Plus: OpenAI is also creating a super app. OpenAI has a new grand challenge: building an AI researcher--a fully automated agent-based system capable of tackling large, complex problems by itself. The San Francisco firm said the new goal will be its "north star" for the next few years. By September, the company plans to build "an autonomous AI research intern" that can take on a small number of specific research problems. The intern will be the precursor to the fully automated multi-agent system, which is slated to debut in 2028. In an exclusive interview this week, OpenAI's chief scientist, Jakub Pachocki, talked me through the plans.

Three people associated with artificial intelligence server maker Super Micro Computer, including its cofounder, have been charged with helping smuggle at least $2.5bn-worth of United States AI technology to China in violation of export laws, according to the US Department of Justice. US prosecutors did not name Super Micro in the complaint, referring only to a "US manufacturer", but San Jose, California-based Super Micro said it was informed by federal prosecutors of the indictment on Thursday. The Justice Department said it had charged Yih-Shyan Liaw, Ruei-Tsang Chang, and Ting-Wei Sun in an indictment unsealed in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday, on allegations of a complex scheme to send US-made servers through Taiwan to other countries in Southeast Asia, where they were swapped into unmarked boxes and sent on to China. The US has had export restrictions on China for advanced AI chips since 2022. In a release, FBI Assistant Director in Charge James Barnacle said the defendants used fabricated documents, staged bogus equipment to pass audit inventories, and used a pass-through company to conceal their misconduct and true clientele list.

A trio linked with a US technology supplier have been charged over a ploy to smuggle American artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China, the Department of Justice said on Thursday. The individuals allegedly conspired to sell billions of dollars' worth of technology to buyers in China by faking documents and using dummy equipment to slip past audits, according to the DOJ. The goods in question included Nvidia-made semiconductors, highly coveted AI chips which are subject to export controls. In August 2025, two Chinese nationals were also arrested and charged with illegally shipping millions of dollars' worth of Nvidia chips to China. The DOJ said in a statement on Thursday that it had arrested US-citizen Yih-Shyan Wally Liaw and Taiwanese citizen Ting-Wei Willy Sun, while Ruei-Tsang Steven Chang, a Taiwanese citizen, remains a fugitive.

The boss of Amazon's server business has joined Apple's Tim Cook in demanding Bloomberg retract a story claims Chinese spy chips were inside some of its servers. '@tim_cook is right,' Andy Jassy tweeted. 'Bloomberg story is wrong about Amazon, too. Andy Jassy said the'Reporters got played or took liberties'. Bloomberg has so far stood by its story, despite every firm involved denying it.

Tim Cook has hit back at Bloomberg for a story claiming the servers of tech giants including Apple contained spy chips. Apple, Amazon and Super Micro, the Chinese motherboard manufacturer Bloomberg claimed introduced the chips, all deny claims the chips, which were'not much bigger than a grain of rice,' would have given China unprecedented backdoor access to computers and data. There is no truth in their story about Apple,' Cook told BuzzFeed News in a phone interview. 'They need to do that right thing and retract it.' Apple CEO Tim Cook, center, talks with Qu Zhangcai, left, and Liu Zhipeng, right, founders of the Xichuangzhu software app, during a visit to the Confucius Tempe in Beijing earlier this month.

Cybersecurity is full of hard problems, but perhaps none so difficult as securing the supply chain for our electronic devices. That's why the report published this week by Bloomberg about Chinese spies secretly planting microchips in American electronics in order to conduct espionage is so deeply unsettling. There is no way to address the threat of foreign governments compromising our hardware that does not require fundamentally and radically rethinking how we manufacture our devices and lead to more expensive, less ubiquitous electronics at exactly the moment when the internet of things seems to be pushing us in the opposite direction. According to Bloomberg, members of China's People's Liberation Army inserted the compromised microchips during the manufacturing process for motherboards produced by Super Micro Computer Inc., a company based in California. Those compromised motherboards, in turn, found their way to nearly 30 different companies and prompted an ongoing investigation by the U.S. government when the errant microchips were finally discovered by Amazon.

Tech giants including Apple and Amazon have hit back at claims by Bloomberg their servers may have been fitted with tiny microchips placed there by Chinese spies. The chips, which were'not much bigger than a grain of rice,' would have given China unprecedented backdoor access to computers and data, according to Bloomberg. Apple, Amazon and Super Micro, the Chinese motherboard manufacturer believed to have introduced the chips, have all issued statements denying the report. An Apple spokesman strongly denied the report in a statement, saying: 'On this we can be very clear: Apple has never found malicious chips, 'hardware manipulations' or vulnerabilities purposely planted in any server. Apple never had any contact with the FBI or any other agency about such an incident.