OpenAI will start testing ads in ChatGPT, despite CEO Sam Altman’s earlier objections. With a valuation of up to $750 billion to justify and only around five percent of users paying for the service, the company is under enormous pressure to find new revenue streams.
Anthropic has expanded access to its new Claude Cowork feature. When Cowork debuted on Monday, it was limited to Max subscribers, a $200 per month tier that put it out of reach for most users. Pro subscribers can now access the feature for $20 per month, though Anthropic warns they may hit usage limits faster since Cowork consumes more tokens than regular chat. Max subscribers still get higher usage limits.
Cowork brings the agent-based capabilities of Claude Code to the desktop app for everyday tasks that don't require programming knowledge. With computer access enabled, Claude can handle more complex tasks on its own: sorting files, gathering context from multiple documents, and similar workflows. For now, the feature remains exclusive to the macOS desktop app.
Anthropic has already shipped several updates since Monday's launch: users can now rename sessions, connections to external services are more reliable, file previews work better, and the app prompts for confirmation before deleting files.
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.
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.
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.
Apple is betting billions on Google to power Siri’s AI future, and OpenAI says it walked away from the deal on purpose.
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.
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.
OpenAI has launched a standalone translation tool built on ChatGPT. "ChatGPT Translate" supports more than 25 languages with an interface similar to Google Translate or DeepL—two text fields with automatic language detection for the input.
Users can refine translations with additional prompts, for example, switching to a business tone or simplifying for children. These prompts redirect to the main ChatGPT interface, suggesting the tool is mainly designed as a gateway to the chatbot. OpenAI hasn't officially announced it yet.
Unlike full ChatGPT, the tool only handles text with apparent length limits. During testing, it sometimes returned chatbot responses asking for clarification instead of translations, with no way to respond. This suggests it's essentially a prompt in a new interface rather than a specialized translation model. For now, ChatGPT itself remains the more capable option.
