Apollo Global Management, known for leveraged buyouts and hefty financing deals, has started investing in AI and related hardware startups with the ambition to lend money to them in the future.

In one previously unreported deal, Apollo has already invested in the low tens of millions of dollars in Mercor’s latest funding round, which is set to value the data-labeling startup at $20 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. It has also invested in chip startup SiFive and in Hadrian, which says it’s building AI-powered factories, in transactions the companies disclosed earlier this year. It expects to make more investments in these categories, the people said.

Zipline, a startup making drones that can deliver small packages like meals and medical supplies, is in talks to raise $1 billion at a valuation of roughly $20 billion, according to three people with knowledge of the fundraise.

The funding round, if it closes, would more than double its valuation from its last funding round, which valued the company at $7.6 billion after the investment. It follows a partnership announced last month with Uber to expand delivery by drones across the U.S. and expectations by investors that the costs of drone delivery are falling, expanding what was once a niche market.

OpenAI said Wednesday it is testing allowing some U.S. advertisers to sponsor AI agents working in ChatGPT, a move that would bring ChatGPT ads closer to what Google and Meta Platforms already offer.

ChatGPT users who click an ad can now start a conversation with an AI agent to ask follow-up ...

Stablecoin issuer Circle officially launched Arc blockchain, which will support the trading of stablecoins, tokenized equities, and other assets.

The blockchain will also support perpetuals, lending protocols, and social trading apps, Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, said in a press briefing. ...

Even for technology leaders, it can feel impossible to keep up with constant advances in the field.

This is especially true in the age of AI, with vendors racing to roll out model updates with new capabilities. Even if technology leaders had time to attend every conference and read every tech publication, it would be a full-time job to simply figure out which trends represent real transformation opportunities, and which are merely hype.

With Google Gemini, you can generate a tailored digest that summarizes the developments most likely to have an impact on your specific industry and organization. Armed with this up-to-the-minute information, you can keep your leadership and workforce apprised of market shifts and technology breakthroughs, protect your organization from expensive distractions, and make high-stakes procurement decisions with confidence.

Step 1: Generate Your Tech Forecast

Open up a new chat, and prompt Google Gemini to provide you with a summary of current technology trends. For a more tailored summary, provide as much information as possible about your company and industry. You might, for example, tell Gemini that you’re the CTO at a mid-sized regional commercial and retail bank in the Pacific Northwest, with a mix of legacy on-premises and modernized cloud infrastructure.

Here’s a sample prompt:

I am the CTO of [company] in [industry]. I want to understand emerging technology trends. Summarize the top five emerging technologies with the most significant potential impact on [industry]. For each technology, list its potential benefits and challenges, and suggest how it could impact [company] in the next two to three years.

Gemini will quickly generate a list of technologies, broken down by their potential benefits, challenges, and overall impact. For the regional bank, Gemini might suggest using agentic AI for continuous risk assessment, pointing out the opportunity to proactively surface lending opportunities and flag potential risks.

Step 2: Refine the Output

Gemini’s summary will be based on the information you provided. To generate a more custom tech forecast, add more information about your existing environment and current challenges.

For example: Gemini might suggest deploying API-led middleware to bridge the gap between your legacy core and your modern cloud app; but maybe you already have middleware running, and the problem is that its fragility is leading to downtime. By adding that context, you can help Gemini focus its output on your specific needs.

Go back and forth with Gemini, providing additional context and feedback until the tech trends summary is exactly what you’re looking for.

Step 3: Automate Delivery

If you have to manually enter a new prompt every time you want an update on tech trends, you might not be as consistent as you’d like. Instead, prompt Gemini once to automatically provide you with an update each day, week, or month.

These sorts of prompts work best when they are completely self-contained, rather than the result of a long, messy chat history. So, ask Gemini to look back at your conversation and synthesize all of your real-world feedback into a single master prompt. Then, paste that master prompt into a new chat and explicitly tell Gemini your desired delivery schedule.

Gemini’s Scheduled Actions feature will take over, allowing you to manage or pause the recurring prompt in your account settings.

Step 4: Move from Knowledge to Action

Staying on top of tech trends is only really useful insofar as it spurs action. As you peruse Gemini’s scheduled summaries, consider where digging deeper into specific topics may help you optimize your operations, mitigate emerging risks, or prepare your IT environment for the future. Try this prompt:

Recommend three areas where [my company] can take proactive steps to stay ahead of the curve on [specific areas].

The CTO of the regional bank might, for example, ask Gemini for specific tips on network-based fraud intelligence. In this step, the role of Gemini is shifting slightly, from industry analyst to strategic sounding board. Because Gemini already has detailed information about your organization’s challenges, goals, and existing environment, its insights will be grounded in your specific reality.

By moving from high-level summaries to tactical next steps, you can use your understanding of tech trends to guide your organization’s IT investments in a marketplace that never stops moving.

Anthropic’s call to slow down AI development to keep humans safe has dominated the news cycle and drew similar calls from the leaders of OpenAI, Microsoft and others (and subtle disagreement from Mark Zuckerberg). 

But Mustafa Suleyman, who runs Microsoft’s AI model development, has a warning about Anthropic itself. 

Suleyman, who co-founded DeepMind (now part of Google), says Anthropic’s approach of treating its Claude models as if they were sentient, similar to humans, could produce a dangerous outcome. He called out Anthropic’s Claude Constitution, a document that treats the model as an intelligent entity and offers guidelines for how it should handle ethical dilemmas. Suleyman said that by incorporating the document into its training, Anthropic could make Claude harder to control. 

Suleyman’s concerns emerged when Anthropic updated the constitution at the start of this year to leave room for the possibility that Claude has some sort of “consciousness” or “moral status,” a change from the original document.

Apple has been working on plans for an enterprise server using its own chips that could incorporate networking equipment from Nvidia, people familiar with the project said, as the Mac maker looks to capitalize on surging interest in its computers for AI.

Apple has been developing the server with plans to sell it to AI developers, other businesses and governments, the people said. The product under consideration would come in two versions—a smaller one with two of Apple’s planned M8 Ultra chips clustered together and a bigger one with four M8 Ultra chips. The M-series Ultra chips are Apple’s highest-performance chips and power products including the Mac Studio.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang plans to attend President Donald Trump’s state dinner for Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Washington next week, according to a person familiar with the matter. His attendance comes as AI chips and the pace of AI development become growing sources of tension between the U.S. ...

South Korean memory chipmaker SK Hynix is in talks with Intel about a deal to manufacture memory chips on U.S. soil for the first time, Reuters reported, citing three people familiar with the discussions.

SK Hynix would either lease part of Intel’s long-planned Ohio fab, or form a joint venture ...

Meta Platforms chief Mark Zuckerberg said ensuring the safety of AI is a commercial necessity for the companies that make models, and took an implicit swipe at calls for a collective slowdown in the technology’s development.

“Every lab has the responsibility and incentive to move at the pace ...

Two researchers who worked on AI safety left their roles at Google DeepMind, stating that they departed over concerns that powerful systems could endanger humans.

The two, Bilal Chughtai and Josh Engels, both of whom are joining organizations dedicated to AI safety, add their voices to those of ...

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk proposed that competing AI companies, including his own SpaceXAI, should “peer-review” each other’s models prior to release, as industry leaders acknowledge rising worries around AI safety.

“Instead of grading your own homework, you would at least have competitors grading ...

Anthropic is opening its fifth Asia-Pacific office in Singapore to drive enterprise adoption of Claude, the company said on Wednesday. Anthropic plans to work with startups, large enterprises and the public sector in Singapore, where Claude usage per capita is among the highest globally.

Dale ...

The startup behind personal AI assistant Instinct is in talks to raise $1 billion at a valuation of about $10 billion, people with knowledge of the deal said. Sequoia Capital and Benchmark have been in talks to lead the financing, the people said. Coatue Management has also been in talks to lead, according to one of the people.

The Information reported earlier this month that the startup is looking to raise new funding as the invitation-only agent faces constraints in compute capacity. As Instinct’s service has become more widely available, the number of users has grown to more than 100,000, according to one of the people.

When it comes to product names, companies tend to move in packs. In video streaming, almost every company included a plus sign in the name brands of their services (Disney+, Paramount+, Apple TV+—you get the picture). In tech, we’ve got Apple One, Google One and now Meta One (we used to have Amazon One, but that has been dropped). Does no one have any imagination? 

Aside from Amazon One, which was a palm-reader system for retail stores, all the other Ones are subscription services for various add-on offerings from the tech firms. Some of these have been around for years—Google One and Apple One have long offered extra amounts of digital storage, along with other perks—but AI is making subscriptions a far more important business model than it has ever been for tech. Google has added extra use of its AI service to its Google One offering. Meta One—unveiled on Tuesday—also offers extra AI usage, as well as some additional tools for using Meta’s social media apps. 

It’s not clear what impact the pledges by Anthropic and OpenAI to slow the pace of AI development will have on their upcoming public offerings. But the comments are having real effects already: more people outside Silicon Valley and Washington are now alert to potential risks from AI in a way they weren’t even very recently. That’s not great news for startups trying to convince consumers and businesses that the tech is worth it, some investors told me.

One venture capitalist, for example, told me about a startup that has recently found customers to be more wary of buying its AI app for small- and medium-sized businesses in the light of news stories about potentially catastrophic AI.

OpenAI has held early conversations with investors about a new funding round that could lift its valuation to $1.2 trillion or higher, according to people familiar with the conversations. The conversations come as OpenAI has pushed off a planned initial public offering to next year or later.

The ...

Microsoft said Tuesday it will raise its quarterly dividend to 98 cents per share, up from 91 cents, beginning in December. The company previously raised its dividend by 10% a year ago. Microsoft’s stock was roughly flat in after hours trading.

The company’s move to return more cash to ...

Meta Platforms plans to release a camera-free pair of smart glasses this fall, according to people familiar with the matter, as it looks to expand its hardware lineup amid privacy concerns about cameras on its existing offerings.

The new glasses model, internally code-named Luna, has six built-in microphones that will allow users to speak with Meta’s AI chatbot and its recently launched consumer AI agent, Muse, one of the people said. It also has a button on the side that can be used to quickly activate Meta AI, and speakers like those in its existing models that direct sound toward the user’s ears without covering them. In addition, the glasses have slimmer temple arms than previous Meta smart glasses such as its Ray-Ban models, making them look more like ordinary eyewear.

A landmark crypto legislation, the Clarity Act, failed to advance in the Senate in a procedural vote Tuesday, sending prices of crypto shares down as the bill became unlikely to pass under the Trump administration.

The Clarity Act, a comprehensive crypto market structure bill, would set explicit ...