Coby Adcock's Scout AI Raises $100 Million to Train Its Models for War. We Visited Its Bootcamp.

We visited Scout AI's training ground where it's working on AI agents that give individual soldiers control of fleets of autonomous vehicles.

Exclusive: How one venture firm is investing in an increasingly fragmented world

Geopolitical turmoil has made venture investing challenging, leading Kompas VC to carve out a niche in startups focused on the physical world.

At his OpenAI trial, Musk relitigates an old friendship

It's a story Musk has told before -- in interviews and to author Walter Isaacson for his bestselling biography of Musk -- but Tuesday was the first time he said it under oath.

South Africa withdraws national AI policy after at least 6 of 67 academic citations found to be AI-generated hallucinations

South Africa’s Communications Minister Solly Malatsi withdrew the country’s draft national AI policy after News24 discovered that at least 6 of its 67 academic citations were AI-generated hallucinations, citing fake articles in real journals. The policy had been approved by Cabinet in March and published for public comment. Malatsi called it an “unacceptable lapse” and promised consequence management. The scandal leaves South Africa without an AI governance framework and raises questions about institutional capacity to regulate the technology.

Google signs classified AI deal with Pentagon

Google signed a classified AI deal with the Pentagon for “any lawful government purpose” one day after 580+ employees urged Pichai to refuse. The contract includes advisory guardrails (no mass surveillance, no autonomous weapons without human oversight) but the government can request adjustments to safety settings. On the same day, Bloomberg revealed Google quietly dropped out of a $100M drone swarm contest in February after an internal ethics review. Google is drawing a line between selling general-purpose AI access and building specific weapons, but on classified networks, the distinction may be meaningless.

Amazon is already offering new OpenAI products on AWS

A day after OpenAI got Microsoft to agree to end exclusive rights, AWS announced a slate of OpenAI model offerings, including a new agent service.

Amazon tried selling office software and failed. Now it is betting that office software itself is obsolete.

AWS launched AI-powered business applications, Connect Decisions for supply chain, Connect Talent for recruitment, joining Connect Health from March, entering the $300B SaaS market against Microsoft, Oracle, and Salesforce. AWS CMO Julia White says having no SaaS legacy is an advantage. But Amazon’s previous application products (WorkMail, Chime, WorkDocs) all failed and were shut down. The bet is that AI agents replace applications rather than augment them, and that Amazon’s operational expertise in logistics and hiring gives it a moat incumbents lack.

Amazon launches an AI-powered audio Q&A experience on product pages

Amazon's new "Join the chat" feature lets you ask questions about products and receive AI-powered audio responses.

AWS to sell OpenAI models after Microsoft drops exclusivity, as OpenAI misses revenue targets and faces $100B infrastructure commitments

AWS will sell OpenAI models after Microsoft ended its exclusive reselling rights, completing a restructuring that began with Amazon’s $50 billion investment in OpenAI’s $110 billion funding round. The companies jointly built a Stateful Runtime Environment for agentic AI on Bedrock. But the deal arrives as the WSJ reports OpenAI missed revenue and user targets, with $25 billion in expected cash burn against $30 billion revenue, and hundreds of billions in infrastructure commitments to AWS, Azure, and Oracle that assume growth OpenAI has not yet demonstrated.

Match Group invests $100M in Sniffies, a cruising app for gay men

The app is Match Group's newest attempt to get mobile users excited about online romance again.

Google expands Pentagon's access to its AI after Anthropic's refusal

After Anthropic refused to allow the DoD to use its AI for domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, Google has signed a new contract with the department.

Paragon is not collaborating with Italian authorities probing spyware attacks, report says

Despite promising to help determine what happened with the hacks targeting journalists and activists in Italy, Israeli American spyware maker Paragon has reportedly not responded to authorities’ requests for information.