NerdNews

Microsoft and OpenAI have adjusted their partnership, allowing OpenAI to access competitors' compute. The new agreement includes a right of first refusal for Microsoft on supplying new capacity. OpenAI can now build additional capacity for research and training of models, while Microsoft maintains exclusive rights to OpenAI's tech for products like Copilot.

Anthropic plans to release a two-way voice mode for its chatbot Claude, allowing for more interactive conversations. The company also expects to release smarter AI models in the coming months and is racing to keep pace with OpenAI in the AI sector.

A joint venture called Stargate, formed by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank, will invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure in the US, with an initial investment of $100 billion. The project aims to build data centers and electricity generation for AI development, with the goal of increasing productivity and competitiveness. The investment is seen as a significant boost to the US economy and a declaration of confidence in America's potential.

The UK government is launching a new initiative to improve its IT systems with the help of AI tools, named 'Humphrey' after the character from Yes Minister. The goal is to reduce delays and improve public services, with a potential £45 billion in productivity savings. The initiative includes a training program for civil service technologists to become AI engineers and a package of AI tools to help with tasks such as analyzing consultation responses and managing tasks.

Gartner forecasts that hyperscalers will operate $1tn worth of AI-optimised servers by 2028, driving growth in the market for AI-optimised hardware. Spending on AI-optimised servers is expected to reach $202bn in 2025, more than double the spending on traditional servers. This growth is driven by the adoption of AI-enabled services and the need for improved performance and efficiency in data centers.

Apache Hudi 1.0 is now generally available, offering a transactional data lake platform with support for near real-time analytics. The release introduces new features such as secondary indexing, partial updates, and non-blocking concurrency control, making it a fully-fledged 'Data Lakehouse Management System' (DLMS).

A data breach at PowerSchool, a cloud-based student information management system, has exposed sensitive personal info of students in Canada and over 40 US states. The breach, which occurred in December, may have compromised data including names, addresses, and health information. PowerSchool claims the stolen data has been deleted, but the company is facing multiple lawsuits.

Nearly 50,000 Fortinet firewalls remain vulnerable to a zero-day exploit, with 48,457 instances still publicly exposed despite warnings issued over the past seven days. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-55591, is being actively exploited, and customers are urged to apply the latest updates to prevent attacks.

Apple's iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, and macOS 15.3 updates will enable Apple Intelligence by default, bringing AI-powered features like notification summaries and Image Playground to supported devices, including iPhone 15 Pro and later, iPads and Macs with Apple Silicon M1 chip or later. Users can disable the feature in settings.

The Nvidia RTX 5090 Founders Edition is a powerful graphics card with a unique design, featuring a two-fan setup and a heavy, chunky build. It requires at least 1000W of system power and has a 16-pin power connection at an angle, with three DisplayPort 2.1 and one HDMI 2.1b port. The card's cooling system is designed to manage heat under pressure, but its size and weight may require extra support in some cases.

Microsoft is no longer the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI, as the AI company has signed a new agreement allowing it to work with other cloud providers, including Oracle, while Microsoft retains 'right of first refusal' on new cloud computing capacity.

OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle are teaming up to build multiple data centers in the US, with an initial investment of $100 billion and a potential total of $500 billion over four years. The project, called Stargate, aims to support the development of AI infrastructure and create hundreds of thousands of jobs. Microsoft, Arm, and Nvidia are also involved as tech partners.

Mistral AI, a French AI lab, is planning an initial public offering (IPO) and expanding its presence in Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the US. The company has raised $1.14 billion in capital and was valued at $6 billion. Mistral competes with OpenAI and others in the AI market, offering models and services like its ChatGPT-like platform, Le Chat.

Meta is developing its first true AR headset, codenamed Artemis, which could be released as early as 2027. The company is also working on new smart glasses models, including the Supernova 2 and Hypernova, with advanced features like AI tools and camera capabilities. Additionally, Meta is developing a wrist strap to control its smart glasses and camera-enabled earbuds to rival Apple's AirPods.

OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and MGX are forming a new company called The Stargate Project to spend $500 billion on AI infrastructure in the US over the next four years. The project aims to create hundreds of thousands of American jobs and secure American leadership in AI. The infrastructure will be used by OpenAI to create more machine-learning models, with the first data centers being built in Texas.

Oracle is scheduled to release patches for 320 new security vulnerabilities affecting over 90 products and services across 27 categories, including critical flaws with a CVSS score of 9.9, on January 21.

Amperesand is targeting data centers with its solid-state transformers, which can efficiently integrate various power sources and regulate surges and dips in voltage or frequency. The company is raising a Series A round and has already demonstrated a 6 megawatt transformer. Its technology replaces traditional iron cores with silicon carbide, allowing for modular and multi-port design.

Telstra International has unveiled its vision for a highly autonomous network that will transform customer experiences. The network will use AI, ML, and cognitive computing to detect under-utilized routes, configure, monitor, and maintain itself. The upgraded network will also have over 800 Tbps of total lit capacity to meet increasing bandwidth consumption and data center demands.

Cloudflare reported a record-breaking 5.6 Tbps DDoS attack from a Mirai-based botnet with 13,000 compromised devices. The UDP-based attack targeted an ISP in Eastern Asia and lasted 80 seconds without impacting the target. Cloudflare's autonomous detection and mitigation system handled the attack without generating alerts.

Bitbucket Cloud services are experiencing a major outage, impacting website, server, and file access. The company is investigating the issue, which started over two hours ago, and is affecting all services, including Git operations, API, and webhooks. The cause of the outage is currently unknown, but Bitbucket is working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.