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Who pays for the electricity that AI eats? Three senators just published their answer: you do — and Big Tech likes it that way.

On October 9, Senators Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen, and Richard Blumenthal released a 27-page report, Power and Profits: How the AI Data Center Boom Costs Households and Communities, the product of a nearly yearlong investigation into AI data centers' impact on communities. The inquiry began with information requests sent December 15, 2025, to seven companies: Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, CoreWeave, Digital Realty, and Equinix.

Waymo is borrowing money for the first time — a sign that robotaxis are growing up.

On October 8, the Alphabet self-driving unit announced it had closed a $5 billion term loan, marking its first debt financing. In a company blog post, CFO Steve Fieler said the capital would support the expansion of Waymo's fully autonomous ride-hailing service across the U.S. and internationally, calling the loan "an important step in our evolution into a scaling commercial enterprise."

Washington just put AI companies to work for science — on an unprecedented scale.

At the White House's "Science: A New Golden Age" summit on October 8, the Trump administration announced that eleven technology companies had committed $2.4 billion in AI tools and compute credits to the Genesis Mission, the federal initiative using AI to accelerate scientific discovery across energy, health, space, and national security. The pledges are part of a broader package the administration billed as a $6 billion-plus push for U.S.-led innovation.

Google's race to catch up in AI-assisted coding may have a new contender — and it is not the model everyone is waiting for. Business Insider reported this week that Google employees are internally testing a Gemini 4 variant codenamed Carbon, and early feedback suggests it could be the strongest coding model the company has built.