SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company, said on Tuesday that it had struck a deal with the artificial intelligence start-up Cursor that could result in its acquiring the young company for $60 billion. SpaceX is making the deal just as it prepares to go public in what is likely to be one of the largest initial public offerings ever. In a social media post, SpaceX said the combination with Cursor, which makes code-writing software, would “allow us to build the world’s most useful” A.I. models.

SpaceX added that the agreement gave it the option “to acquire Cursor later this year for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for our work together.” It is unclear if the companies plan to consummate the deal before or after SpaceX’s I.P.O., which could happen as early as June. […] Cursor, which has raised more than $3 billion in funding, was founded in 2022 and made waves as a fast-growing A.I. start-up. It was under pressure in recent months after OpenAI and Anthropic announced competing code-writing products that were embraced by tech companies. Cursor had been in talks to raise funding in recent weeks.

The Republican attorney general, James Uthmeier, said at a press conference in Tampa on Tuesday that accused gunman Phoenix Ikner consulted ChatGPT for advice before the shooting, including what type of gun to use, what ammunition went with it, and what time to go to campus to encounter more people, according to an initial review of Ikner’s chat logs. “My prosecutors have looked at this and they’ve told me, if it was a person on the other end of that screen, we would be charging them with murder,” Uthmeier said. “We cannot have AI bots that are advising people on how to kill others.”

Uthmeier’s office is issuing subpoenas to OpenAI seeking information about its policies and internal training materials related to user threats of harm and how it cooperates with and reports crimes to law enforcement, dating back to March 2024. At the press conference, Uthmeier acknowledged the investigation is entering into uncharted territory and is uncertain about whether OpenAI has criminal liability. “We are going to look at who knew what, designed what, or should have done what,” he said. “And if it is clear that individuals knew that this type of dangerous behavior might take place, that these types of unfortunate, tragic events might take place, and nevertheless still turned to profit, still allowed this business to operate, then people need to be held accountable.”

[…] Ikner, 21, is facing multiple charges of murder and attempted murder for the April 2025 shooting near the student union on FSU’s Tallahassee campus, where he was a student at the time. His trial is set to begin on Oct. 19. According to court filings, more than 200 AI messages have been entered into evidence in the case.

Mozilla says it used an early version of Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview to comb through Firefox’s code, and the results were hard to ignore. In Firefox 150, the team fixed 271 vulnerabilities identified during this effort, a number that would have been unthinkable not long ago. Instead of relying only on fuzzing tools or human review, the AI was able to reason through code and surface issues that typically require highly specialized expertise.

The bigger implication is less about one release and more about where this is heading. Security has long favored attackers, since they only need to find a single flaw while defenders have to protect everything. If AI can scale vulnerability discovery for defenders, that dynamic could start to shift. It does not mean zero days disappear overnight, but it suggests a future where bugs are found and fixed faster than attackers can weaponize them.

Framework has been selling and shipping its modular, repairable, upgradable Laptop 13 for five years now, and in that time, it has released six distinct versions of its system board, each using fresh versions of Intel and AMD processors (seven versions, if you count this RISC-V one). The laptop around those components has gradually gotten better, too. Over the years, Framework has added higher-resolution screens in both matte and glossy finishes, a slightly larger battery, and other tweaked components that refine the original design. But so far, all of those parts have been totally interchangeable, and the fundamentals of the Laptop 13 design haven’t changed much.

That changes today with the Framework Laptop 13 Pro, which, despite its name, is less an offshoot of the original Laptop 13 and closer to a ground-up redesign. It includes new Core Ultra Series 3 chips (codenamed Panther Lake), Framework’s first touchscreen, a new black aluminum color option, a larger battery, and other significant changes. And while it sacrifices some component compatibility with the original Laptop 13, displays and motherboards remain interchangeable, so Framework Laptop owners can buy the new Core Ultra board and owners of older Framework Laptop boards can pop one into a Pro to benefit from the new battery and screen. At 1.4kg (about 3 pounds), the Laptop 13 Pro is slightly heavier than the Laptop 13’s 1.3kg, but it still stacks up well against the 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro (1.55kg, or 3.4 pounds).

The Framework Laptop Pro will start at $1,199 for a DIY edition with a Core Ultra 5 325 processor, and no RAM, SSD, or operating system. A prebuilt version with Ubuntu Linux installed will start at $1,499, and Windows 11 will cost another $100 on top of that. A Core Ultra X7 358H version starts at $1,599 for a DIY edition, and a “limited batch” Core Ultra X9 388H version starts at $1,799. A bare motherboard with the Core Ultra 5 325 starts at $449, while a Core Ultra X7 358H board will cost $799. Pre-orders are available now, and begin shipping in June.

Less than four months ago, Bank of America’s chief executive, Brian T. Moynihan, volunteered in a TV interview what he would say to his 210,000 employees about the chance of artificial intelligence replacing human work. “You don’t have to worry,” he said. “It’s not a threat to their jobs.” Last week, after Bank of America reported $8.6 billion in profit for the first quarter — $1.6 billion more than the same period a year earlier — Mr. Moynihan struck a different tone. The bank’s bottom line, he said, was helped by shedding 1,000 jobs through attrition by “eliminating work and applying technology,” which he repeatedly specified was artificial intelligence. He predicted more of that in the months and years to come. “A.I. gives us places to go we haven’t gone,” Mr. Moynihan said.

The veneer of Wall Street’s longstanding assertion — that A.I. will enhance human work, not replace it — is rapidly peeling away, as evidenced by the current quarterly earnings season. JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo racked up $47 billion in collective profits, up 18 percent, while shedding 15,000 employees. All of them credited A.I. to some degree with helping cut jobs and automate work in areas ranging from the so-called back office, where tens of thousands of employees fill out paperwork to comply with various laws and regulations, to the front office, where seven-figure salaried professionals put together complicated financial transactions for corporate clients.

Unlike executives in Silicon Valley, few major financial figures are stating outright that A.I. is eliminating jobs. Citi, for example, has pledged to shrink its work force by 20,000 people through what one executive described to financial analysts last week as the company’s “productivity and efficiency journey.” The bank is paying for A.I. software from Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, to automatically read legal documents, approve account openings, send invoices for trades and organize sensitive customer data, among other tasks, according to public statements by bank executives and two people familiar with Citi’s systems. Among the recent job cuts at Citi were scores of employees who were part of the bank’s “A.I. Champions and Accelerators” program, according to the two people, who were not permitted by the bank to speak publicly. The program involves Citi employees who perform their day jobs while also working to persuade their colleagues to adopt A.I. technologies.

Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth told employees in a separate memo shared on Monday that the company would step up internal data collection as part of those “AI for Work” efforts, now re-branded as Agent Transformation Accelerator (ATA). “The vision we are building towards is one where our agents primarily do the work and our role is to direct, review and help them improve,” Bosworth said. The aim, he added, was for agents to “automatically see where we felt the need to intervene so they can be better next time.” Bosworth did not explicitly spell out how those agents would be trained, but said Meta would be “rigorous” about “building up data and evals for all the types of interactions we have as we go about our work.”

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone acknowledged that the MCI data would be among the inputs. […] “If we’re building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people “actually use them — things like mouse movements, clicking buttons, and navigating dropdown menus,” said Stone.

At Google, leaders are anxious about falling behind in the race to offer AI coding tools, especially as rivals like Anthropic PBC offer more effective and popular tools to businesses, according to people familiar with the matter. The search giant is now working to unite some of its coding initiatives under one banner to speed progress and take advantage of a surge in customer interest. In some corners of Alphabet’s Google, particularly AI lab DeepMind, concerns about the company’s position are mounting, according to current and former employees and executives, who declined to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

Businesses are just starting to realize that AI coding tools can enable anyone to build products by prompting a chatbot. But Google doesn’t have a clear solution for them. Its Gemini model’s capabilities are sprinkled across half a dozen different coding products with different branding, indicating how the company’s lack of focus and competing internal efforts have hampered success, the people said. Even internally, some Google engineers prefer to use Anthropic’s Claude Code, they said. More concerning, the people said, are the engineers who are struggling to adopt AI coding at all. […] Google’s emphasis on its own technology has also complicated the push to catch up. Most employees are banned from using competing tools such as Claude Code or Codex due to security concerns, but Googlers can request exceptions if they can demonstrate they have a business case, one former employee said. Some teams at DeepMind, including those working on the Gemini model, internal applications, and open source models, use Claude Code, according to three former employees. “You want the best people to use the best tool, even inside Google,” one of the former employees said. […]

In recent years, DeepMind has tried to tighten control over how its AI breakthroughs are woven into Google products. Last year, Google appointed Kavukcuoglu to a new position as chief AI architect, a role in which he is charged with folding generative AI into Google products. Yet confusion about who is leading the charge on AI coding persists. Along with DeepMind, Google Cloud, Google Core, Google Labs and Android are all pushing AI coding in different ways, one of the people said. […] Within the Googleplex, there is a philosophical clash between AI researchers who want to move as quickly as possible and more traditional senior engineers who have exacting standards for code quality, former employees say. AI usage is factored into performance reviews, according to a former employee. But engineers who try to use internal AI coding tools often hit capacity constraints due to competition for computing power, the former employee said.

After Xbox CEO Asha Sharma admitted last week that “Game Pass has become too expensive for players,” Microsoft is dropping the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. Starting today, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate drops from $29.99 to $22.99 a month, and PC Game Pass moves to $13.99, down from $16.49 a month.

The price drops are being fueled in part by future of Call of Duty titles no longer joining Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass at launch. “New Call of Duty games will be added to Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass during the following holiday season (about a year later), while existing Call of Duty titles already in the library will continue to be available,” says Microsoft.

The IEA report covers energy use, including the electrical grid, transportation, home heating, and other forms of consumption. As such, it can track how some of those uses are shifting, as electric vehicles displace some gasoline use and heat pumps replace gas and oil heating. It also saw a more global trend: The demand for electricity grew at twice the rate of overall energy demand. All of these went into the conclusion that we’re starting the Age of Electricity. In terms of specifics, the IEA saw electric vehicle demand rise by nearly 40 percent, with electric car sales being a quarter of the total of cars sold last year. While that’s having a measurable effect on electricity demand, it remains relatively small at the moment. It’s almost certain to be contributing to the size of the rise in oil use last year: 0.7 percent. In absolute terms, that’s less than half the average rise of the previous decade.

[…] When it comes to supplying electrons for those alternatives, the central story is solar power. “The absolute increase of solar PV generation in 2025 is the largest ever observed for any source,” the IEA says, “excluding years marked by rebounds from global economic shocks such as COVID-19.” In other words, with nothing in particular driving the energy markets in 2025, Solar’s growth was unprecedented. On its own, its growth covered a quarter of the rising demand for all forms of energy. If you limit it to electricity, increased solar production covered over two-thirds of the increased demand. Overall, solar generated over 2,700 terawatt-hours last year, more than double its output from three years earlier. It now accounts for over 8 percent of the world’s total electricity production. Thirty individual countries installed at least a gigawatt of solar last year, and it is now the single largest grid source by capacity (though other sources still outproduce it at the moment).

Maryland is poised to become the first state in the country to ban “surveillance pricing.” The practice refers to companies using a shopper’s personal data, such as browsing history, location, or purchasing behavior, to tailor prices to individual customers. The Protection From Predatory Pricing Act, passed this month and sent to the governor for a signature, would prohibit food retailers and third-party delivery services from using the practice. Violations would be treated as deceptive trade practices under state law, with potential fines and lawsuits.

Amazon’s investment includes $5 billion into Anthropic now, with up to $20 billion in the future tied to “certain commercial milestones,” according to a release. The initial investment is at Anthropic’s latest valuation of $380 billion. Anthropic said in the release that it will bring nearly 1 gigawatt total of Trainium2 and Trainium3 capacity online by the end of the year.

With all of the major hyperscalers competing to build out AI capacity as quickly as possible, Amazon said in February that it expects to shell out roughly $200 billion this year on capital expenditures, mostly on AI infrastructure.

The initiative comes from the goal of providing “safe, age-appropriate experiences for players and families while respecting their privacy” and providing “meaningful control over their gaming experiences.” The age-verification process will be implemented globally, and players will need to verify their age to continue using PlayStation communication services, such as messages and voice chat. If the player opts not to verify their age, they can still use other services, such as games, trophies, and the store. Only the communication experience will be affected if you choose not to verify your age. PlayStation didn’t provide a date for when players will need to begin the verification process.

A ban on mobile phones in schools in England is to be introduced by the government to ensure that “critical safeguarding legislation” is passed. The government will table an amendment to the children’s wellbeing and schools bill in the House of Lords after the bill was held up by peers on opposition benches. It will make existing guidance on mobile phone bans in schools statutory, a move that ministers have resisted until now.

The government had consistently argued that the vast majority of schools had already banned mobile phones, and that there was no need to add a legal requirement. They finally capitulated, however, describing it as “a pragmatic measure” to get the bill through. […] The bill is regarded by many as the biggest piece of child protection legislation in decades and includes proposals for a compulsory register for children who are not in school, a crackdown on profiteering in children’s social care, and a “single unique identifier” to help agencies track a child’s welfare.

Cook leaves an impressive legacy after growing the company to a $4 trillion market capitalization from just $300 billion 15 years ago. Over Cook’s 15-year tenure as CEO, Apple’s stock has risen 1,932%, beating the S&P 500’s 504% increase, according to Dow Jones Market Data. That places Apple’s stock as the 38th best-performing member of the index over that period of time.

Cook had big shoes to fill, replacing Apple’s iconic founder, Steve Jobs, as CEO. Cook’s successor, John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, will need to guide Apple’s through uncharted waters as the company navigates its artificial-intelligence transition and supply-chain constraints. Cook will remain at Apple as executive chairman.