Tech, in brief

Alphabet, the company that owns Google, reported its July to September results on Wednesday. [2]

Google Cloud, which rents computing power and AI tools to businesses, sold $30.7bn of services. [2]

That was 103% more than in the same three months a year earlier. [1]

The cloud unit's profit rose to $11.1bn, from $3.6bn a year earlier. [1]

Schindler argued that AI searches will pay off as Google adds more ads to them. [4]

Analyst Ben Barringer said Google cannot choose between protecting search and joining the chatbot shift. [8]

Investors now weigh AI spending against how soon it pays off, a fund manager told Reuters. [12]

Anat Ashkenazi, Alphabet's finance chief, said spending will rise significantly again in 2027. [5]

She said Alphabet will give the 2027 figure on its next results call. [5]

Google's searches are growing at their fastest rate in five years, but the new AI Mode answers earn it less than its old search ads, while Alphabet spent $51.4bn in three months on data centres and chips. [10][4][2]

A record like the fastest search growth in five years sounds like a win, and it sits beside the plain fact that each new AI search earns Google less so far.

Over 100 companies use its own AI chips, and its operating profit rose to $11.1bn from $3.6bn. [4][1]

How much less an AI Mode search earns Google than an ordinary search.

Google admitted AI Mode earns less and said its ad tests look promising, but it gave no figure for either kind of search. [4][6]

How much Alphabet will spend on data centres in 2027.

Its finance chief said only that spending will rise significantly and that the figure comes on the next results call. CNBC wrote that yearly spending is expected to pass $300bn in 2027, without naming whose estimate that is. [5]

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]

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]

Microsoft rents out the same kind of computing and earned $10bn in those three months from OpenAI alone. [15]

It earns from OpenAI twice, through cloud rent and a reported share of OpenAI's sales, which brought in $10bn in three months. [15]

How much of Microsoft's $10bn from OpenAI is a share of OpenAI's sales and how much is cloud rent.

Microsoft did not split the figure, and neither company has confirmed the reported 20% revenue share. [15]

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]

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]

AI data centres pay higher prices for its memory, so its chips made 106.5 trillion won of operating profit in three months. [19][20]

It lost 0.6 trillion won as its costs rose, while the chip side made 106.5 trillion won. [19]

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]

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]

PC makers moving work back to China to save money are signing with them, partly for their access to Chinese memory. [27]

Orders moved back to China before the two new lines ever turned a profit, a supplier told Nikkei Asia. [27]

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]

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]

Why AI is moving from data centres onto the laptop you buy

An AI answer made in a data centre uses the AI company's chips and power each time

So every new user adds to that company's running bill

A chip inside a laptop or speaker was paid for by the buyer when buying it

An answer made on that chip costs the AI company nothing more, and makes no trip

So makers move the smaller AI jobs onto devices, and the device price rises

Moving an AI job from a data centre onto a laptop does not make it free.

The same AI answer, made in two places. In a data centre its maker pays for each one. On a laptop the buyer already paid for the chip.

Opera says builders can add AI to the browser without paying for every request, because the user's own computer does the work.

The AZ3 chip in the new Echo Dot handles voice on the speaker, so commands no longer go to a data centre and back.

Nvidia built its transcription model to run on a single chip, which can sit in a laptop instead of a data centre.

Apple and Microsoft are both selling pricey laptops built for AI, part of a push to run more AI on the device, the Guardian reports.

Only smaller models fit on a laptop, so the biggest AI jobs still run in data centres.

Every AI answer is paid for by somebody, either the company running the data centre or the person who bought the device.

Memory prices rose 500% in a year, and Apple charges $7,000 extra for 16TB of storage on its new laptop. [27][31]

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]

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]

How well Gemini 4 Carbon works for ordinary users.

Only chosen security firms can use it so far, and most of its scores come from Google's own tests, with one outside firm putting it just one point ahead. [21][23]

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]

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]

Whether DeepSeek and Moonshot really trained their new models on GPT-6 Astra.

The claim comes from unnamed people quoted by The Information; the three companies did not immediately answer Reuters, and The Next Web says it has not checked it. [25][26]

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]

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]

Whether GitHub's 4 million extra cores will end its outages.

GitHub says its move to several Azure regions finishes early next year, and code changes grew fivefold in the past year. [32]

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]

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]

Which chips were in the servers Malaysia seized, and who was to get them.

Customs named neither the chip maker nor the destination, citing an open investigation, and no one has been arrested. [35]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Waymo's driverless taxis now give more than 500,000 paid rides a week across 15 US metro areas.

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]

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]

New York's governor signed a law that bars AI chatbots from claiming a romantic relationship with a child or urging a child to keep secrets from parents. Companies that break it face fines of up to $25,000 for each breach.

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]

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

Whether Australia's chatbot rules become law.

The bill passed the lower house, but the opposition Coalition says it will vote against it in Australia's Senate, where its path is unclear. [47]

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]

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]

They live beside 69 temporary gas turbines, and three sued over noise that wakes them at night. [48]

Whether xAI's home offers really require owners to drop the noise lawsuit.

The condition comes from residents, a realtor and the mayor; xAI did not answer the Guardian's questions about it. [48]

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]