The Arena - SiliconNoon (Page 29)

The Arena

Hugging Face's $400 Microduck puts a waddling robot on every desk

The model hub wants to be the place you buy your next robot, and this week it put a price tag on that ambition. Hugging Face unveiled Microduck on August 27 — a $399 bipedal robot, about ten inches tall and under two pounds, that waddles, sings and skates, developed in part by Pollen Robotics and manufactured by Shenzhen's Seeed Studio. Hugging Face shipped Microduck, an open, $399 bipedal robot that turns the model hub into a robot shelf. About the size and weight of a small book, the little m

The Arena

SK Telecom spins off AI data centers as KKR-backed SK Horizon

The AI build-out kept extending past the models themselves today: SK Telecom carved its data centers into a dedicated investment vehicle backed by KKR, while Kioxia moved to add a third Japanese fabrication plant for AI-driven memory demand. Two bets on the physical infrastructure underneath the boom. SK Telecom announced it will spin off its data-center business into a new company called SK Horizon, bringing in a combined 3.08 trillion won (about $2.3 billion) of equity from KKR and a consorti

The Arena

Microsoft brings Arabic AI models to its enterprise stack

Microsoft is bringing Saudi AI firm HUMAIN's Arabic-language models into its enterprise platform. The two companies announced a long-term collaboration to put HUMAIN's ALLAM model family into Microsoft's AI ecosystem — available through Microsoft Foundry for building, customizing and deploying Arabic-language applications and agents, and wired into M365 Copilot for mission-critical productivity and business workflows. Microsoft's Forward Deployed Engineers will work alongside HUMAIN's AI experts

The Arena

AWS orders 2 million more Nvidia GPUs for 2027–2028

Amazon and Nvidia have expanded their decade-long partnership with a deal that adds 2 million more Nvidia GPUs to Amazon's data centers, deploying through 2027 and 2028. It is a fresh, concrete signal that top-tier AI infrastructure demand still has a long runway. AWS is betting 2 million more Nvidia GPUs that the AI buildout hasn't peaked. The expanded partnership brings Nvidia's Blackwell Ultra, Rubin, and Rubin Ultra chips into Amazon Web Services' data centers across 2027 and 2028, accordin

The Arena

OpenAI backs its second startup fund with $400 million

OpenAI has committed about $400 million to its second venture fund, and this time it is writing the check alone. A new SEC filing shows the AI lab opening its next startup vehicle with roughly $400 million in capital, per a Wall Street Journal report — a sharp break from 2021, when OpenAI raised $175 million for its first fund from outside investors, including Microsoft. That shift, first reported by WSJ, turns the lab's investing arm into a wholly self-funded operation at a moment when OpenAI i

The Arena

Thinking Machines co-founder Zoph returns to Google as VP of research

One of the most-watched names in frontier AI is going home. Barret Zoph, a co-founder of Thinking Machines Lab and a veteran OpenAI researcher, is returning to Google as vice president of research, the Wall Street Journal reports. Thinking Machines Lab co-founder Barret Zoph is returning to Google as a vice president of research, the latest swing in the talent war behind the frontier model race. Zoph left OpenAI in June and stepped away from Thinking Machines Lab in January, according to the Jo

The Arena

Nvidia in talks to buy Hugging Face for over $13 billion

The chip giant that powers most of the AI business is reportedly moving to buy the platform where much of the open-source world lives. Nvidia has been in serious talks to acquire Hugging Face at a valuation above $13 billion, Business Insider reported on Wednesday, citing a person familiar with the matter. Microsoft also met with Hugging Face about a deal, but those conversations are no longer ongoing, the report said — a sign that Nvidia has emerged as the lead suitor for the de facto home of

The Arena

Viral AI agent Instinct raises $350M at a $2.5B valuation

The fastest thing in consumer AI right now isn't a model release — it's a barely-older-than-summer personal assistant called Instinct, and Silicon Valley can't sign checks fast enough. The startup behind it has pulled in $350 million at a valuation of $2.5 billion, a fivefold jump that its backers are framing not as a bet on one app but as a signal about where agentic AI is headed. Instinct, a life-organizing AI agent offered by Spear Street Technology and founded by the 23-year-old Noah Shinn,

The Arena

Nvidia's $96B quarter puts it on the edge of $100B

The AI build-out has a new eye-watering milestone: Nvidia just turned in a record quarter and told Wall Street the next one could be even bigger — the clearest signal yet that the compute arms race shows no sign of slowing. Nvidia posted a record $96.2 billion in revenue for its second fiscal quarter, up 106% year over year, setting the company up to become the second trillion-dollar quarterly club member on AI demand alone. Data center revenue more than doubled to $89 billion, and net income j

The Arena

Today in AI — August 26, 2026

It was an earnings-day closer for the books: Nvidia doubled to its biggest-ever quarter, security vendors are riding an AI-threat supercycle, and the PC and cloud stacks both showed how the boom is really shaping demand. Industry * Nvidia turned in its largest quarter on record, with revenue up 106% year over year to $96.2 billion as data-center revenue jumped 117% to $89 billion — proof of an AI-spending inflection point, with net income more than doubling to $59.7 billion and third-quarter

The Arena

Salesforce and Anthropic launch 'Claudeforce' for sales teams

The long-simmering question about whether generative AI will eat the software incumbents is getting its clearest answer yet: the incumbents are racing to put the models inside their own products. Salesforce and Anthropic on Wednesday deepened their alliance, and the enterprise giant's results show just how much its AI bet is paying off. Salesforce and Anthropic are betting enterprise AI is their upgrade, not their replacement. The two companies expanded their strategic partnership by unveiling

The Arena

MiniMax triples revenue to $117M as losses narrow 11%

The Chinese model labs' financial scoreboard keeps shifting — and MiniMax just posted the loudest growth number yet. Its first-half 2026 report lands the same week DeepSeek's leaked books and SenseTime's first-ever profit redrew expectations for how this generation of frontier AI actually makes money. MiniMax's revenue raced 283% higher — but the losses are racing too MiniMax reported first-half 2026 revenue of $117 million, up 283% year over year, while its attributable net loss narrowed to

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