Runpod hits $1bn valuation as the AI compute crunch bites
Runpod hits $1bn valuation as the AI compute crunch bites

Runpod has raised $100M and reached a $1bn valuation, a tenfold jump in under two years. The cloud startup rents out AI computing power, and it says it turned down buyout offers worth more than $500M. The great AI compute crunch is minting a new kind o…

Congress wants Big Tech to pay AI’s power bills
Congress wants Big Tech to pay AI’s power bills

Congress is moving to stop households paying for Big Tech’s AI power bills. A House panel votes this week on a package of measures. The aim is to put AI data centre energy costs back on the companies that create them. As AI drives up electricity bills,…

Deezer launches a remix tool that does not use AI and pays artists for every stream
Deezer launches a remix tool that does not use AI and pays artists for every stream

Deezer has launched Remix Lab, a feature that lets fans remix songs directly inside the app using in-app tools rather than artificial intelligence. The feature requires the explicit consent of the original artists and rights holders, and Deezer says ar…

Morgan Stanley doubles its China robot forecast again
Morgan Stanley doubles its China robot forecast again

Morgan Stanley has doubled its forecast for China humanoid robot shipments again, to 50,000 this year. The bank says the machines are moving from stage demos to real factories, shops and restaurants. China’s robots are leaving the showroom and reaching…

Riviera Partners acquires AI startup recruiter Lateral Labs as the talent war reshapes executive search
Riviera Partners acquires AI startup recruiter Lateral Labs as the talent war reshapes executive search

Riviera Partners, the Insight Partners-backed executive search firm that has placed technology leaders at companies including Uber, Snowflake, Figma, and Discord, is acquiring Lateral Labs, a recruiting firm that specialises in hiring for AI startups. …

Hyundai workers vote to strike over robot fears
Hyundai workers vote to strike over robot fears

Hyundai workers have voted overwhelmingly to authorise a strike, and for the first time robots are part of the fight. A Hyundai robot strike would test who controls the factory floor as humanoid machines arrive. South Korea’s largest carmaker is headin…

Your AI coding tools may soon cost more than you
Your AI coding tools may soon cost more than you

By 2028, the AI tools a developer uses could cost more than the developer’s salary, Gartner warns. AI coding costs are climbing fast, and most companies cannot even see what they are spending. The AI coding boom has a bill, and it is growing fast. By 2…

Figma adds code layers to the canvas and lets users build custom AI plugins at Config 2026
Figma adds code layers to the canvas and lets users build custom AI plugins at Config 2026

Figma used the opening keynote of its Config 2026 conference on Wednesday to unveil code layers, a feature that brings executable code directly onto the collaborative design canvas. Teams can now clone repositories and extract flows from code into desi…

Mistral OCR 4 targets the enterprise back office
Mistral OCR 4 targets the enterprise back office

Mistral OCR 4 reads a document like a structured map, not a wall of text. It is cheap, speaks 170 languages, and can run entirely on your own servers. Europe’s AI champion is going after the enterprise back office. Mistral has a new model, and it is no…

China Telecom’s $1.7bn server deal hands Huawei a big win
China Telecom’s $1.7bn server deal hands Huawei a big win

China Telecom just ordered 40,000 servers worth $1.7bn. Huawei did not even bid, yet its ecosystem walked away with the bulk of the deal. That is not an accident. It is the template. A state-owned Chinese carrier has handed Huawei a major win without H…