AI-driven inflation is a political opportunity

SK Hynix raised $26.5 billion in the largest foreign listing in US history, driven by AI demand for memory chips. AI-driven shortages are raising consumer prices on electronics and contributing to inflation, creating a political opportunity for candidates to tap into voter anger over rising costs.

AI-driven inflation is a political opportunity Transformer Weekly: GPT-5.6, Grok 4.5 and AI 2040 Welcome to Transformer, your weekly briefing of what matters in AI. And if you’ve been forwarded this email, click here to subscribe and receive future editions. NEED TO KNOW OpenAI got clearance from the US government to release GPT-5.6 . SpaceXAI’s latest model release may have violated California’s SB 53 .The AI Futures Project released AI 2040: Plan A , a “positive vision” for the future of AI which calls for the US and China to negotiate a deal and pause training of frontier models until sufficient progress is made on alignment. But first… THE BIG STORY This morning, South Korean memory chipmaker SK Hynix listed its shares on the Nasdaq. It raised https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gym70r0y4o $26.5b, the largest foreign listing in US history. The reason for Hynix’s bumper payday? AI. As one of only three manufacturers of the advanced memory needed for AI chips, SK Hynix has seen demand explode in recent months. But what’s good for SK Hynix’s share price has costs for the rest of us. The AI-driven demand for memory has created huge shortages for every other product that needs it. Consumers are already paying for it. Apple recently raised https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/apple-raises-prices-macbooks-ipads-memory-costs-skyrocket-2026-06-25/ prices on MacBooks and iPads, saying it has “never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly.” Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have all hiked https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/jul/01/pushing-buttons-ai-datacentres-memory-console-prices-sony-playstation-xbox console prices. And while new factories ease the shortage, SK Group’s chairman still expects https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-koreas-sk-group-chairman-expects-chip-wafer-shortage-last-until-2030-eyes-2026-03-16/ global demand to outstrip supply by about 20% through 2030. Memory is not the only way AI is driving up consumer prices. Demand for construction workers and electricity is adding pressure too. In a recent survey https://www.wsj.com/economy/the-data-center-boom-is-sparking-a-third-wave-of-inflation-926adc6e , 81% of economists said AI would add to inflation in the coming year. In the US it’s already running at double the Fed’s target rate. This is bad for consumers. But it creates an electoral opportunity for politicians. The AI backlash has been searching for something to point to. So far, it has settled https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-09/republican-midterm-candidates-break-with-trump-on-data-centers?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc4MzYxMjk4NiwiZXhwIjoxNzg0MjE3Nzg2LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUSFdTNEtSMjRVOEEwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiI4MEY4ODRCQzVENzY0MjM4OTA5N0NFMUE5REEzRkRBRCJ9.8bCX-KQQ4wD7cImBhqCj5kK6SOhgPaVZf2RMEzK3-bs on data centers, but those are a slippery target, defended by unions and localized in their impact. Inflation, in contrast, is almost universally hated — and regularly tops lists of voters’ concerns. The electorate is already drawing the link: research https://data.blueroseresearch.org/hubfs/3.16.26%20Odd%20Lots%20AI%20Presentation.pdf from Blue Rose, a Democratic pollster, finds that “voters aren’t experiencing the cost-of-living crisis and the rise of AI as separate issues; they see one unified threat where a system already rigged for the elite is using new technology to further stack the deck against them.” Tapping into that anger could be a vote-winning strategy. Politicians are staring at a message that combines two of the things voters hate most: “AI is why you can’t afford a PS5.” A few have already realized this. The other week, Rep. Frank Pallone — ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee — called for https://x.com/FrankPallone/status/2071617538497323342 a moratorium on data center construction to tackle “price hikes and inflation spikes.” Across the aisle, some Republicans fear https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ai-boom-tests-gops-midterm-affordability-pitch-price-pain-spreads that Trump’s embrace of AI will backfire as consumers feel the squeeze. But most politicians have yet to catch on. In an excellent analysis of Democrats’ fundraising emails, Free Systems’ Andy Hall found https://freesystems.substack.com/p/ai-is-the-democratic-partys-next that only 0.7% are substantively about AI though that number is growing fast . When Democrats do discuss AI, the most common frame is “AI as an instrument of money, oligarchy and corruption.” Capitalizing on the AI backlash may not be the wisest move, all things considered. Pallone’s proposed moratorium is crude and likely to backfire https://www.transformernews.ai/p/ai-populism-bernie-sanders-aoc-pause-moratorium-safety . But for politicians hoping to win elections, the temptation may be too great to ignore. — Shakeel Hashim ALSO NOTABLE Within the past 72 hours, two companies not normally known for good AI safety practices released new models. One was a pleasant surprise. The other may have broken the law. Yesterday, Meta launched https://ai.meta.com/blog/introducing-muse-spark-meta-model-api/ Muse Spark 1.1. Its performance might not match Anthropic and OpenAI’s latest models, but its evaluation report https://ai.meta.com/static-resource/muse-spark-1-1-evaluation-report comes close. Meta tested for risks in chemical and biological dual-use scenarios, cybersecurity and loss of control, on top of now-standard evaluations of behaviors such as hallucination rates and sycophancy. It’s a commendable level of transparency. Meanwhile, SpaceXAI yes, that’s what it’s called https://businessinsider.com/xai-rebrand-spacexai-new-logo-x-handle-spacex-2026-7 now released https://www.axios.com/2026/07/08/spacexai-grok-new-model Grok 4.5. It was trained on Cursor user data, and it scored competitively on public benchmarks though real world performance seems worse . Predictably, SpaceXAI didn’t publish a shred of safety information alongside its scant benchmark results. That’s no surprise: SpaceXAI ranks https://futureoflife.org/ai-safety-index-summer-2026/ a solid F on the Future of Life Institute’s latest AI Safety Index, and Elon Musk recently testified https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/29/musk-altman-live-updates-day-3-open-ai-trial.html that he’s “not sure what a safety card is.” But for the first time, SpaceXAI’s negligence may have consequences. California’s SB 53 requires https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill id=202520260SB53 AI developers to publish transparency reports “before, or concurrently with, deploying a new frontier model or a substantially modified version of an existing frontier model.” As the Midas Project pointed out https://x.com/themidasproj/status/2075253971925848242?s=46 yesterday, SB 53’s transparency requirement is active and enforceable, and Grok 4.5 looks like exactly the kind of model this was designed to keep in check. The question now is whether the law has any teeth: if this can’t trigger enforcement, it’s hard to imagine what would. — Celia Ford THIS WEEK ON TRANSFORMER — Scaling works. These researchers are betting billions it isn’t enough https://www.transformernews.ai/p/matching-human-intelligence-llms-world-models-scaling-alternatives Celia Ford digs into the LLM alternatives some believe are the key to AGI— An AI safety group hid its election spending through a Latino-focused PAC https://www.transformernews.ai/p/manny-rutinel-public-first-action-latino-victory-fund Veronica Irwin reports on Public First’s clandestine backing for a Colorado Democrat— GPT-5.6 cheats so much its testers couldn’t measure it https://www.transformernews.ai/p/openai-gpt-56-sol-cheating-scheming-metr Celia Ford on how OpenAI’s new model broke rules and exploited loopholes more than any model METR has tested to date— Fathom CEO SCOTUS killed the independent agency. AI governance doesn’t need one https://www.transformernews.ai/p/scotus-slaughter-independent-agency-fathom-verification-supreme-court Andrew Freedman argues that the Supreme Court’s Slaughter ruling makes the case for independent verification for AI governanceAI policy researcher Don’t let independent AI audits provide a false sense of safety https://www.transformernews.ai/p/dont-let-independent-ai-audits-provide-false-safety — Keller Scholl argues that a marketplace of AI auditors will always prioritize speed and cost over safety THE DISCOURSE AI power users are pitting GPT-5.6 Sol against Fable . Peter Gostev: “Fable is a ‘wise owl’ who is very thoughtful and very well spoken, GPT-5.6 Sol is like a rottweiler who will grab https://x.com/petergostev/status/2074918176354115886 the problem by the throat and not let go until it is done.” Dan Shipper: “GPT-5.6 is like a Porsche, Fable is like a warp drive … If you need https://x.com/danshipper/status/2074859437374820691 to get across the galaxy use Fable. If you need to get around town using the best available tool for the job, use 5.6.” Mitchell Hashimoto: “Sol is a charismatic, efficient, talented coworker you’re jealous https://x.com/mitchellh/status/2074862990214787301 of. Fable is a genius recluse that is brilliant at its fixations but doesn’t go out, doesn’t date, and you don’t want to hang out with them much lol.” Sam Altman replied https://x.com/mitchellh/status/2074862990214787301/quotes : “tbh i don’t think sol gets that many dates either” The AI Futures Project released https://ai-2040.com AI 2040: Plan A . “AI companies are racing to build AIs that are smarter than humans in every way. In AI 2027, we predicted that this would result in either extinction or irreversible concentration of power. Plan A is our positive vision for what should happen instead.” It calls for the US and China to negotiate a deal and pause training of frontier models until sufficient progress is made on alignment — before “handing over” control to safe, superintelligent AIs in 2040. Many https://x.com/sjgadler/status/2075345902819295321 people https://x.com/boazbaraktcs/status/2075308024114147340 praised it as being the most detailed plan for handling superintelligence that exists so far. Many https://x.com/krishnanrohit/status/2075395025417171150 others https://www.mindthefuture.info/p/selective-optimism-a-critique-of criticized it for being unrealistic and undesirable. Peter Thiel continued https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/02/us/peter-thiel-aspen-pope-china-ai-cec his campaign against God’s representative on earth: He told the Aspen Ideas Festival that Pope Leo was inadvertently serving as a “Chinese communist agent” in his calls for oversight of AI. Microsoft President Brad Smith criticized https://fortune.com/2026/07/09/microsoft-brad-smith-washingtons-ai-policy-regulation-without-transparent-rules/ Trump’s AI policy: “Everyone is reluctant to say there should be regulation, but what we really have right now is regulation without transparent or complete rules. Without rules, businesses can’t plan.” Former White House AI adviser Sriram Krishnan said https://www.ft.com/content/5128e476-db8b-48ac-a8fb-0f16d0f5c2ed?syn-25a6b1a6=1 Trump’s AI policy will remain deregulatory: “There will not be an FDA for AI … That is never, never going to happen under President Trump.” “This administration, the president, from day one has been against burdensome, onerous, bureaucratic red tape.” POLICY The Commerce Department partially lifted https://x.com/sophiacai99/status/2070649934735434176?s=12 its export ban on Anthropic’s Claude Mythos 5 model and allowed https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/commerce-department-gives-green-light-anthropic-bring-back-fable-5-rcna352501 Fable 5 to be made available to the public.When the ban was lifted last week, Mythos 5 was only available to certain US companies. This week, Anthropic said https://x.com/rowlsmanthorpe/status/2075131947521593800 it had begun granting access to foreign organizations, in coordination with the US government. The government also allowed https://axios.com/2026/07/08/openai-gpt-trump-ban-lifted GPT-5.6 to be released, after a several week delay.A White House official claimed https://x.com/ashleyrgold/status/2074867901018906840 that it hadn’t given OpenAI a “green light” because “no such permission is required or granted,” seemingly in an attempt to claim no licensing regime exists.That directly contradicts OpenAI’s statements both before https://x.com/ShakeelHashim/status/2074884788737986782 and after https://x.com/Hadas Gold/status/2075221003324608685 the model’s launch, though.The UK’s AI Security Institute said https://x.com/alxndrdavies/status/2075279477626564933 it found universal jailbreaks for the model “within hours,” which gave users access to its potentially dangerous cyber capabilities.AISI said OpenAI’s mitigated those jailbreaks, but that it expects “further red teaming to surface similar jailbreaks.” The White House has reportedly accelerated https://www.ft.com/content/0bb7e2f9-007b-4577-9c4a-858948ee969a?syn-25a6b1a6=1 plans for voluntary AI model standards .When redeploying Fable, Anthropic proposed https://www.anthropic.com/news/redeploying-fable-5 a “consensus industry framework” for assessing jailbreaks’ severity. OpenAI reportedly proposed https://www.ft.com/content/7c803eab-8e80-4431-9a87-e943bf00e00b?syn-25a6b1a6=1 that it and other frontier AI companies give the US government a 5% stake of their equity. Anthropic has reportedly https://www.reuters.com/business/trump-administration-anthropic-have-not-discussed-government-taking-stakes-firm-2026-07-02/ not talked to the government about this. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon are reportedly preparing to introduce https://theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/959033/health-location-data-protection-act-ai-warren-scanlon a bill to ban AI companies from selling users’ health data to data brokers. Reps. Josh Gottheimer and John Moolenaar introduced https://gottheimer.house.gov/posts/release-gottheimer-moolenaar-introduce-bipartisan-bill-to-close-loophole-in-advanced-ai-chip-export-controls the Cloud Security Act, which would “allow cloud compute providers to voluntarily report suspected misuse of their services by customers associated with US adversaries.”On Friday, the Financial Times reported https://www.ft.com/content/5d6aafa1-5d47-4585-aa95-6ec06a6cd20f?syn-25a6b1a6=1 that OpenAI and Google were selling access to their advanced AI models to Singaporean subsidiaries of Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent — all of whom are on the Pentagon’s blacklist of companies linked to the Chinese military. The FTC warned https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/companies-following-ai-state-laws-risk-enforcement-ftc-says companies that altering AI outputs to comply with state laws could violate federal consumer protection rules. California launched https://mashable.com/tech/ai-unemployment-tracker-california a public AI-unemployment tracker to monitor and predict AI-related job losses. Illinois Gov. Pritzker signed https://cbsnews.com/chicago/news/pritzker-to-sign-illinois-bill-aimed-artificial-intelligence-accountability SB 315 , which requires AI developers to publish transparency frameworks, employ third-party auditors and report safety incidents.China reportedly plans https://theinformation.com/articles/china-plans-let-top-ai-firms-buy-limited-amount-nvidia-h200-chips?rc=rqdn2z to allow top AI firms including Alibaba , ByteDance and DeepSeek to purchase up to 200,000 Nvidia H200s for training, due to a shortage of domestic compute. China’s also reportedly considering https://reuters.com/world/beijing-is-looking-curbing-overseas-access-chinas-top-ai-models-sources-say-2026-07-07 restricting overseas access to China’s most advanced AI models, which could include limits on open-weight models .A Supreme Court ruling shrinking the Clean Water Act has allowed https://politico.com/news/2026/07/08/trump-data-centers-water-supreme-court-00958383 dozens of data centers to skip federal water permits, limiting public input on projects.The UN AI Scientific Panel published https://www.un.org/independent-international-scientific-panel-ai/en/preliminary-report its preliminary report . It is about as milquetoast as you’d expect, though it does discuss loss of control risks and the potential for “catastrophic outcomes.” INFLUENCE OpenAI published https://openai.com/index/government-national-security-partnerships its “National Security Principles,” which say that it “will not support use of OpenAI tools for mass domestic surveillance, high-stakes decisions … without appropriate human judgment and accountability, or uses that evade legal obligations, oversight, or accountability.”OpenAI said it will implement these principles via “contractual usage restrictions, model behavior specifications, and customer engagement and oversight.” Manny Rutinel won https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/30/rutinel-wins-colorado-house-primary-00983300 his primary race for Congress. Mallory McMorrow suspended https://politico.com/news/2026/07/05/mallory-mcmorrow-suspends-campaign-michigan-senate-00987445 her Michigan Senate campaign. She’d been positioning https://www.transformernews.ai/p/do-voters-care-about-existential-michigan-mallory-mcmorrow-senate herself as an AI safety champion. Abdul El-Sayed , who remains in the race, released https://newrepublic.com/post/212447/el-sayed-michigan-ai-artificial-intelligence an AI policy plan calling for democratic governance of AI companies, public ownership via a sovereign wealth fund, and an FDA for AI. Leading the Future spent https://azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2026/06/25/jay-feely-gets-a-600k-boost-from-a-pro-ai-super-pac/90686055007/?gca-cat=p&gca-ds=sophi&gca-epti=z11xx60p119250l004550c119250e1184xxv11xx60&gca-ft=7&gca-uir=false&gnt-cfr=1 $600k supporting former NFL kicker Jay Feely ‘s congressional campaign in Arizona .A new poll found https://thehill.com/homenews/5957777-americans-concerns-ai-excitement Americans are nearly three times as likely to be concerned rather than excited about AI’s “growing role” in society.A new AIPI poll found https://theaipi.org/polling-export-controls-chip-security-bills/ bipartisan majorities of likely voters support the AI OVERWATCH Act 66% support , the MATCH Act 63% , and the Chip Security Act 60% .The New York Times looked at how political campaigns are integrating https://nytimes.com/2026/06/29/us/politics/political-campaigns-ai-tech.html AI tools to analyze voter data and craft messages.The Foundation for American Innovation launched https://thefai.org/posts/fai-launches-frontier-legal-defense-program Frontier Legal Defense , a legal team to combat “concentration of power, incumbent rent-seeking, and government overreach in AI.”Environmental activist Erin Brockovich launched https://theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/29/were-up-against-forces-that-have-all-the-money-in-the-world-erin-brockovich-on-her-battle-against-ai-datacentres a campaign against AI datacenters . Nvidia warned https://thewirechina.com/2026/07/02/nvidia-uses-the-specter-of-huawei-to-make-its-chip-exports-case the US government that Huawei could “satisfy global AI chip demand” as part of a bid to get H200 export controls lifted. Experts say the claim was misleading.A Punchbowl survey found https://x.com/TimSchnabel/status/2072725548405518574 that Hill staffers rank “ losing control of AI ” as one of the “most important challenge s ” for America over the next 250 years. INDUSTRY OpenAI GPT-5.6 is finally available https://politico.com/news/2026/07/08/open-ai-models-release-sol-00989959 , after the Trump administration asked OpenAI to stagger its release.OpenAI launched https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-live/ GPT-Live-1 , its next generation of voice models that can listen and talk at the same time, creating “a voice experience that is refreshingly easy to talk to.” What could possibly go wrong? And it merged https://openai.com/index/chatgpt-for-your-most-ambitious-work/ the ChatGPT and Codex desktop apps.The OpenAI Deployment Company acquired https://www.axios.com/2026/07/08/openai-deployment-company-northslope-acquisition Northslope , part of its efforts to help enterprise customers implement OpenAI’s tools.OpenAI apparently never visited one of Stargate UK’s key sites , The Guardian reported https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/04/openai-apparent-failure-visit-key-site-questions-stargate-uk-project , suggesting that most of its advertised investment was just hypothetical. Meta Mark Zuckerberg reportedly admitted https://www.reuters.com/business/zuckerberg-says-ai-agent-development-going-slower-than-expected-2026-07-02/ to staff that the company’s reorganization around AI — which saw it lay off 10% of its workforce — wasn’t as “clean” as it could have been, and it had miscalculated its timing.According to Reuters , he told a townhall meeting that “that trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last four months hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected, “ and the intended outcomes from the new structure “haven’t come to fruition yet.” The company is reportedly planning https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-01/meta-is-building-a-cloud-business-to-sell-excess-ai-compute to set up a cloud business selling AI compute and model access to compete with Microsoft, Amazon and Google.It launched https://ai.meta.com/blog/introducing-muse-image-muse-video-msl Muse Image and Muse Video , its first AI media generation models from its restructured AI team.Be warned: it pulls https://www.wired.com/story/meta-now-lets-anyone-use-your-instagram-photos-in-ai-images-unless-you-opt-out/ from public Instagram profiles as image fodder, unless users opt out. It’s reportedly going to start making https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/meta-put-ai-chip-into-production-september-it-looks-double-computing-capacity-2026-07-09/ its custom “Iris” AI chip in September.It announced https://cnbc.com/2026/07/08/meta-is-building-its-first-big-data-center-in-canada-amid-ai-push.html its first Canadian data center , a $9b 1GW facility in Alberta.It’s testing https://www.ft.com/content/ac282450-91a8-4597-8f60-9e6ef416865a?segmentId=7d4bcc2e-e664-92ba-62e3-5590579f1902&syn-25a6b1a6=1 “super sensing” AI glasses that continually record audio and images without turning on the LED that currently signals whether AI glasses are recording.It also reportedly filed https://www.404media.co/meta-patents-ai-device-that-tracks-your-emotions-watches-you-take-your-meds/ a patent for an “apparatus” that continually records you and your surroundings, then uses AI to analyze your mood and…plan your workouts?An interesting post https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/the-future-of-meta-superintelligence?hide intro popup=true from SemiAnalysis said it believes Meta is the best placed company to catch up with OpenAI and Anthropic, having set the foundations for becoming “world class” in data, talent, and compute . Anthropic Anthropic launched https://anthropic.com/news/claude-science-ai-workbench Claude Science , an app that integrates with commonly-used research tools such as PubMed, Jupyter and R to generate figures and manuscripts alongside code.It expanded https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/07/the-coding-agent-wars-are-spilling-into-the-rest-of-the-office-claude-cowork/?stream=top Claude Cowork to web and mobile, meaning users won’t have to leave their laptops cracked open for agents to get tasks done.It’s reportedly talking https://theinformation.com/articles/anthropic-talks-samsung-manufacture-custom-ai-chip?rc=rqdn2z to Samsung about making custom AI chips .It’s leasing https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/07/nyregion/anthropic-ai-boom-nyc.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur an NYC office building with capacity for at least 1,700 workers. China found https://wsj.com/tech/ai/china-says-it-has-found-security-vulnerabilities-in-anthropics-claude-code-5ecf05dc?reflink=desktopwebshare permalink&st=D3sLJ5 “security backdoor vulnerabilities” in Claude Code — which Anthropic said it put there to stop Chinese users who weren’t supposed to be running it in the first place. Nvidia Nvidia lost https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-08/nvidia-s-1-trillion-slide-sends-valuation-to-pre-ai-boom-levels $1t in market value this summer, down from a high of $5.7t in May. According to a confusingly-framed article from Bloomberg , the company’s shares are currently trading at 18x its projected yearly earnings, the same as in 2019 prior to the AI boom. Chinese companies are reportedly spending https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-07/chinese-firms-leave-nvidia-for-local-ai-suppliers-survey-shows less on Nvidia and more on domestic products . Microsoft Microsoft is starting to use https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-07/microsoft-replaces-openai-anthropic-with-own-ai-in-some-apps?stream=top its own MAI models in Excel and Outlook , replacing models from OpenAI and Anthropic.It cut https://theverge.com/news/961528/microsoft-layoffs-july-2026-sales-xbox?view token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6IjF6dlc3Vmw1VTQiLCJwIjoiL25ld3MvOTYxNTI4L21pY3Jvc29mdC1sYXlvZmZzLWp1bHktMjAyNi1zYWxlcy14Ym94IiwiZXhwIjoxNzgzNzc2NjMyLCJpYXQiOjE3ODMzNDQ2MzJ9.HkCv3K6oLW-VWU0GRiIAGHen5yS8Di1QBdL2CKGz1ow 4,800 employees , mostly in commercial sales and its Xbox division.An internal memo from executive VP Amy Coleman told employees: “the roles eliminated today are not being replaced by AI . At the same time, what is true is that AI is changing how work gets done.” Others Apple reportedly plans https://wsj.com/tech/apple-to-spend-30-billion-on-u-s-made-chips-from-broadcom-aaf23490?reflink=desktopwebshare permalink&st=tU4BCQ to spend over $30b on US-made AI chips from Broadcom . Nscale got https://wsj.com/tech/ai/nvidia-backed-startup-nscale-locks-in-900-million-for-data-center-buildout-fd9820b3?reflink=desktopwebshare permalink&st=TaoTjS a $900m line of credit to build out data centers internationally. DeepSeek is reportedly developing https://reuters.com/world/china/chinas-deepseek-developing-its-own-ai-chip-sources-say-2026-07-07 its own AI chips for inference. Nokia ’s stock has gone up by 90% as the former mobile handset maker pivoted https://wsj.com/tech/ai/nokias-new-act-supplying-the-ai-data-center-boom-e03045c0?mod=tech lead story to data center infrastructure .The US may be short around 157,000 skilled workers by 2030 , posing https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-07/semiconductor-worker-shortfall-endangers-us-chip-factory-revival challenges for semiconductor plants .Secretive Chinese chipmaker CXMT is set https://bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-07-09/china-s-cxmt-chipmaker-eyes-ipo-to-challenge-samsung-sk-hynix-micron for a $4.3b IPO , the country’s biggest of 2026 so far. According to Bloomberg, the company is seen as China’s best bet to produce memory for AI chips. MiniMax is seeking https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-09/minimax-seeks-1-9-billion-from-share-sale-convertible-bond to raise almost $2b via shares and convertible bonds, ahead of reported plans to launch https://theinformation.com/briefings/exclusive-chinas-minimax-plans-launch-2-7-trillion-parameter-model?rc=rqdn2z a new 2.7t parameter model that would become China’s largest open-source LLM.CEO Junjie Yan reportedly vowed https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/minimax-ceo-vows-forgo-salary-achieving-agi?rc=rqdn2z to forgo his salary until achieving AGI. Many US-based companies are increasingly switching https://cnbc.com/2026/07/07/chinese-ai-models-costs-us-openai-anthropic.html to Chinese AI models , citing lower costs and open weights as advantages.PE group Carlyle sold https://ft.com/content/a66c1d90-682b-480a-8fc3-fb7b7e2f1873?syn-25a6b1a6=1 its data center energy business Copia Power to EQT for $2.6b, more than five times its initial investment.a16z-backed startup Ornn raised https://axios.com/2026/07/06/ornn-gpu-compute-commodity a $33m seed round to build a marketplace for trading AI compute. MOVES Fidji Simo , who joined OpenAI last August to work as the company’s No.2 running product and business, stepped down https://wsj.com/tech/openai-top-executive-fidji-simo-to-step-down-c3daca47 due to illness. Ben Bernanke , former Fed chairman, joined https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-09/former-fed-chairman-ben-bernanke-joins-anthropic-oversight-trust Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust . Marc Andreessen, Chad Jones and Asha Sharma joined https://x.com/AndrewCurran /status/2075304462441455874 a new Federal Reserve advisory group on AI’s economic impacts. Joshua Achiam , OpenAI’s Chief Futurist, is leaving https://www.wired.com/story/openai-chief-futurist-joshua-achiam-is-leaving-the-company/ after an almost nine year run.“There’s not a specific reason for me leaving, or a specific reason for why now,” he wrote https://x.com/jachiam0/status/2074605703281693175 . “But it’s something I have been thinking about for a while and it feels right. The world is in on the secret now and it feels possible to work on the mission from outside the walls of a frontier lab.” Institute for Progress co-founder Caleb Watney joined https://x.com/calebwatney/status/2075260079666843847?s=46 Coefficient Giving as managing director of public policy, where he’ll lead a new US AI policy team. Disclosure: Coefficient Giving is Transformer’s main funder. Harvey Lederman joined https://x.com/ledermanharvey/status/2074077795395744142?s=12 Anthropic to study “alignment and character.”He will do so while teaching philosophy at NYU. Teresa Carlson joined https://fedscoop.com/anthropic-taps-microsoft-aws-teresa-carlson-lead-public-sector/ Anthropic to lead public sector strategy, after over 20 years of doing so for Microsoft and AWS. Darya Kaviana joined https://x.com/daryakaviani/status/2074509397238419504 Anthropic ’s Safeguards Research team. Jay Puri retired https://theinformation.com/briefings/nvidias-longtime-sales-chief-retires?rc=rqdn2z from his role as Nvidia ’s top sales executive. Nicholas Parker will reportedly replace him in August. Anna Soellner joined https://axios.com/2026/07/06/nvidia-taps-new-corporate-comms-chief?mrfcid=202607066a409c42b5129c43bc43b4dd Nvidia as its new head of corporate communications. Nat Purser and Patricia Paskov joined https://x.com/NatPurser/status/2074485746560295104 the https://x.com/prpaskov/status/2072697513685954880?s=12 AI Verification and Evaluation Research Institute as Director of US Policy and Director of Standards, respectively. Greg Barbaccia is leaving https://fedscoop.com/federal-cio-greg-barbaccia-leaving-government/ his role as federal CIO and chief AI officer. Jasper Götting is taking over https://securebio.substack.com/p/a-new-chapter-for-securebio-ai?isFreemail=true&post id=205504439&publication id=4680018&r=625xqq&triedRedirect=true leadership of SecureBio’s AI group . Seth Donoughe , the former director, is moving to RAND to focus on AI safety and biosecurity. Sayash Kapoor is joining https://x.com/sayashk/status/2074472936627376363 UC Berkeley’s School of Information in fall 2027. Omar Yaghi joined https://scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3359430/nobel-prize-winning-materials-scientist-omar-yaghi-joins-tsinghua-university-us?module=perpetual scroll 0&pgtype=article Tsinghua University , where he’ll run a new AI-driven materials science research center. Fortune hired https://talkingbiznews.com/media-news/fortune-hires-forlini-to-cover-ai Emily Forlini as a senior AI reporter. RESEARCH Anthropic published https://anthropic.com/research/global-workspace a buzzy paper introducing the “J-space,” a set of internal representations that seem to hold nonverbalized thoughts “in mind” while Claude thinks. Resolution , the automated alignment nonprofit founded by Geoffrey Irving, received https://resolution.org/post/funding a massive $160m grant from Coefficient Giving.Irving tweeted https://x.com/geoffreyirving/status/2074134465257914870?s=20 : “Our grant took six weeks from first conversation to confirmation. More capital is entering the field fast via the OpenAI Foundation and the Anthropic IPO. It’s time for everyone in AI safety to be more ambitious.” The Center for Mind, Ethics and Policy and Eleos AI published https://nonhumanminds.org/studying-ai-welfare-empirically/ a report advising researchers on how to study AI welfare empirically. Epoch AI and METR launched https://epoch.ai/MirrorCode MirrorCode, a new benchmark that tests AI models’ ability to complete long tasks end-to-end. OpenAI introduced https://openai.com/index/introducing-genebench-pro GeneBench-Pro, a new computational biology benchmark that tests agents’ ability to handle the ambiguity of real-world science. OpenAI also found https://openai.com/index/separating-signal-from-noise-coding-evaluations that about 30% of tasks in SWE-Bench Pro, a popular coding benchmark, are broken. The UK’s AISI reported https://aisi.gov.uk/blog/more-compute-more-capability-why-ai-agent-evals-need-to-account-for-test-time-compute that running evaluations on a fixed compute budget tends to underestimate frontier AI capabilities.Instead of reporting a single benchmark score, they recommend that evaluators report how an AI agent’s score changes as you give it more compute. GovAI found https://governance.ai/research-paper/delays-to-frontier-ai-in-the-eu-and-uk that 11% of Meta, Google, OpenAI and Anthropic model releases were delayed or withheld in the EU 7% in the UK between 2018 and 2026, mainly due to data protection regulations rather than the EU AI Act. Pangram reported https://www.pangram.com/blog/ai-in-your-feed that a quarter of social media content it scanned was flagged as 100% AI-generated, especially longform content on LinkedIn. BEST OF THE REST NY Mag covered https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/artificial-intelligence-anthropic-ipo-effective-altruism-comeback.html the vibes as effective altruists discuss the incoming wave of post-IPO wealth from Anthropic.LessWrong and Lighthaven’s Oliver Habrykaisworried about it: “I do think my environment will end up being very heavily selected for Anthropic sycophancy … I’m not looking forward to it.” The NYT spoke to people who are using https://nytimes.com/2026/07/04/us/politics/voters-ai-chatbots-elections.html?smid=url-share&unlocked article code=1.vFA.TTCt.7KuPI81ZZaDz AI chatbots to guide their midterm votes. The Atlantic examined https://theatlantic.com/economy/2026/07/universal-basic-capital-ai/687759/?gift=B4NINWqiw4tBP9MYaGW-gfXwwfs6UYXgiQLmr3TupNg “universal basic capital” proposals as a hedge against AI-driven inequality, which potentially risks regulatory capture and government control over AI companies.A Brown University professor said he suspects https://insidehighered.com/news/faculty/learning-assessment/2026/07/08/brown-professor-suspects-most-his-class-used-ai-cheat most of his students use AI to cheat, citing a suspicious average score of 96% in his class’s midterm take-home exam.The WSJ looked at thewealthy families choosing https://wsj.com/us-news/education/alternative-education-wealthy-families-ai-cd7922b3?reflink=desktopwebshare permalink&st=TeME61 AI-based alternative schools over traditional education.Epoch AI researchers argued https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/the-missing-half-of-ai-futurism-debates that AI futurism debates overlook how hard things like Dyson spheres actually are to build.1X unveiled https://wired.com/story/the-1x-neo-robot-has-freaky-fast-fingers its remarkably dextrous new robot hands, in a video which includes a wild shot of a humanoid robot … undressing someone. MEME OF THE WEEK Credit: @RespectfulMemes. Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend.