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By Stephanie Palazzolo

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Recent Editions

A man wears a lobster hat that represents OpenClaw at Baidu's headquarters in Beijing. Photo by Adek Berry/ Getty Images)

Nvidia, Startups Race to Make OpenClaw Safer to Use

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Mar 12, 2026 7:00am PDT

Enthusiasm for OpenClaw, the popular open-source software for powering personal AI agents using personal computers, has been tempered by a number of embarrassing security snafus, such as when OpenClaw started mass-deleting emails from Meta alignment director Summer Yue’s inbox.In China, where developers are arguably even more enthusiastic about... Enthusiasm for OpenClaw, the popular open-source software for powering personal AI agents using...

Art via Getty Images

What’s CXL? The Alternative Memory Technology Embraced by Google, Nvidia

By Qianer Liu · Mar 11, 2026 7:00am PDT

The global memory chip shortage sparked by the AI boom has prompted companies including Google and Nvidia to spend more effort on alternatives that could ease the supply crunch. One of them is a technology that allows servers to share memory across a data center.The technology, Compute Express Link, or CXL, is seven years old but was slow to... The global memory chip shortage sparked by the AI boom has prompted companies including Google...

Unreasonable Labs cofounders Yuan Cao and Markus Buehler. Photos courtesy of Unreasonable Labs.

The Startup Trying a New Trick to Develop AI For Science Discovery

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Mar 10, 2026 7:38am PDT

OpenAI and Anthropic have raised tens of billions of dollars on the promise of artificial intelligence that can make new discoveries in fields like medicine, biology and physics. And yet, we’re nowhere close to that. (You might recall this awkward moment from last fall when a ChatGPT-generated math “discovery” was debunked.) The... OpenAI and Anthropic have raised tens of billions of dollars on the promise of artificial...

Pete Hegseth, left, and Dario Amodei. Photos by Getty.

AI Agenda: Anthropic Has a Strong Legal Case Against Trump’s DoD

By Rocket Drew · Mar 9, 2026 7:00am PDT

Pete Hegseth, left, and Dario Amodei. Photos by Getty.

AI Agenda: Anthropic Has a Strong Legal Case Against Trump’s DoD

By Rocket Drew · Mar 9, 2026 7:00am PDT

Anthropic’s lawyers probably spent the weekend preparing a lawsuit the company said it would file against the Department of Defense for designating the Claude AI maker as a “supply chain risk” and cutting off commercial ties to “protect national security.” The designation followed Anthropic’s request for special assurances its tech wouldn’t be... Anthropic’s lawyers probably spent the weekend preparing a lawsuit the company said it would file...

Art via Getty Images

OpenAI Develops a ‘Bidirectional’ Audio Model to Boost Voice Assistants

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Mar 5, 2026 7:00am PST

Wow, what a day of news! In case you missed it (which would have been difficult), we broke a number of stories yesterday regarding OpenAI and Anthropic. Most memorable was this piece about the fiery, 1,600-word memo Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei penned to staff last Friday criticizing the OpenAI-Pentagon deal. (You can check out the full memo... Wow, what a day of news! In case you missed it (which would have been difficult), we broke a...

Art via Getty Images

OpenAI’s Next AI Model Will Have ‘Extreme’ Reasoning

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Mar 4, 2026 7:00am PST · 1 comment

OpenAI’s next GPT model is coming—and soon, according to a person with knowledge of it.Among the highlights, the new model, GPT-5.4, will have more than double the context window of the current GPT-5.2 model. That means the model can handle queries with many more words or data, up to 1 million tokens compared to 400,000 tokens today, the person... OpenAI’s next GPT model is coming—and soon, according to a person with knowledge of it.Among the...

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (left) and Under Secretary of Defense (Research and Engineering), Emil Michael at the Pentagon in July. Win McNamee/Getty Images.

The OpenAI and Anthropic Execs at the Center of the Pentagon Action

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Mar 3, 2026 7:00am PST · 1 comment

OpenAI was on the backfoot on Monday. Current and former OpenAI employees took to social media to share concerns about their employer signing an agreement with the Pentagon that seemed to accept at least some terms Anthropic had rejected. A surge in people uninstalling the ChatGPT app from their phones over the weekend, according to TechCrunch,... OpenAI was on the backfoot on Monday. Current and former OpenAI employees took to social media to...

Sam Altman. Photo by Getty Images

The Loopholes in OpenAI’s Pentagon Deal

By Erin Woo · Mar 2, 2026 7:00am PST

Sam Altman. Photo by Getty Images

The Loopholes in OpenAI’s Pentagon Deal

By Erin Woo · Mar 2, 2026 7:00am PST

What a weekend! Anthropic is now poised to sue the Pentagon, after being labeled a “supply chain risk,” while OpenAI has its own agreement allowing the agency to use OpenAI’s models in “classified environments.”There are still plenty of unanswered questions, including how big of a business risk being designated a “supply chain risk” poses... What a weekend! Anthropic is now poised to sue the Pentagon, after being labeled a “supply chain...

Image from Getty Images.

A Robot Data Startup Raises $60 Million

By Rocket Drew · Feb 26, 2026 7:00am PST

Companies developing AI models to power humanoid and other robots have been hard at work collecting videos and other data for training their models, even paying people to record themselves completing tasks in homes and workplaces. As these data-collection efforts start to pay off, and robots take on some of those tasks, the robot developers... Companies developing AI models to power humanoid and other robots have been hard at work...

Andrew Feldman, Cerebras Systems. Art by Clark Miller; Getty Images.

Why OpenAI’s Cerebras Chip Deal Matters; What Anthropic Wants to Know About Chinese Rivals

By Stephanie Palazzolo and Rocket Drew · Feb 25, 2026 7:00am PST

OpenAI executives have repeatedly signaled, both publicly and privately, that the only factor limiting the company’s revenue growth is access to computational resources. Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar wrote an entire blog post on this topic earlier this year, and OpenAI executives highlighted the message again in a presentation to investors... OpenAI executives have repeatedly signaled, both publicly and privately, that the only factor...

Art by Getty Images

Why ChatGPT Faces Language Barriers

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Feb 24, 2026 7:00am PST

Many AI researchers believe AI models that listen and speak to people are trailing text-based models in capabilities and performance. That gap is even bigger when you look at audio models for languages other than English, especially outside the Western hemisphere.That could be a big issue for companies like OpenAI that are aggressively trying to... Many AI researchers believe AI models that listen and speak to people are trailing text-based...

Art by Getty Images

OpenAI’s GPT-5 Dip; Why Agents Are Hard to Evaluate

By Stephanie Palazzolo and Rocket Drew · Feb 23, 2026 7:00am PST

Art by Getty Images

OpenAI’s GPT-5 Dip; Why Agents Are Hard to Evaluate

By Stephanie Palazzolo and Rocket Drew · Feb 23, 2026 7:00am PST

Before we get into today’s column, Friday’s story from Sri and me confirmed what many had been hypothesizing since OpenAI’s release of GPT-5 in August: ChatGPT’s growth hasn’t been as strong as OpenAI hoped.The story is more nuanced, obviously. The chatbot has hit new highs in terms of weekly active users—910 million, to be exact as of earlier... Before we get into today’s column, Friday’s story from Sri and me confirmed what many had been...

ZaiNar cofounder and CEO Daniel Jacker. Photo courtesy of ZaiNar.

Startup Developing GPS Alternative for Physical AI Earns $1 Billion-Valuation

By Katie Roof · Feb 19, 2026 7:00am PST · 1 comment

Over the last two years, investors and researchers have flocked to startups helping bring AI into the physical world, from developing robot hands to the AI models that train robots to software to train self-driving cars. Now one startup says it can solve a perennial problem for robots and other AI-powered systems: getting precise location... Over the last two years, investors and researchers have flocked to startups helping bring AI into...

Photo via Getty Images

Don’t Get Tricked By Fake ‘Continual Learning’

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Feb 18, 2026 7:00am PST

A new holy grail has emerged in the AI industry in recent months: continual learning, or the promise of AI that’s able to learn from real-world experience the way humans do, without having to undergo long formal training processes that require tons of computational power and data.And as you’d might expect with the rise of an ill-defined, buzzy... A new holy grail has emerged in the AI industry in recent months: continual learning, or the...

Art by Mike Sullivan.

China’s AI Giveaway War

By Juro Osawa · Feb 17, 2026 7:05am PST

U.S. AI firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic haven’t yet turned a profit but they’re trying to get on the path to doing so. In China, the big tech firms behind AI chatbots are fighting a different battle.Chinese tech firms are competing so intensely to draw people to use their AI chatbots that they’re spending this week’s Lunar New Year holidays... U.S. AI firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic haven’t yet turned a profit but they’re trying to get...

Art by Clark Miller.

The Problem With World Models

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Feb 12, 2026 7:00am PST · 2 comments

Art by Clark Miller.

The Problem With World Models

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Feb 12, 2026 7:00am PST · 2 comments

If you follow the AI world on X, you’ve probably seen in recent weeks clips of video game-like worlds where users are playing as a dog on a sunny beach, a vial of poison in the play Hamlet or a pack of cigarettes on the floor of Penn Station. These videos, generated with Google’s Genie 3 model, highlight the promise of so-called world... If you follow the AI world on X, you’ve probably seen in recent weeks clips of video game-like...

Art by Clark Miller.

How OpenAI Uses ChatGPT to Catch ‘Leakers’

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Feb 11, 2026 7:00am PST

Here at The Information, we’re always trying to break through the hype to understand how folks are actually using AI in the real world. And recently, I came across a new application of AI that I can’t say I had ever heard of before: using ChatGPT to catch so-called leakers.When a news story about OpenAI’s internal activities is published,... Here at The Information, we’re always trying to break through the hype to understand how folks...

Art by Clark Miller.

How OpenClaw Learns New Things

By Rocket Drew · Feb 10, 2026 7:00am PST · 2 comments

The sizable gap between how AIs and humans learn new things has inspired researchers to rethink the math behind today’s AI models. But developers have found a more immediate and practical workaround to get AI to continually learn: “skills.” A skill is a text prompt containing instructions for how an agent should perform a task. For... The sizable gap between how AIs and humans learn new things has inspired researchers to rethink...

Art by Mike Sullivan

Why Voice Assistants Are Dumb Compared to Text Chatbots

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Feb 9, 2026 7:00am PST

For years, investors and founders have told me that AI which talks and listens the way humans do is on the cusp of a breakout moment. We’re still not there.Audio models are still lagging behind their text-based brethren in terms of intelligence. If you ask an audio model like the ChatGPT voice assistant a tough math question, for instance, it’s... For years, investors and founders have told me that AI which talks and listens the way humans do...

Daytona CEO Ivan Burazin. Photo courtesy of Daytona.

Datadog and Figma Back a Startup Developing Tools For AI Agents

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Feb 5, 2026 7:00am PST

Daytona CEO Ivan Burazin. Photo courtesy of Daytona.

Datadog and Figma Back a Startup Developing Tools For AI Agents

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Feb 5, 2026 7:00am PST

First off, check out Jyoti’s Wednesday scoop about Meta’s latest AI model efforts. In sum, Meta is telling its employees “we’re back in the game!” and setting high expectations for the company’s next open-weight large language model, codenamed Avocado.Yes, Meta AI leaders did the same last year with Llama 4 and we all know how poorly that turned... First off, check out Jyoti’s Wednesday scoop about Meta’s latest AI model efforts. In sum, Meta...