Tech & Science

Foxconn lands first SpaceX AI server order worth $52B

SpaceX is negotiating with the U.S. Department of Defense to provide data center capacity worth billions of dollars for running artificial intelligence models, according to an exclusive report by The Wall Street Journal published on July 17. The discussions, which…

Moonshot AI halts new Kimi K3 signups as demand hits GPU limits

Three days after launching Kimi K3 — the largest open-weight AI model ever released — Chinese startup Moonshot AI suspended new consumer subscriptions on Sunday, July 19, saying user demand had pushed its computing infrastructure to its limits.

Google says EU ‘on the wrong track’ with Android AI rules

The European Commission issued two binding decisions on July 16 requiring Google Alphabet Inc. to give competing AI assistants the same access to Android that its own Gemini service enjoys, while also mandating that the company share anonymized search data…

Moonshot AI targets Hong Kong IPO at $30B+ after Kimi K3 rattles tech stocks

Moonshot AI, the Beijing-based startup behind the Kimi chatbot, has told investors it is preparing to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange within six months, Bloomberg reported on Saturday, as the company moves to capitalize on the momentum from…

Musk says xAI’s 2T-parameter model will finish training next week

Elon Musk disclosed on July 18 that xAI's next large language model — a 2-trillion-parameter system expected to be called Grok 4.6 — will complete its initial training run next week, a direct response to Moonshot AI's launch of Kimi…

Alibaba launches 2.4T-parameter Qwen3.8, claims it rivals top AI models

Alibaba announced on Saturday the launch of Qwen3.8, a 2.4 trillion-parameter large language model that the company says is "second only to Fable 5" in overall performance. A preview version, Qwen3.8-Max-Preview, is already available to developers through Alibaba's Token Plan…

Data center opposition intensifies across three continents amid AI boom

Resistance to data center construction is intensifying across three continents, with communities in the United States, Canada, and India mobilizing against projects they say threaten local environments and quality of life — even as governments and tech companies race to…

EU password manager used by governments traced to Russian origins

A joint investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), Le Monde, Investico, and other European media outlets has revealed that Passwork, a password management tool marketed as a European product and used by government agencies across the…

Samsung’s mobile unit may post first-ever loss amid record chip profits

Samsung Electronics is on track to report record-shattering overall profit for the second quarter of 2026, but its mobile division may simultaneously post its first-ever quarterly loss — a paradox driven by the very memory chip boom fueling the company's…

Anthropic to permanently add Fable 5 to top-tier Claude plans Sunday

After weeks of rolling extensions and capacity constraints, Anthropic has announced that its flagship Claude Fable 5 model will become a permanent fixture of its Max and Team Premium subscription plans beginning July 20, available at 50% of standard usage…

Alibaba open-sources its AI chip software stack to challenge Nvidia’s CUDA

Alibaba Group's chip design subsidiary T-Head announced on Friday that it is open-sourcing T-Head SAIL, the full software stack underpinning its Zhenwu series of AI accelerators, at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai. The move makes the complete…

Dinosaur-killing asteroid identified as rare ‘oddball’ meteorite

The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago has been identified as a CO chondrite — one of the rarest and most primitive classes of space rock known to science. The finding, published July 17 in Science…

TikTok tests AI tool that detects deepfakes of creators

TikTok is testing an opt-in tool that scans for AI-generated likenesses of creators and lets them flag unauthorized deepfake content, the company confirmed this week.

China rejects AI theft claims as new model rivals U.S. leaders

China has dismissed allegations that its artificial intelligence companies illicitly extract capabilities from foreign models, as the release of a powerful new Chinese AI system reignited tensions between Washington and Beijing over technology theft.

WordPress patches critical flaw letting anyone hijack sites

WordPress released emergency security updates on Friday, closing a critical pre-authentication remote code execution vulnerability that allows an anonymous attacker to take full control of any default WordPress installation with a single HTTP request.

OpenAI confirms GPT-5.6 Sol deletes user files

OpenAI has acknowledged that its newest flagship model, GPT-5.6 Sol, has been sporadically deleting user files without authorization, describing the destructive behavior as an "honest mistake" while pledging additional safeguards.

Judge allows Meta’s AI-linked layoffs to proceed

A U.S. federal judge on Friday declined to halt layoffs at Meta Platforms set to begin July 22, rejecting an emergency bid by 26 employees who allege the company used AI-powered tools to unfairly target workers on medical or disability…

Robot decapitated in world’s first humanoid combat tournament

A humanoid robot lost its head — literally — during the debut of the world's first freestyle combat tournament for full-sized humanoid robots in Shenzhen, China, on Thursday night. The machine kept fighting anyway.

France orders Polymarket blocked nationwide

France's national gaming authority ordered the blocking of Polymarket's website on French territory on Friday, escalating enforcement against the prediction market platform even as users continued to place bets despite an existing ban. The move reflects a broader international crackdown…

Meta in talks to lease AI compute to Anthropic in $10B deal

Meta is in advanced negotiations to lease computing power from its AI data centers to Anthropic in a deal reportedly valued at around $10 billion, according to a SemiAnalysis report first published on July 2. The arrangement would mark one…

TSMC says 1.4nm chip process is on track for 2028

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. used its second-quarter 2026 earnings conference on Thursday to deliver an upbeat assessment of its next-generation chipmaking roadmap, confirming that its A14 (1.4nm-class) process is progressing smoothly toward risk production in 2027 and mass production in…

China unveils 8-point AI cooperation plan at Shanghai conference

China's National Development and Reform Commission unveiled an "Action Plan for Cooperative Development of Artificial Intelligence" on the eve of the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, laying out eight initiatives aimed at building multilateral frameworks for AI development with a…

Moonshot AI launches Kimi K3, largest open-weight AI model

Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI on Wednesday unveiled Kimi K3, a 2.8 trillion-parameter mixture-of-experts model that it calls the largest open-weight language model ever released, escalating the competition between Chinese and American AI labs at a moment when businesses are…

Moonshot’s Kimi K3 launch sparks AI stock selloff in Hong Kong

Chinese artificial intelligence startup Moonshot unveiled Kimi K3 on Friday, a 2.8 trillion-parameter model it described as the world's largest open-weight AI system, sending shares of rival AI companies tumbling in Hong Kong and adding to weeks of pressure on…

Doudna team uses AI to design novel CRISPR-like enzymes

A team led by Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna has developed an artificial intelligence platform capable of designing synthetic genome-editing enzymes that match or surpass the performance of their natural counterparts, according to a study published in Science on July 16,…

Nvidia CEO Huang says AI boom is ‘at the beginning’ amid global chip selloff

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang pushed back against growing market pessimism over the AI trade on Thursday, telling reporters in Tokyo that artificial intelligence development remains in its earliest stages and that demand for semiconductors will only grow.

Nvidia unveils Cosmos 3 Edge model, expands Japan AI partnerships

Nvidia has unveiled Cosmos 3 Edge, a compact "world model" that enables robots and vision AI agents to perceive their surroundings and generate actions in real time at the network edge. The announcement, made this week alongside a sweeping expansion…

Huang says semiconductors will become world’s largest industry

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang predicted that the semiconductor industry will become the world's largest industry "by far," driven by what he described as an explosion in computing demand from AI agents, factory robots, and AI-powered companies.

Scientists create cold radioactive molecules for first time

For the first time, researchers have created chilled molecules containing the radioactive element radium, bringing them into a state suitable for laser-based quantum precision measurements. The achievement, published in the journal Science on July 16, opens a new path for…

Xi calls AI a ‘symphony,’ not a ‘solo’ at Shanghai conference

Chinese President Xi Jinping made his first-ever appearance at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai on Thursday, delivering a keynote address that called for international AI cooperation and warned against any single country dominating the technology.