Business

• Alibaba prices HK$80 billion share placement to fund AI expansion

  Alibaba prices 710 million new shares at HK$112.70, directing all net proceeds to full-stack AI capabilities and infrastructure, pending expected August 26 closing.

• Chinese AI models take OpenRouter’s top three spots in real-world usage

  DeepSeek, Tencent and Xiaomi lead OpenRouter’s weekly token rankings, showing a major shift in real-world developer usage across coding and agent workloads.

• OpenAI cuts GPT-5.6 Sol API pricing for three months

  GPT-5.6 Sol input falls to $4 and output to $20 per million tokens on AWS through at least November 21, materially changing frontier-model workload economics.

• Grok 4.6 lands in Google’s enterprise model catalog

  Google adds Grok 4.6 to Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform in Preview, with 524K context, reasoning, function calling and fixed launch quotas.

• Starcloud Raises $250M to Scale Nvidia-Powered AI Data Centers in Orbit

  Starcloud raises $250 million at a $2.3 billion valuation as Nvidia and Cisco back its orbital AI data-center scale-up.

• Spotify signs Kobalt licensing deal for AI-powered covers and remixes

  Spotify signs Kobalt licensing deal for AI-powered covers and remixes Spotify has signed a licensing agreement with music publisher Kobalt for its planned generative-AI tool that will let users create…

• Scale AI appoints Francis deSouza as its new CEO

  Scale AI appoints Francis deSouza as its new CEO Scale AI has appointed Francis deSouza as chief executive, effective August 10, succeeding interim CEO Jason Droege. Scale says the leadership change c…

• ChatGPT Ads expands to five more international markets

  ChatGPT Ads expands to five more international markets OpenAI has expanded ChatGPT Ads to the UK, Mexico, Brazil, Japan and South Korea as it continues testing advertising as a way to support free acc…

• Google Deepens TPU Supply Chain With Performance-Linked Marvell Deal

  Google deepens its Marvell custom-silicon partnership across TPU infrastructure with performance-linked warrants tied to future purchases.

• Nvidia Pays $6B to License Poolside’s Model-Building Factory

  Nvidia reportedly licenses Poolside’s Model Factory for $6 billion, invests $1 billion and offers jobs to 109 technical staff.