Alice Huang, the alleged Chinese spy at the heart of an Nvidia scandal, has been barred from Singapore after local authorities determined she had provided inaccurate information during an investigati…

Alice Huang, the alleged Chinese spy at the heart of an Nvidia scandal, has been barred from Singapore after local authorities determined she had provided inaccurate information during an investigation they conducted into data center company Megaspeed. Huang was probed for her suspected ...

The network of companies tied to Alice Huang, the alleged Chinese spy in a romantic relationship with Nvidia’s former CEO Jensen Huang, recently invested in Chinese AI star DeepSeek, according to thr…

The network of companies tied to Alice Huang, the alleged Chinese spy in a romantic relationship with Nvidia’s former CEO Jensen Huang, recently invested in Chinese AI star DeepSeek, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter. The investments were meant to forge closer ties with DeepSeek so Alice Huang’s companies could supply a steady stream of Nvidia’s advanced Blackwell chips, which are banned from sale to China, according to one of the three people. The investments, which haven’t previously been reported, illustrate the hidden yet important role Alice Huang and her companies have played in China’s AI industry.

As companies grow, they necessarily adopt more complex processes to align teams and manage increased volume. But over time, these processes can become cumbersome and unwieldy, creating hidden bottlen…

As companies grow, they necessarily adopt more complex processes to align teams and manage increased volume. But over time, these processes can become cumbersome and unwieldy, creating hidden bottlenecks that slow organizations down and incentivize employees to devise manual workarounds. And often, no one person in the enterprise has the visibility needed to figure out where things are breaking down. A process improvement analysis can root out waste and identify solutions, but this often requires hours spent poring over dense standard operating procedures (SOPs) and unstructured stakeholder interview notes. Google Gemini can accelerate this synthesis, organizing information in a way that lets human reviewers apply their own expertise to the problem more quickly. Imagine you’re a consultant leading an operations engagement, for example, and your client says that its employee onboarding process is slowing down entire departments like HR and IT. Follow these steps using Google Gemini to help transform SOPs and meeting notes into a prioritized, executive-ready roadmap for improvement. Step 1: Break Down the Existing Process The client’s SOP and your own notes from stakeholder interviews give you plenty of information to get started. Upload your materials to Gemini and type a brief prompt: Summarize the current steps, organizational roles, and key systems involved in my client’s workflow, as outlined in the attached SOP document. Answer as a process analyst, and provide your response in the form of a numbered list. Gemini will take a lengthy client SOP and deconstruct it into a list of simple steps, helping you to more clearly see inefficiencies and potential sources of friction. For an employee onboarding process, for example, these steps might include talent acquisition and background screening, entry into the HR information system, ticket generation, hardware procurement; and Day 1 setup. Step 2: Identify the Most Pressing Problems The next step is to analyze what peo

Nvidia CEO and co-founder, Jensen Huang, resigned on Thursday in a stunning turn of events that upends the world’s second-most-valuable company and rattles one of the foundations of the AI economy. F…

Nvidia CEO and co-founder, Jensen Huang, resigned on Thursday in a stunning turn of events that upends the world’s second-most-valuable company and rattles one of the foundations of the AI economy. Finance chief Colette Kress will become interim CEO, Nvidia said in a statement. The move came three days after the board announced an independent investigation into reports that Huang was the target of a “foreign intelligence effort.” U.S. intelligence agencies reportedly concluded earlier this year that Huang had developed a close relationship with a woman they believed was spying for Beijing. Huang on Sunday also apologized to Nvidia employees for having an extramarital affair.

The Commerce Department is finalizing a long-awaited rule that will prevent Chinese AI firms from remotely accessing advanced AI chips through data centers in other countries, according to two people…

The Commerce Department is finalizing a long-awaited rule that will prevent Chinese AI firms from remotely accessing advanced AI chips through data centers in other countries, according to two people familiar with the process. The move could help the department push back on criticism that it has acted too slowly to create policies to limit China’s access to advanced AI technologies—rules that have been opposed by influential companies such as Nvidia. The rule, which could be announced as soon as this month, will expand existing semiconductor-related controls from the department’s Bureau of Industry and Security and extend them to seven additional countries, including Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, in an effort to prevent remote access and chip smuggling into China, the people said. Commerce is currently consulting with other government agencies on the rule before it can be finalized, they added.

Well, that didn’t take long. Jensen Huang’s time as CEO of Nvidia appears to be coming to an end, according to multiple reports that the board was meeting Wednesday night to consider his future. Just…

Well, that didn’t take long. Jensen Huang’s time as CEO of Nvidia appears to be coming to an end, according to multiple reports that the board was meeting Wednesday night to consider his future. Just three days ago, it announced an inquiry into whether he was the “target of a foreign intelligence effort,” but at the time the board said it had “confidence in Jensen.” It seems likely that confidence was undermined by a New York Times story on Wednesday that said Huang had had an affair with a company executive in addition to an industry executive who may also be a Chinese spy. If the board dumps Huang, it will demonstrate that no CEO is indispensable, no matter how vital their role is. Many observers had insisted the opposite in recent days, perhaps understandably. After all, Huang co-founded the company and still owned 3.6% of the stock, making him one of the biggest shareholders. As we wrote in this piece, he “has a hand in nearly every aspect of the company’s day-to-day operations.” Along with Sam Altman, he’s been probably the most articulate advocate for AI. Most importantly, his vision of the future has positioned Nvidia to benefit more than any other company from the AI boom, driving its market capitalization to a high of $5.8 trillion in early October, according to Koyfin.

United Airlines said Wednesday it will ban AI agents and assistants from booking its flights, following similar bans by banks and retailers that cited privacy concerns. The ban covers bookings made d…

United Airlines said Wednesday it will ban AI agents and assistants from booking its flights, following similar bans by banks and retailers that cited privacy concerns. The ban covers bookings made directly on United’s app and website as well as through travel agencies and aggregators. The ...

Nvidia’s board is preparing to oust Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The board has been investigating Huang’s romantic relationship with a woman whose Chinese firm…

Nvidia’s board is preparing to oust Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The board has been investigating Huang’s romantic relationship with a woman whose Chinese firm that obtained banned Nvidia chips, and which the U.S. suspected was providing information to ...

Sequoia Capital is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into Sequence Holding, a one-year-old business that just announced a $7.7 billion insurance acquisition co-led by Michael Dell’s family of…

Sequoia Capital is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into Sequence Holding, a one-year-old business that just announced a $7.7 billion insurance acquisition co-led by Michael Dell’s family office, say people familiar with the matter. This will be Sequoia’s second known investment in a new category of holding companies. These aim to buy businesses in established industries such as accounting, insurance and HOA management and then replace or complement some human work with AI. The new money raised from Sequoia is likely to allow Sequence, which has been scouting for targets, to make more acquisitions, according to people familiar with the matter.

Meta Platforms is changing the leadership of its massive data-center operation, with longtime executive Santosh Janardhan telling employees that he is stepping down as head of global infrastructure a…

Meta Platforms is changing the leadership of its massive data-center operation, with longtime executive Santosh Janardhan telling employees that he is stepping down as head of global infrastructure and will leave the company early next year. Dave Brown, a veteran of Amazon Web Services whom ...

The fast-growing crop of startups that lease computing capacity from cloud firms and then resell it, without spending a nickel on their own AI chips, are at a crossroads. Finding it harder to line up…

The fast-growing crop of startups that lease computing capacity from cloud firms and then resell it, without spending a nickel on their own AI chips, are at a crossroads. Finding it harder to line up enough computing capacity to serve their customers, some are starting to buy their own chips, which is likely to drastically change the economics of their business. The difficulty in getting enough compute also has pushed some of these startups to look for computational resources from dozens of smaller neoclouds, which tend to have more available capacity than larger hyperscalers such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform. News this week of a hack of Fireworks, one of the best known of these startups, highlights the risk of that approach.

Private equity firms and AI labs are sorting out how to charge clients and hire enough engineers for joint ventures they’ve launched to build custom AI tools for businesses. That comes as private equ…

Private equity firms and AI labs are sorting out how to charge clients and hire enough engineers for joint ventures they’ve launched to build custom AI tools for businesses. That comes as private equity firms are looking to the technology to boost profits, including at companies they’ve struggled to sell. One such team-up is Ode with Anthropic, which launched in July with $1.5 billion in capital commitments from investors including Blackstone and Hellman & Friedman. Ode currently charges most of the several dozen businesses it works with a fixed fee to develop and launch custom AI products, people familiar with the partnership say. The company lets clients retain ownership of the AI software it builds, the people said, allowing them to keep using or even sell the tools once completed without paying Ode ongoing fees. Those terms help Ode attract customers that balked at the terms offered by the team of engineers at Anthropic that embeds with enterprises, which seeks to retain ownership of the custom software it builds and license it back to customers, one of the people said. But Ode has been looking at other ways to earn more on AI projects. Some Ode executives initially proposed coinvesting in companies that were also its customers, but Blackstone’s team pushed back on the idea, one of the people said. Instead, Ode decided to charge performance-based bonus fees on top of the fixed project fees, allowing it to earn more if clients hit specific financial targets. Less than 10% of Ode’s clients are paying those performance-based fees, one of the people said, though Ode is aiming to grow that share. Setting the fees can be difficult because the company and its customers both need to agree on how to measure any AI-driven gains, including setting a baseline and financial or product-related goals. The fees may be negotiated once a contract is signed and Ode then does some early exploratory work and collects data, giving both sides enough information to set terms before mov