OpenAI unveils its first custom inference chip 'Jalapeño' built with Broadcom, while Tesla and Sunrun announce a 16 GW virtual power plant and new developments emerge in AI coding costs and White House negotiations.

• OpenAI and Broadcom revealed 'Jalapeño,' OpenAI's first custom chip designed for AI inference, built in nine months with AI-assisted design as part of OpenAI's 'full-stack' strategy.
• Tesla, Sunrun, and Renew Home announced a 16 GW virtual power plant aggregating home batteries to address surging data center electricity demand, with 300 MW ready for immediate deployment in Virginia.
• A $500 million 'Intercept' fund launched to eliminate common respiratory illnesses like the cold and flu, backed by investors including Stripe and Anthropic, focusing on air filtration and broad-spectrum treatments.
• LLMs generate unnecessary tokens and security risks by coding from scratch rather than reusing existing code—explicitly informing models about existing functionality can yield significant token cost savings.
• Anthropic's White House negotiations are back on track after co-founder Dario Amodei was replaced in talks by Tom Brown, whose warmer communication style has improved progress.

Wendy's stock surged up to 42% in a Reddit-driven meme stock rally, while Congress passed a major housing bill that Trump is withholding his signature on, and Europe bakes in a record-breaking heat wave.

• The Road to Housing Act — a bipartisan bill to speed construction, reform zoning, and expand affordable housing options — passed both chambers of Congress but Trump refused to sign it, demanding the SAVE Act (a voter ID bill) pass first; the housing bill will automatically become law in 10 days unless vetoed.
• Wendy's stock surged as much as 41.9% after a Reddit r/WallStreetBets post called on retail investors to 'save Wendy's,' targeting the ~32% of shares sold short in a classic short-squeeze play.
• Micron reported its most profitable quarter ever, with Q3 revenue of $41.5 billion (up from $9.3 billion a year ago), driven by strong demand for memory and storage chips from data center builders.
• Twin earthquakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 struck Venezuela within a minute of each other — the largest since 1900 — killing at least 32 people and injuring 700, with casualties expected to rise.
• France recorded its hottest day ever during a European heat wave exceeding 104°F, prompting even the leader of France's Green Party to acknowledge that air conditioning may now be a necessity despite only 25% of French households currently having it.

OpenAI unveiled its first custom AI chip 'Jalapeño' built with Broadcom, while a Google engineer was fired after his viral open-source Workspace CLI tool went viral just as Google announced an official version.

• OpenAI and Broadcom unveiled 'Jalapeño,' a custom inference chip designed to run ChatGPT faster and cheaper than Nvidia GPUs, developed in just 9 months and set for full deployment by end of 2026.
• Google fired engineer Justin Poehnelt after his open-source Google Workspace CLI went viral and hit #1 on Hacker News — just two days after Google Cloud Next announced an official Workspace CLI.
• Noam Shazeer, co-lead of Google's Gemini model, left Google for OpenAI — marking the second time he's departed Google for a competitor.
• GPT-5 Pro helped solve a 3-year immunology mystery about how immune cells fight cancer.
• Anthropic launched 'Claude Tag' for Slack Team and Enterprise plans, enabling teams to use Claude as a shared AI assistant in channels with proactive 'Ambient Mode' alerts.

OpenAI and Broadcom unveiled 'Jalapeño,' OpenAI's first custom AI inference chip developed in just nine months, marking a major push toward infrastructure independence from Nvidia.

• OpenAI's Jalapeño chip was developed with Broadcom in a record nine-month ASIC cycle, promising better performance-per-watt than current state-of-the-art, with initial deployment targeted by end of 2026.
• Anthropic alleges Alibaba conducted the largest-ever Claude model distillation attack, running 28.8M fraudulent exchanges through 25,000 accounts to illicitly extract Claude's capabilities.
• OpenAI's o3 model helped Boston Children's Hospital solve 18 previously undiagnosed rare pediatric cases, improving diagnostic success rates across 376 patients.
• Spain's AI supervisory agency (AESIA) is now operational as Europe's first standalone AI regulator, with hiring tools, credit scoring, and law enforcement applications as initial audit priorities.
• AI investment is shifting toward infrastructure and execution layers, highlighted by a $100M round for developer cloud Runpod and a $110M Series C for financial decision-automation platform Taktile.

Venezuela declared a state of emergency after two major earthquakes left dozens dead and devastated key infrastructure including its main international airport.

• Back-to-back earthquakes struck Venezuela, killing dozens, injuring hundreds, toppling buildings, and devastating the country's main international airport, with officials warning the death toll will rise.
• The US Senate voted down a war powers resolution to rein in Trump's handling of the Iran war, after Trump pressured Senators Cassidy and Rand Paul into reversing their positions.
• The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz following a US-Iran agreement has flooded oil markets with supply, causing Brent crude to erase all of its wartime price gains.
• Stocks rallied after Micron's blowout earnings forecast revived AI trade enthusiasm, with Qualcomm also projecting $15 billion in data-center chip sales by 2029.
• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are taking on interest-rate risk in their investment portfolios at levels that previously rattled Wall Street two decades ago.

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Mozilla's Head of Firefox, Ajit Varma, argues that browser competition and open-source AI are critical to preventing a closed, controlled internet future.

• Browser competition is increasingly important as AI reshapes how people access and interact with the web.
• Firefox is betting on open-source AI as an alternative to closed, proprietary platforms.
• Dependence on a single AI model or platform poses hidden risks for users and the broader internet ecosystem.
• Most users unknowingly trade privacy for convenience when choosing browsers and web platforms.
• Decisions made now about open vs. closed internet platforms could define the next decade of the web.

Anthropic's Claude is gaining ground among paying AI users despite ChatGPT's market dominance, while major tech investments and acquisitions reshape the AI landscape.

• Anthropic's Claude is increasingly being chosen by paying AI consumers, eating into ChatGPT's stronghold in the premium market segment.
• Databricks' former AI chief claims a new image-generation system called Un-0 can reduce AI's power consumption by up to 1,000x.
• Amazon is investing an additional $13 billion in AI infrastructure in India as global tech firms race to expand in the country.
• Adobe has acquired Topaz Labs, an image and video enhancement tool maker, with plans to integrate its technology across Adobe's apps.
• Cellebrite's phone-unlocking tools were used by Russian authorities to hack a political opponent's iPhone despite the company claiming it had cut off sales to Russia.

Iran reportedly struck a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices up over 2%, while JPMorgan reshuffled its leadership and the Supreme Court shielded Bayer from Roundup cancer lawsuits.

• Iran reportedly struck an unidentified cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz, damaging its bridge; the White House is investigating whether the attack was ordered at higher levels of the Iranian military.
• Oil prices rose more than 2% on news of the strike, with WTI settling around $72 a barrel and Brent up about 2%.
• JPMorgan named Troy Rohrbaugh and Doug Petno co-presidents following the sudden departure of consumer banking chief Marianne Lake, upending the race to succeed CEO Jamie Dimon.
• The Supreme Court voted 7-2 to shield Bayer from Roundup cancer-warning lawsuits, sending the company's shares up as much as 20%.
• US inflation hit a three-year high with the PCE price index rising 4.1% year-over-year, driven largely by elevated gasoline costs tied to the Iran war, increasing pressure on the Fed and Trump.