tech

Yiwen Lu7/31/24

Alibaba aims new AI search at businesses

Alibaba will launch an AI-powered search engine for international merchants in September, the Chinese e-commerce giant said on Wednesday.

Traditionally, businesses would have to manually search and sift through thousands of websites to find the right product. Their new AI chatbot trained on Alibaba’s 1 billion product listings and other industry-specific documents will save buyers time finding the right suppliers, the company said.

Alibaba’s international commerce business, which includes Singapore-based Lazada and AliExpress, was the company’s fastest-growing segment in the latest quarter. Simultaneously, their competition grew domestically and direct retail sales within China contracted.

The company also sees an opportunity to expand its business-to-business marketplace, its oldest division. If there is anything for Chinese e-commerce companies to learn from recent scrutiny over Shein and Temu, whose suppliers protested against price squeezes this week, it is that building a marketplace for businesses is safer than one for consumers.

Alibaba now has 50 million buyers and 200,000 suppliers. But the company said that the new tool will become available to all small businesses, regardless of whether they are Alibaba customers.

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Anthropic really doesn’t want the US to help China with AI

Anthropic made its case for freezing China out of the AI race as much as possible in a new policy paper. The company warned that letting China catch up to US AI companies could risk AI-powered mass surveillance and huge risks to monitoring AI safety.

Jon Keegan5/15/26

Tesla Robotaxi

Tesla finally reported un-redacted information about its Robotaxi crashes

There have been a total of 17 crashes so far among its Texas Robotaxis. Read about them all here.

Rani Molla5/15/26

tech

Rani Molla5/15/26

Alphabet sold $3.6 billion in Japanese yen bonds — a record for a foreign company — likely to help its AI capex binge

We now have the value for Alphabet’s Japanese yen bond raise — 576.5 billion yen, or $3.6 billion — and it’s a record for a foreign issuer in Japan. The deal was spread across seven tranches with maturities ranging from 3 to 40 years, allowing the company to lock in rates as low as 1.965%.

The latest deal comes on the heels of Alphabet’s massive US and European bond deals, where the company has tapped global markets for nearly $60 billion in fresh capital over the last few months. In a filing earlier this week, the search giant said it would use the proceeds for “general corporate purposes.” That likely means fueling its AI infrastructure build-out, which has pushed its projected 2026 capex bill to a staggering $190 billion.

HALLUCIN-AI-TIONS

SYNTAX ERROR

Chris Stokel-Walker

Closeup of a Red Robot

tech

Rani Molla5/14/26

Bloomberg: Relationship between OpenAI and Apple has deteriorated and legal action may be imminent

The two-year-old alliance between Apple and OpenAI has deteriorated, Bloomberg reports, with the AI giant now consulting legal counsel about issuing a potential breach of contract notice.

OpenAI executives allege that Apple failed to adequately integrate and promote ChatGPT on the iPhone, causing the AI firm to lose out on billions a year in subscriptions and hurt its brand, according to the report.

Meanwhile, Apple has expressed concerns over OpenAI’s privacy protection, and has been miffed that OpenAI has been working on its own hardware with former Apple design lead Jony Ive.

More recently, Apple, which has trailed its peers in developing AI, has decided to offer users their choice of AI models, rather than aligning exclusively with OpenAI’s.

Apple-OpenAI Relationship Frays, Setting Up Possible Legal Fight

Apple-OpenAI Relationship Frays, Setting Up Possible Legal Fight

Meanwhile, Apple has expressed concerns over OpenAI’s privacy protection, and has been miffed that OpenAI has been working on its own hardware with former Apple design lead Jony Ive.

More recently, Apple, which has trailed its peers in developing AI, has decided to offer users their choice of AI models, rather than aligning exclusively with OpenAI’s.

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