SoftBank seeks a second $10bn loan against its OpenAI stake

SoftBank is seeking a further $10bn loan to fund its OpenAI stake, Bloomberg reported on Friday. It closed a loan of exactly that size, secured against the same asset, 22 days earlier. TNW has not ind [...]

Google’s big Waze AI update includes a button that makes the app shut up

Google has given Waze a batch of new features, most of them powered by Gemini. The headline additions are a motorcycle mode, personalised routing, conversational map editing, and Gemini-powered destin [...]

Russia tries to jam Starlink to counter Ukraine’s long-range drones

The war in Ukraine has become, among other things, a fight over signals. Russian forces are now trying to jam Elon Musk’s Starlink network to blunt the cheap long-range drones that have reshaped the [...]

Anthropic’s Claude Cowork breaks off the laptop and onto your phone

Anthropic has brought Claude Cowork, its Claude Code-style agent for general knowledge work, to web and mobile. The tool launched as a desktop app in January and, from Tuesday, is rolling out in bet [...]

The Pentagon calls this Chinese firm a military company. Its lidar runs US robotaxis anyway

A lidar maker the Pentagon brands a Chinese military company quietly wires up America’s robotaxis, trucks, and even an airport. Nvidia is one of its partners. Hesai makes many of the sensors self-dr [...]

China weighs curbing overseas access to its top AI models

China’s open AI models have been a gift to developers everywhere. Now Beijing may pull them back in. Chinese officials have discussed limiting who outside the country can use the nation’s best AI [...]

Utah let an AI renew prescriptions without a doctor, and its medical board wants it stopped

Utah has quietly become the first US state to let an AI chatbot renew prescriptions without a doctor, according to the Associated Press. The programme, run by a company called Doctronic, launched in [...]

Meta wants to rent out its spare AI compute, and Wall Street likes the idea

A reported plan to sell surplus computing power would put Meta up against AWS, Google Cloud and Azure, and give investors a reason to look past its spending. Meta has spent two years buying every scra [...]

A Chinese model split Silicon Valley. Now the startups are fighting back.

Silicon Valley does not usually gang up on its own. This week it did. Nearly 200 US startups have urged the Trump administration not to block American access to Chinese open-weight AI models. A ban, t [...]