Report: AI lab DeepSeek doubled its round as black-market Nvidia chips got pricier

The Information, citing sources, reports that Chinese AI lab DeepSeek doubled the size of its latest funding round because prices for Nvidia Blackwell chips on the black market were surging. The round this month was nearly $16 billion. Chinese state-owned investors made up 27% of it.

Report: Spotify plans a $5-a-month AI tool to make your own remixes and covers

The Financial Times, citing sources, reports that Spotify aims to launch an AI product in early 2027 that lets subscribers create their own remixes and covers of songs. It would cost up to about $5 a month. The launch depends on licensing deals with music rights holders.

Amazon's CEO says outside AI shopping agents are not yet better than shopping direct

On Amazon's earnings call, CEO Andy Jassy told investors not to worry about AI bots from other companies making its online store pointless. He said outside AI shopping agents are "still not great, nor more convenient than coming to a retailer directly." Amazon pushes its own assistant, Alexa for Shopping, instead.

Meta quietly launches Style Sketch, an AI app that plans outfits from your own clothes

Meta has launched Style Sketch, an AI fashion app that helps people put together outfit ideas using clothes they already own. TechCrunch reports it is available in Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand. Meta did not announce it widely.

Amazon says its Prime Video service is now profitable on its own

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Prime Video has "a revenue run rate in the tens of billions of dollars and is now profitable in its own right." It comes four years after Amazon bought the MGM film studio for $8.5 billion, and after this year's hit movie Project Hail Mary.

Deadly blast shuts Intel's chip plant in Israel, slowing server chips for six months

Tom's Hardware reports that a deadly explosion at Intel's Fab 28 factory in Israel has caused a two-week shutdown. It says the shutdown will cost about $600 million and severely disrupt server chip manufacturing for six months. Shipments of Intel's 10nm Xeon server chips are stalled, which will affect two quarters in a row.

Anthropic's stock filing warns it depends heavily on TSMC chips made in Taiwan

In its S-1, the filing it made to list its shares, AI company Anthropic says it relies heavily on chips made by TSMC in Taiwan. It warns of risks from "potential disruption" amid tensions between Taiwan and China, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Binance says hackers took about $6.3 billion and pledges to cover all customer losses

Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, says a hack drained about $6.3 billion from its wallets, and it has pledged to cover all losses. It has suspended deposits and withdrawals, and says early findings point to a compromised laptop of a DevOps engineer (who runs its systems) as the possible way in. Blockchain analysis firm TRM Labs says the North Korea-based group TraderTraitor did it, across 10 blockchains, mostly in about 20 minutes. Binance says it has frozen $3 billion in crypto assets, and Tether and Circle have frozen billions of dollars of their coins. Binance.US says it is not affected.

CrowdStrike says China-linked hackers used an AI tool to target 200+ groups in 11 days

Security firm CrowdStrike says Chinese state-linked hackers targeted more than 200 organisations in 11 days, attacking governments and businesses worldwide. They used an AI tool called ARTEX, built with a DeepSeek language model and another model. At least nine organisations were compromised, NBC News reports.

Robotaxi firm Waymo will use Toyota cars for self-driving taxis in Japan and the UK

Waymo will begin testing self-driving versions of Toyota's electric bZ4X car in Japan next year. It is part of a broader partnership with the carmaker, and the cars are also meant for the UK.

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