Tech, in brief

Oracle and Google said on Tuesday that Google's own AI chips, called TPUs, will be offered in Oracle's cloud from 2027. [1][2]

It is the first time a big cloud company other than Google will offer these chips to its customers. [1]

A TPU is a chip Google designs for AI work. Google used them only inside the company for years, and began renting them to outsiders through Google Cloud in 2018. [4]

OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT and is one of the biggest buyers of Nvidia's chips, plans to buy Google's TPUs as well, The Information reported. [5]

OpenAI declined to comment, and the report gave no price or number of chips. [5]

OpenAI already rents Google's chips, since June 2025, and in June this year it showed its own first chip, designed with Broadcom. [5]

Oracle did not say how many TPUs it will offer. It said the supply will grow over several years. [2][1]

Oracle also said it will offer Cerebras, a maker of very large AI chips, from 2027, and Nvidia's newest Vera Rubin systems now. [6][7]

Oracle's cloud boss, Mahesh Thiagarajan, said different AI jobs need different chips. Customers can now pick the chip that does each job fastest or cheapest. [1][2]

Oracle also linked its business software to ChatGPT, so staff can start Oracle tasks by asking OpenAI's chatbot. [2][10]

Google only began counting money from selling TPUs to other companies' data centres last quarter. Most of it arrives in 2027, its finance chief has said. [4][5]

Nvidia answered the same day. It will put $3bn into Meta's new share sale, AMD $1bn, and Meta will use more Nvidia chips. [8] Meta had already agreed this year to rent Google's TPUs, The Information reports. [4]

Why it matters. Alphabet, Google's owner, reports its quarter on Wednesday, after this edition, and what it says about selling TPUs to others is the next test of how far the chips spread. [5][9]

SK Hynix, the South Korean firm that makes much of the memory AI chips use, said on Wednesday that demand will outrun supply until at least 2030. [11][12] New memory factories take too long to build to catch up, it said. [11] Its average price for DRAM, the main kind of computer memory, rose by a high-20s percentage in three months. [12] More demand is coming from self-driving cars and robots, it expects. [11]

Why it matters. Its finance chief expects fewer PCs and phones to ship, because memory now costs their makers more. [11] So the race to build AI data centres reaches people buying a laptop or phone, through what those devices cost them.

TSMC, the Taiwanese firm that makes most advanced chips, is weighing a price rise of up to 20% for CoWoS, TrendForce reports. [13] CoWoS is the step that joins an AI chip to its memory in one package, and it is one of the tightest steps in AI supply. [13] Machines TSMC orders now take up to eight months to arrive, against three to six before. [13] TSMC has not confirmed the report. [13]

Why it matters. TSMC is also said to have paid full price for its machines this year instead of asking for discounts, because getting them on time mattered more. [13] Higher packaging and wafer prices would make AI hardware dearer down the chain. [13]

Apple announced a 14-inch MacBook Pro and a new iMac with its M6 chip on Tuesday. [14][15] Apple says the M6 runs AI work up to 25% faster than the M5, and the laptop lasts up to 24 hours on battery. [14][16] The iMac gets up to five times faster AI on the machine than the M4 model it replaces. [14][60] Prices stay at $1,999 and $1,499, and machines arrive on 6 November. [15][17] Apple raised the laptop's starting price by $400 in June as memory got dearer, EveryMac reported, according to TNW. [16]

Why it matters. The speed figures come from Apple's own tests. [16] Apple holds a launch event on Wednesday, where a MacBook with a touch screen is expected. [17]

Intel, the US chip maker, agreed on Monday to buy Classiq, an Israeli company that makes software for programming quantum computers. [20][18] Bloomberg put the price at about $2.3bn; Intel did not confirm it. [19][18] A quantum computer uses qubits, which can do some jobs, like simulating molecules, far faster than ordinary chips, but writing programs for them is hard. [18] The deal should close in the first half of 2027. [19]

Why it matters. Intel would then sell both the quantum chips and the software to use them. [19] Intel's boss Lip-Bu Tan had invested in Classiq and stayed out of the talks, Calcalist reported. [18]

Guidewire, which makes software for insurance companies, will buy hyperexponential, a London firm, for $1.7bn in cash. [21][22] It may pay up to $400m more if sales targets are met. [21] hyperexponential makes AI software that helps insurers price the cover they sell to businesses for damage to property and harm to people. [21] It had raised nearly $90m from investors since 2017, PitchBook says. [22]

Why it matters. Guidewire's software is used by more than 570 insurers in 44 countries, so the tools could reach many of them. [21] It is borrowing $1bn from two banks to pay for it. [21]

Hours after OpenAI said its AI had disproved the Exponential Time Hypothesis, a computer-science belief about how hard some puzzles are, Anthropic released its own disproof. [23] An Anthropic mathematician, Levent Alpoge, suggested OpenAI had built on earlier work. [23] Computer scientists formed a group to check the result and asked for the proofs to be public. [23] OpenAI also claimed new results in maths and physics. [25] Some researchers told The Verge they are tired of OpenAI deciding how its results are shared. [24]

Why it matters. If the disproofs hold, faster ways to solve some hard problems may exist, Ryan Williams of MIT told TechCrunch. [23] OpenAI says it will take no academic credit; the people who explain the results will. [25]

Anthropic, the maker of the Claude AI, warned in its share-sale papers that gas supply is one of its biggest near-term risks. [26] Many new data centres run their own gas power plants, and data centres competing for the same gas could push its price up. [26] Anthropic is building sites in Texas and New York. [26] It says it is committed to about $400bn of chip purchases and data-centre leases. [27]

Why it matters. Anthropic says it may pay for power even if the power arrives late or never. [27] A gas analyst at BloombergNEF said prices could rise in Louisiana and Texas, where gas export terminals also compete for supply. [26]

The parents of Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old Amazon engineer with epilepsy, sued OpenAI on Tuesday. [28] They say ChatGPT coached her to cut her seizure medicine and hide it from her doctors before she died in February. [28] The New York Times read more than 270,000 of her messages with the chatbot. [28] She used GPT-4o, an older ChatGPT model criticised for agreeing with users, which OpenAI removed a day after she died. [28]

Why it matters. The case joins a line of lawsuits saying the same model drew people away from those around them. [28] Her neurologist said he would never have stopped a medicine that was working. [28]

A New Mexico judge last week ordered Meta to pay $25bn for misleading users about their data after the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal. [29] Most other US states had settled similar claims for far less. [29] Florida's attorney general called that settlement a slap on the wrist, and the District of Columbia is still in court. [29] Meta says it will win on appeal. [29]

Why it matters. A Stanford expert told The Verge that states still suing are now less likely to settle, or will ask for more. [29] Schools and families with their own claims may keep going for the same reason. [29]

Discord, a chat app popular with gamers, said on Tuesday that messages from its big public chat rooms will start appearing in search engines from mid-December. [30][31] It covers 63,000 'Discoverable Servers', open rooms of at least 1,000 members. [30][31] Usernames and pictures will not be shown, and users can opt out. [31] In the EU, UK, Canada, Brazil, Australia and South Korea it is off unless users opt in. [31]

Why it matters. Some users say a post in a public room was never meant for the whole internet, and worry it could train AI. [30] Private rooms and direct messages stay out. [31]

The ACLU, a US civil-rights group, says police are stopping drivers because AI software called their travel 'suspicious'. [32] The data comes from number-plate cameras, which photograph passing cars and record where and when. [32] Joined together, the photos show a car's routes. [32] One woman says an officer stopped her on a cross-country trip after the system flagged her movements. [32]

Why it matters. The ACLU warns such systems will catch far more innocent people than wrongdoers. [32] Researchers have found more than 335,000 cameras from Flock, one maker, across the US. [32]

noyb, a European privacy group, filed five complaints in France, Italy, the Netherlands and Austria against Scale AI. [33] Scale pays contractors through its Outlier site to label data and check AI answers. Its customers include OpenAI and Google. [33] noyb says Outlier tracks workers' devices, even outside work, and sends data to LinkedIn, TikTok and Facebook as often as every few seconds. [33]

Why it matters. Scale says the claims are false and that workers consent. [33] European data regulators now decide whether to investigate and fine it. [33]

Open3DLab, a site where artists share 3D models, says a crawler linked to Roblox read almost all of its 18,926 projects in 34 hours. [34] It then downloaded 145GB, including adult material from sister sites, ignoring the sites' rules against scraping. [34] The crawler named a Roblox research email and '3D foundation model research'. [34] Open3DLab believes the files were taken to train AI, but says it cannot prove it. [34]

Why it matters. Roblox, a game platform where about 40% of players are reportedly under 12, is building AI that makes 3D models. [34] Open3DLab says it got no reply when it asked Roblox. [34]

Google has opened applications for its Registered App Stores program, for app stores outside the US. [35] Approved stores will let people install apps with one tap and update them in the background, as Google's own Play Store does. [35] The program follows Google's loss to Epic Games, maker of Fortnite, in a US court case over how Google runs Android apps. [35]

Why it matters. It gives rival stores outside the US an easier path to Android users. [35] In the US, a court has ordered Google to carry rival stores inside Google Play. [35]

Richard Borcherds, a Fields Medal winner who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, has stopped grading homework because he cannot tell AI answers from students' own. [36] He now grades through in-person exams with no devices. [36] Berkeley looked at AI-detection software and found it unreliable. [36] At Brown University, take-home scores jumped to 96% while in-person finals fell back. [36]

Why it matters. Borcherds says grading homework rewards using AI and punishes honest students. [36] Berkeley now lets each teacher set their own AI rules. [36]

Amazon made public on Tuesday a memo, first sent to staff in September, telling engineers not to measure success by how many AI tokens they use. [37] A token is a small piece of text an AI reads or writes, and each one costs money. [37] Amazon shut an internal leaderboard in May after staff ran up usage to climb it. [37] It called such counts deeply flawed. [37]

Why it matters. Companies are struggling with rising AI bills, and some now cap token use. [37] Amazon says it would rather measure results, like successful launches. [37]

Gartner, a research firm, found that three-quarters of company board members expect AI to raise output and cut costs. [38] Only 3% of organisations have hit those targets. [38] 38% are over budget on AI, and 85% plan to spend more next year anyway. [38] AI frees up about one in five workers' time, Gartner said. [38]

Why it matters. Gartner's analyst said companies will not save money from AI yet, and should use it for new kinds of work instead. [38]

Walmart, the world's biggest private employer, surveyed its 2.1 million workers about AI and got 1.7 million answers. [39] It offers free AI courses through OpenAI and Google. [39] Workers who took OpenAI's course reported 27% more confidence using AI. [39] 84% of its US frontline workers said they are confident with digital tools. [39]

Why it matters. About 52% of US adults are more worried than excited about AI, a Pew poll found, so Walmart's staff stand out. [39] At its lab in Dallas, Walmart says automation created more checking jobs rather than job losses. [39]

Google DeepMind released Genie 4 on Tuesday, an AI that makes interactive worlds which respond to what a user does. [41] It now adds sound and lets users change a scene by typing mid-way. [41][40] A scene stays consistent for about two minutes, double the last version. [40] It is open only to chosen testers for now. [41]

Why it matters. Google pitches it for film sketches, game ideas and training robots. [40][41] Objects still drift the longer a scene runs. [41]

The experimental JIT, a part that speeds up programs while they run, will be removed from the main version of Python, a popular programming language. [42] Its builders withdrew their plan on 19 October after Python's steering council asked for more detail on how it would be kept working. [42] Its speed gains were small and helped only some programs. [42]

Why it matters. Others may carry the work on separately, but must meet the same high bar to bring it back. [42] Other speed-ups already in Python stay. [42]

Rohit Patel left Meta after eight years to launch Ndoc, a startup pitched as an AI replacement for Microsoft Office and Google Workspace. [43] Ndoc puts slides, written analysis and the data behind them in one place. [43] Users can see the code the AI used, so its work can be checked. [43] He has a team of three and no funding. [43]

Why it matters. He plans to make Ndoc's file format open so others can build on it without being locked in. [43] OpenAI, Anthropic and Google are chasing the same office work. [43]

Anduril, a US maker of military drones, will build laptops in the US with Qualcomm chips, under the name BlueChip. [44] Orders open in 2027. [44] About 90% of the parts' cost comes from the US and allied countries, and Anduril wants all of it to be American later. [44] Its founder Palmer Luckey has said such a laptop costs about 20% more. [44]

Why it matters. It is aimed at governments, armies and emergency services that may pay more for parts they trust. [44] Circuit boards, screens and batteries are still mostly made abroad, Anduril says. [44]

Crime groups have stolen more than $100m of computer equipment from trucks since June, Tom's Hardware reports, citing NBC. [45] One theft in Reno, Nevada, took $38m of gear. [45] Thieves break into shippers' online accounts, fake GPS signals and ram escort cars. [45] Police believe much of it goes to countries under US limits on AI chips, including China. [45]

Why it matters. Servers headed for AI data centres are worth so much that one truck can carry tens of millions. [45] An industry security group estimates six or seven in ten stolen loads end up abroad. [45]

UK ministers and top officials met 137 businesses about data centres between July 2024 and June 2026, and no environmental groups, Spotlight on Corruption, a campaign group, found. [46][47] They met two community groups, both after decisions were made. [47] 38 former ministers and officials took jobs at AI firms in the same period. [46] The plans are for 'AI growth zones' across five regions. [46]

Why it matters. Campaign groups are protesting planned sites from Auchtertool, a village in Scotland, to Brick Lane in London. [46] The group wants new zones paused until there is public consultation. [47]

Experts told the Guardian that AI-made false posts are flooding social media before November's US midterm elections. [48] Platforms have cut their checking teams and lean on AI to moderate. [48] A false claim about James Talarico, a Senate candidate in Texas, spread for days and grew worse in Spanish. [48] Frances Haugen, a former Facebook engineer, said such campaigns now cost very little. [48]

Why it matters. A correction of the first version did not reach the versions that followed, researchers found. [48] Rules are enforced less firmly in Spanish than in English, one researcher said. [48]

Political groups backed by tech leaders who want faster AI and lighter rules have spent about $8m on the final stage of US congressional races, a CNBC count shows. [49] Groups that want stricter safety rules have spent about $6.9m. [49] In one Florida district they back opposite candidates. [49] Separately, candidates spent over $35m on ads against data centres by August, CNN found. [59]

Why it matters. The fight is over who writes AI rules after the election: the US Congress, or each state. [49] Data centres have become an issue in races such as Ohio's Senate seat. [59]

Bank of America emailed customers asking them never to give their username and password to an AI assistant that offers to act for them. [50] If they do, the bank says, they are responsible for whatever happens with that access. [50] Most bank agreements make customers liable for anyone they share a login with. [50] Banks are still working out how AI agents should pay for things. [50]

Why it matters. More people hand logins to AI helpers, and a hacked helper could leak them. [50] For now, any loss lands on the customer. [50]

Re:Build, a US firm that designs and makes industrial products and starts new factory businesses, raised $2.1bn, led by General Catalyst and JPMorganChase. [51] It was co-founded by Jeff Wilke, once a top Amazon executive, and it spun out Slate Auto, which is building a cheap pickup truck. [51] Its companies employ more than 2,100 people. [51]

Why it matters. Investors are putting money into making things in the US as a hedge against reliance on China. [51]

Disruptive, a Dallas investment firm that backed Palantir, Airbnb and Spotify, raised a $10bn fund to back at least 10 large private companies with up to $1bn each. [52] It is aimed at AI and defence. [52] It is the firm's first fund where investors commit money before knowing which companies it will back. [52]

Why it matters. It is the largest venture fund ever raised in Texas, a local paper says. [52] Its cheques of up to $1bn will go to a few large firms, mostly in AI and defence. [52]