Author: Advanced AI Editor
By Jonathan Stempel (Reuters) -Apple was sued on Friday by shareholders in a proposed securities fraud class action that accused it of downplaying how long it needed to integrate advanced artificial intelligence into its Siri voice assistant, hurting iPhone sales and its stock price. The complaint covers shareholders who suffered potentially hundreds of billions of dollars of losses in the year ending June 9, when Apple introduced several features and aesthetic improvements for its products but kept AI changes modest. Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment. CEO Tim Cook, Chief Financial Officer Kevan Parekh and former CFO…
By Stephen Nellis SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Snowcap Compute, a startup working on building artificial intelligence computing chips using superconducting technology, on Monday raised $23 million and said that the former CEO of Intel will join its board. Snowcap aims to build computers that could one day beat today’s best artificial intelligence systems, while using a fraction of the electricity. To do that, Snowcap plans to use a new kind of chip made with superconductors, which are materials that allow current to flow without electrical resistance. Scientists understand superconductors well and have theorized about making computer chips with them since at…
(Reuters) -Goldman Sachs on Monday announced a firmwide launch of an artificial intelligence assistant, a tool driven by generative AI, to boost productivity, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters. Around 10,000 employees at the bank are already using the GS AI Assistant, the memo sent to staff by Chief Information Officer Marco Argenti showed. With the AI tool’s official company-wide launch, Goldman joins a long list of big banks already leveraging the technology to shape their operations in a targeted manner and help employees in day-to-day tasks. Citigroup has AI tools such as Citi Assist, which searches internal…
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -The Dutch government pledged 70 million euros ($82 million) on Friday for the construction of an artificial intelligence plant in the northern city of Groningen. The plant, which will be managed by a consortium of Dutch organisations, is intended to become a European research hub for the development of AI technologies in applications ranging from agriculture and healthcare to energy and defence. The government has also applied for European Union co-financing worth another 70 million euros for the plant, it said in a statement, potentially adding to the 60 million that the Groningen regional administration also plans to…
(Reuters) -OpenAI has recently begun renting Google’s artificial intelligence chips to power ChatGPT and other products, The Information reported on Friday, citing a person involved in the arrangement. The move, which marks the first time OpenAI has used non-Nvidia chips in a meaningful way, shows the Sam Altman-led company’s shift away from relying on backer Microsoft’s data centers, potentially boosting Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs) as a cheaper alternative to Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs), the report said. As one of the largest purchasers of Nvidia’s GPUs, OpenAI uses AI chips to train models and also for inference computing, a…
(Reuters) -Meta Platforms is seeking to raise $29 billion from private capital firms to build artificial intelligence data centers in the U.S., the Financial Times reported on Friday. The Facebook-parent has advanced discussions with private credit investors including Apollo Global Management, KKR, Brookfield, Carlyle and PIMCO, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. Meta is looking to raise $3 billion in equity and $26 billion in debt, the report said, adding that the company is debating how to structure the debt raising and may also seek to raise more capital. Such a fundraising comes at a time when…
ZURICH (Reuters) -Siemens has recruited Amazon executive Vasi Philomin to its new position of head of data and artificial intelligence, the German technology company said on Monday. The move is the latest step by Siemens as it seeks to develop AI products and applications like its Industrial Copilot. Siemens has been aiming to accelerate its transition to a technology-focussed company, with AI seen as a key area along with industrial software. In 2023, Siemens unveiled a partnership with Microsoft to use artificial intelligence to increase productivity and human-machine collaboration in the manufacturing, transportation and healthcare industries. The project will create…
By Jaspreet Singh (Reuters) -Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reorganized the company’s artificial intelligence efforts under a new division called Meta Superintelligence Labs, according to a source on Monday. The division will be headed by Alexandr Wang, former CEO of data labeling startup Scale AI. He will be the chief AI officer of the new initiative at the social media giant, the source said. The high-stakes push follows senior staff departures and a poor reception for Meta’s latest open-source Llama 4 model, challenges that have allowed rivals including Google, OpenAI and China’s DeepSeek to seize momentum in the AI race.…
By Milana Vinn and Krystal Hu (Reuters) -Surge AI, a data-labeling firm that competes with Scale AI, has hired advisors to raise as much as $1 billion in the first capital raising in the firm’s history, sources told Reuters, as it seeks to capitalize on growing user demand amid Scale AI’s recent customer exodus. The company, founded by former Google and Meta engineer Edwin Chen, is targeting a valuation of over $15 billion, sources said, cautioning that the talks are still in early stages and the final number could be higher. The funding would be a mix of primary and…
(Reuters) -Microsoft will lay off nearly 4% of its workforce, the company said on Wednesday, in the latest job cuts as the tech giant looks to rein in costs amid hefty investments in artificial intelligence infrastructure. The company, which had about 228,000 employees worldwide as of June 2024, had announced layoffs in May, affecting around 6,000 workers. It was planning to cut thousands of jobs, particularly in sales, Bloomberg News reported last month. The Windows maker had pledged $80 billion in capital spending for its fiscal year 2025. However, the soaring cost of scaling its AI infrastructure has weighed on…