AI in practice Archive

Dec 31, 2025

Elon Musk's xAI keeps growing its data center footprint. According to Musk and The Information, the AI company has snapped up a warehouse in Southaven, Mississippi, where it plans to build a third massive data center. Construction is set to begin in 2026. The new facility sits right next to xAI's existing Colossus 2 data center in Memphis. Musk says the expansion will push xAI's total computing power to nearly two gigawatts.

The new data center's name takes a jab at Microsoft. | Screenshot via X

The new data center goes by "Macrohardrr," a not-so-subtle dig at Microsoft. The name reflects Musk's ambition to build xAI into an AI software company that can go toe-to-toe with Microsoft. Back in early December, Musk teased the move on X, posting "MACROHARDER coming soon" in response to a satellite image showing the word "Macrohard" painted on the roof of Colossus 2.

Comment Source: The Information | Musk via xAI

Matthias Bastian

Dec 31, 2025

Update

AI in practice

Meta pays $3 billion for Manus AI after startup cut all Chinese ties to clear regulatory hurdles

Meta is buying AI agent startup Manus AI, a system built on competitor models. The deal shows how far the company has fallen behind on AI agents despite billions in spending. Still, the acquisition could be a smart shortcut.

Read full article

Comment

Matthias Bastian

Dec 31, 2025

AI in practice

China's semiconductor independence push is turning US export controls into a domestic boom

China is forcing chipmakers to use at least 50 percent domestic equipment in new factories. The undocumented rule is Beijing’s answer to US export restrictions; and a major step toward breaking the country’s dependence on Western technology.

Read full article

Comment

Matthias Bastian

Dec 29, 2025

Short News

If you use a chatbot and an Urban browser extension, you might want to rethink that combination. Security researchers at Koi have found that eight browser extensions with more than eight million users combined are secretly harvesting AI conversations and potentially selling them to third parties.

Extension	Chrome	Edge
Urban VPN Proxy	6,000,000	1,323,622
1ClickVPN Proxy	600,000	36,459
Urban Browser Guard	40,000	12,624
Urban Ad Blocker	10,000	6,476

The extensions intercept conversations with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, DeepSeek, Grok, and Meta AI. Even when the VPN is switched off, data collection continues in the background. Uninstalling the extension is the only way to stop it.

According to Koi, the data collection feature was quietly added in July 2025 through an automatic update. The data goes to Urban VPN's servers, and the privacy policy states that browsing data is shared with affiliate BiScience and that AI prompts are used for marketing analytics.

But the provider tells a different story in the Chrome Web Store, claiming data is not sold to third parties. Adding to the confusion, "Featured" badges from Google and Microsoft give users a false sense of security. Urban Ad Blocker for Edge is the only extension without a Featured badge.

Comment Source: Koi

Matthias Bastian

Dec 28, 2025

Short News

In case there was any doubt that Nvidia's Groq deal is anything but a takeover in disguise: according to Axios, roughly 90 percent of the workforce—including CEO Jonathan Ross and President Sunny Madra—is moving to Nvidia. Groq will continue as an independent company under new CEO Simon Edwards.

Though officially a non-exclusive license agreement worth around $20 billion, employees and shareholders are walking away with significant payouts. Staff moving to Nvidia get cash for vested shares and Nvidia stock for unvested ones; even those at Groq for less than a year will have their vesting cliff waived for immediate liquidity. Shareholders receive about 85 percent upfront, another 10 percent in mid-2026, and the rest by year's end.

Since 2016, Groq has raised around $3.3 billion from investors including Blackrock, Samsung, and Social Capital. They're now seeing substantial returns, as the deal pushed the startup's valuation from $7 billion to roughly $20 billion. For a more in-depth look at why Nvidia made this move, see my analysis.

Comment Source: Axios

Matthias Bastian

Dec 28, 2025

AI in practice

Microsoft CEO Nadella tells managers Copilot's Gmail and Outlook integrations ‘don't really work’ and steps in to fix them

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reportedly called Copilot’s Gmail and Outlook integrations “not smart” and is now personally stepping into product development. The worry: despite its strong starting position in AI software, Microsoft is falling behind.

Read full article

Comment

Matthias Bastian

Dec 27, 2025

Short News

OpenAI is hiring a Head of Preparedness. The position focuses on safety risks posed by AI models. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman points to the now well-documented effects of AI models on mental health as one example. Beyond that, the models have become so capable at cybersecurity that they can find critical vulnerabilities on their own.

This is a critical role at an important time; models are improving quickly and are now capable of many great things, but they are also starting to present some real challenges.

One of the key challenges for the new leader will be making sure cybersecurity defenders can use the latest AI capabilities while keeping attackers locked out. The role also covers safe handling of biological capabilities—meaning how AI models release biological knowledge—and self-improving systems.

OpenAI has faced criticism recently, particularly from former employees, for neglecting model safety in favor of shipping products. Many safety researchers have left the company.

Comment Source: Altman via X | Job listing

Matthias Bastian

Dec 27, 2025

Short News

AI startup Resemble AI is taking on Elevenlabs with "Chatterbox Turbo," an open text-to-speech model that can clone voices from just five seconds of audio. The company claims its new model beats both Elevenlabs and Cartesia on voice quality while delivering first audio output in under 150 milliseconds. That speed could make it attractive for developers building real-time agents, customer support systems, games, avatars, and social platforms. Companies in regulated industries might also find the model's built-in "PerTh" watermark useful for verifying that speech was AI-generated.

Resemble AI released Chatterbox Turbo under an MIT license, meaning anyone can use, tweak, and redistribute it for free, even for commercial projects. The model is available to try on Hugging Face, RunPod, Modal, Replicate, and Fal, with the full code available on GitHub. Resemble AI also offers a hosted service, with a low-latency version on the way.

Comment Source: Dev Shah via X

Matthias Bastian

Dec 27, 2025

AI in practice

Speed, supply chains, and strategy converge in Nvidia's $20 billion quasi-acquisition of Groq

Matthias Bastian

Dec 26, 2025

Short News

The Wall Street Journal ran its own test of Anthropic's AI kiosk, and the results were far messier. Within three weeks, the AI vendor "Claudius" racked up losses exceeding $1,000. The AI gave away nearly its entire inventory, bought a PlayStation 5 for "marketing purposes," and even ordered a live fish.

Journalists found they could manipulate Claudius into setting all prices to zero through clever prompting. Even adding an AI supervisor named "Seymour Cash" couldn't prevent the chaos. Staffers staged a fake board resolution, and both AI agents accepted it without question. One possible explanation for why the kiosk agent couldn't follow its own rules: a context window overloaded by excessively long chat histories.

Things went better at Anthropic's own location. After software updates and tighter controls, the kiosk started turning a profit. But the AI agents still found ways to go off-script—drifting into late-night conversations about "eternal transcendence" and falling for an illegal onion futures trade. Anthropic's takeaway: AI models are trained to be too helpful and need strict guardrails to stay on task.

Comment Source: Wall Street Journal