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AI Agenda

By Stephanie Palazzolo

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Recent Editions

President Donald Trump, left, and White House AI "czar" David Sacks. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images.
AI Agenda

What’s Next for State AI Laws After Trump Order

By Rocket Drew · Nov 20, 2025 7:00am PST · 1 comment
The White House plans an executive order to block states from passing laws regulating AI, as we reported Wednesday. Instead of state laws, the order suggests there should be a federal law governing the information that AI companies have to disclose and how they handle potential bias in models. Specifically, it directs White House AI “czar”... The White House plans an executive order to block states from passing laws regulating AI, as we...
Art by Mike Sullivan
AI Agenda

Google Unseats Anthropic With Gemini 3

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Nov 19, 2025 7:04am PST
Before we get to Gemini 3, we want to highlight this morning’s news that former Harvard University President Larry Summers has resigned from OpenAI’s board of directors following a congressional committee’s release of emails showing a personal correspondence between him and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Summers had been on the board of... Before we get to Gemini 3, we want to highlight this morning’s news that former Harvard...
OpenHands cofounders Graham Neubig, Robert Brennan and Xingyao Wang. Photo courtesy of OpenHands.
AI Agenda

Gemini 3 Arrives; Open-Source Coding Agent Raises $19 Million

By Erin Woo · Nov 18, 2025 8:00am PST
Before we get to today’s news about Gemini, we should mention that this morning, Microsoft and Nvidia announced that they’re investing in Anthropic, who will be spending at least $30 billion over an unspecified amount of time to rent servers from Microsoft’s Azure cloud equipped with Nvidia chips.... Before we get to today’s news about Gemini, we should mention that this morning, ...
Photo from Getty Images
A Coding Assistant’s Bet on Ads Seems to Be Paying Off
By Stephanie Palazzolo · Nov 17, 2025 7:00am PST
Photo from Getty Images
AI Agenda

A Coding Assistant’s Bet on Ads Seems to Be Paying Off

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Nov 17, 2025 7:00am PST
Before we get to today’s column, it’s worth pointing out that Google CEO Sundar Pichai strongly hinted on X that Gemini 3, the long-awaited next update to Google’s line of Gemini models, would be coming out this week. Google has done an impressive job of catching up to the other labs when it comes to conversational AI models, and Gemini 3 will... Before we get to today’s column, it’s worth pointing out that Google CEO Sundar Pichai strongly...
Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang. Photo by Getty Images
AI Agenda

Why Nvidia Keeps Backing Would-Be Competitors to OpenAI

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Nov 13, 2025 7:36am PST
As we wrote in this story on Tuesday, investors are rushing to back a new crop of research-focused AI labs (dubbed neolabs) hoping to outflank OpenAI and Anthropic. One investor, in particular, is driving most of these new startups: Nvidia.In Reflection AI’s October fundraising, for instance, Nvidia contributed $800 million out of the $2 billion... As we wrote in this story on Tuesday, investors are rushing to back a new crop of...
AI Agenda Newsletter
Stay ahead of the innovation and disruption happening in AI. Stephanie Palazzolo covers the tech, startups, companies and people making headlines.
By providing your email, you agree to The Information’s Privacy Policy
Art by Getty Images
AI Agenda

Robotics Data Startup Raises $40 Million Led By Bessemer

By Rocket Drew · Nov 12, 2025 8:12am PST
Before we get to today’s column, Steph and Sri broke news Tuesday night about a flurry of investments VCs are making in so-called “neolabs,” or new labs hoping to exploit approaches to developing AI models and research they say major developers like OpenAI and Anthropic may have overlooked.These include companies like agent startup Isara, which... Before we get to today’s column, Steph and Sri broke news Tuesday night about a flurry of...
Art by Mike Sullivan
AI Agenda

The Little-Known Search and Browser Startup Generating $100 Million in Annualized Revenue

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Nov 11, 2025 7:00am PST
Consumer-focused AI developers such as OpenAI and Perplexity are jockeying for a share of the browser market, now dominated by Google’s Chrome. But before they have a chance of dethroning Chrome, they first have to surpass Brave.Brave has been around for a decade and passed $100 million in annualized revenue in the first quarter of this year,... Consumer-focused AI developers such as OpenAI and Perplexity are jockeying for a share of the...
Art by Mike Sullivan
China’s Open-Source Models Challenge Anthropic in AI Coding
By Juro Osawa · Nov 10, 2025 7:00am PST
Art by Mike Sullivan
AI Agenda

China’s Open-Source Models Challenge Anthropic in AI Coding

By Juro Osawa · Nov 10, 2025 7:00am PST
Chinese companies are launching open-source AI models built to power coding assistants as cheaper alternatives to those available from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. Late last month, Shanghai-based AI startup MiniMax launched M2, a new open-source large language model developed primarily for coding and AI agents. In a post on X, MiniMax... Chinese companies are launching open-source AI models built to power coding assistants as cheaper...
Ion Stoica. YouTube/Opaque Systems
AI Agenda

Why OpenAI CFO Said Uncle Sam Should Backstop Chip Financing; Databricks Co-Founder Responds to Benchmark Critics

By Rocket Drew and Amir Efrati · Nov 6, 2025 7:00am PST
It’s not every day one of the world’s most valuable companies asks the U.S. government for assistance, but these aren’t ordinary days. On Wednesday, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar suggested at a Wall Street Journal event that the federal government ought to guarantee the financing of AI chips. Come again?“We’re looking for an ecosystem of banks,... It’s not every day one of the world’s most valuable companies asks the U.S. government for...
Image via Getty Images
AI Agenda

How Anthropic’s Claude Code Helped Brex Write 80% of a New Codebase

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Nov 5, 2025 7:00am PST
Coding and financial services are two of the most common domains that people cite when I ask about the most promising applications of artificial intelligence. Now we have an example that combines both of them.Wednesday morning, corporate card issuer Brex announced a series of new “agentic” products, powered by Anthropic’s Claude models, that aim... Coding and financial services are two of the most common domains that people cite when I ask...
AI Agenda Newsletter
Stay ahead of the innovation and disruption happening in AI. Stephanie Palazzolo covers the tech, startups, companies and people making headlines.
By providing your email, you agree to The Information’s Privacy Policy
Dario Amodei. Photo by Getty Images
AI Agenda

The Information’s Most Promising AI Startups; Positive Cash Flow Seems In Sight For Anthropic

By Stephanie Palazzolo, Laura Mandaro and Rocket Drew · Nov 4, 2025 7:00am PST
I’d recommend you check out our annual list of the most promising startups, which we published this morning and includes companies across artificial intelligence, consumer, cybersecurity, crypto and more.Each year, it gets harder and harder to come up with our final list of AI applications and infrastructure startups. Part of that is due to the... I’d recommend you check out our annual list of the most promising startups, which we published...
Mira Murati. Photo by Getty Images
What Ilya Saw: Mira Murati’s Screenshots About Sam Altman
By Amir Efrati · Nov 3, 2025 7:00am PST · 1 comment
Mira Murati. Photo by Getty Images
AI Agenda

What Ilya Saw: Mira Murati’s Screenshots About Sam Altman

By Amir Efrati · Nov 3, 2025 7:00am PST · 1 comment
Before we get to today’s column, OpenAI is continuing its trend of diversifying its cloud compute providers away from Microsoft. Monday morning, the ChatGPT maker announced that it has signed a seven-year, $38 billion cloud deal with Amazon Web Services. OpenAI will immediately start using compute from AWS, with the goal to deploy all capacity... Before we get to today’s column, OpenAI is continuing its trend of diversifying its cloud compute...
Asha Sharma, president of product development for Microsoft’s Core AI division. Photo by Erin Beach.
AI Agenda

AI Leaders Get Practical; Gemini’s Ascent

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 30, 2025 7:00am PDT
At our Women in Tech, Media and Finance conference Wednesday, AI leaders from Microsoft, PagerDuty and Index Ventures got into the nitty gritty of what it’s like to invest in, develop, buy and use AI products. Our top takeaways.1. Not everyone’s a fan of vibe coding. Lucy Guo, the CEO of creator startup Passes and a cofounder of data labeling... At our Women in Tech, Media and Finance conference Wednesday, AI leaders from Microsoft, ...
OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki and CEO Sam Altman.
AI Agenda

How Realistic is OpenAI’s 2028 Timeline For Automating AI Research Itself?

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 29, 2025 7:00am PDT
OpenAI flooded the zone yesterday with a long-awaited announcement regarding its revised agreement with Microsoft and corporate restructuring, and an hour-long livestream in which CEO Sam Altman and Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki answered questions from the public. (For more on the restructuring, check out this story from my colleagues.)On the... OpenAI flooded the zone yesterday with a long-awaited announcement regarding its revised...
Getty Images
AI Agenda

How OpenAI’s Sora is Evolving Like TikTok

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 28, 2025 7:10am PDT
When OpenAI released its Sora video app last month, it seemed like an attempt to develop a TikTok-like viral video service with artificial intelligence at its core. And in some ways, usage of Sora has echoes in how TikTok is used.In a recent all-hands, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees that 20% to 30% of Sora users created AI-generated videos... When OpenAI released its Sora video app last month, it seemed like an attempt to develop a TikTok...
AI Agenda Newsletter
Stay ahead of the innovation and disruption happening in AI. Stephanie Palazzolo covers the tech, startups, companies and people making headlines.
By providing your email, you agree to The Information’s Privacy Policy
Art via Getty Images; Mike Sullivan
Why Anthropic and OpenAI Are Using Cognition’s Coding Test
By Rocket Drew · Oct 27, 2025 7:00am PDT
Art via Getty Images; Mike Sullivan
AI Agenda

Why Anthropic and OpenAI Are Using Cognition’s Coding Test

By Rocket Drew · Oct 27, 2025 7:00am PDT
As artificial intelligence models improve, the companies developing them are seeking more sophisticated ways to measure how good they are at a wide range of tasks. As a result, they are developing internal benchmarks to test models’ capabilities, rather than relying on publicly available tests.Cognition, which has created the Devin coding agent,... As artificial intelligence models improve, the companies developing them are seeking more...
Art by Getty Images; Mike Sullivan
AI Agenda

Music App Suno Nearly Quadruples Annual Recurring Revenue to $150 Million

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 23, 2025 7:00am PDT · 1 comment
You can count the number of breakout consumer AI applications on the fingers of one hand. There’s OpenAI’s ChatGPT and…that’s about it, at least so far. Suno, which helps people create music using conversational prompts, isn’t yet a breakout—but it could be soon. The company is generating around $150 million in annual recurring revenue from... You can count the number of breakout consumer AI applications on the fingers of one hand. There’s...
Photo by Getty
AI Agenda

OpenAI’s New Browser War; Google’s College Developer Play

By Erin Woo and Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 22, 2025 7:00am PDT
Before we get to today’s column, we’d be remiss not to mention OpenAI’s release on Tuesday of its new web browser, news of which we first scooped almost a year ago. The new browser, ChatGPT Atlas, is yet another example of OpenAI expanding its reach into consumers’ online lives, just as other tech incumbents such as Google and Apple... Before we get to today’s column, we’d be remiss not to mention OpenAI’s release on Tuesday of its...
Youtube/Dwarkesh Patel.
AI Agenda

Is Andrej Karpathy Right About Overhyped AI?

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 21, 2025 7:05am PDT · 2 comments
Andrej Karpathy, one of the founding members of OpenAI, on Friday threw cold water on the idea that artificial general intelligence is around the corner. He also cast doubt on various assumptions about AI made by the industry’s biggest boosters, such as Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman.The highly regarded Karpathy called ... Andrej Karpathy, one of the founding members of OpenAI, on Friday threw cold water on the idea...
Peter Hoeschele. Screenshot via YouTube
OpenAI Executive Explains the Insatiable Appetite For AI Chips
By Sri Muppidi · Oct 20, 2025 7:00am PDT
Peter Hoeschele. Screenshot via YouTube
AI Agenda

OpenAI Executive Explains the Insatiable Appetite For AI Chips

By Sri Muppidi · Oct 20, 2025 7:00am PDT
Peter Hoeschele, who runs OpenAI’s Stargate data center team, said at an event last week that the company’s models are essentially in constant training mode. That’s a change from the past, when OpenAI would stop training them when they reached a certain point. “Let’s stop talking about training versus inference,” Hoeschele said after Oracle... Peter Hoeschele, who runs OpenAI’s Stargate data center team, said at an event last week that the...