Explainer

What began as the foundational partnership of the modern AI era is showing signs of a spectacular collapse. OpenAI executives have reportedly discussed accusing their biggest financial backer, Microsoft, of anticompetitive behavior, a move that could unravel the most pivotal alliance in technology. The news, first reported by the Wall

Taiwan’s decision yesterday to add Chinese tech giants Huawei and SMIC to its trade blacklist marks a formal, and forceful, alignment with U.S. policy. The move, which tightens loopholes and raises the stakes for any Taiwanese firm supplying the two blacklisted companies, is more than a symbolic gesture.

In a sign of just how heated the artificial intelligence talent war has become, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly taken to personally emailing elite AI researchers with job offers worth at least $10 million a year. The move is part of an aggressive push to build a new “superintelligence”

For the past two years, the story of the great AI boom has been one of hardware. It’s a race for Nvidia GPUs, for access to TSMC's cutting-edge fabs, for enough electricity to power colossal data centers. But this week, a different kind of scarcity crisis erupted,