Top tech leaders just called to tap the brakes on frontier AI, but Washington is pushing back. President Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed concerns from Anthropic and OpenAI executives, warning that slowing down could hand victory to China. As Trump bluntly put it, "whoever wins AI, wins."
Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat, Oriol Vinyals, and Quoc Le just founded Discovery Loop, a Public Benefit Corporation built to automate machine learning, science, and engineering research. The startup will start with large-scale ML experimentation, backed by a seed round led by Radical Ventures and Khosla Ventures alongside Alphabet.
Google just announced a major leadership shakeup across its AI ranks, with Demis Hassabis stepping back from day-to-day operations to become Chair of DeepMind and Alphabet’s Chief Scientist. DeepMind veteran Koray Kavukcuoglu takes over as SVP to steer Gemini model development, while legendary 27-year Google veteran Jeff Dean is departing to launch an independent AI-for-science venture. With Gemini topping 950M monthly active users, Google is reorganizing its top minds for the next sprint toward AGI.
Google just fell months behind schedule releasing its flagship Gemini 3.5 Pro model after it failed internal coding benchmarks. A late-June attempt to refresh training data yielded disappointing results, and competing internal teams across Cloud, DeepMind, and Android are compounding delays. Alphabet shares slid 3.2% as engineers voice frustration over falling behind OpenAI and Anthropic.
Waymo just suspended freeway driving across all its US markets over construction zone safety concerns, while also pausing service in Atlanta and San Antonio following flooded-road issues. The pullback comes right after a fleet-wide software recall for speeding through flooded streets in Texas. Local road service continues, but highway trips are offline indefinitely.
Isomorphic Labs is in advanced talks to raise more than $2 billion in a new funding round led by Thrive Capital. The AI drug discovery startup, spun out of Alphabet's Google DeepMind, will also see Alphabet participate. The massive deal underscores that big-ticket investor appetite for AI pharmaceuticals remains sky-high.
Google is investing up to $40 billion in Anthropic, committing an immediate $10 billion at a $350 billion valuation with another $30 billion tied to performance targets. The deal also locks in 5 gigawatts of Google Cloud compute over the next five years to power Claude.
Alphabet's robotics software bet Intrinsic just merged into Google as a distinct group, teaming up with Gemini, Google Cloud, and DeepMind. The move connects its modular Flowstate robotics platform directly to Google's frontier AI models to automate factory floors and warehouses. Physical AI is finally getting the Android treatment.
Autodesk just hit Google with a trademark infringement lawsuit over the name "Flow" for AI movie-making tools. Autodesk claims it has used Flow for VFX production since September 2022, but Google allegedly broke promises not to commercialize the name, secretly filed trademarks in Tonga, and aggressively promoted it at Sundance.
Google just revealed that Gemini has surpassed 750 million monthly active users, up from 650 million reported last quarter. While it is rapidly closing the gap with ChatGPT's estimated 810 million users, it still trails Meta AI's 1 billion mark. Pichai credited Gemini 3 as a key growth driver, noting API usage now tops 10 billion tokens per minute.
Google just unveiled Gemini 3, its next-generation frontier model family led by Gemini 3 Pro. The model claimed the top spot on LMArena with an unprecedented 1501 Elo, delivering huge upgrades in multimodal reasoning and vibe coding alongside a new agentic platform called Google Antigravity. Why it matters: Google is pushing hard to retake the AI crown by turning models into autonomous, self-executing software agents.
TechCrunch just revealed the full main-stage agenda for Disrupt 2025 ahead of its October 27 kickoff in San Francisco. Big names like Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, Alphabet's Astro Teller, and investor Elad Gil are taking the stage to debate where frontier AI models, consumer tech, and venture bets go next.
Penske Media, the publisher behind Rolling Stone and Variety, just sued Google for antitrust abuse over AI Overviews. The lawsuit claims Google forces publishers to feed its AI summaries, directly cannibalizing referral traffic and ad revenue with no opt-out short of leaving search entirely. Google fired back, calling the claims meritless.
Perplexity AI just submitted an unsolicited $34.5 billion offer to buy Google’s Chrome browser, backed by unnamed venture capital funds. Dubbed "Project Solomon," the bid attempts to pounce on Google's antitrust troubles as courts weigh forcing a browser spinoff. Perplexity itself is valued at only $18B, making it an audacious power play.
Alphabet’s drug discovery arm Isomorphic Labs is gearing up to launch its first clinical trials in humans. Born out of DeepMind’s AlphaFold breakthroughs, the company is targeting cancer and immunology programs in London, aiming to dramatically improve the brutal 10% success rate typical of traditional drug trials.
A federal judge just dealt a major blow to Character.AI, ruling the First Amendment won't shield it from a lawsuit over a teen's suicide. The court refused to classify LLM-generated text as protected free speech, meaning AI makers can no longer hide behind the Constitution when their bots cause real-world harm.
Apple is actively looking to integrate AI search engines like OpenAI and Perplexity into Safari, according to court testimony from services chief Eddy Cue. Cue revealed Safari search queries dipped last month due to AI, putting the browser's massive $20 billion default search deal with Google under fresh pressure.
OpenAI just signaled it would be interested in acquiring Google's Chrome browser if a federal judge orders Alphabet to spin it off. ChatGPT product head Nick Turley made the statement during the DOJ's antitrust trial. Meanwhile, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas opposed the divestiture, arguing regulators should focus on opening Android instead.
Waymo just announced plans to launch its Waymo One driverless ridehailing service in Washington, DC by 2026. The major roadblock is local law, which currently requires a human behind the wheel for testing and bans driverless commercial operations entirely. If regulators clear the way, the fleet—which already logs 200,000 paid rides weekly—will roll directly into the nation's capital.
Waymo just scrapped its waitlist in Los Angeles, opening up 24/7 driverless rides to anyone with the Waymo One app. The service spans nearly 80 square miles across Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and Downtown LA. It marks Waymo's second fully public metro rollout after San Francisco, pulling ahead while rivals like Cruise and Zoox play catch-up.
