Author: Jaxon Bennett

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.A few months ago we marvelled at how the AI bacchanal had enticed venture capitalists into moving from backing pre-revenue companies to pre-product companies like Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence.Oh how sweetly innocent we were back then . . . The new hot thing seems to be pre-plan companies. From MainFT on Friday evening, with Alphaville’s emphasis below:OpenAI’s former chief technology officer Mira Murati has raised $2bn for her new artificial intelligence start-up, in a deal which values the mysterious six-month-old company at $10bn.The deal, which…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Over the second weekend of May, Donald Trump sacked the head of the US Copyright Office. On the previous Friday, the office had released “Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Part 3: Generative AI Training”. For the “tech bros”, who had spent so much on bringing Trump to power, this report was a declaration of war: it cast doubt on the viability of the “fair use” defence, upon which Open AI, Meta and other tech companies rely for the unrestricted right to “scrape” online…

The Trump Organization’s bid to enter the smartphone industry with a ‘Made in America’ device and mobile plan has seen it partner with a small network registered at a luxury apartment in the beachfront Trump Tower Miami.The business led by the US president’s sons Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump has tapped Liberty Mobile Wireless to help leverage the family’s brand to crack the mobile network market — and to push President Trump’s ambition to bring smartphone manufacturing to the US. The US president has threatened companies like Apple with 25 per cent tariffs unless they shift production, a logistical challenge…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The UK is to invest more than £500mn in emerging technology based on quantum physics that experts say has the potential to transform economic and national security. The government’s support will be welcomed following questions about what would replace an ambitious Conservative pledge in 2023 to invest £2.5bn over 10 years and project Britain as a world leader in quantum technology. The quantum industry’s backers say it will potentially transform areas ranging from the discovery of advanced industrial materials to the imaging of the…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Tesla’s robotaxi service, touted by Elon Musk as the future of his flagging electric-car maker, is expected to launch in the company’s home city of Austin on Sunday with only about 10 cars and a human safety driver on board amid regulatory scrutiny on the safety of its self-driving technology.Shares in Tesla have risen about 50 per cent from this year’s low in early April, with investors hopeful that the autonomous ride-hailing service will help revive a company that has suffered declining…

Mark Zuckerberg is betting more than $14bn that a well-connected 28-year-old is the catalyst his company needs to catch up with rivals racing to develop and commercialise artificial intelligence. The Meta chief struck a deal last week to buy 49 per cent of data labelling business Scale AI and hire its leader Alexandr Wang. Zuckerberg paid $14.3bn, marginally ahead of Scale’s last valuation. But ownership of the start-up is “basically incidental”, according to one Scale investor. The real prize was Wang. An executive at one of Meta’s biggest rivals said the move came after Zuckerberg decided Wang was the “wartime…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.London-based artificial intelligence start-up PhysicsX has raised $135mn from investors, valuing it at almost $1bn, as it becomes the latest company to benefit from a surge of interest in defence technology. The six-year-old start-up, founded by two former Formula 1 engineers, uses AI to better design products across the manufacturing and defence industries, such as engine and drone components. The deal, which has seen it attract funding from Siemens and Singapore state-backed Temasek, comes amid a flood of investor appetite for defence…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Artificial intelligence myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son is pushing the idea of a vast $1tn artificial intelligence and robotics complex in the US state of Arizona that could include the establishment of a free-trade zone and the involvement of the world’s biggest chipmaker, TSMC.The plan, which Son has raised with US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, is aimed at bringing high-tech manufacturing into the country at scale, said three people familiar with the concept, which was first reported by Bloomberg.SoftBank officials have also discussed it with…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.OpenAI’s former chief technology officer Mira Murati has raised $2bn for her new artificial intelligence start-up, in a deal which values the mysterious six-month-old company at $10bn. The deal, which closed recently, according to multiple people familiar with the transaction, was one of the largest “seed” — or initial — funding rounds in Silicon Valley’s history.San Francisco-based Thinking Machines Lab has not declared what it is working on, instead using Murati’s name and reputation to attract investors, said those familiar with the…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Technology sector myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.The writer is former editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and writes Futurepolis, a newsletter on the future of democracyEven by Silicon Valley’s historically rarefied standards, Big AI is spending stratospheric amounts on talent this year. Meta has invested $15bn in Scale AI, a data labelling start-up that claims just 900 employees. Scale’s 28-year-old chief executive, Alexandr Wang, will take up a job at a new Meta lab devoted to creating AI “superintelligence”. His cash and equity in the deal is reported to be…