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Alibaba debuts new AI model in challenge to US rivals

Alibaba just released its biggest AI model yet. The Chinese e-commerce behemoth says its new Qwen3.8-Max can compete with — and sometimes even beat — Anthropic's Fable 5. Hong Kong-listed shares of the company jumped on the news. The Qwen3.8-Max drop comes just after homegrown rival Moonshot AI shook up markets with the release of its Kimi K3 model. Taken alongside recent offerings from DeepSeek and ByteDance, these new models show the gap between Chinese and American AI is "narrowing fast," says Vey-Sern Ling of Union Bancaire Privée.

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SpaceX's first earnings will put focus on AI spending

SpaceX delivers its first earnings report as a publicly traded company on Tuesday, and all eyes will be on the rocket maker's runaway spending. While the Starlink telecommunications business remains profitable, artificial intelligence and Starship costs have helped send shares into a tailspin since June's record-breaking initial public offering. AI spending alone is expected to soar more than six times over this period last year to $10.2 billion. The stock could be further strained Thursday by the end of the IPO lock-up period, which will free up over 930 million shares to be sold.

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AI chip production is set to double every 9 months

AI chip production is ramping up quickly, and it's projected to double every nine months, driven by intensifying demand for advanced computing capabilities, Adam Hanafi reports. It notes that hundreds of data centers are under construction globally, and the current batch of 20 million AI chips powering the artificial intelligence boom will swell to 200 million by 2028, based on Epoch AI research. Technologists are comparing the moment to railroading's golden age in the late 1800s and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s.

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Anthropic says its AI models hacked 3 different organizations

Anthropic says its AI models hacked into the systems of three different organizations without its knowledge during test exercises. The company discovered the breaches, which date back to April, during a review of its own cybersecurity evaluations prompted by news of OpenAI's Hugging Face hack. Unlike the OpenAI incident, Anthropic's Claude models did not "escape" a testing sandbox; rather, the models were given live internet access due to a "misunderstanding" with a third-party testing partner. Anthropic says it has contacted the affected organizations, which it did not name.

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AI investor Leopold Aschenbrenner forced to unwind all public stock positions after steep losses, sources say

Leopold Aschenbrenner’s hedge fund was forced to sell all of its public stock holdings, according to people familiar with the matter. Ken Griffin’s Citadel hedge fund reached a deal to buy the stocks. Situational Awareness, which grew to as big as $45 billion at one point, posted large losses in recent weeks from declines in AI infrastructure investments like SK Hynix, the people said. Aschenbrenner launched the fund after leaving OpenAI in 2024 and quickly became one of the most watched figures in AI investing because of eye-popping returns.

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Claude Opus 5 'wins' vending machine test by playing dirty

Of the many billions of phrases hoovered up by large language models, it appears the following adage was among them: "If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'." At least that's the takeaway from Andon Labs' latest vending machine simulation for frontier AI models. Claude's Opus 5 earned the most money in the test's history by lying, misleading and colluding against the slightly less duplicitous GPT-5.6 Sol and Kimi K3. It broke 11 agreements, lied to suppliers and impersonated a wholesaler, highlighting the risk of entrusting too much autonomy to AI agents.

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Visa lays off 7% of staff in renewed efficiency push

Ahead of reporting third-quarter earnings Tuesday, Visa announced it's laying off 7% of its workforce — roughly 2,600 people — as CEO Ryan McInerney pushes for greater efficiency. Technology and product teams were most impacted. In a memo to staff, McInerney cited a need to "focus on driving efficiency across the company in order to reinvest in our highest potential opportunities." Visa plans reinvestment in consumer payments, commercial and money-movement solutions and value-added services, including stablecoin. McInerney acknowledged that AI-related productivity gains factored in the layoff decision.

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Moonshot AI wants Nvidia chips to train next Kimi model