Scale AI

Newly revealed classified estimates indicate the National Security Agency is spending billions of dollars testing artificial intelligence models, according to a report drawing on internal figures. The disclosure points to the scale of US intelligence investment in AI evaluation, and online discussion is focused on what the money covers, oversight of the spending, and privacy implications of spy agencies testing commercial models.

Google has announced Project Suncatcher, a research initiative to run machine learning infrastructure on solar-powered satellite constellations in orbit. The plan, outlined on Google's research blog, envisions data centre-scale compute in space to tap unlimited solar energy as terrestrial energy demands from AI grow. Early discussion centres on feasibility, launch costs, and whether orbiting hardware could realistically scale.

Anthropic has signed a $12 billion agreement with Akamai for AI computing capacity, according to a Bloomberg report. The deal gives the AI company access to large-scale compute resources, further expanding its infrastructure spending as competition for computing power among leading AI developers intensifies. The full terms and duration of the arrangement have not been detailed.

The Wall Street Journal reports, in an exclusive, that a startup is developing AI tools to defend against a potential 'AI pandemic' — a scenario where artificial intelligence systems are used at scale for harm, such as mass disinformation or automated attacks. Details about the company, its funding and its technology were not provided beyond the headline claim.

Chosun Ilbo reports exclusively that the South Korean government is considering ending a national artificial intelligence project and is weighing a special purpose company structure as an alternative. The report has drawn attention to the fate of state-backed AI plans, with officials said to be reviewing whether the current approach should be abandoned or reorganised. Details of the project's scale and timeline were not disclosed.

SynthBee has completed a $100 million funding round with Crosspoint Capital, a deal that gives the young startup significant backing as it scales. Details on valuation and use of proceeds were not disclosed. The round puts SynthBee among the recent wave of well-funded artificial intelligence startups attracting large checks from specialized investors.

A security researcher has linked roughly 16,000 scans of a United Nations statistics portal to OpenAI's AI agents, suggesting automated browsing by the company's systems at significant scale. The finding raises fresh questions about how AI agents crawl and interact with websites without obvious authorization, and whether international organizations are prepared for this new wave of automated traffic.

Elon Musk said xAI plans to expand its computing capacity to more than 1.2 million Nvidia GPUs by the end of the year, more than double its current count. The plan underscores the escalating race among AI companies to secure massive GPU fleets for training larger models, and highlights Nvidia's central role in supplying the global AI buildout.

The rapid expansion of AI is driving a surge in data centre construction, and with it a sharp rise in electricity demand that power grids are struggling to meet. Coverage highlights the tension between tech companies' growth plans and energy sustainability, raising questions about how the industry will source clean power at scale.

Major technology companies are rapidly expanding their use of financial guarantees to back debt raised for AI datacentres and chips, issuing up to $300bn in commitments in under a year. Analysts note much of this exposure is recorded off their balance sheets, raising questions about transparency and hidden risk in the AI investment boom.

Bridgewater argues that the current surge in artificial intelligence capital expenditure can only be justified if enterprise and consumer adoption of AI scales rapidly enough to generate returns. The hedge fund's analysis adds to the debate over whether massive spending on data centres and chips by tech companies will pay off, or whether it resembles an investment bubble.

Nvidia has added LG Electronics to its Partner Network as a preferred cooling provider, aiming to ease the power and heat constraints of large-scale AI data centers. While attention usually falls on Nvidia's GPUs, the company is signaling that thermal management is becoming a critical bottleneck, giving LG a direct path to supply cooling technology for AI infrastructure.

Sakana AI has introduced SAIL, a research project on scaling in-context imitation learning, aimed at teaching robotic systems new skills by letting them learn from demonstrations within context rather than through task-specific retraining. The announcement is drawing attention from robotics and AI researchers interested in whether scaling in-context learning can improve general-purpose robot behavior.