Innovation

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."

OpenAI's biggest model upgrade of the year is not just a model upgrade — it is a redesign of what a chatbot answer looks like.

On October 7, OpenAI began rolling out GPT-6 across ChatGPT, starting with Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise users and expanding to Free and Go tiers the next day. The audience is enormous: OpenAI says more than 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT each week. Paid tiers run GPT-6 Sol; free users get GPT-6 Luna, both tuned for everyday conversation.

Apple's big smart-home moment arrives Tuesday — and this time the company is going all in.

At its "Welcome home" experience in New York on October 13, Apple is expected to unveil HomeView, its first dedicated smart-home hub, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The name surfaced in a trademark filing discovered by MacRumors, and Gurman has now fleshed out the details in his Power On newsletter.

The era of the chatbot that forgets you the moment you close the tab may be ending. At its DevDay developer conference last month, OpenAI unveiled "dots" — always-on AI agents in ChatGPT designed to keep working toward a user's goals without being told every step. "Dots are remarkably capable, always-on agents built to handle really anything you can think of," CEO Sam Altman said during the keynote.

The AI industry's fight over Washington's attention has a new front. Anthropic is building a formal "presidential engagement" program to work directly with both parties' 2028 presidential candidates on AI policy — a dedicated in-house political operation that experts say they have never quite seen from a technology company.

British quantum computing company Universal Quantum has raised more than $100 million in a Series A round the company describes as the largest ever secured by a UK-headquartered quantum firm. The round was co-led by Silicon Valley's DCVC and the quantum-focused Firgun Ventures, with participation from EDBI, Main Sequence, Hostplus, Integral GlobalTech, and Roblox founder Dave Baszucki, among other investors.