Read full article about: Cloudflare acquires Human Native to build new payment model for AI training data
Cloudflare is acquiring British startup Human Native to create a new payment system for AI training data. The company runs a marketplace for AI training data and converts multimedia content into structured, licensable datasets.
The move addresses a growing problem: AI crawlers scrape the web on a massive scale without paying website operators. Instead of letting AI companies grab content for free, publishers could make their data available through an index and get paid for it.
Cloudflare has already been developing tools like "AI Crawl Control" and "Pay Per Crawl" that let website operators control who can use their content for AI training. The company also co-founded the x402 Foundation with Coinbase to enable automatic machine-to-machine payments. Cloudflare runs its own AI platform and recently expanded it by acquiring Replicate.
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Source: Cloudflare | Human Native
Read full article about: OpenAI safety researcher joins Anthropic's alignment team
Andrea Vallone, a senior safety researcher at OpenAI, has moved to Anthropic. She'll be working on the alignment team, which focuses on AI model risks. Vallone spent three years at OpenAI, where she founded the "Model Policy" research team and contributed to major projects including GPT-4, GPT-5, and the company's reasoning models.
Over the past year, Vallone led OpenAI's research on an increasingly urgent question: how should AI models respond when users show signs of emotional dependency or mental health struggles? Some users, including teenagers, have taken their own lives after conversations with chatbots. Several families have filed lawsuits, and the U.S. Senate has held hearings on the issue.
At Anthropic, Vallone will report to Jan Leike. Leike himself was head of safety research at OpenAI before leaving the company in May 2024. At the time, Leike publicly criticized OpenAI, saying safety had taken a backseat to shipping new products.
Read full article about: Some of the largest AI players are now paying Wikipedia for the data they already use
Wikipedia has landed major AI companies as partners: Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral AI, and Perplexity have joined the Wikimedia Enterprise partner program, with Google, Ecosia, and others already on board. These companies use the APIs to integrate Wikipedia content into their products.
Wikipedia is considered one of the highest-quality datasets for training large language models, and its content powers chatbots, search engines, and voice assistants. The Wikimedia Foundation argues that human-curated knowledge is more valuable than ever in the AI era, but without financial contributions from companies profiting from this data, the open knowledge model could be at risk.
In late October, Wikipedia raised concerns about declining traffic from AI systems that display its content without sending users to the website and later called for fair licensing through its API.
This tension is likely to grow. Chatbots are extracting value from the web at scale, and the legal landscape remains murky. Not every site can follow Wikipedia's path, or that of Tailwind, by offsetting lost revenue through partnerships and paid APIs.
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Source: Wikimedia Enterprise
Google's new open TranslateGemma models bring translation for 55 languages to laptops and phones
TranslateGemma shows how targeted training helps Google squeeze more performance out of smaller models: the 12B version translates better than a base model twice its size and runs on a regular laptop. With the growing Gemma family, Google is staking its claim in the race for open AI models.
OpenAI reportedly walked away from Apple to focus on building its own AI hardware instead
Apple is betting billions on Google to power Siri’s AI future, and OpenAI says it walked away from the deal on purpose.
Read full article about: OpenAI launches call for US-based AI hardware suppliers in push for domestic manufacturing
What China can do, the US can do too: OpenAI has published a call for proposals to boost domestic AI hardware production. AI relies on a broad ecosystem of physical components beyond chips, OpenAI says. The company is seeking manufacturers and suppliers of data center components like cooling systems, power supplies, and networking equipment, plus consumer electronics and robotics. Applications are open through June 2026.
The move comes as China reportedly restricts Nvidia H200 imports and pushes domestic manufacturers to source hardware locally. If China succeeds in decoupling its supply chain, the US can expect countermeasures—and if both countries want true independence, they'll each have to build their own.
The initiative fits squarely with Trump's "America First" agenda. OpenAI frames it as "reindustrialization of the country." Notably, OpenAI President Greg Brockman donated $25 million to Trump's campaign.
Read full article about: OpenAI invests in Merge Labs, a brain-computer interface startup co-founded by Sam Altman
OpenAI has invested in Merge Labs, a startup developing brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). The company raised a total of $252 million in seed funding, according to Bloomberg. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is a co-founder of Merge Labs. The exact size of OpenAI's investment remains unknown.
Merge Labs aims to combine biological and artificial intelligence to improve human capabilities. The startup is working on safer BCIs with higher bandwidth by combining biology, devices, and AI, according to OpenAI. OpenAI views BCIs as an important way for humans to interact more naturally with AI systems. The collaboration includes basic science models and tools to speed up research.
Merge Labs relies on ultrasound technology instead of electrodes. The goal is to create less invasive BCIs that can interact with more neurons. This puts OpenAI in direct competition with Elon Musk's Neuralink, which was founded in 2016 and uses electrode-based implants. The investment follows OpenAI's strategy of backing hardware and interface technologies. Rumors about this investment had circulated since summer.