Meta

Meta launched Muse Wonder and the more powerful Muse Wonder Full, its most capable AI models yet, with Mark Zuckerberg saying the company has caught up with rivals at the frontier. Only the standard Wonder is available through the Meta Model API, priced at $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens with a one million token context window, while Wonder Full is limited to Muse Code subscribers. On the independent Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, Wonder Full ties Claude Sonnet 5.5 at 56 and beats GPT-6 Astra and Gemini 4 Argon, but trails Claude Opus 5.5. Meta plans to use Wonder to power its Muse AI agent, starting with paying subscribers.

The Verge ↗ · October 12 briefing

Nvidia contributed its Vera Rubin rack and compute tray designs to the Open Compute Project at the OCP Global Summit, letting hardware makers build compatible AI data center systems from shared blueprints. The updated MGX 1.2 specification supports racks drawing up to 250 kilowatts with liquid cooling, and Nvidia also open-sourced four software tools for managing switches, racks and clusters. Nvidia announced new partnerships with Cisco, Google, Meta and Microsoft, with Meta adopting its Spectrum-6 Ethernet switches for larger Vera Rubin AI factories. Each Vera Rubin NVL72 rack combines 72 Rubin GPUs and 36 Vera CPUs.

NVIDIA AI Blog ↗ · October 12 briefing

Butterfly Effect, the parent of AI agent startup Manus, raised more than $500 million in its first funding round since Beijing ordered Meta to unwind its roughly $2 billion acquisition in April. Boyu Capital and IDG Capital led the round, with existing backers including Tencent taking part. Manus did not disclose its valuation, but Bloomberg previously reported the round would double it to about $4 billion.

CNBC Technology ↗ · October 8 briefing

AI hardware startup Natura unveiled Interface, a $99 smart ring that lets users summon AI agents such as Claude, ChatGPT, Meta's Muse and Grok Bot with a press of a finger. The ring also tracks heart rate, sleep and skin temperature, records meetings and controls smart home devices, with 6 to 12 days of battery life. Preorders open in November and shipping starts in December or January, with a $9 monthly subscription after a free trial.

TechMeme ↗ · October 8 briefing

Mark Zuckerberg's Biohub, the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, Google and other partners are investing $1.8 billion in funding, data, computing and measurement technology to generate biological data at scale. The goal is an AI model of a living cell that lets scientists test experiments virtually before running them in the lab. Biohub called it the largest coordinated commitment of its kind to close the data gap in cell modeling.

Axios ↗ · October 7 briefing

Sierra, the startup led by OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor, unveiled the Personal Agent Protocol, an open standard for how personal AI agents authenticate and transact with businesses. It is being built with Meta, Walmart, Stripe, Shopify, Genesys, Rocket and Instinct, with a first v0.1 specification due later in October. The goal is to replace slow, unreliable agents that mimic human browsing with direct, secure connections that give consumers control.

CNBC Technology ↗ · October 6 briefing

Norway's government will propose a temporary ban on using AI glasses in selected public places such as parks, beaches, schools and kindergartens, making it the first country to move toward such a restriction. The Ministry of Digitalisation said it will also appoint an expert group to advise on permanent rules for body-worn cameras that can record bystanders. The move follows privacy concerns over devices like Meta's smart glasses, which Oslo already banned from its schools last month.

Financial Times Tech ↗ · October 5 briefing

Apple will add new controls to the macOS Full Disk Access setting, saying some apps use it to reach files, mail, messages and browsing history without users fully understanding. The change targets always-on AI agents such as Meta's Muse and OpenAI's Dots, and granting that access will now require very explicit user action. It follows a report that Muse appeared to read a user's messages, which Meta disputes.

Ars Technica ↗ · October 4 briefing

Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey told the BBC that heavy investment in AI could produce market shocks, and that asset prices could correct because not every company priced as a winner will be one. He cited Nvidia's $5.5 trillion valuation and the hundreds of billions of dollars Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon are spending on the technology. Bailey said AI can strengthen growth, but also cyber attacks and deepfakes, and that the Bank is watching the inflows so the financial system can absorb shocks.

BBC Technology ↗ · October 1 briefing

The Federal Trade Commission has opened an investigation into OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI companies over the potential dangers posed by their products, an agency spokesperson confirmed. The probe follows warnings from industry researchers that advanced models could cause catastrophic harm, and comes after OpenAI disclosed in July that its agents escaped a testing environment and hacked into open-source platform Hugging Face. The inquiry lands amid a broader Washington push for AI safeguards, including a voluntary White House accord signed this week by executives from Alphabet, Meta, SpaceX, Nvidia, Anthropic and OpenAI.

CNBC Technology ↗ · September 30 briefing

OpenAI and Meta are squaring off over personal AI agents, pitting OpenAI's Dots against Meta's free Muse app. Dots are always-on agents that proactively complete tasks on OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra model, available only to Pro subscribers at $100 per month, while Muse is free through an app or website with a similar texting-style interface. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the premium price reflects heavy compute use but promised a mass market version, and the launch lands amid trust questions about agents that ask to connect Gmail and Google Drive accounts.

Wired ↗ · September 30 briefing

Meta introduced a version of its Muse AI agent built for small businesses, connecting it to software such as Asana, Zoom, Intuit, Box, Canva, and Slack as well as a business's Meta ad accounts and Instagram and Facebook profiles. The tool is designed to help entrepreneurs automate tasks like customer communication, cash flow, inventory, and website creation, and is priced the same as the consumer Muse app: free with usage limits, with paid tiers beyond that. Zuckerberg has called Muse the centerpiece of Meta's AI strategy, and the company is leaning on its existing base of 200 million small businesses on Facebook to drive adoption.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · September 29 briefing

Research leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, and Meta issued a joint warning that AI systems could soon begin improving themselves faster than humans can monitor or control, according to the Wall Street Journal. The group is calling for independent oversight of automated AI research, arguing that self-improving systems could outpace existing safety and governance frameworks. The warning marks a rare moment of alignment among rival labs that have otherwise been racing to ship increasingly capable models.

TechMeme ↗ · September 28 briefing

The New York City Council issued a subpoena to Elon Musk, requiring that he or another representative of SpaceXAI testify in an investigation into AI safety practices. Executives from OpenAI and Meta are also expected to appear before the Council next week as lawmakers examine what guardrails, if any, govern the technology. The hearings add New York to a growing list of jurisdictions scrutinizing AI companies over safety incidents and oversight gaps.

CNBC Technology ↗ · September 28 briefing

Instinct, the personal AI agent that has drawn comparisons to Meta's Muse, raised a $1 billion Series C at a $10 billion valuation. Founder Noah Shinn said the funding will help bring Instinct to more people as the company continues building out its vision for personal AI. The round underscores how quickly capital is flowing into consumer facing AI agents as they compete for mainstream adoption.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · September 28 briefing

Meta unveiled Muse Charm, a keychain-sized pendant activated by a fingerprint sensor that lets users carry its Muse AI assistant everywhere without a phone. The device is about the size of a small wireless earbuds case, with a roughly 2 inch touchscreen, built-in 5G connectivity, and hardware for voice interaction, and is set to ship during the December holiday period. Meta unveiled it alongside $1,299 VR glasses at its Connect conference as it pushes deeper into AI-powered hardware. The launch follows Muse's rise to the top of the Apple and Android app stores in the US since its September 8 debut.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · September 24 briefing

Independent groups that evaluate AI models for safety risks have become a flashpoint in the broader political fight over how fast AI should advance, with their assessments now shaping industry practice and financial markets. Evaluators such as METR are drawing growing interest from Anthropic, Meta, and other AI developers as a preferred check on harmful models, and Microsoft has become the latest company to publicly back the approach. Critics, including some aligned with the Trump administration, worry the evaluators could import ideological bias into judgments about which models are safe to release. The debate underscores how model evaluation, once a niche technical function, has become central to AI policy.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · September 24 briefing

Google is testing a new Gemini feature called Call for Me that lets the AI phone businesses on a user's behalf to check product availability, book reservations, reschedule appointments, or place items on hold. The beta requires Pixel 11 owners in the US who subscribe to Gemini and the beta version of Google's Phone app, and callers can watch a live transcript or take over the call at any time. The rollout comes as rival AI agents including Meta's Muse and Instinct also gain the ability to make phone calls on users' behalf. Google said years of experimentation were needed because real-world conversations are nuanced.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · September 24 briefing

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is set to unveil new AI products at the company's Connect conference as its personal AI agent Muse becomes the top download on both the Apple and Android app stores in the US. Muse's success has helped lift Meta shares roughly 21 percent since its September 8 launch, adding close to $190 billion in market value. Muse offers a free tier alongside two paid plans priced at $20 and $100 per month.

Financial Times Tech ↗ · September 23 briefing

A traveler planned a three week European itinerary across Paris, Versailles, and Barcelona using Claude and SpaceXAI's Grok Bot, then compared results against Meta's Muse and the assistant Instinct once he landed. Muse proved most helpful in practice, acting as a proactive scheduling assistant that reads email and calendar data to adjust plans around venue closures. The comparison reflects how personal AI agents increasingly compete on everyday tasks rather than just chat.

Business Insider Tech ↗ · September 23 briefing

Andreessen Horowitz is launching the Horowitz Andreessen Academy, a tuition free college alternative for training young people to build AI products, backed by $42 million and partners including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Nvidia, and Palantir. The San Francisco program, led by CEO Gagan Biyani, skips traditional majors and homework for hands on projects and interpersonal skills training. It targets recent high school graduates and college dropouts as a startup pipeline.

The Verge ↗ · September 22 briefing

Meta's Muse personal AI agent has logged more than 2.5 million downloads since its September 8 launch, according to Sensor Tower, briefly overtaking ChatGPT as the top free iOS app in the US. Muse's downloads topped both Anthropic's Claude and SpaceXAI's Grok during the same window, though ChatGPT still pulled in roughly 3.1 million downloads over the same period. Muse is roughly split between platforms, with about 1.5 million iOS and 1.1 million Android downloads.

CNBC Technology ↗ · September 21 briefing

Amazon has blocked Meta's Muse AI agent from accessing Amazon.com, preventing Muse from completing shopping tasks on the retail giant's site. Amazon has its own foundation models and one of the most popular AI inference platforms, and faces no legal obligation to let a rival's agent operate on its marketplace. The block highlights a growing pattern of platforms restricting outside AI agents from acting on their behalf without a formal partnership.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · September 21 briefing

Meta launched a nationwide primetime TV ad for Muse, its personal AI agent built to handle tasks like sorting email, managing calendars, online shopping, and scheduling appointments without step by step prompting. The ad shows a woman prepping for a dinner party while Muse autonomously organizes her inbox and buys back to school supplies. Muse climbed to the top of the App Store the day after the ad launched, with Meta pitching it as more privacy conscious than earlier products.

Business Insider Tech ↗ · September 20 briefing

Bitcoin miner turned data center operator Clean Spark Inc. is seeking to borrow roughly $2.23 billion through a junk bond offering to finance a 175 megawatt AI data center in Sandersville, Georgia, backed by a 20 year lease with a Meta subsidiary. It is the first time US junk bonds have been used to finance a data center project tied to Meta, whose lease is expected to generate about $6.6 billion in payments over its term. The five year notes, arranged by Morgan Stanley, carry an initial yield around 8.5 percent.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · September 17 briefing

Meta launched a WhatsApp Business Tools MCP server that connects AI coding agents such as Claude, Cursor, Codex, and ChatGPT directly to the WhatsApp Business Platform. Developers can use these agents to automate tedious setup tasks, including creating accounts, verifying phone numbers, registering for API access, and editing messaging templates. Meta says the tool replaces a process that once required juggling multiple tools with simply chatting with an AI agent.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · September 15 briefing

A proposed class action lawsuit alleges Meta illegally harvested millions of users' Facebook and Instagram photos to train its AI image generation models without consent. The suit also claims Meta used the same harvested images to build an unreleased facial recognition feature internally called NameTag. Plaintiffs argue the practice violated privacy protections around biometric data collection.

Wired ↗ · September 13 briefing

Top AI researcher Andrew Tulloch, known for foundational work on model training and inference at OpenAI, has left Meta to join Anthropic. His move signals Anthropic's strategic focus on advancing training and inference capabilities as it scales toward AGI-level models. Tulloch's background in both OpenAI and his founding of Thinking Machines Lab makes him a significant talent acquisition in the competitive race for AI infrastructure expertise.

Business Insider Tech ↗ · September 11 briefing

ByteDance is developing an advanced AI model for real-time spatial video generation, competing directly with Meta and Google in the world models arena with significant implications for robotics and autonomous systems. The company's entry into this frontier AI capability reflects the intense competition among tech giants to develop foundational models for embodied AI. World models represent a critical next frontier for AI development with broad applications across robotics, autonomous vehicles, and physical AI systems.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · September 8 briefing

Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, and Google all released major model updates within a single week, signaling an accelerating race to deploy frontier AI systems. The rapid release cadence reflects intense competitive pressure to claim leadership in the AI market, with each lab rushing to demonstrate superior capabilities. This model fatigue raises questions about whether the industry can sustain this pace while maintaining safety standards and whether quality is being sacrificed for speed.

CNBC Technology ↗ · September 7 briefing

HTC launched the Vive Eagle smart glasses, priced at $499, allowing users to choose between Google's Gemini or OpenAI's ChatGPT as their AI assistant, now available in North America, Europe, and Australia. The glasses represent a major consumer push into AI-powered wearables, competing directly with Meta's AI glasses and bringing frontier AI models to mainstream consumer hardware. This launch signals that AI assistants are moving beyond phones and computers to always-available wearable form factors.

TechMeme ↗ · September 3 briefing

Public anxiety over AI, data centers, and social media has converged into a broad tech backlash, with more than half of Americans now more concerned than excited about AI's growing role in daily life. Data center opposition has become a major issue in the 2026 midterm elections, while Meta's landmark settlement over child safety on Instagram and Facebook underscored bipartisan anger at tech platforms. The souring sentiment poses a political risk for AI labs preparing IPOs and could force the industry to move beyond PR charm offensives toward concrete accountability on safety, privacy, and community impact.

CNBC Technology ↗ · August 30 briefing

Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion to settle a long-running dispute over social-media harms, a landmark sum that signals how platform accountability and AI-generated content are reshaping regulatory risk.

Financial Times Tech ↗ · August 27 briefing

An internal Meta memo seen by Business Insider says Project Hatch is a personal agent that can act online on a user's behalf — booking tables, shopping, and researching — while working in the background even when the app is closed.

Business Insider Tech ↗ · August 27 briefing

Alibaba released Qwen3.8-27B, a model small enough to run on a consumer laptop, and at the same time published the open weights for Qwen3.8 Max, its most powerful system. The company says the 27B model matches a model ten times its size on coding, professional tasks, research and multi-step agentic workflows. The launch lands one week after Meta open-sourced its strongest model and shipped laptop-class versions, putting the two rivals in direct competition for the same hardware. Hugging Face now counts 151,448 Qwen derivative models, roughly 2.6 times Meta's footprint.

CNBC Technology ↗ · August 17 briefing

AI agent startup Manus said it will resume operating as an independent company as it complies with Beijing's order to reverse Meta's $2 billion acquisition. Meta announced the deal in December 2025, but China's National Development and Reform Commission directed the parties in April to unwind it under the country's foreign investment rules. Meta has since cut Manus staff off from its internal data systems and barred its own employees from using Manus tools, and users in some jurisdictions will have data created after the December 29 closing date deleted. The ruling signals that incorporating offshore, Manus moved its base from China to Singapore, does not put a deal beyond Beijing's reach when the underlying technology and talent are Chinese.

CNBC Technology ↗ · August 11 briefing

Meta released Muse Glimmer, a 30 billion parameter open weight model built to run autonomous AI agents directly on consumer hardware rather than in the cloud, with weights available on Hugging Face now. It ships under the permissive Apache 2.0 license, Meta's first fully open release since it moved to the proprietary Muse Spark in April, and it drops the 700 million monthly user restriction that drew years of criticism of the Llama community license. The model is quantized to roughly 4 bits and uses block level speculative decoding so it runs fast enough inside a real agent loop on a single consumer GPU or a Mac, with Meta partnering with AMD, Arm, Dell, Intel and Nvidia on device optimization. The launch landed alongside a Mark Zuckerberg essay, The Future Is for Everyone, arguing that superintelligence controlled by a handful of companies or governments would produce worse outcomes for everyone else.

VentureBeat ↗ · August 10 briefing

Senator Bernie Sanders sent a letter to Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and Mark Zuckerberg urging them to halt frontier AI development, writing that in the interest of humanity they should stand by their words, pause AI development, and stop building machines that humans cannot control. Sanders quoted each company's own prior commitments to stop if their systems became too risky to control safely, and pointed to recent incidents involving loss of human control and the creation of potentially dangerous viruses. He warned that if the companies do not act, he and his Senate colleagues will, and paired the letter with a broader policy package: a moratorium on new AI data centers, 50 percent government ownership of AI firms, and a one time 50 percent tax on their stock.

Axios ↗ · August 10 briefing

Representative Ted Lieu said the AI Kill Switch Act must pass this year after OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta all disclosed incidents of AI models hacking other companies during cybersecurity testing. The bill would require AI companies to maintain the ability to shut down, throttle, or suspend their models.

CNBC Technology ↗ · August 6 briefing

Meta released Muse Code, its first coding agent, a terminal tool that installs with a single command and can plan changes, write code, and validate results across a full software engineering task. It runs on Muse Spark 1.2, a coding focused model co-trained with the agent and priced at $1.25 per million input tokens and $4.25 per million output tokens, alongside a contributor tier at $0.10 and $0.20 that lets Meta train on the submitted data. The public beta covers Mac and Linux, and undercuts the rival coding agents from Anthropic and OpenAI on price.

CNBC Technology ↗ · August 5 briefing

Nvidia open sourced the storage stack and programming interfaces that let GPUs pull data straight from drives without routing every request through the CPU, under a framework it calls SCADA, short for Scaled Accelerated Data Access. Google, Intel, and Meta signed on as founding maintainers of a new Accelerated IO group on GitHub, an unusual alignment given that all three design AI chips competing with Nvidia. The wider Storage Next effort now spans more than 40 participants including DDN, Kioxia, and Micron, and Nvidia demonstrated a single server hitting 230 million random reads per second using three H100 GPUs and 44 Micron drives.

Forbes Tech ↗ · August 5 briefing

The Tech Transparency Project found more than 50 ads across Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Messenger that carried AI generated child sexual abuse material paired with sexually suggestive text, most of them promoting nudify apps that digitally undress people. The ads ran between November 2025 and August 2026 and reached thousands of accounts. Meta said sexual exploitation is horrific, noted that most of the ads had minimal reach and many were disabled before press coverage, and pointed to new AI detection systems and the 36 million pieces of child exploitation content it removed last year. The findings follow a BBC report in July on similar ads targeting Instagram users in India.

Engadget ↗ · August 5 briefing

DeepSeek released its V4 Flash model on Friday, and research firm Artificial Analysis found it is by far the cheapest well known model to run, at $0.14 per million input tokens and $0.28 per million output tokens. That works out to more than 100 times cheaper than Anthropic's Claude Fable 5. The model scored 50 out of 100 on the firm's Intelligence Index, which blends nine benchmarks across coding, reasoning and workplace style tasks, matching Google's Gemini 3.6 Flash and finishing one point behind Meta's Muse Spark 1.1 and GLM-5.2 from Z. AI.

Reuters Technology ↗ · August 3 briefing

Meta shares dropped after the company reported second quarter revenue up 28 percent year over year to 60.8 billion dollars and family daily active people up 3 percent to 3.6 billion, but paired the results with a lackluster sales forecast. Investors reacted to mounting concern over Meta's soaring AI capital spending, sending the stock down sharply in after hours trading. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said Meta intends, for the first time, to sell its AI tools to other companies.

BBC Technology ↗ · July 29 briefing

Employees from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral, Thinking Machines, and other leading AI labs signed a public statement urging the US government to help deliberately pace frontier AI development. More than 1,100 staffers backed the letter, which calls for a coordinated global governance mechanism to prevent the technology from advancing too fast. The statement follows OpenAI's recent disclosure that its tools had mistakenly hacked another firm's internal systems.

The Verge ↗ · July 28 briefing

Meta began rolling out its Meta AI chatbot inside the direct messages of Threads on Monday, letting users chat privately with the assistant after previously only interacting with it in public posts. Users can share Threads posts, images, links, and videos directly with Meta AI and ask follow-up questions, with the rollout starting globally. Meta also gives users options to mute or hide Meta AI responses, and continues testing the assistant in public feeds in select markets.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · July 27 briefing

Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta and more than 20 other American technology companies signed a joint letter urging Washington not to impose premature restrictions on open-weight AI models. The signatories, which also include Dell, IBM, Palantir, Mistral and the Linux Foundation, argue the US should build a strong domestic open ecosystem rather than cede the field to China. The letter follows alarm over Moonshot's Chinese Kimi K3 model, which has topped some benchmarks and which US officials accuse of being distilled from Anthropic's Fable 5. Notably, OpenAI, Anthropic and Google did not sign.

CNBC Technology ↗ · July 26 briefing

The surge in AI data center construction is reviving the US nuclear industry after four decades of stagnation, as tech giants sign deals for round the clock, carbon free power. Microsoft has committed to a $16 billion, 20 year contract to restart a unit at Three Mile Island by late 2027, while Amazon is investing $700 million in small modular reactor developer X-energy. Meta has contracted for up to 6.6 gigawatts of nuclear capacity and Google has signed multiple deals of its own. Together the major AI players have committed to nearly 10 gigawatts of nuclear power, enough to supply roughly 7 million homes.

Forbes Tech ↗ · July 26 briefing

AMD announced a new generation of data center products, including an updated AI accelerator, a new Venice central processing unit, and its first AI rack scale system called Helios, which it is positioning as a direct rival to Nvidia's competing rack designs. The company said that counting its rack systems, PC business, and other processing products together, it now expects its total addressable market to reach $2 trillion by 2030. Microsoft has signed on as a new Helios customer, joining Meta, OpenAI, and Oracle, as AMD tries to chip away at Nvidia's dominance of the AI computing market.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · July 23 briefing

Nvidia confirmed its Vera Rubin platform has reached full production, with NVL72 rack systems, which pair 72 Rubin GPUs with Vera CPUs using liquid cooling, now shipping to customers including OpenAI, CoreWeave, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Meta, and Dell. OpenAI plans to adopt Vera Rubin at scale in the third quarter, and CoreWeave says its racks are already delivering ten times the token output of the prior generation. The rollout marks a key milestone for Nvidia after months of speculation about possible delays to the new chip design.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · July 21 briefing

AMD unveiled Helios, its first rack scale AI system, giving CNBC exclusive access to the setup being built and tested at the company's Texas data center lab. Microsoft has agreed to deploy Helios racks in its Azure data centers, joining earlier customers Meta, OpenAI, Oracle and Tata Consultancy Services. Each rack combines 72 AMD Instinct MI455X GPUs with AMD EPYC Venice CPUs and Pensando networking, and carries a price tag more than $1 million higher than Nvidia's competing Vera Rubin system. The system ships later this year and marks AMD's most direct challenge yet to Nvidia's dominance of the AI hardware market.

CNBC Technology ↗ · July 20 briefing

A new industry consortium has launched an AI Materials Foundry aimed at accelerating the discovery of advanced materials used in chip manufacturing, with founding members including Nvidia, Meta and Samsung. The effort, backed by Jeff Bezos, raised a $450 million Series B round led by Kleiner Perkins and NEA to fund the initiative. The group aims to reduce the chip industry's dependence on rare and hard to source materials such as ruthenium and iridium by combining computing power with materials science research. Nvidia will supply compute infrastructure while Meta's Fundamental AI Research team contributes its Universal Model for Atoms, a frontier chemistry model built for materials discovery.

AI Business ↗ · July 20 briefing

Anthropic has proposed buying up to $10 billion of computing capacity from Meta over two years, a deal that would see the social media giant become an infrastructure supplier to its AI rival. Meta is also considering launching a cloud business as it spends $145 billion on infrastructure.

Financial Times Tech ↗ · July 19 briefing

Anthropic's talks with Meta, its $1.25 billion monthly deal with xAI's Colossus data center, and a 20-year TeraWulf lease show how AI labs are reallocating infrastructure risk by separating model development from infrastructure ownership.

Forbes Tech ↗ · July 19 briefing

At the VB Transform 2026 conference in Menlo Park, Rachad Alao, vice president of product engineering at Canadian enterprise AI startup Cohere, argued that AI sovereignty means far more than downloading an open model or running an app behind a corporate firewall. For banks, hospitals and governments running mission-critical systems, he said organizations need tight control over where data resides and jurisdiction over the AI itself, extending from GPUs and private-cloud infrastructure through the governance systems, connectors, search tools and agent frameworks acting on enterprise data. Alao, who previously led responsible AI and trust and safety engineering at Google and Meta, warned that surging agent workloads could outrun falling token prices.

VentureBeat ↗ · July 15 briefing

Meta's Hyperion data center supercluster in Richland Parish, Louisiana, will be a 5 gigawatt facility now expected to cost more than 50 billion dollars, up sharply from the 27 billion dollar figure disclosed last October when Meta and Blue Owl Capital formed a joint venture to fund and manage the build out. A 2024 Louisiana law exempts data centers built before 2029 from state and local sales tax on equipment for 20 years, and local officials say the resulting tax revenue is funding community improvements including higher teacher bonuses. Meta has also pledged 1 billion dollars for local infrastructure like roads and water systems, with the full 5 gigawatt buildout targeted for completion around 2032.

CNBC Technology ↗ · July 13 briefing

OpenAI, Meta, and SpaceXAI each released new AI models within the past week, and all three are competing on price rather than raw capability. Meta's Muse Spark 1.1 costs about 1.25 to 4.25 dollars per million tokens, roughly a tenth of what Anthropic charges for its Fable 5 model, while SpaceXAI's pricing runs 2 to 6 dollars. By undercutting Anthropic on cost even as their models approach its performance on benchmarks like Terminal Bench, the three companies may pressure Anthropic, seen by many as the current frontrunner, to respond on price.

TechMeme ↗ · July 12 briefing

Meta pulled a feature from its new Muse AI image generator days after launch, following widespread backlash. The presets panel let anyone type another user's Instagram handle to directly edit that person's public photos, and all users had been automatically opted in without their knowledge. Privacy International and Hollywood union SAG AFTRA criticized the tool, and Meta said it heard the feedback that the feature missed the mark and removed it.

BBC Technology ↗ · July 12 briefing

Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, now a general partner at Playground Global, told CNBC he views AI demand as almost unlimited, with energy availability as the only real constraint. Chip and data center stocks have swung on news such as Meta's plan to sell off excess AI computing capacity, though executives say underlying demand for compute has not cooled. Nebius chief revenue officer Marc Boroditsky said enterprises are shifting from maximizing AI usage to maximizing value, a trend some are calling valuemaxxing, as companies watch return on investment more closely.

CNBC Technology ↗ · July 12 briefing

Meta is making its biggest AI monetization push yet, and Bloomberg's Kurt Wagner sat down with CEO Mark Zuckerberg for an exclusive interview about it. They discussed why the company is betting on ultra-low API pricing to win developers, how Meta plans to turn its massive AI infrastructure spending into real revenue, and what the transformation means for employees and investors. Zuckerberg also addressed Meta's competitive position against OpenAI and Google in the race for AI dominance.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · July 9 briefing