TL;DR

Meta’s $1.25B OpenAI talent push rebuffed; Germany launches €631B AI drive; OpenAI outage hits paid users.

Highlights

• Meta offered up to $1.25 billion to recruit OpenAI talent and attempted to acquire Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI); both efforts were rebuffed 1.
• Over 60 German firms and Chancellor Merz launched a €631B "Made for Germany" initiative focused on AI, industrial data, and tech innovation, including NVIDIA partnerships 2.
• OpenAI’s ChatGPT Agent rollout for paid users triggered a major outage, highlighting reliability issues amid 500M weekly active users 3.
• Microsoft issued urgent patches for a critical SharePoint zero-day (CVE-2025-53770) exploited globally; on-premises installations remain at risk 4.
• UK is likely to withdraw its Apple iCloud backdoor demand after U.S. pressure, aiming to maintain digital trade and AI regulatory cooperation 5.
• Tesla ’s robotaxi launch in Austin led to analyst price target hikes, citing scalable autonomous tech and SaaS economics 6.
• WeRide and Lenovo unveiled HPC 3.0, a cost-reducing, Nvidia Thor-powered platform for L4 autonomous vehicles, debuting in WeRide’s Robotaxi GXR 7.
• Pinterest was upgraded to Overweight by Morgan Stanley, citing improved ad efficiency and AI-driven product innovation 9.
• India launched an AI-powered Traditional Knowledge Digital Library to digitize and protect centuries-old medical knowledge and support drug discovery 10.
• Galaxy Digital advanced plans for a major U.S. AI data center, boosting its profile alongside a $3B crypto portfolio and analyst upgrades 11.

Commentary

Meta ’s aggressive pursuit of OpenAI talent and its attempt to acquire Safe Superintelligence Inc. signal intensifying competition for AI leadership, with leading researchers commanding unprecedented compensation packages. The refusal of OpenAI staff and SSI to accept Meta’s offers highlights the high retention and mission alignment within top AI labs, suggesting that strategic differentiation and culture remain as important as capital in this talent market 1.

Germany’s €631 billion “Made for Germany” initiative represents a coordinated national effort to accelerate AI and tech innovation, leveraging industrial data and partnerships with firms like NVIDIA 2. This scale of investment could shift enterprise AI adoption and research activity in Europe, while also influencing global standards and supply chain priorities as Germany seeks to strengthen its position relative to U.S. and Asian competitors 2.

Operational resilience remains a concern for hyperscale AI platforms. OpenAI’s ChatGPT Agent launch, followed by a significant outage for paid users, underscores the challenge of scaling reliably as user demand surges 3. In parallel, Microsoft ’s critical SharePoint zero-day exploit highlights ongoing risks in legacy infrastructure, reinforcing the urgency of cloud migration and robust security practices for organizations deploying AI at scale 4.

On the regulatory front, the UK’s anticipated withdrawal of its Apple iCloud backdoor order after U.S. intervention illustrates the growing interplay between AI regulation, encryption policy, and international digital trade 5. As governments negotiate AI frameworks and data access, cross-border alignment and policy reversals will be increasingly relevant for AI product teams and compliance leaders 5.

Elsewhere, the commercialization of autonomous vehicles is advancing, with Tesla ’s robotaxi rollout and WeRide’s cost-cutting HPC 3.0 platform both drawing positive analyst attention 67. India’s AI-powered traditional medicine library and Galaxy Digital ’s AI data center plans further demonstrate the breadth of AI’s impact—from heritage preservation and healthcare to infrastructure and financial services 1011.