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. CNBC 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.

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, and that Nvidia committed $2 billion of a convertible financing worth more than $3 billion.

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, citing sources, reports that the board has approached Rene Haas, the CEO of chip designer Arm, who worked at Nvidia more than a decade ago. President Trump has said former Apple CEO Tim Cook should run the company. The New York Times reports that Wall Street fears Nvidia's deals will slow, and sources say its $500 billion lending group is in flux.

Some Nvidia employees ask the board to bring back ex-CEO Jensen Huang

WIRED reviewed internal messages showing some Nvidia staff want Huang back. A post in the company's internal suggestion box has drawn more than 1,600 comments, several asking the board to reinstate him. Nvidia named former Synopsys CEO Harvey Jones as board chair. The Wall Street Journal, citing a source, reports that Huang called interim CEO Colette Kress a 'deer in the headlights' at an August finance meeting.

India's central bank gives Paytm early approval to bring back its digital wallet

Paytm Payments Services, a Paytm subsidiary, has received in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank of India to issue prepaid payment tools, including digital wallets. Paytm's wallet stopped working after the RBI restricted Paytm Payments Bank in 2024. The unit must pass a system and cybersecurity audit within six months and then get final approval before the wallet can return. Paytm shares hit a 52-week high and closed 1.1% higher.

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.

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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