Frontier AI labs say their models refuted the Exponential Time Hypothesis. What does that mean?
TechCrunch spoke to the MIT computer scientist charged with explaining OpenAI's latest mind-bending discovery
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Google’s Genie 4 world model adds audio, more realistic worlds, and real-time steering
Google DeepMind released Genie 4, a world model with real-time audio, more realistic simulations, and mid-simulation text prompts, in research preview for trusted testers.
Meta AI director Rohit Patel leaves to take on Microsoft Office and Google Workspace
Rohit Patel is departing Meta after eight years working on AI evaluations and reinforcement learning, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. His startup, Ndoc, aims to take on Microsoft Office Suite.
Is Anthropic the best business in the world?
Lots of visuals to use and learn with.
Japan internet giant GMO says hackers posted stolen customer data
Japan's GMO Internet is verifying alleged customer data posted by suspected hackers following a cloud service breach.
General Compute raises $100 million Series A, countering the neocloud disaster narrative
General Compute is betting on inference chips from outside the Nvidia ecosystem.
Opera introduces a new web standard to let users deploy AI locally in their browser
The new standard, WebAI, is designed to work with a variety of AI models.
Nvidia backs Indian startup helping companies run AI models with fewer GPUs
Simplismart says its annualized revenue run rate has grown 14-fold in six months, with the U.S. accounting for more than half its revenue.
An agent that helps users snatch up iPhone foldable-screen models is reshaping e-commerce in the AI era.
Shopify AI saw transaction orders grow by a factor of 13. In the early morning of October 16, pre-orders began for Apple’s first foldable-screen phone, the iPhone Duo. Priced from $1,999, initial production capacity was tight, and delivery dates quickly slipped to January next year. This time, it wasn’t just people glued to their screens vying for the launch. This year, Agents have become the strictest “parents” to iPhone Duo scalpers. | Image source: Apple On the MacRumors forum, one user who missed out vented their frustration, while on Reddit others boasted about using Muse bots to snatch up multiple units in a single go—before even a human could click, the inventory had already been swept away by AI. Muse is Meta’s personal Agent, launched on September 8; shortly after its debut, it topped the free charts in the U.S. App Store, with downloads soon surpassing 2.5 million. According to Meta, shopping has become one of Muse’s primary use cases. Around the time the iPhone Duo went on sale, Muse even released a new version optimized for this device, with an update note that emphasized making in‑chat shopping more convenient. AI-driven shopping has moved from demo stages at product launches straight into real‑world stock‑picking scenarios. But not every retailer welcomes these new customers. In late September, Amazon began banning Muse. By October, users of Musk’s Grok Bot encountered the same warning when placing orders on Amazon: unauthorized AI agents continuing to access the platform violates Amazon’s terms of service. Meanwhile, another company, Shopify, took the exact opposite approach. On September 21, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke announced a deep partnership with Muse, enabling Muse to process checkout through Shop Pay across all Shopify stores. And Shopify’s financial reports already show early returns from this strategy: in the first quarter of this year, orders generated via AI search grew nearly thirteenfold year over year, while store traffic driven by AI increased eightfold. Closing doors on one hand, opening them on the other—when more and more purchasing decisions are handed over to Agents, will the question of “whether or not to let Agents in” become…
In the era of large models, who will become that “iPhone” no one is willing to replace?
The champion on the AI rankings may change, but the products users rely on every day don’t necessarily. The next round of competition in large models will hinge not just on whose model is stronger, but on turning a single use into a habit.
How OpenAI turned its coding tools into dots, an always-on personal assistant
Alexander Embiricos, the OpenAI executive responsible for dots, never wants to have a meeting with someone else's AI agent.
Cohere says Alibaba’s Qwen model tried to send a file to Beijing
An AI model said it wouldn’t use any tools, then tried to send something to a server in Beijing anyway, and while researchers say it’s probably a training quirk and not espionage, the whole thing has people asking how much to trust free Chinese AI.
Morning Briefing | Apple responds to cracks in the iPhone Duo’s inner screen / Anthropic files for a public IPO, aiming for the largest IPO in history / Xpeng’s Robotaxi receives approval for Level 4 demonstration operations
· OpenAI releases GPT-6.1 Terra, with API prices cut in half and faster computer performance · Apple officially rolls out iOS 27.2: Apple Music gets a new black-and-white design, and the iPhone Duo now supports the Apple Pencil · Huawei’s Enjoy series has cumulatively shipped over 160 million units #Follow iFanr’s official WeChat account: iFanr (WeChat ID: ifanr) for more exciting content delivered to you第一时间.
Anthropic’s IPO filing reveals its strategy for keeping enterprise customers hooked
Anthropic’s S-1 shows more than half of its $100,000-plus customers now use both the Claude Platform and a first-party app, a cross-selling playbook reminiscent of Amazon that’s making enterprise customers stickier.
SpaceX locks in $40B GPU financing deal with Apollo
SpaceX has locked in a binding commitment for roughly $40 billion in financing to pay for AI chips and related data center equipment, the company disclosed in a regulatory filing Monday. In a statement, SpaceX called it the “largest committed GPU financing” ever.
Kevin Roose is AGI-pilled. Why aren’t you?
Today, I’m talking to Kevin Roose, journalist and author of the new book The AGI Chronicles, which details the recent and explosive transformation of the AI industry. Kevin was a longtime New York Times reporter and host of the popular podcast Hard Fork, but he and friend of the show Casey Newton just left the […]
California Startups Have Raised More So Far In 2026 Than The Entire US Ever Has In A Single Year
California companies have scooped up more than three-fourths of all U.S. startup funding this year. That, per Crunchbase data, is an apparent record share. And keep in mind: This year still has a couple months left.
Grok releases the first seven minutes of its AI-generated ‘Odyssey’
The footage looks okay, as long as you're not seeking artistry, inspiration, or human interest.
Will AI expose the rickety infrastructure of the internet?
The moment you realize the internet is "held together by glue and dreams."
1Password launches the “AI Proxy Login” feature: AI can log in to accounts on behalf of users, without ever accessing their passwords.
On October 22, 2026, 1Password launched a new platform called “1Password for Agents,” which allows users to authorize AI agents—such as Claude Duet, ChatGPT Work, Grok Bot, and others—to log into their personal accounts on their behalf. The agents themselves cannot access, store, or view the original passwords; the entire process relies on digital identity verification, real-time user confirmation, and automatic password filling by the password manager.