AI Agenda by Stephanie Palazzolo — The Information

Four times/week (subscribers only)

AI Agenda

By Stephanie Palazzolo

Stay ahead of the technological breakthroughs, startups and leaders in AI with a 14-day free trial of the AI Agenda. After your trial, unlock 25% off on a subscription to The Information for full access to the newsletter, plus all of our original reporting on AI.

By providing your email, you agree to The Information’s Privacy Policy

Recent Editions

Art via Getty Images

Nvidia Drama Explodes; The Startup Tricking Scammers by Using AI Agents

By Claudia Chong · Nov 9, 2026 7:01am PST

Shares of Nvidia were trading down 5% early Monday morning, a sign of the huge uncertainty now hanging over the AI chip giant in the wake of the company’s disclosure Sunday that it would investigate recent reporting that CEO Jensen Huang “had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort.”Adding to the drama, Huang acknowledged having had an... Shares of Nvidia were trading down 5% early Monday morning, a sign of the huge uncertainty now...

Scott Wiener's election night watch party in San Francisco. Santiago Mejia/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images.

California Sends AI Safety Lawmaker to Congress

By Rocket Drew · Nov 5, 2026 7:00am PST

Scott Wiener, the California politician who led the successful effort to pass AI safety legislation in the state’s legislature last year, is headed to Washington. The state senator won Tuesday’s election to succeed long-time House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, after his opponent conceded on Wednesday. When Wiener arrives in D.C., he will be among... Scott Wiener, the California politician who led the successful effort to pass AI safety...

Art via Getty Images

The Security Companies Trying to Get AI Agents Under Control

By Tiffany Li and Stephanie Palazzolo · Nov 4, 2026 7:02am PST

Before we get to today’s column, a heads up that new models from OpenAI could come as soon as Friday, according to people with knowledge of the models. Those models could include the next generation of its Astra, Sol and cyber focused models, the people said. (Obviously, including a caveat here that model timelines could change.)Meanwhile,... Before we get to today’s column, a heads up that new models from OpenAI could come as soon as...

Sam Altman, left, and Jensen Huang. Photos via Getty Images

Should OpenAI Be Afraid of Jensen Huang?

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Nov 3, 2026 8:16am PST

Sam Altman, left, and Jensen Huang. Photos via Getty Images

Should OpenAI Be Afraid of Jensen Huang?

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Nov 3, 2026 8:16am PST

News flash: A lot of people in Silicon Valley are afraid of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.They have understandable reasons to be fearful, as Leo, Phoebe and I detailed in our story this morning. The chipmaker has a lot of money and influence to throw around, since Huang has the ear of several top government officials, including President Trump. ... News flash: A lot of people in Silicon Valley are afraid of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.They have...

Art by Mike Sullivan

It’s Contract Renewal Season, But Some Customers Aren’t Biting

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Nov 2, 2026 7:01am PST · 1 comment

My colleagues and I have been hearing a lot of stories about big enterprise customers renegotiating their annual contracts with model developers. Traditionally, software sellers use this time as an opportunity to convince customers to increase their annual commit by, for instance, reminding them how they exceeded their usage limits this... My colleagues and I have been hearing a lot of stories about big enterprise customers...

Art via Getty Images; Mike Sullivan

Encryption Under Siege? OpenAI, Anthropic Disprove Key Cryptography Theorem

By Jemima McEvoy and Tiffany Li · Oct 29, 2026 7:01am PDT

Cryptographers who develop encryption technologies may not be sleeping very well these days.OpenAI and Anthropic both said Monday that their internal AI models had disproven the Exponential Time Hypothesis, a longstanding computer science theorem that predicts the minimum difficulty of solving a certain category of problems. Cryptographers had... Cryptographers who develop encryption technologies may not be sleeping very well these days....

Art via Getty Images

Foundry Raises $100 Million for Autonomous Factories

By Rocket Drew · Oct 28, 2026 7:20am PDT

Large companies have learned over the past couple years that they can get more mileage out of AI agents by rethinking their processes from scratch, rather than merely automating the existing ways of doing things. Manufacturers are beginning to learn the same lesson as they adopt robots powered by physical AI models.One such manufacturer is ... Large companies have learned over the past couple years that they can get more mileage out of AI...

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

How Is Anthropic So Efficient?

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 27, 2026 7:01am PDT · 1 comment

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

How Is Anthropic So Efficient?

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 27, 2026 7:01am PDT · 1 comment

When Anthropic on Monday dropped its long-awaited initial public offering prospectus filing, a lot of the details—see our top takeaways here—weren’t exactly new, given how much my colleagues and others had previously reported about it.Two items stood out to me, though: how Anthropic is running its models more efficiently than before, and changes... When Anthropic on Monday dropped its long-awaited initial public offering prospectus filing, a...

Art via Getty Images; Mike Sullivan

The Argument in Favor of Tranched Rounds

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 26, 2026 7:21am PDT

Before we get to today’s column, the big day is here: Anthropic dropped its long-awaited public S-1 filing Monday morning. Tune in today for stories from my colleagues and me that will be breaking down the most important takeaways from the filing, such as improvements in the company’s compute efficiency, details on its spending and cash... Before we get to today’s column, the big day is here: Anthropic dropped its long-awaited...

Art via Getty Images

Utopai Becomes a Unicorn as Video AI Takes Off

By Rocket Drew · Oct 22, 2026 7:01am PDT

While much of the AI industry has fixated on new personal AI assistants from Meta and OpenAI, video AI is enjoying a quiet renaissance. Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg is teaming up with the former head of OpenAI’s Sora app to launch a new AI film company. Startup Higgsfield quadrupled its valuation to $5.4 billion in August. And Kling AI,... While much of the AI industry has fixated on new personal AI assistants from Meta and OpenAI,...

Art via Getty Images; Mike Sullivan

OpenAI, Anthropic Should Cap Compute for R&D, Say AI Safety Advocates

By Tiffany Li · Oct 21, 2026 7:00am PDT

Ideas are flowing fast and furious on how AI labs can “pace” AI development so safeguards keep up with the technology’s smarts. Last week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman laid out three scenarios he said have been considered in the industry, including merging all of the AI labs into a single entity to develop new AI safely or creating a global regulatory... Ideas are flowing fast and furious on how AI labs can “pace” AI development so safeguards keep up...

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Photo by Minh Connors/ Getty Images

OpenAI’s ‘Pacing 2.0’ Problem: How Smart Is Too Smart?

By Stephanie Palazzolo and Amir Efrati · Oct 20, 2026 7:01am PDT

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Photo by Minh Connors/ Getty Images

OpenAI’s ‘Pacing 2.0’ Problem: How Smart Is Too Smart?

By Stephanie Palazzolo and Amir Efrati · Oct 20, 2026 7:01am PDT

OpenAI is bound to get a reality check soon, if it hasn’t already, on how difficult it is to “pace” AI technology, let alone getting all the frontier AI developers to agree on how to do so together.CEO Sam Altman last week walked employees through three proposals the industry has discussed for how to safely develop AI, we reported yesterday.... OpenAI is bound to get a reality check soon, if it hasn’t already, on how difficult it is to “...

Art via Getty Images

Anthropic Readies Model That Reads Users’ Intentions Better

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 19, 2026 7:00am PDT

In the last month, OpenAI, Anthropic and Google have released more than a dozen new models. If you thought that pace was crazy, don’t expect things to slow down anytime soon.Anthropic is preparing to release a new model that is better in its reasoning and intuition than the Anthropic models that are currently available commercially, according to... In the last month, OpenAI, Anthropic and Google have released more than a dozen new models. If...

Cognition co-founder Scott Wu. Getty Images.

Cognition’s Plan to Limit Tokenmaxxing to the Most Efficient Engineers

By Rocket Drew · Oct 15, 2026 7:01am PDT

To rein in AI spending, large companies are capping employees’ usage, turning to cheaper and smaller models and using routers to send only the hardest requests to the most expensive models.Cognition, the startup behind the AI coding agent Devin, is adding a new trick to the book: measuring how efficiently different engineers use AI so companies... To rein in AI spending, large companies are capping employees’ usage, turning to cheaper and...

Art via Getty Images

OpenAI’s Math Breakthroughs Rattle Cryptography Leaders

By Tiffany Li · Oct 14, 2026 7:00am PDT

OpenAI’s release last Tuesday of more than 300 math results it says an internal model solved has sparked concern among some of the world’s leading cryptographers, or experts in encoding information to keep it private and secure. They worry that AI’s continued math advances could find new algorithms that make our current methods of protecting... OpenAI’s release last Tuesday of more than 300 math results it says an internal model solved has...

Vincent Weisser, CEO & Co-Founder of Prime Intellect. Screenshot via YouTube/OpenRouter.

Neocloud Prime Intellect Acquires Startup To Speed Up Inference

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 13, 2026 7:00am PDT

Vincent Weisser, CEO & Co-Founder of Prime Intellect. Screenshot via YouTube/OpenRouter.

Neocloud Prime Intellect Acquires Startup To Speed Up Inference

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 13, 2026 7:00am PDT

Neoclouds and so-called inference providers that help app developers run open source models are trying to differentiate themselves in a very crowded market. For instance, one such neocloud, Prime Intellect, which was valued at $1 billion in an equity financing in July, is buying a startup to help it make open models run faster and more... Neoclouds and so-called inference providers that help app developers run open source models are...

Art by Mike Sullivan

OpenAI’s Plan To Revive Sora

By Stephanie Palazzolo and Cory Weinberg · Oct 12, 2026 7:00am PDT

Remember OpenAI’s video model Sora and all the great Sam Altman memes that came from it? Earlier this year, the ChatGPT-maker canned both the model and the TikTok-like app it powered as part of broader culling of server-intensive “side projects” even as rivals xAI and Google forged ahead with their own video models.Well, there’s a chance that a... Remember OpenAI’s video model Sora and all the great Sam Altman memes that came from it? Earlier...

Art by Mike Sullivan; Getty Images

How OpenAI Beat Math

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 8, 2026 8:00am PDT

Mathematicians are likely feeling the kind of anxiety that software engineers have experienced for months in the wake of OpenAI release on Tuesday of a whopping 722 research papers with AI-created solutions to a range of problems across math subjects. AI’s success solving ultra-difficult math problems—even though it still makes mistakes... Mathematicians are likely feeling the kind of anxiety that software engineers have experienced...

Art via Getty Images

Former Tesla Optimus Lead is Launching an Industrial Robot Startup

By Kevin McLaughlin · Oct 7, 2026 7:01am PDT

Ashish Kumar, a former AI lead for Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robots, has co-founded a startup developing non-humanoid robots that handle a variety of tasks that would normally be done by highly skilled workers in industries such as manufacturing and aerospace, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. The San Francisco... Ashish Kumar, a former AI lead for Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robots, has co-founded a startup...

Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon during a New York City Council hearing on the threat of AI. Photo by Michael Nagle/Getty Images

AI Whistleblowers Say Researchers Are Checking AI Less Frequently

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 6, 2026 7:00am PDT

Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon during a New York City Council hearing on the threat of AI. Photo by Michael Nagle/Getty Images

AI Whistleblowers Say Researchers Are Checking AI Less Frequently

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 6, 2026 7:00am PDT

It won’t be any surprise to people with human intelligence that Monday’s New York City Council hearing on the risks of AI was as theatrical as a Broadway show. What was more surprising was what the AI researchers testified about how AI research is evolving, and what that means for their job.For those who missed it, the city council heard... It won’t be any surprise to people with human intelligence that Monday’s New York City Council...