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Microsoft and OpenAI broke up — now they’re ready to fight

3 June 2026 at 15:04
Satya Nadella on a graphic background of the red, blue, green, and yellow.

At Microsoft's annual Build conference on Tuesday, the company announced a slew of new or expanded AI initiatives, including a super app, in-house reasoning models, a cybersecurity tool, and OpenClaw-esque AI agents. All this news added up to a clear message: Microsoft is positioned to be one of the biggest players in AI, and it's finally acting like it.

For years, Microsoft's AI business leaned hard on its early and exclusive partnership with OpenAI. But the drama-filled marriage slowly devolved into a situationship, and the pair effectively separated in late April (though Microsoft is still OpenAI's primary cloud partner - for now). This …

Read the full story at The Verge.

As the tech mega-IPO race heats up, has OpenAI missed its moment?

3 June 2026 at 11:38

With rivals racing to market to raise ‘eye-popping sums’, the spotlight is now on the AI sector’s one-time ‘poster child’

A year is a long time in AI. Just 12 months ago, Sam Altman was predicting his company OpenAI would build a super intelligence and fundamentally remake society. Now the boss of the ChatGPT developer is walking back those ideas after failing to make money from ads and erotic chatbots.

Meanwhile, rivals are storming ahead with plans to expand and go public on the stock market, in what is widely expected to be a season of record-setting initial public offerings (IPOs).

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© Photograph: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

© Photograph: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

© Photograph: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

Anthropic surges as OpenAI struggles to keep up

Stock market filing illustrates AI company’s meteoric rise, while California’s tech billionaires pour cash into elections

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian. This week in tech, we’re discussing Anthropic’s meteoric rise, both theological and financial, and California’s unprecedented infusion of political cash from Silicon Valley.

‘Like a billionaire on acid’: Star Wars director Gareth Edwards comes out in favour of AI

To YouTube and beyond: how online gen Z directors stormed Hollywood

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© Photograph: Patrick Sison/AP

© Photograph: Patrick Sison/AP

© Photograph: Patrick Sison/AP

Mathematicians warn of AI threats to profession as industry encroaches

2 June 2026 at 19:19

Mathematicians warned against rising tech industry influence in a declaration describing the many challenges that AI poses to mathematics research. The timing of the declaration comes two weeks after OpenAI publicized one of its AI models as having disproved an 80-year-old mathematical conjecture in geometry.

The declaration was developed by a working group of 16 researchers over eight months following a conference held at Leiden University in the Netherlands in September 2025. Published on June 2, 2026, the resulting Leiden Declaration on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics has been endorsed by the International Mathematical Union—the international non-governmental organization that hosts conferences and oversees the most prestigious prizes in mathematics such as the Fields Medal.

“Mathematicians should find it quite striking that tech companies are suddenly interested in their work,” said Kevin Buzzard, a mathematician at Imperial College London, in a statement. “The Leiden Declaration is a well-thought-through response to what is currently happening, as AI continues to disrupt this space.”

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