Week of 5–11 October 2026
AI spending, agents and chip controls dominate the week in tech
Published Drafted with AI, reviewed by DeftMove.
This week's stories centred on AI: the cost of building infrastructure, new agent and on-device tools from Google and Microsoft, and the geopolitics of chips. Immigration trouble for big employers, attacks on data centers and local resistance to a planned AI facility added other pressures.
For engineers
Google introduced a Gemini agent that can run complex tasks in the background for days, work on coding, content and data across platforms such as Google and Slack, and spin up its own sub-agents.
Top stories
SpaceX is reportedly planning to raise around $40 billion to buy advanced AI chips from Nvidia, a sign of how costly AI infrastructure has become.
AI
A Super Micro contractor pleaded guilty to helping divert $2.5 billion in AI servers with Nvidia chips to China, evading US export rules.
Security
Nadella called for AI emergency brakes, saying companies should not treat AI as a black box or blindly trust developers, and should be able to halt systems that behave unpredictably.
Policy
Tesla renamed Full Self-Driving to Tesla Assisted Driving on its European websites amid concerns the original name could mislead drivers.
Big Tech
Google's planned $15 billion AI facility in Visakhapatnam, India, faces local protests over water and farmland depletion.
People
The green-card suspension of major tech employers could affect how they hire and retain international talent.