OpenAI's new ChatGPT Wallet lets its AI agents buy things for you, with approval

OpenAI announced ChatGPT Wallet, a payment feature for its AI agents. The company says it gives agents in ChatGPT Work, Codex and its dots agents a secure way to complete purchases, with user approval and existing card protections. The Verge reports that it is rolling out to ChatGPT Pro subscribers in the US who are 18 or older, have a US billing address and use eligible US-issued American Express, Chase, Mastercard or Visa cards. TechCrunch calls it a limited rollout.

OpenAI shuts its separate robotics team and moves the staff to other groups

OpenAI has disbanded its stand-alone robotics team and moved its researchers to its research and Applied units, Fortune reports. The company confirmed the change when Fortune asked. It says general models such as GPT-6 Astra can now be applied to robots directly.

Nvidia's board starts looking for a new CEO; FT says it approached Arm's boss

Nvidia's board told CNBC it is choosing a search firm to find a successor to Jensen Huang and has not formally approached any candidates. The Financial Times and Tom's Hardware report that the board approached Rene Haas, the CEO of chip designer Arm and a long-time Nvidia veteran. Separately, WIRED reports that some Nvidia staff are asking the board to bring Huang back. The New York Times says Nvidia held $48 billion in stakes in 229 private companies as of July, and TechCrunch reports founders and investors expect smaller checks without Huang.

AI cloud firm Nscale says it needs more money to deliver a $45B Anthropic deal

Nscale, an Nvidia-backed company that rents out AI computing, told investors in a filing that it must raise more money to meet its 2027 commitments. It had ordered Nvidia chips for a $45 billion Anthropic deal. The Financial Times says this casts doubt on its planned $35 billion stock market listing. CNBC reports third-quarter revenue of $307.5 million, up 1,344% on a year earlier, and a net loss of $1.69 billion. Bloomberg reports that its debt rose to $5.5 billion in September from $137.4 million in June.

Chip-tool maker Applied Materials reports record sales and credits AI demand

Applied Materials sells the machines that chip factories use. It reported record fourth-quarter revenue of $10.41 billion, which its finance chief says is up 53 percent on a year earlier. Full-year revenue was a record $34.45 billion. CEO Gary Dickerson says AI keeps driving extra demand for chips. Intel will join its new research centre in Silicon Valley as a founding partner, and the company showed a new measuring tool, the VeritySEM 20.

Uber says hackers stole thousands of drivers' licence details from AI firm Fireworks

Uber confirmed that information from thousands of drivers' licences was stolen in a data breach, TechCrunch reports. Uber says the data was stored by Fireworks AI, an AI cloud company, and was taken during a security incident there. Earlier this week Fireworks said hackers had reached some customers' data.

Microsoft apologises for near two-day Outlook and 365 outage, blames a network upgrade

The outage began on Thursday with Exchange Online, Microsoft's email backend. Gizmodo says Downdetector logged reports from 74 countries and territories, with about 130,000 Outlook reports at the peak. Teams, SharePoint Online and Copilot were also hit, and Ars Technica reports that governments, hospitals and courts were disrupted. On Friday Microsoft apologised and said it was seeing broad recovery. It says the cause was a technical issue from an earlier network capacity upgrade, not an attack or AI agents. The Verge's sources link it to network configuration changes in Azure, Microsoft's cloud. Microsoft will publish a full report.

US aviation agency FAA halts departures at all US airports after a telecoms outage

The FAA issued a rare nationwide ground stop on Friday, citing "extraordinary circumstances" and "reasons of safety" after communication problems hit several air traffic control centres. Planes already in the air were allowed to land. The FAA said there had been a temporary telecommunications outage. CBS News sources say an update to the private network that connects the air traffic control system made it reboot and crash. A Bloomberg source says the FBI does not believe it was a cyberattack. ASI, maker of the FAA's new AI advice tool SMART, says its system was not the cause.

Reuters finds over $3.2B of Chinese computing projects using banned Nvidia chips

Nvidia has said US export controls have effectively shut it out of China's AI data-centre market. A Reuters review of Chinese contracts, disclosures and other documents found more than $3.2 billion in computing projects built or planned around Nvidia chips that the US restricts. TechCrunch reports new research showing that China's most advanced AI models were trained on banned Nvidia chips. Tom's Hardware reports that Malaysia is investigating possible re-exports of Nvidia hardware, and Singapore has charged an executive over suspicious purchases of 917 AI servers.

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