From the archive
AI business news tracks how companies adopt artificial intelligence and how that changes products, competition and work. Follow enterprise deployments, partnerships, company strategy and the effects of AI on jobs and skills. Our reports separate announced ambitions from demonstrated results, with sources and context to help you judge where adoption is useful, costly or still unproven.
Lead story
SpaceX could soon give NVIDIA-powered AI computing a rather dramatic new workplace: orbit. Yahoo Finance UK reports that Elon Musk is highly confident the company will begin launching orbital AI computers in 2027, with larger deployments expected during 2028.
Read the report & discussion ↗OpenAI Watch
404 Media reports that hundreds of OpenAI contractors review real ChatGPT conversations to evaluate the model’s replies. The practical point for users is immediate: on Free, Plus and Pro accounts, switching off Improve the model for everyone prevents new chats from being used for model improvement, but does…
Watch Desk
Nationwide has moved 15 million customers off legacy core systems and consolidated 19 data stores on Microsoft Azure, creating the foundation for AI tools across the UK building society. The important bit is the order: fix the data plumbing first, then give thousands of employees and emerging agents…
OpenAI Watch
Fyxer has built an AI executive assistant around more than 500,000 hours of annotated human-assistant workflows, using OpenAI models alongside dozens of smaller, specialised systems. The useful idea is not simply “AI writes your email”, but a pipeline that decides what needs a reply, retrieves the right memories…
Cohere Watch
Cohere co-founder and CEO Aidan Gomez has challenged proposals that would let a small group of leading AI laboratories coordinate safety standards with an antitrust exemption. His central argument is not that advanced AI needs fewer guardrails, but that the companies being regulated should not also get to…
DeepSeek Watch
Chinese AI labs are narrowing the gap with US rivals by squeezing more useful work from less computing power. That matters because the contest is shifting from who can buy the largest pile of chips to who can make each token earn its keep.
Watch Desk
Anthropic, OpenAI and Google are reportedly discussing a standards body for AI testing and auditing. That matters because the companies building increasingly capable systems may be moving towards shared scrutiny, but no independent referee or binding rulebook exists yet.
AMD Watch
AMD and Intel have taken a small but strategically interesting step towards making AI workloads easier to target across future x86 processors: a 2 September GCC commit added initial support for their AI Compute Extensions, or ACE. The practical significance is in the compiler, not a shiny new…
Watch Desk
AI companies in the US and China are increasingly using AI to write code, design experiments and develop training techniques for more capable models, according to the South China Morning Post. The long-term ambition is recursive self-improvement: systems that can help train and build their successors in an…
Intel AI Watch
Intel is positioning Saudi Arabia as more than a customer for imported AI technology. At LEAP 2026, the company says it announced collaborations covering locally assembled servers, AI infrastructure, video analytics and skills development, with the wider aim of making the Kingdom a regional technology hub.
Watch Desk
AI governance needs an emergency upgrade, according to a four-part plan from Axios. Its central proposal is a technically capable regulator that can inspect dangerous models and stop them, rather than another committee producing tasteful PDFs at ordinary government speed.
Jacob Coxon Watch
Jacob Coxon’s public resignation from Anthropic has opened a private debate inside several of the companies building frontier AI. The most important development is not a new doomsday forecast, but evidence that workers at Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta and Google are now discussing whether development should pause until stronger…
Dario Amodei Watch
Dario Amodei is calling for frontier AI development to move more slowly, with Anthropic committing to invite embedded third-party evaluators into its own operations. The proposal matters because it tries to turn safety commitments from polished promises into something outside reviewers can actually inspect.
OpenAI Watch
OpenAI, Microsoft and The New York Times have presented their summary-judgment arguments in the newspaper’s copyright lawsuit. The central question is now sharply drawn: can AI companies train on published journalism as a transformative use, or does that copying help create products that compete with the original work?…
Meta AI Watch
Meta is reportedly asking some individual contributors in its Applied AI division whether they would like to become managers again, a quiet reversal of the flatter structure built around its AI push. The move matters because deploying advanced AI at scale still appears to require plenty of the…
Watch Desk
Export Development Canada says it has put more than C$700m behind Canadian AI companies and investment funds. The important bit is not merely the size of the cheque book: the Crown corporation is using its overseas network to help home-grown AI firms find customers, partners and room to…
Meta AI Watch
AI-powered smart glasses are becoming a privacy flashpoint in Europe after reports of women and girls being filmed without consent. The devices can record video, translate text and interact with an AI assistant, so the argument is no longer about a quirky gadget. It is about who can…
Cohere Watch
Cohere is reportedly in advanced discussions to raise between $2bn and $3bn at a valuation of about $20bn, a financing that could become the largest on record for a private Canadian startup if it closes. The proposed round could include Canadian government financing and German government participation, according…
Meta AI Watch
Meta’s attempt to collect employees’ keystrokes and mouse movements for AI training was suspended after staff resistance and a reported internal data exposure. The episode shows the awkward bit of building systems that learn from human computer use: the data may be valuable, but the people generating it…
