Author: precious

Nvidia has brought six of the world’s biggest investment firms into the AI infrastructure race, creating financing platforms designed to mobilize more than $500 billion in third-party capital. Partnered with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR, the initiative is aimed at helping AI labs, cloud providers, and enterprises finance the expensive computing infrastructure needed to expand their operations. The scale matters because building AI infrastructure now requires far more than buying GPUs. Companies need servers, networking equipment, data centers and power capacity, which, in turn, creates a capital requirement that can stretch into billions of dollars before an…

Scientists have spent decades studying the genetic sequences that allow viruses to infect, replicate, and evolve. Stanford researchers have now used artificial intelligence to go a step further, designing complete viral genomes that did not previously exist and testing whether they could work. The team created 16 functional bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, using genome language models developed with the Arc Institute. And the result marks the first reported demonstration that generative AI can design entire viral genomes that produce viable viruses. The research further gives scientists a new way to explore bacteriophages that could eventually help fight bacterial infections.…

OpenAI has temporarily paused parts of the development of its upcoming Astra model after internal evaluations raised concerns that it may have reached the company’s highest cybersecurity risk category. The decision marks the first time OpenAI has reported a model potentially reaching its “Critical” cyber capability threshold, a level reserved for systems that could autonomously discover and exploit serious vulnerabilities or carry out sophisticated attacks against hardened systems. While the ChatGPT-maker has explained what the “Critical” threshold means, the company has not publicly described the specific tests or actions that led to Astra’s assessment. What OpenAI’s “Critical” Threshold Means OpenAI’s…

The U.S. government is preparing new restrictions on Chinese technology used inside data centers, bringing another part of the AI supply chain into the country’s widening technology crackdown on China. The latest proposal, being developed by the Federal Communications Commission, would restrict imports of new Chinese optical transceivers. These components move data between servers over fiber-optic cables and are essential to the high-speed networks connecting AI systems inside modern data centers. The agency hopes to publish the measure this year, although officials could still change or abandon it. The development comes shortly after the FCC added connected power inverters and…

Valar Atomics has raised $1 billion in a Series B round led by Sequoia Capital, giving the nuclear startup the capital to move from demonstrating small reactors to producing them at scale. On the one hand, the funding values the company at about $6 billion. On the other hand, Valar has also secured a separate $200 million credit facility. The three-year-old company is developing small modular nuclear reactors designed to provide reliable electricity for large industrial facilities, including AI data centers. Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire will join Valar’s board, while investors including Atreides Management, Point72, Snowpoint Ventures, Valor Equity Partners…

Amazon has crossed a valuation milestone that only four companies had reached before it. On August 3, Amazon shares jumped 4.6% to a record $284.02, pushing the company’s market value above $3 trillion for the first time and making it the fifth company to reach that level after Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Alphabet. This came days after Amazon reported stronger-than-expected second-quarter results, but one part of the business stood out to investors. Amazon Web Services (AWS) grew 37% year-over-year, its fastest growth in 18 quarters. The result showed that demand for cloud infrastructure remains strong as companies spend heavily on…

Apple briefly reclaimed its position as the world’s most valuable company in July, overtaking Nvidia as investors started to question how much the biggest technology companies can afford to spend on artificial intelligence (AI). This immediately gave Apple a remarkable advantage in the market. However, the title has since returned to Nvidia, but Apple’s brief lead revealed a change in what investors were rewarding, as the market was beginning to place greater value on companies that could participate in the AI boom without accumulating huge infrastructure costs. Apple Spent Far Less On Infrastructure Apple’s approach to AI has been noticeably…

Microsoft just gave Wall Street one of its clearest signs yet that the enormous cost of building the AI economy can translate into real financial returns. The company added nearly $450 billion in market value in a single trading session after reporting stronger-than-expected cloud growth and forecasting continued cash generation from its AI and cloud investments. Meta, meanwhile, faced a very different investor reaction in the same earnings cycle, with its shares falling sharply as investors focused on rising AI costs, weaker free cash flow and a less convincing near-term outlook. The contrast offers a sharper question Wall Street is…

Google has pulled an AI image-generation feature from Google Earth less than a day after launching it, following demonstrations that showed how easily the tool could create convincing fake satellite imagery of real locations. Among the examples was an AI-generated nuclear plant in Iran created by researcher Henk van Ess, along with fabricated scenes involving refugees, bomb damage, and a fatal crash. The feature, powered by Google’s Nano Banana 2 image model, allowed users to select a location in Google Earth and use a text prompt to alter its satellite, aerial, or 3D imagery. Google had promoted the feature for…

A UK bank customer lost £14,244 after criminals used his debit card to buy credits for Anthropic’s Claude AI platform, even after he told his bank that the first suspicious transaction was not authorized by him. The incident has raised questions about how banks respond when stolen card details are used repeatedly on a legitimate technology service. The customer, Zoli Rutter, told Guardian Money that the fraud happened on 19 June. According to him, Metro Bank detected a £90.90 transaction and contacted him to ask whether he had authorised it. But Rutter said no, and the bank told him his…