Latest AI News
Meta Strikes Multi-Billion Dollar Deal with Google for AI Chips
Meta has signed a multi-billion-dollar agreement with Google to rent AI chips, underscoring the escalating battle for computing power in the global AI race.
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Anthropic Rejects Pentagon Demand to Allow ‘Any Lawful Use’ of AI
The company said it has deployed its Claude models across the Department of War and other national security agencies.
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Anthropic is Giving Away Claude Max to Open-Source Maintainers
To qualify for Anthropic’s Clause Max 20x subscription, applicants must be a primary maintainer or core team member of a public repository.
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Intrinsic Joins Google to Scale Physical AI for Manufacturing & Logistics
Intrinsic’s platform supports application development across different robots, cameras, sensors and AI models.
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SBI Life Taps Sarvam for Multilingual Voice AI Across India
Sarvam has partnered with SBI Life to deploy multilingual generative AI across servicing, claims and sales.
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The Real Cost of Building AI Without Guardrails
Enterprise leaders call for balancing rapid AI innovation with ethical safeguards.
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ServiceNow Launches Autonomous Workforce, Integrates Moveworks into AI Platform
At ServiceNow, the Autonomous Workforce is handling more than 90% of employee IT requests.
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Anthropic CEO stands firm as Pentagon deadline looms
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodeisaid Thursdaythat he “cannot in good conscience accede to [the Pentagon’s] request” to give the military unrestricted access to its AI systems. “Anthropic understands that the Department of War, not private companies, makes military decisions,” Amodei wrote in a statement. “However, in a narrow set of cases, we believe AI can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values. Some uses are also simply outside the bounds of what today’s technology can safely and reliably do.” The two cases are: mass surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weapons with no human in the loop. The Pentagonbelievesit should be able to use Anthropic’s model for all lawful purposes, and that its uses shouldn’t be dictated by a private company. Amodei’s statement comes less than 24 hours ahead of the Friday 5:01 p.m.deadlineDefense Secretary Pete Hegseth has given Anthropic to either acquiesce to his demands, or face the consequences. The Department of Defense hasattempted to force Amodei’s handby either labeling Anthropic a supply chain risk — a designation reserved for foreign adversaries — or invoke the Defense Production Act and effectively force the firm to do its bidding. The DPA gives the president the authority to force companies to prioritize or expand production for national defense. Amodei pointed out the contradiction in those two threats. “One labels us a security risk; the other labels Claude as essential to national security.” He added that it’s the Department’s right to choose contractors most aligned with its vision, “but given the substantial value that Anthropic’s technology provides to our armed forces, we hope they reconsider.” Anthropic is currently the only frontier AI lab that has classified-ready systems for the military, though the DOD is reportedly getting xAI ready for the job. “Our strong preference is to continue to serve the Department and our warfighters—with our two requested safeguards in place,” Amodei said. “Should the Department choose to offboard Anthropic, we will work to enable a smooth transition to another provider, avoiding any disruption to ongoing military planning, operations, or other critical missions.” TLDR, he’s saying: “We can just part ways. There’s no need to be nasty about it.”
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Jack Dorsey just halved the size of Block’s employee base — and he says your company is next
Jack Dorsey has long been an open admirer of Elon Musk. Now, it seems, he may have been taking notes. On Thursday, Dorseyannouncedthat Block, the payments company he founded that operates Square, Cash App, and Tidal, is cutting more than 4,000 employees, nearlyhalfits global workforce, taking it from over 10,000 workers down to just under 6,000. Investors responded enthusiastically, sending the stock up more than 24% in after-hours trading. It isn’t the first time a major tech company has done something of the sort. In November 2022, Musk slashed roughly 50% of Twitter’s staff in a single stroke after taking the company private, a move that rattled many in Silicon Valley and rewrote the unofficial rules for how far a CEO could go in one shot. Dorsey was in an unusual position to watch it unfold. He’d rolled his roughly 2.4% ownership stake in Twitter into Musk’s takeover rather than taking a cash payout, making him one of the largest outside investors in what became X. The two men have had one of tech’s stranger relationships, with warm words giving way to public shots, then back again. Dorsey championed Musk’s Twitter acquisition, then said Musk “should have walked away.” He helped launch Bluesky, the decentralized Twitter alternative, then quit its board and called X “freedom technology.” Both are also vocal Bitcoin advocates — Block and Tesla each carry the cryptocurrency on their balance sheets. Dorsey framed Thursday’s cuts as a proactive, even empathetic, choice, and not a financial emergency. (The 4,000 people losing their jobs may see it differently.) “Repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead,” he wrote on X. He predicted that within a year, most companies will arrive at the same place. “I’d rather get there honestly and on our own terms than be forced into it reactively,” he said. The cuts are being driven, at least officially, by AI. Block CFO Amrita Ahuja said the cuts will position the company to “move faster with smaller, highly talented teams using AI to automate more work.” Salesforce and Amazon are among a growing list of other companies that have madeenormousstaffingcutsciting the increased gains they are seeing from AI, though a Forrester Research report last monthcast some doubton how real those gains are versus the likelihood that many layoffs are financially driven.
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Mistral AI inks a deal with global consulting giant Accenture
Enterprises havestruggled to find a return on investmentfrom adopting AI tools. Now AI companies are trying a new tactic to get their tech to stick by partnering with consultants. On Thursday, French AI research lab Mistral AI and global consulting giant Accentureannounced a multiyear partnership. The deal entails the two companies working together to develop enterprise tech powered by Mistral’s AI models for clients. Financial terms and duration of the deal were not disclosed. TechCrunch reached out for more information. This deal also includes Accenture becoming a Mistral customer and rolling out its technology to its underlying employees. While Mistral is often seen as a smaller European peer to the sprawling U.S. AI “startups,” the partnership proves that Mistral can still land the same sizable customers, given that OpenAI and Anthropic recently announceddeals with Accentureas well. The agreement comes as AI companies are increasingly partnering with consultants. For instance, OpenAI just announced its“Frontier Alliance”initiative with four large consulting firms, including Accenture, on Monday to help push its newOpenAI FrontierAI agent governance platform to enterprise customers. Anthropic is also partnered withIBMandDeloitte. Will partnering with consulting firms be the trick to finding more enterprise AI adoption? It’s unclear, but what is clear is that AI companies are definitely trying to find out.
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Sophia Space raises $10M seed to demo novel space computers
As space companies itch to push the most advanced chips into orbit, the problem of cooling those high-powered processors is top of mind. “It’s cold in space … [but] there’s no airflow, and so the only way to dissipate is through conduction,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said when asked about space-based data centers during his firm’s most recent earnings call. Now, Sophia Space has raised $10 million from investors, including Alpha Funds, KDDI Green Partners Fund, and Unlock Venture Partners. The company plans to prove out a new approach to passively cooling space computers on the ground, then buy a satellite bus from Apex Space and show that it works in orbit by late 2027 or early 2028. Companies like SpaceX, Google, or Starcloud are examining traditional satellite form factors for their proposed space data center constellations, which rely on large radiators to keep chips in optimal thermal condition. But Sophia Space’s founders — CTO Leon Alkalai, CEO Rob DeMillo, and chief growth officer Brian Monnin — have a different approach. The company’s tech comes from an unusual source: a $100-million-endowed program at Caltech to develop orbital solar plants that would beam electricity to Earth below. The researchers ultimately settled on a sail-like structure that is thin and flexible compared to boxy, traditional satellites. While technical and regulatory challenges make producing electricity for Earth difficult, Alkalai, a fellow at the Caltech-managed Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was struck by the idea of using the design to power space-based processors. (Aetherflux, a space solar power startup, has had asimilar realization.) Sophia, an Nvidia partner, has designed modular server racks with integrated solar panels it calls TILES, which are 1 meter by 1 meter in area and a few centimeters in depth. By adopting this thin form factor, DeMillo says that processors can sit against a passive heat spreader, eliminating the need for active cooling. He expects 92% of the power it generates will go to processing, a significant gain on traditional designs. This design requires, however, a sophisticated software management system to balance activity across the processors. By the 2030s, Sophia hopes to be building larger space data centers out of thousands of TILEs, envisioning a 50-meter-by-50-meter structure delivering 1 MW of computing power. DeMillo argues that attempting to build space data centers with less efficient systems will not be economical and that a single structure rather than a distributed network linked by lasers will be easier to execute. First, however, Sophia plans to begin by offering its TILEs to satellite operators that require compute solutions on orbit. Potential partners include Earth-observation satellites collecting large amounts of sensor data, missile warning and tracking systems that the Pentagon is investing billions of dollars to build, or even increasingly complex communications networks. “The dirty little secret of the satellite industry is we’ve got all these amazing sensors up there that produce terabytes, or even petabytes, of data every few minutes, and they throw most of it out because they can’t do the computing on board and they can’t get round trip back and forth to the surface fast enough,” DeMillo told TechCrunch.
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So, we’re getting Prada Meta AI glasses, right?
Could Meta be preparing to launch a Prada version of its Meta AI glasses? That’s the speculation after Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla, were spotted sitting in the front row of Prada’s Fall/Winter 2026 Fashion Week show in Milan on Thursday. The social media exec was seenchatting with his seatmate, Lorenzo Bertelli, Prada’s chief merchandising officer and son of head designer Miuccia Prada. While Zuckerberg has been working to polish his image in recent years, includingwith upgraded threads, it’s likely that he wasn’t at Prada for the fashion, but rather because of an upcoming collaboration with the brand. CNBC reportedlast summer thatPrada AI glasses were in the works, among others. However, Meta has yet to publicly announce such a deal. (The company has not yet responded to a request for comment about Zuckerberg’s presence in Milan.) Surprise guests at Pradapic.twitter.com/BPHqLo9oaW EssilorLuxottica, the French-Italian eyewear brand and Ray-Ban maker, has been working with Meta on these high-tech devices since their debut, initially under the Ray-Ban Stories brand. This month, the company announced itsold over 7 million AI glasses in 2025, up from 2 million in the prior year. Those sales included both Ray-Ban Meta andOakley Metaglasses, the latter designed more for the athletic types. Now, it seems, Prada AI glasses could be next, given that Prada and EssilorLuxottica already renewed their licensing deal for eyewear under the Prada and Miu Miu brands for the nextten years. (The existing agreement, which expired on December 31, 2025, was later extended through December 31, 2030, with the provision for renewal until December 31, 2035.) Prada AI glasses could give Meta a foothold in the high-fashion market, a niche that its Oakleys and Ray-Bans don’t yet fill. Establishing the glasses as a luxury symbol could also benefit Meta’s brand overall. However, there are some concerns that AI glasses aren’t the right fit for a world that’s seeing an increased consumer backlash against surveillance devices, which have recently led people torip outtheirRing doorbellsandsmash Flock cameras. This shift could see Meta reconsidering whether it willadd facial-recognitionfeatures to its glasses, asThe New York Timesrecently reported. The news drew criticism for what had otherwise been a modestly successful tech product and has even promptedone developer to build an appthat will warn you if someone is wearing the AI glasses near you.
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