Author HubMaximilian Schreiner

Max is the managing editor of THE DECODER, bringing his background in philosophy to explore questions of consciousness and whether machines truly think or just pretend to.
AI and society

OpenAI restructures under new foundation, Microsoft takes 27 percent stake

AI research

OpenAI outperforms humans and Google at the world's top collegiate programming contest

AI in practice

New data from OpenAI and Anthropic show how people actually use ChatGPT and Claude

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AI and society
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Elon Musk's AI company xAI is reportedly in advanced talks to secure $15 billion in new funding, according to the Wall Street Journal. The deal would value the company at $230 billion, a sharp increase from the $113 billion valuation it reported in March following its merger with X. Musk's financial adviser Jared Birchall shared the terms with investors on Tuesday evening. It's still unclear whether the new valuation applies before or after the additional investment.

Like other AI firms, xAI is burning through cash as it builds out its infrastructure. In June, the company raised $5 billion in equity and $5 billion in debt to construct a massive data center in Memphis. Musk's space company SpaceX contributed $2 billion to that round.

WSJ
AI and society
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Former U.S. Treasury Secretary and Harvard professor Larry Summers has stepped down from OpenAI's board following the publication of his email exchanges with Jeffrey Epstein. Summers had already announced on Monday that he would withdraw from all public roles, though it was initially unclear whether that included his position at OpenAI.

Summers said he was grateful for his time on the board and planned to continue following the company's work. OpenAI told CNBC that it respected his decision and valued his contributions. As a board member, Summers was among the few people directly involved in key decisions related to artificial general intelligence (AGI) at the company.

His resignation comes after the U.S. Congress released more than 20,000 documents revealing his communications and contacts with Epstein.

AI in practice
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Microsoft has introduced Agent 365, a new platform designed to help organizations manage their AI agents as if they were part of the workforce.

Agent 365 includes five core features: a centralized registry for every AI agent in the organization through Microsoft Entra, access control using unique agent IDs, performance dashboards for tracking efficiency, integration with Microsoft 365 apps and corporate data, and built-in security managed by Microsoft Defender and Microsoft Purview.

The system works with Microsoft's own tools like Copilot Studio, but it also supports open-source frameworks and third-party solutions from partners such as Adobe, Nvidia, ServiceNow, and Workday. Agent 365 is available in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center and is currently being tested through Microsoft's Frontier program.

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AI and society
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Thinking Machines Lab, founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, is looking to raise up to five billion dollars in new funding, according to The Information. That would at least triple the nine-month-old company's existing capital. A second source says the startup is aiming for a valuation of at least 50 billion dollars.

The company previously raised two billion dollars at a ten-billion-dollar valuation from backers including Andreessen Horowitz. The money will support research, new hires, and computing resources. In October, the company launched Tinker, a tool that lets developers customize open AI models. Thinking Machines is also working on a consumer-facing product, potentially a voice-based AI assistant.

AI in practice
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Arm and Nvidia plan closer collaboration. Arm says its CPUs will be able to connect directly to Nvidia's AI chips using NVLink Fusion, making it easier for customers to pair Neoverse CPUs with Nvidia GPUs. The move also opens Nvidia's NVLink platform to processors beyond its own lineup.

The partnership targets cloud providers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, which increasingly rely on custom Arm chips to cut costs and tailor their systems. Arm licenses chip designs rather than selling its own processors, and the new protocol speeds up data transfers between CPUs and GPUs. Nvidia previously tried to buy Arm in 2020 for 40 billion dollars, but regulators in the United States and the United Kingdom blocked the deal.

Arm
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AI research

Frustrated authors withdraw papers after realizing their reviewers are just lazy LLMs

AI research

Gemini 3 Pro tops new AI reliability benchmark, but hallucination rates remain high

AI research

Researchers push "Context Engineering 2.0" as the road to lifelong AI memory

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