McDonald's has been using artificial intelligence to dynamically price menu items in the US and some global markets, according to a report by Reuters. This involves finding the "optimal price" to match what a particular store's patrons would be willing to pay. This fluctuates according to location, and even stores in the same city can have different cost amounts for the same exact items, according to information reviewed by Reuters. This is basically surge pricing, like with ride-share platforms, but for hockey puck burgers that have been sitting under a hot lamp. Reuters got a look at the interface that franchisees use to access this technology and it's pretty creepy. Messages show stuff like "your restaurant is showing MEDIUM SENSITIVITY to price" based on "customer willingness to pay in your area."

As China and the U.S. race to build separate artificial intelligence supply chains, investors are playing both sides, with U.S. banks fundraising for AI upstarts in China and Chinese money flowing to U.S. tech. The stakes are sizable, with Wall Street banks acting as book-runners on 19 Chinese high-tech equity capital market deals worth $17.2 billion so far this year, according to LSEG data, accounting for nearly 30% of the sector's total issuance. U.S. stocks, particularly semiconductors, are also the favorite destination for China's outbound mutual funds. The value of U.S. equity held by Hong Kong residents and mainland Chinese has jumped 23% in the past year to top $750 billion, U.S. data shows. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

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When Jessica Wachter, a finance professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, wanted to assess AI's impact on the economy over the next few years, she faced a long list of business and technical uncertainties. So she started with what she calls a "remarkable fact" that is not in question: A handful of so-called hyperscalers are investing huge amounts of money to build AI data centers. Instead of trying to predict how useful and widely deployed AI models will be, she simply asked how fast the hyperscalers' earnings will need to grow to justify their spending through 2027, when--she and her collaborator estimate--expenditures will reach nearly $1.1 trillion.

SoftBank-backed SB Energy aims to raise $500 million from Japan for U.S. IPO The proceeds from SB Energy's public listing in Japan will be used to develop and build data centers and power plants. SB Energy, a data center firm backed by SoftBank Group, is aiming to raise as much as $500 million in the Japanese portion of its planned initial public offering (IPO) in the U.S., following other major deals tapping the country's deep pools of capital. The company will start taking investor orders as soon as this month, according to a local regulatory filing Tuesday. The proceeds will be used for developing and constructing infrastructure including data centers and power plants. SB Energy, whose strategic investors include OpenAI and Nvidia, filed for an IPO in the U.S. this month. Mizuho Financial Group, Daiwa Securities Group, PayPay Securities, Rakuten Securities and SBI Holdings will act as the selling agents for Mizuho's U.S. arm, according to the filing.

For decades, one of Canada's biggest selling points to foreign investors was its access to the world's largest economy next door. Prime Minister Mark Carney is now trying to sell something bigger -- to bet on Canada itself. The invitation-only meeting will bring some of the world's largest pension and sovereign wealth funds and asset managers together with corporate executives, Canadian premiers and federal officials. Carney, a former central banker with deep ties to the global investment world, wants them to put money into everything from mines and pipelines to ports, artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing. It is part of a much bigger push to catalyse $1 trillion in investment in Canada over the next five years, with about $280bn in public investment and government incentives to help draw in private and institutional capital.

Donald Trump said China would benefit from a slowdown in US AI development. Donald Trump said China would benefit from a slowdown in US AI development. President hits out after Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX leaders back call to limit'reckless' development Donald Trump has dismissed calls to increase controls on AI as a "sick conspiracy", as stocks linked to the technology slumped after appeals from leading developers on the weekend for the industry to slow down. The US president wrote on social media: "The only control or'guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the USA has that, in spades!" It came after the chief executive of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, appealed for the AI industry to limit "reckless" development .

Each September, a who's who of executives from across Silicon Valley descends on San Francisco's Palace Hotel to charm investors at a conference hosted by the investment bank Goldman Sachs. This past week, between talk of growth and potential returns, tech titans found themselves addressing the abrupt resignation of Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon. Coxon, a 27-year-old who worked at OpenAI before joining its chief rival Anthropic, said on Tuesday that people building artificial intelligence (AI) believed the technology could destroy humanity. They are gambling with our lives, he said, these will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything. Coxon is by no means the first AI insider to publicly sound the alarm.

God told them to sell crypto. A pastor and his wife created a cryptocurrency and hawked it in Christian communities. When it came crashing down, investors lost millions and they were accused of fraud. When Eli Regalado first heard God speak to him, he wondered whether he was hallucinating. Now he likens the experience to having "a thought that is not my thought." Divine words echo in his mind like a line from a movie or the memory of a loved one's voice. "It's not'You better do this,'" he says. Holy messages arrive daily while Eli is praying, reading, or watching television. Sometimes they surface in prophetic dreams or missives from strangers. Occasionally, they appear midsentence, when he pauses to ask, "Lord, what do you want to say here?" Eli's wife, Kaitlyn, tends to get heavenly dispatches in the shower, when she finally has a moment to herself. Other times, she seeks counsel from above. "I'll be writing in my journal and praying and asking questions and just believing what I'm hearing is Him," she says. God's directives have been manifold. According to the Regalados, He told them to get married, buy a house, and start having kids. When Eli owned a marketing firm in Colorado, He told him what to name it, whom to hire, and which clients to take on. Then God told him to start preaching in his living room and online. In 2021, when Eli was 41 and Kaitlyn was 28, divine guidance steered them in an unexpected new direction: crypto.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has today announced NVIDIA is buying Hugging Face in a deal valued at 12.93 billion. It's the confirmation of a rumor that's been circulating for several weeks, with NVIDIA reportedly intensifying its interest in the company after other buyers became interested. Developers use Hugging Face to share, discover and test AI models. As the generative AI boom began in 2022, the platform established itself as a central hub for open-source models. Assuming the deal goes through, it puts NVIDIA in a dominant position for both AI hardware and open software.