Tech, in brief

OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Anthropic say they will obey one shared signal against AI training. [1]

The signal is one line in robots.txt, a website's file of rules for automatic visitors. [1]

Those visitors are crawlers: programs that copy pages for search, archives or AI training. [1]

With one line, a site can now refuse all 4 companies at once. [2]

For a blog or news site, one line now covers four of the biggest AI makers. [2]

But it cannot undo past copying: pages already taken stay with the AI companies. [2]

Internet engineers built robots.txt as a request, honoured only by crawlers that choose to. [2]

So the signal reaches only as far as the companies that promise to read it. [1]

Anthropic, whose staff wrote the rule, is the only one of the four obeying it. [1]

A site that adds nothing stays open to AI training by all of them. [2]

Nobody knows yet whether Meta and smaller AI firms will obey it. [1]

The next fixed date is Microsoft's start, on 1 February 2027. [2]

At the same time, the websites AI learns from are getting new ways to refuse, from one shared robots.txt line to a UK investigation of Meta's terms. [1][3]

Its own standards lead wrote the shared signal, and it is the only one of the four firms already obeying it. [1]

Amazon set up a loan of up to $80 billion backed by AI hardware it buys. [4]

Lenders get rights over some of that equipment, though Amazon's filing does not say which. [4]

Amazon can draw the money from the start of 2027 to the third quarter of 2028. [4]

In the year to September, Amazon spent $42.4 billion more cash than it brought in. [4]

A year earlier, it had $14.8 billion left over. [5]

Its spending promises reached $883 billion, more than double a year before. [4]

Until now Amazon paid with cash from AWS, its cloud arm, and record bond sales. [4]

Amazon's boss Andy Jassy says AWS installs a new AI chip about every 14 seconds. [14]

Amazon borrows instead of selling shares; Alphabet is selling shares to raise $80 billion. [4]

Bankers call this secured lending: lenders hold a claim on the machines, not just a promise. [4]

Amazon's debt had passed $225 billion by June, before this loan. [4]

Why lenders to AI builders want a claim on the machines

A firm spends more cash on AI than its business brings in

It borrows to cover the gap

Lenders ask what they get back if the payments stop

A claim on the machines, or a stronger firm's guarantee, answers that

So the weaker the borrower, the more the loan rests on the machines

A lender to a weak borrower is really lending against the machines, so the loan is only as safe as the price those machines would fetch.

A top-rated borrower needs no pledge. A young one needs a stronger firm to promise what the building is worth.

Amazon's lenders get rights over some of the equipment the $80 billion buys, so they can fall back on the machines and not only on Amazon's promise.

Nscale is young and short of chips, so Nvidia offers to cover the building's value and take it over if the payments stop.

Microsoft, rated AAA, borrows $25 billion on its own name, while Anthropic, expected to be rated junk, leans on stronger partners to back its debt.

A claim on machines protects a lender only if someone will buy them, and if many AI builders fail at once they all try to sell the same chips together.

The lenders, the chip makers, the cloud firms and the people who use AI each see one part of these deals.

Alphabet, Amazon and Meta are spending more cash than their businesses bring in, so Amazon is borrowing against its AI machines and Nvidia may stand behind Nscale's loans. [5][4][6]

What happens to Amazon's lenders if AI demand cools.

Amazon has not said which machines back the $80 billion, so nobody outside can judge what the lenders could recover. [4]

Five tech giants have signed up for more than $3 trillion of future AI spending. [15]

Bloomberg counted Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle. [15]

The money is for data centres, leases, equipment and energy. [15]

Alphabet, Google's owner, has the most: more than $1 trillion, nearly 8 times a year ago. [15]

Meta, Facebook's owner, has more than $800 billion, a bit under half for data-centre leases. [15]

Some of the leases run for 30 years. [15]

In July a similar count of four of them came to about $2.4 trillion. [15]

Alphabet, Amazon and Meta now spend more cash than their businesses bring in. [16]

Microsoft is the only one of the four still bringing in more than it spends. [16]

The giants are paying for AI with their older businesses: adverts, business software and online shops. [16]

Accountants call cash left after spending free cash flow; below zero, firms borrow or sell shares. [5]

Gartner, a research firm, has warned that much of this spending may never pay off. [15]

Each company counts these promises differently, so the total mixes short orders with decades-long leases. [15]

A figure like $3 trillion is too big to picture, so it can sound like strength even when much of it is promised or borrowed. [15][5]

Nvidia, which makes the chips AI runs on, may guarantee billions of dollars of Nscale's loans. [6]

Nscale, a British AI cloud company, is building a West Virginia data centre for Anthropic. [17]

Anthropic signed a $44.6 billion contract for the first building alone. [6]

If Nscale missed payments, Nvidia would take over the site and help find a buyer. [6]

The talks are not signed, and the terms could still change. [17]

Nscale had about 25,000 AI chips running in August, against nearly 500,000 planned. [6]

This month Microsoft pulled out of a planned Nscale site in England. [6]

Anthropic can walk away if Nscale's money is not in place by a set deadline. [17]

Bankers call it a residual value guarantee: Nvidia promises the building's worth to lenders. [17]

Nvidia keeps a big chip buyer, and would have to step in if Nscale fails. [6]

Nvidia has given AI cloud firms and big customers about $170 billion in investment and credit. [6]

Nscale is young and short of chips, so Nvidia offers to cover the building's value and take it over if the payments stop.

Whether Nvidia will actually sign the guarantee for Nscale.

The talks are not signed and the terms could still change; Nvidia and other backers asked for stricter terms after markets turned. [17]

Microsoft borrowed $25 billion from investors on Thursday, selling its first bonds since 2017. [18]

Its 10-year bonds cost 5.6% a year, barely more than the US government pays. [18]

Microsoft holds a AAA credit rating, the top grade; only Johnson & Johnson shares it. [18]

SpaceX, rated BBB, 3 steps lower, will pay up to 8.75% on $40 billion. [18]

Bonds of CoreWeave, an AI cloud firm deep in the junk grade, have traded above 15%. [18]

Blackstone, a big investor, now expects Anthropic to get a junk rating after its share sale. [19]

Junk is the grade for riskier borrowers; Blackstone expects the top band of it, BB. [19]

Blackstone had earlier said Anthropic would win a safer grade before 2027. [19]

A junk rating would make it harder and dearer for Anthropic to borrow for chips. [19]

Credit analysts grade how likely a borrower is to repay, and lower grades pay more interest. [18]

Microsoft gets cheap money for AI; weaker firms like CoreWeave pay far more. [18]

Microsoft, rated AAA, borrows $25 billion on its own name, while Anthropic, expected to be rated junk, leans on stronger partners to back its debt.

Its AAA rating let it sell 10-year bonds at 5.6%, barely above what the US government pays. [18]

CoreWeave's bonds trade above 15%, and a junk rating would make Anthropic's borrowing dearer. [18][19]

President Trump declared imported robots and factory machines a threat to US national security. [8]

He signed it on Wednesday, after a Commerce Department study begun in September 2025. [8]

It sets no tariffs, which are taxes on imports, for now. [8]

If talks with trading partners fail, the options include tariffs, quotas and fees. [8]

The US installed almost 38,500 industrial robots in 2025, up 12%. [8]

US firms often buy heavy robot arms from FANUC, ABB, Yaskawa and KUKA, all based abroad. [8]

No US company makes comparable heavy-duty arms, Ars Technica reported. [8]

General Motors, Ford, Tesla, Boeing and Lockheed Martin all rely on such robots. [8]

Trade lawyers call this Section 232: a 1962 law letting presidents limit imports for security. [8]

The order names no country, and none of the foreign firms it warns about. [8]

Officials must report back to President Trump within 180 days. [8]

Whether the robot tariffs come at all.

Officials have 180 days of talks and the order names no country. [8]

The CMA, Britain's competition watchdog, is investigating Meta's new terms for publishers. [3]

The terms could let Meta use news sites' content for its own products, including AI. [3]

The CMA will judge whether Meta is abusing a dominant position with exploitative terms. [3]

Meta had planned the terms for 20 November, then put them on hold. [3]

A Norwegian court this week banned Meta from enforcing the terms for now. [3]

In France, an appeals court told Meta to negotiate fairly over payments to the press. [3]

Meta says it has promised not to change its terms without consulting publishers. [3]

Since May, over 340 news sites have blocked archive crawlers to keep their work from AI. [3]

Thousands of UK businesses rely on Meta for customers, so unfair terms could break the law. [3]

Competition law calls it abuse of dominance when a firm's size lets it impose unfair terms. [3]

Publishers gain a regulator on their side; Meta may be made to change its terms. [3]

The competition watchdog is now examining whether Meta's terms for their content are unfair. [3]

The New York Times says OpenAI and Microsoft broke copyright by training AI on its articles. [20]

The Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, has filed a brief in that case. [21]

OpenAI and Microsoft say that training is fair use, which US law allows without permission. [20]

Wikimedia says training should count as fair use, but chatbots copying articles back should not. [21]

It warns that a sweeping win for either side could harm the open web. [20]

Wikimedia sites are among the most important sources of AI training data, the filing says. [21]

But AI answers draw visitors away from the volunteers who keep the sites going. [21]

The case will decide whether training AI on news articles breaks US copyright law. [20]

US fair use asks whether a new use makes something new and different from the original. [21]

Wikimedia wants both: AI tools for its editors, and readers who still come to Wikipedia. [21]

Australia's government is weighing copyright changes that could let AI firms train on creative work. [7]

Opposition senators warn that this could breach section 51 of the constitution. [7]

Section 51 lets Australia's government take property only on just terms, meaning fair payment. [7]

Senator Ross Cadell said Australia could owe payment to every rights holder on Earth. [7]

Anne Twomey, a leading constitutional lawyer, said there was potentially a concern. [7]

Anthropic suggested an opt-out model: it would copy work unless an owner signals an objection. [7]

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said it would be theft if creators were not paid. [7]

The choice decides whether musicians, authors and journalists get paid when AI learns from them. [7]

Constitutional lawyers ask whether weakening an owner's rights counts as the state taking property. [7]

No bill has been published yet, so nobody can test the worry against real wording. [7]

Whether Australia can change copyright for AI without breaking its constitution.

No bill has been published, and the leading constitutional expert says it depends on how the law is drafted. [7]

Apple's AI features reach China with iOS 27.3 in December, after a 4 November test. [9]

Users can call on Qwen, an AI model from Alibaba, inside Siri and Writing Tools. [9]

China's internet regulator cleared that set-up in July. [9]

The features include live translation, writing help and removing objects from photos. [22]

The rebuilt Siri assistant Apple showed this year is not included. [9]

They work on the iPhone 15 Pro and newer models. [9]

They arrive about 2 years after Apple's AI first launched in the US. [9]

Apple trained its own AI model just for China, Reuters reported in August. [22]

Until December, iPhones in mainland China have none of these Apple AI features. [22]

Alibaba gains a place inside Siri on iPhones across China. [9]

Waymo, a driverless-taxi company, chose Toyota to supply cars for Japan and the UK. [23]

Testing of self-driving Toyota bZ4X cars starts in Japan in 2027. [24]

Toyota will build them at its Takaoka factory and fit Waymo's driving system there. [23]

Japan and the UK drive on the left, so the cars need right-hand steering. [23]

Waymo has tested Jaguar cars in London for months and needs permits to launch. [23]

It plans a fully driverless taxi service in Tokyo next year. [24]

The two firms signed a first, loosely worded agreement 18 months ago. [23]

Toyota's factories give Waymo a way to make robotaxis for markets outside the US. [24]

Engineers call this Level 4 driving: the car needs no human driver in its cleared areas. [24]

For now the deal looks more like an ordinary supplier contract, TechCrunch says. [23]

The firms will also study putting Waymo's system into Toyotas that people own. [23]

Foxconn, best known for assembling iPhones, wants 50% of the world's AI server market. [25]

Its share is about 40% now and could reach 45% next year, chairman Young Liu said. [25]

An AI server is the computer AI runs on in a data centre. [25]

Foxconn's factories are fully booked for at least the next 18 months. [25]

Liu expects AI equipment to bring 60% to 65% of revenue within three to five years. [25]

He said a new deal with OpenAI is in the works, after meeting Sam Altman. [26]

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has not commented. [26]

In November 2025 the two firms agreed to design AI data-centre racks together. [26]

A full order book at the main AI server maker shows buyers still ordering hard. [25]

Liu pushed back on talk of an AI bubble, while his own sales ride on AI. [26]

Its AI server factories are fully booked for at least a year and a half. [25]

China called a report of a spy close to Nvidia's boss, Jensen Huang, groundless speculation. [27]

The New York Times reported that US intelligence suspected Alice Huang of gathering information for China. [27]

Alice Huang, no relation to Jensen, was an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore data-centre firm. [27]

Investigators also suspected Megaspeed of helping Nvidia chips reach China against US export rules. [27]

Nvidia said Jensen's interactions with Ms Huang are not unusual or unexpected. [27]

The Times reported that President Trump was briefed a year ago and took no action. [28]

Sources said he feared hurting Nvidia's chip sales or the trade truce with China. [28]

Jensen Huang has become President Trump's main adviser on AI, the report says. [28]

Intelligence agencies call it unmasking: revealing a US citizen's name in surveillance reports. [27]

Jensen Huang was not given the warning briefing that targets of spying sometimes get. [28]

What, if anything, Alice Huang passed to China.

Neither the BBC nor the sources behind the New York Times report could say what she shared or how valuable it was. [27][28]

Reddit's shares fell 29.22% on Friday, their worst day since listing in 2024. [29]

Reddit forecast sales of $1 billion to $1.03 billion for the last quarter of the year. [29]

Analysts had expected $1.05 billion. [29]

Sales still grew 53% from a year earlier. [29]

Its boss, Steve Huffman, said visits from Google search went down meaningfully because of AI. [29]

Reddit will test making people log in to read it. [29]

Reddit's worst fall before this, 20.99%, came on 31 July. [29]

Google's AI answers keep readers on Google instead of sending them to sites like Reddit. [29]

Web businesses call visits sent by a search engine referral traffic, and Reddit's fell. [29]

Google keeps the readers; Reddit loses the visits it used to get from search. [29]