Saturday, November 7, 2026
Submit your startupModels, tools and the companies building them.
AI / TechCrunch ·
Open source models are becoming more mainstream as enterprises, governments and startups alike rely on the promise of lower costs, more control, and more flexibility. But as increasingly capable models become more freely available, how do companies capture value? And with Chinese open models gaining…
AI / TechCrunch ·
DuckDuckGo is courting schools frustrated by Google's AI restrictions, pointing educators to its search engine and options to disable AI features.
AI / The Decoder ·
Anthropic is rolling out text watermarks to four more Claude models ahead of the EU AI Act's December deadline. But on older models like Claude Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6, API users can disable the watermark by changing a single sampling parameter. Anthropic's response to the loophole? A compliance…
AI / MIT Technology Review ·
Texas is the fastest-growing data center market in the US and ground zero for Big Tech’s largest AI buildouts. But the blue wave that swept the Lone Star State may jeopardize that position. Democrat James Talarico won the US Senate seat against Ken Paxton. Gina Hinojosa won the race for governor…
AI / TechCrunch ·
Open source models are becoming more mainstream as enterprises, governments and startups alike rely on the promise of lower costs, more control, and more flexibility. But as increasingly capable models become more freely available, how do companies capture value? And with Chinese open models gaining…
AI / The Decoder ·
OpenAI is buying Pierre Computer Company, the startup whose libraries already power the coding agent Codex. Combined with OpenAI's recently launched Git backend Pando, the deal shows the company is building out its infrastructure for developers and AI agents working side by side. The article…
AI / The Verge ·
With smartphone sales tanking by around 20 percent compared to 2025, Qualcomm is looking to data centers to help boost its bottom line. During its Q4 2026 earnings call, the company laid out its plans to make a splash in the AI data center business, through partnerships with companies like Amazon…
AI / TechCrunch ·
Apple's AI-powered Siri Recaps won me over in just one day, despite my privacy reservations. But there's still room for improvement.
AI / The Verge ·
One of the basic problems of spending too much time on social media is that you are cooking your brain by reading posts from a pack of attention-seeking lunatics. If your social media of choice is the site formerly known as Twitter, and it is your main source of contact with the outside world, you…
AI / The Decoder ·
CloudOpsBench is a new open-source benchmark that measures how well AI agents handle typical DevOps tasks in the cloud, from fixing services and removing resources to restricting access rights, rolling out updates, and decommissioning projects. The article New open-source benchmark reveals reasoning…
AI / TechCrunch ·
Politicians on the left, like NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani and former FTC chair Lina Khan, accused Google of acting as an unregulated monopoly.
AI / The Decoder ·
MIT researchers show that OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra can read and deliberately rewrite the weights of other AI models without traditional training. In one experiment, Astra boosted a Qwen model's math accuracy from 7.9 to 48.1 percent by changing just 0.016 percent of its weights. The approach could…
AI / The Decoder ·
Anthropic has released FlashProve, a research prototype that uses cryptography to verify whether an AI response actually came from the claimed model. The system still has significant limitations. The article Anthropic's new prototype proves which model wrote an AI response without exposing its…
AI / The Verge ·
AT&T's smart home security system now integrates with Gemini for Home. The company says its Connected Life system is the "first" home security product to integrate with Google Home Premium, enabling a bunch of Gemini-powered features that can summarize home events, search your video history, and…
AI / The Verge ·
Nothing CEO Carl Pei said in a post on X that the company's launching its first AI device in December. That's just a little over a year after Pei announced plans for "AI-native" devices and an AI operating system. He didn't give away much about what exactly the new device is, only that one feature…
AI / The Verge ·
ChatGPT can now create GIFs using a prompt or a photo uploaded to the AI chatbot. The update, which is rolling out alongside OpenAI's new Images 2.6 model, allows you to adjust the GIF's animation speed, edit individual frames, and share it with others. Before this change, ChatGPT couldn't…
AI / The Verge ·
This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they're going to change your life. Opt in for Optimizer here. "How does that make you feel?" I get asked this a lot in therapy. Plenty of life…
AI / TechCrunch ·
Today is the day to join TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 in Boston's SoWa Power Station. Register now to join this founder-focused conference today.
AI / MIT Technology Review ·
A sales representative asks an AI agent for customer pricing, and the agent pulls data from multiple sources: restricted pricing systems, internal communications, and archived quotes. The output looks accurate to the agent, so a second agent uses the data to draft the proposal for the sales rep.…
AI / The Verge ·
Data center developers are poised to face a more restrictive building environment after voters across the country voted in candidates who favor moratoriums and ballot measures that put more obstacles on their expansion, delivering a stinging blow to a central pillar of the AI industry. Of voters…
AI / The Verge ·
AI agents won't be stealing Uber's lunch any time soon. Only four rides were arranged by third-party AI agents during the third quarter of 2026, Uber executives disclosed during an earnings call this morning. The volume of Uber Eats orders fulfilled by AI agents was a little higher, with the company…
AI / The Decoder ·
In the 2026 U.S. midterm elections, AI ranked last among campaign issues: only 56 percent of respondents cited AI and data centers as an important factor. According to NBC exit polls, corruption (90 percent) and the cost of living (89 percent) clearly dominated, despite growing public attention to…
AI / The Decoder ·
Starting in 2027, Google plans to turn off AI features in its school products by default, letting schools decide what to enable. The catch: schools that block AI entirely on their devices will also lose access to Google Search, since the two systems are now too deeply intertwined to separate.…
AI / The Verge ·
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman spent election night defending his position on PC RAM purchases. He changed his name on X to "Ram Altman" in response to another user's comment, saying, "i actually do want the world to have tons of memory and people to put as much as they want in their computers, and it […]