Alphabet has become just the fourth US company to reach a market cap of $3 trillion, joining an exclusive club consisting of Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft. The achievement comes not long after it evaded having to divest its Chrome browser, coupled with investor confidence in its AI direction - revenue for Google Cloud alone is reportedly up 32% year-over-year. With boosted capex plans and Gemini adoption on an upward trend, the $3 trillion milestone could be a sign of confidence from Wall Street over its belief that Google could build a second profit engine alongside its search enterprise.
Internal messages viewed by news outlet Business Insider reports that xAI has laid off 500 employees last Friday night. The cuts focus on xAI's 1,500-man data annotation team, slashing a third of its headcount as the company undergoes a shift in focus, scaling back on "generalist AI tutor roles" in favor of specialists. When asked to comment, xAI referred to a post on X/Twitter, where it stated that it will "immediately surge" its Specialist AI tutor team by 10 times right after the cuts.
OpenAI's popular Codex AI coding agent has received a new upgrade as the company unveiled GPT-5-Codex late Monday evening. GPT-5-Codex is also more dynamic when it comes to time spent reasoning, be it anywhere from a few seconds up to 7 hours. Trained for code reviews, the model improves upon its predecessor across coding and refactoring benchmarks, along with producing fewer misleading code comments. The upgraded model is rolling out in Codex products, paid ChatGPT plans, IDEs, and more, with API access for developers planned "soon."
Another week where trade tensions between China and the US escalate, with the Asian giant accusing Nvidia of violating anti-monopoly laws as both sides hold trade talks in Madrid. The probe follows up on China's original December 2024 investigation into Nvidia, which was linked to the company's acquisition of Mellanox in 2020. Meanwhile, the US recently blacklisted two Chinese chipmakers from purchasing US semiconductor tech, further adding fuel to the fire at a time when Beijing's skepticism around its chips reaches a high point.
Despite its recent $3 trillion market milestone, Google faces yet another lawsuit as it is accused of harming news publishers by illegally using content for AI Overviews, Google's AI summary feature. The lawsuit comes from Penske Media Corporation (PMC), which runs a variety of publications like Rolling Stone, Billboard, Variety, and others. Penske's claims are similar to other lawsuits like it, stating that AI Overviews reduces traffic to websites, damaging revenue figures. Although Google insists the opposite is true, the suit claims that Google hasn't offered any competing information regarding referral traffic.
Cybersecurity startup Remedio, formerly Gytpol, has raised $65 million in its first-ever funding round, led by Bessemer Venture Partners at a $300 million valuation. Founded by ex-Israeli intelligence officer Tal Kollender, the small 40-person firm uses AI to detect misconfigurations and vulnerabilities, offering one-click fixes with "zero disruption." The company has been profitable for 6 years while bootstrapped, and boasts Amazon, Coca-Cola, and Colgate-Palmolive as some of its major customers. According to the press release, the funding will go towards accelerating global expansion, marketing, and new tools.