In short: Stanford’s 2026 AI Index Report finds the performance gap between the best American and Chinese AI models has collapsed to 2.7%, down from 17.5-31.6 percentage points in May 2023, despite…
Month: April 2026
Threads is redesigning its website and finally adding direct messages to the desktop
Summary: Threads head Connor Hayes previewed a redesigned web interface that adds direct messages, a navigation sidebar with shortcuts to saved posts and insights, and a cleaner single-feed layout replacing the current…
Meta targets 20 May for 8,000 layoffs as it redirects billions toward AI infrastructure
In short: Meta will begin companywide layoffs on 20 May, cutting approximately 8,000 employees (10% of its 78,865-person workforce), with additional cuts planned for the second half of 2026. The restructuring, which…
Europe is pouring tens of billions of public money into VC. The hard part is making it work
The European Investment Fund is raising a €15 billion fund of funds called ETCI 2 that aims to unlock up to €80 billion in scaleup funding across Europe. Germany’s WIN initiative is…
Nvidia’s Huang warns DeepSeek running on Huawei chips would be ‘horrible’ for the US
In short: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang warned on the Dwarkesh Podcast that DeepSeek optimising its AI models for Huawei’s Ascend chips instead of American hardware would be “a horrible outcome” for the…
Anthropic’s Amodei meets Wiles and Bessent at the White House in first step toward resolving Mythos standoff
In short: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei met White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday in what the White House called “productive and constructive” talks over…
Palantir, Thales, and a startup are competing to build the FAA’s predictive air traffic AI
In short: The FAA is developing SMART (Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories), an AI system that would extend air traffic conflict prediction from 15 minutes to two hours, with Palantir, Thales,…
Cursor is raising $2 billion at a $50 billion valuation as AI coding tools become the fastest-growing software category
In short: AI coding startup Cursor (Anysphere) is in talks to raise at least $2 billion at a $50 billion valuation, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital, and Nvidia, nearly doubling its…
Three more senior executives leave OpenAI as the company kills its side quests
Summary: Three senior OpenAI executives, former CPO Kevin Weil, Sora head Bill Peebles, and enterprise CTO Srinivas Narayanan – departed on the same day as the company shuts down “side quests” including…
NVIDIA didn’t invest in Xanadu, but it made its CEO a billionaire anyway
Christian Weedbrook, the founder and CEO of Toronto-based Xanadu Quantum Technologies, became a billionaire this week without NVIDIA investing a single dollar in his company. His 46.4 million multiple-voting shares were worth…