AI news, distilled.

Blackstone’s Jas Khaira says fears over AI-buildout debt are overblown

Blackstone’s AI head on why the PE giant isn't panicked by market jitters.

Meta wants to pay for its broad AI buildout with a newly created class of stock

The social media giant is planning a new stock strategy to help power its broad investments in AI models and services.

Data centers could erase decades of air quality gains

A rush of new data centers could bring air pollution roaring back to levels not seen since the 2000s in Texas, which has become ground zero for the physical infrastructure behind generative AI. New and proposed data centers are demanding a tremendous amount of electricity. How developers and utilities meet that demand - with gas […]

Meta to create a new class of shares to fund AI push

Meta says it's issuing a new class of shares to fund its AI initiatives. As part of its third-quarter earnings report released on Wednesday, the company says the non-voting stock will also go toward potential acquisitions and employee compensation, with trading beginning in 2027. "The scale of investment required to compete, sustain growth, expand infrastructure, […]

TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026: Everything you need to know

TechCrunch Founder Summit is a full-day gathering in Boston on November 4 where founders across all stages connect with top VCs and experienced entrepreneurs to gain tactical insights on building and scaling their companies.

Meta says Muse has over 10M users, with shopping a top activity

Meta Muse users are adopting the app for shopping and personal productivity, the company said during Q3 earnings. The AI app now has over 10M users.

Broad access through consistent standards

How OpenAI works with distribution partners to uphold consistent safeguards, support responsible access, and clarify expectations in our Usage Policies.

Recursive launches Flint, a laptop coding model it says was largely built by AI

Startup Recursive has released Flint, a free, laptop-sized coding model built largely by its own AI research system, as an early test of AI that improves itself.

Anthropic takes on Muse with Claude Duet, its new AI agent

Anthropic just announced an AI agent competitor to Meta's Muse and OpenAI's Dots: Claude Duet. The new agent, designed for professionals and small business owners, is launching as a "research preview," according to Anthropic, and it's available as a standalone app on iOS and Android and through Claude on the web. The AI agent is […]

Walmart is inviting AI agents to shop for you

Walmart will soon let AI agents shop on its website for you. Next month, the retail giant will allow you to connect your own AI agent to the site, with systems in place to let you approve and review purchases and set spending limits. The embrace of AI agents stands in stark contrast to Amazon, […]

While Amazon blocks AI agents, Walmart rolls out the welcome mat

As Amazon blocks AI agents from shopping on its site, Walmart is taking the opposite approach, introducing new technology that lets AI agents make purchases on customers' behalf, with controls over spending and transaction approvals.

NVIDIA Kumo Relational Outperforms Supervised Machine Learning on Relational Data, No Training Required

PHP Armageddon: OpenAI, Google’s Wiz find ancient holes, panicking the internet

This is the kind of security issue that was found and prevented by AI, but is also a high risk because of AI.

Train in Simulation, Deploy on a Real Robot: Microduck with Isaac Lab 3.0

How Specializing the Vocabulary of SLMs Can Cut Inference Cost by 77% in Real Applications

Blacksmith hits unicorn valuation after Sequoia leads Series C

Blacksmith, a platform that lets companies build and test AI code more effectively, just announced a $66 million Series C round led by Sequoia that values the company at $1 billion.

Physicist Christopher Stubbs joins Anthropic's Long-Term Benefit Trust

How AT&T is rethinking in-house legal work with OpenAI

AT&T is working with OpenAI to make legal knowledge easier to access. Learn how its LegalEdge team is rethinking intake and scaling legal judgment.

Profiling TorchNeuron (Part 1): System-level profiling on AWS Trainium.

Profiling TorchNeuron (Part 1): System-level profiling on AWS Trainium.