tracking tool, without asking him. [20] His case rests on a 1988 law passed after a journalist published a US Supreme Court nominee's video-rental history. [20] Lower courts threw it out because he had only signed up for a newsletter. [20]

Why it matters. A win could open the way to lawsuits against many websites that track what people watch; Salazar's own class action seeks up to $2,500 a person. [20] Paramount's lawyer warned sites might hide videos behind consent screens; a ruling is due by next summer. [20]

New AI gadgets from Apple, Amazon, Meta and start-ups listen all day and write summaries of conversations, CNBC reports. [21] Amazon's Bee Frontier and Bee Eclipse arrived on Thursday, and the Apple Watch Series 12 takes notes in the background. [21] Apple and Amazon say they do not keep the audio. [21] But many US state wiretap laws turn on whether a conversation was captured, not whether a recording was saved. [21]

Why it matters. In some states the legal risk may fall on the person wearing the device, not its maker. [21] A law professor says New Hampshire's law is broad enough to cover the Apple Watch feature, though prosecution is unlikely. [21]

More than 300 local bans and pauses on new US data centres have delayed only about three projects, says SemiAnalysis, a research firm. [22] Those three add up to about 2.3 of the 21 gigawatts, a measure of power, planned inside areas with a ban. [22] Most pauses stop new applications but do not cancel approvals already given. [22] The firm still expects 38 gigawatts of US data-centre capacity in 2027, more than double 2026. [22]

Why it matters. A state-wide pause would matter more: Texas has told its environment agency to issue no data-centre permits, and the agency's report to the governor is due on Monday. [22] A poll by the firm in August found more Americans dislike data centres than like them. [22]

Data-centre companies and trade groups are taking their case into US schools, Wired reports. [23] One trade group gave flag-making kits and leaflets on the industry's positive impact to 3,100 first-graders in Loudoun County, Virginia, home to many data centres. [23] Another, 7x24 Exchange, offers colouring pages and children's books about data centres. [23] Wired counted at least eleven companies and groups that have taken students on trips to data centres since 2025. [23]

Why it matters. The push comes as local opposition to the buildings grows. [23] An education researcher told Wired that fast-food, tobacco and oil companies have used schools in the same way for a century. [23]

Police in Philadelphia arrested Carolyn Marvin and charged her with disorderly conduct after she stood in front of an Uber delivery robot and refused to move. [24] She told a local TV station she blocks the robots because they take jobs from human delivery workers. [24] The robots have become common in the city's downtown, and one was kicked over earlier this year. [24]

Why it matters. It is a small, public sign of a wider worry that robots, robotaxis and AI agents are taking lower-paid jobs. [24]

Researchers at the Swedish Defence Research Agency built an AI system, WiFireNet, that spots concealed handguns from the way they bend ordinary Wi-Fi signals. [25] They trained it on video and Wi-Fi readings of people carrying phones, a metal bottle, a plastic gun and a real one. [25] Their paper went online on 13 October and tested it on an old 1999 Wi-Fi standard. [25] The code, models and data are free for anyone to use. [25]

Why it matters. Wi-Fi sensing needs no cameras, which is why critics warn it could watch people with no rules in place. [25]

In a US Air Force test, an F-22 Raptor pilot gave combat orders to an Anduril YFQ-44A Fury, a drone that flies itself, The Defense Watch reported. [26] The drone turned the orders into tasks and moves on its own during the simulated fight. [26] The test is part of a programme to add drones to fighter squadrons, so that one pilot can lead several aircraft. [26]

Why it matters. The Air Force wants this because it costs less than putting a pilot in every jet. [26] The drones still have to be fitted into maintenance, weapons handling and supply before they reach front-line squadrons. [26]

DJI, the Chinese drone maker, has released the Dock 4, a box that swaps a landed drone's battery in about 25 seconds and sends it back up within 45. [27] It is meant for emergency services; charging the old way takes about 30 minutes. [27] Partners in China are taking orders for a kit at about $25,000. [27] It cannot be sold in the US: last December the FCC, the US communications regulator, put all foreign-made drones on a list that blocks new models. [27]

Why it matters. Another FCC plan could pull older foreign drones and docks with heat or laser sensors from US sale, and DJI has sued the regulator. [27]

Chinese companies that make AI hardware will keep selling shares in Hong Kong, even as US data-centre firms lose value, said Simon Yuan, Citi's head of China investment banking, on Friday. [28] He said about half the demand for these shares comes from inside China, and money from the mainland is a big buyer. [28] 118 companies listed in Hong Kong in the first nine months of this year, raising $49.4bn, up 106%. [28]

Why it matters. He warned that if the AI cycle turns in the US, Hong Kong will feel it too. [28] He expects next year's listings to shift from hardware to Chinese AI models and apps. [28]

LTM, an Indian company that does IT work for other businesses, had promised faster growth but grew revenue just 1.1% from the quarter before. [29] Its AI revenue rose 40% from a year earlier, to 13.4% of the total, and it now takes more short AI projects of six to 12 months. [29] But new orders fell 25% from the quarter before, to $1.26bn. [29] Its shares fell over 1% on Monday and are down almost 30% this year. [29]

Why it matters. Short AI projects turn into revenue faster than big old contracts. [29] But LTM has not said how much of its new orders is yearly value and how much is whole-contract value, which makes future sales harder to judge, analysts at Nirmal Bang said. [29]

ICANN, the non-profit that runs the internet's address system, opened its yearly meeting in Bali, Indonesia, on Monday. [31] Its chair, Tripti Sinha, said that ten years after the US government handed this job to ICANN, the address system has not split apart. [31] She warned that AI agents could change traffic on it, and could create more fake web addresses as well as help catch them. [31]

Why it matters. Its chief executive, Kurt Erik Lindqvist, said ICANN must turn agreed policy into working practice faster and more openly. [31]