Latest AI News
AI Talent Gap is Forcing Companies to Look at Women's Returnships in New Light
Structured re-entry programmes are moving from the margins to the mainstream as companies scramble to fill AI roles.
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Microsoft’s Copilot Terms of Use Says the AI Chatbot Is for Entertainment Purposes Only
Microsoft has been aggressively pushing Copilot, its in-house artificial intelligence (AI) technology, as a powerful productivity tool for enterprises. The Redmond-based tech giant recently released an automation tool dubbed Copilot Cowork, a wellbeing product called Copilot Health, and new native large language models (LLMs). However, despite the push, the AI chatbot's terms of use describe it as an entertainment tool, which has started a debate online. Netizens have raised concerns that the language used in the terms suggests the tech giant does not want to take accountability for its AI's actions.
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OpenAI Undergoes Leadership Shake-Up as COO Brad Lightcap Moves to Special Projects Role: Report
OpenAI is said to be undergoing a major leadership reshuffle. According to a report, longtime Chief Operating Officer (COO) Brad Lightcap is transitioning into a new role focused on special projects. Meanwhile, two other senior executives have reportedly stepped back due to health concerns. The development comes at a time when the company is expanding its enterprise business and exploring new revenue streams, building upon the completion of its latest funding round.
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Wipro Acquires Mindsprint in $375 Mn Deal to Scale Agri-Business Intelligence
Following the completion of the acquisition by June 2026, Mindsprint will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wipro.
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Andrej Karpathy Moves Beyond RAG, Builds LLM-Powered Personal Knowledge Bases
Instead of relying on RAG, Andrej Karpathy said that LLMs can manage indexing and summaries internally at smaller scales.
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GPU Failures are the Biggest Challenge in AI Today
Unlike traditional systems, AI clusters operate at extreme limits of compute, bandwidth, and temperature where failures are not exceptions, but expected.
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India’s Privacy Laws Come With a Huge Cost to RTI
The DPDP Act amends Section 8 1(j) of the RTI Act, removing the core safeguards that governed transparency and disclosure.
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SatLeo Labs Raises $2.2 Mn to Scale Thermal Satellite Mission
The funding will support SatLeo Labs’ satellite mission and an AI platform for thermal intelligence applications.
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Copilot is ‘for entertainment purposes only,’ according to Microsoft’s terms of use
AI skeptics aren’t the only ones warning users not to unthinkingly trust models’ outputs — that’s what the AI companies say themselves in their terms of service. Take Microsoft, which is currentlyfocused on getting corporate customers to pay for Copilot. But it’s also been getting dinged on social media overCopilot’s terms of use, which appear to have been last updated on October 24, 2025. “Copilot is for entertainment purposes only,” the company warned. “It can make mistakes, and it may not work as intended. Don’t rely on Copilot for important advice. Use Copilot at your own risk.” A Microsoft spokespersontold PCMagthat the company will be updating what they described as “legacy language.” “As the product has evolved, that language is no longer reflective of how Copilot is used today and will be altered with our next update,” the spokesperson said. Tom’s Hardware notedthat Microsoft isn’t the only company using this kind of disclaimer for AI. For example, bothOpenAIandxAIcaution users that they should not rely on their output as “the truth” (to quote xAI) or as “a sole service of truth or factual information” (OpenAI).
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In Japan, the robot isn’t coming for your job; it’s filling the one nobody wants
Physical AI is emerging as one of the next major industrial battlegrounds, with Japan’s push driven more by necessity than anything else. With workforces shrinking and pressure mounting to sustain productivity, companies are increasingly deploying AI-powered robots across factories, warehouses, and critical infrastructure. Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industrysaidin March 2026 that it aims to build a domestic physical AI sector and capture a 30% share of the global market by 2040. The country already holds a strong position in industrial robotics, with Japanese manufacturers accounting for about 70% of the global market in 2022,according to the ministry. Based on conversations with investors and industry executives, TechCrunch explored what’s driving that shift, how Japan’s approach differs from the U.S. and China, and where value is likely to emerge as the technology matures. Several factors are driving adoption in Japan, including cultural acceptance of robotics, labor shortages driven by demographic pressures, and deep industrial strength in mechatronics and hardware supply chains, Woven Capital managing director Ro Gupta told TechCrunch. “Physical AI is being bought as a continuity tool: how do you keep factories, warehouses, infrastructure, and service operations running with fewer people?” Hogil Doh, Global Brain general partner, also said. “From what I’m seeing, labor shortages are the primary driver.” Japan’sdemographiccrunch is accelerating. The population declined fora 14th straight year in 2024; those of working agemake up just to 59.6%of the total, a share projected to shrink by nearly 15 million over the next 20 years, Doh pointed out. It’s already reshaping how companies operate:a 2024 Reuters/Nikkei surveyfound labor shortages are the main force pushing Japanese firms to adopt AI. “The driver has shifted from simple efficiency to industrial survival,” Sho Yamanaka, a principal with Salesforce Ventures, said in an interview with TechCrunch. “Japan faces a physical supply constraint where essential services cannot be sustained due to a lack of labor. Given the shrinking working-age population, physical AI is a matter of national urgency to maintain industrial standards and social services.” Japan is stepping up efforts to advance automation across manufacturing and logistics, according to Mujin CEO and co-founder Issei Takino. The government has been promoting automation to address structural challenges such as labor shortages. Mujin, a Japanese company, has built software that lets industrial robots handle picking and logistics tasks autonomously. Mujin’s approach centers on software — specifically robotics control platforms — that allows existing hardware to perform more autonomously and efficiently, Takino said. Where Japan has historically excelled is in the physical building blocks of robotics. Whether that advantage translates into the AI era is a more open question. The country continues to demonstrate strength in core robotics components such as actuators, sensors and control systems, according to Japan-based venture capitalists, while the U.S. and China are moving more quickly todevelop full-stack systemsthat integrate hardware, software and data. “Japan’s expertise in high-precision components – the critical physical interface between AI and the real world – is a strategic moat,” Yamanaka said. “Controlling this touchpoint provides a significant competitive advantage in the global supply chain. The current priority is to accelerate system-level optimization by integrating AI models deeply with this hardware.” Hardware capabilities are strongest in China and Japan, with Japan particularly strong in robot motion control, while the U.S. leads in the service layer and market development, Takino said. Historically, many U.S. companies have leveraged their software strengths to build integrated businesses – similar to Apple – pairing strong software platforms with high-quality hardware sourced from Asia. However, this model may not fully translate to the emerging world of physical AI, Takino said. “In robotics, and especially in Physical AI, it is critical to have a deep understanding of the physical characteristics of hardware,” Takino said. “This requires not only software capabilities, but also highly specialized control technologies, which take significant time to develop and involve high costs of failure.” WHILL, a Tokyo- and San Francisco-based startup that makes autonomous personal mobility vehicles, is drawing on Japan’s “monozukuri,” or craftsmanship heritage, as it takes a broader, full-stack approach to global expansion, CEO Satoshi Sugie told TechCrunch. The company has developed an integrated platform combining electric vehicles, onboard sensors, navigation systems and cloud-based fleet management for short-distance and autonomous transport. The company is leveraging both Japan and the U.S. for development, using Japan to refine hardware and address aging population needs, and the U.S. to accelerate software development and test large-scale commercial models, Sugie noted. The government is putting money behind the push. Under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, Japan has committed about$6.3 billion to strengthen core AI capabilities, advance robotics integration and support industrial deployment. The shift from experimentation to real deployment is already underway. Industrial automation remains the most advanced segment, with Japaninstalling tens of thousands of robots each year, particularly in the automotive sector. Newer applications are also beginning to gain traction, Doh said. “The signal is simple – customer-paid deployments rather than vendor-funded trials, reliable operation across full shifts, and measurable performance metrics such as uptime, human intervention rates and productivity impact,” Doh said. In logistics, companies are deploying automated forklifts and warehouse systems, while in facilities management, inspection robots are being used in data centers and industrial sites. Companies likeSoftBankare already applying physical AI in practice, combining vision-language models with real-time control systems to enable robots to interpret environments and execute complex tasks autonomously. In defense, where autonomous systems are becoming foundational, competitiveness will depend not just on platforms but on operational intelligence powered by physical AI, Terra Drone CEO Toru Tokushige told TechCrunch. Tokushige added that by combining operational data with AI, Terra Drone is working to enable autonomous systems to function reliably in real-world environments and support the advancement of Japan’s defense infrastructure. Investment is shifting beyond hardware, with companies allocating more capital to orchestration software, digital twins, simulation tools and integration platforms, according to investors and industry sources. Japan’s physical AI ecosystem is also evolving in ways that differ from traditional tech disruption models. Rather than a winner-take-all dynamic, industry participants expect a hybrid model, with established companies providing scale and reliability, while startups drive innovation in software and system design. Large incumbents, including Toyota Motor Corporation, Mitsubishi Electric, and Honda Motor, retain significant advantages in manufacturing scale, customer relationships, and deployment capabilities. But startups are carving out critical roles in emerging areas such as orchestration software, perception systems, and workflow automation. “The relationship between startups and established corporations is a mutually complementary ecosystem,” Yamanaka said. “Robotics requires heavy hardware development, deep operational know-how, and significant capital expenditure. By fusing the vast assets and domain expertise of major corporations with the disruptive innovation of startups, the industry can strengthen its collective global competitiveness.” Japan’s defense ecosystem is also shifting away from dominance by large corporations toward greater collaboration with startups, the Terra Drone CEO said. Large companies remain focused on platforms, scale and integration, while startups are driving development in smaller systems, software and operations, with speed and adaptability becoming key competitive factors. Companies like Mujin are developing platforms that sit above hardware, enabling multi-vendor automation and faster deployment across industries. Others, including Terra Drone, are applying similar approaches to autonomous systems, combining AI and operational data to support real-world applications at scale. “The most defensible value will sit with whoever owns deployment, integration, and continuous improvement,” Doh said.
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Can orbital data centers help justify a massive valuation for SpaceX?
SpaceX hasreportedly filed confidential paperworkfor an initial public offering in which the company would raise $75 billion at a $1.75 trillion valuation. And according to CEO Elon Musk, orbital data centers will be a big part of SpaceX’s future. On the latest episode ofTechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I discussed Musk’s vision, as well as other companies that are pursuing similar goals. It will takesignificant tech development and massive capital spendingto make orbital data centers a reality, but as Sean noted, with “opposition happening around the country to data centers in general,” executives like Musk and Jeff Bezos may be thinking, “The engineering challenge may be less than the social challenge back here” on Earth. Read a preview of our conversation, edited for length and clarity, below. Sean:This has been a trend — I would say a rapidly forming trend — over the last half year to a year, and we have different examples of it. We have SpaceX; I feel like in some ways, Elon Musk was late on this trend. And for the moment, let’s set aside the actual mechanics and the viability of data centers in space. We could talk about that in a second if we want, but — Kirsten:We have a really good storywe’ll link to in the show notes, by the way. One of our most recent hires, Tim Fernholz, is amazing. He writes all about the physics and the constraints of that. Sean:Yeah, I think it’s a really interesting engineering challenge. It’s a really interesting physics challenge. It’s a really interesting orbital mechanics challenge. But it’s something that clearly a bunch of companies and people are going to try and chase. [There’s] going to be SpaceX doing it, with a kind of variance of what they’re already working on with their Starlink network. There’s a startup that had come out of Y Combinator, originally called Starcloud, that was really one of the first ones out there trying to build a huge business around this, thatjust raised $170 million this week, their valuation [on] that tipped them over into a unicorn status. Jeff Bezos is trying to go after this as well. This is a next generation version of the competition that we’ve seen happening between Starlink and Amazon’s Leo satellite network, and Blue Origin has its own satellite network coming online as well in the next couple of years. So there’s going to be a whole bunch of this happening, and it feels like it wasn’t happening a year ago. I know the way that Elon Musk pitches it is — we know he’s allergic to red tape, he’s built a data center in Memphis, too. Maybe now he knows the challenges and the risks you have to take to sidestep that red tape. There’s a lot of opposition happening around the country to data centers in general. And these people say, “We have access to space, so let’s just try and do it up there.” The engineering challenge may be less than the social challenge back here on our [planet]. Kirsten:And it also creates excitement, right? If a company is about to go [public] and they’re working on data centers in space, this is something that people can have expectations about in a positive way and ignore the constraints. It feels like a company that is working on something that’s not old and outdated, but signals the future. And it’s really a great strategy when you think about it. Anthony:Not that Elon Musk is the only one who does this, but it seems like he’s incredibly successful at being like, “Don’t judge my companies based on how much money they’re making now, judge them based on these grand visions that I can spin out about what will happen in the future.” And going back to a point that Sean was making, I think that part of what’s interesting is to [ask]: How does this fit in with the broader data center rollout? How does it fit in with opposition and the idea that maybe people are not going to be able to build as many data centers as they want to? I don’t think any of us are engineers who can really assess the viability of these plans. It does certainly have a tinge of fantasy to it, but even when they do lay out these plans, it feels like just a drop in the bucket in terms of compute capabilities compared to what they want to build out on Earth. So it feels like there’s not a scenario where this replaces a whole bunch of new data centers on Earth. It’s just sort of a […] supplement to it. Sean:The last two things I’ll point out that are really front and center for me is, one, we’ve seen a backing off in some ways [from] data centers — not just because of opposition, but because maybe we don’t need as much, right? We see a bunch of jockeying from some of the AI labs about, “Well, maybe we don’t need to lease this much from this company,” or whatever. And if that becomes a thing that is more true than it was five months ago, do you all of a sudden lose all that momentum to do something as crazy as putting the data centers in space? Providing that it works, even. The other thing is that the idea of building these massive data centers in space, with all these satellites that make up the quote unquote “data center,” is business for SpaceX. And I think this is unique to them compared to these other companies: They are a launch company primarily, even though they generate a bunch of revenue from Starlink. They are the vehicle that gets the data centers to space. They get to book that as revenue for SpaceX. And so it becomes this thing where, of course [Musk] wants — whether or not it works, he would eventually have to prove it — but of course he wants to send more and more satellites into space because it’s more revenue for SpaceX. And that makes SpaceX look better as a public company. And then you just kind of tumble down the path until he finds something else to pitch the investors on. Loading the player…
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Google, OpenAI Take The Fight to the Cricket Field, and Between Overs
Sponsoring cricket tournaments allows AI companies like Google and OpenAI to tap into younger audiences.
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