A group of current and former Microsoft staff has circulated an open letter accusing the company of putting AI ahead of its workers, customers and climate goals. It comes as Microsoft offers buyouts to roughly 60,000 employees, the biggest offer of its kind in the company's history.
The signatories want staff to have a say in how AI is built and used, and they want an end to tying AI use to rewards or penalties. They also want Microsoft to keep its goals of removing more carbon than it emits, replenishing more water than it uses and producing zero waste by 2030.
AI-related financing now makes up about a quarter of bank lending growth to companies in the euro zone, the European Central Bank's chief economist Philip Lane said.
Lane noted that credit has stayed robust despite higher interest rates and an oil price shock. Without AI, company loan growth would be 3% a year instead of 4%, even though AI sectors are a small part of the economy.
He would prefer more investment funded through equity, which could let AI-native firms expand faster. The ECB is expected to raise rates again at its December meeting.
Sachin Tendulkar has taken a non-controlling stake in Recykal, the Indian waste management technology firm.
His investment extends the $23 million round Recykal closed in June. The company will use the money to strengthen its tech platform, expand its Deposit Return System for packaging waste, and grow internationally.
Recykal's goal is to change the habits of a billion people, and Tendulkar said he was drawn in by how technology tackled a daily problem.
SpaceX plans to invest more than $74 billion across two AI supercomputing campuses, one in Texas and one in Arizona.
The Texas facility at Starbase, estimated at over $24 billion, will sit on about 444 acres near Brownsville and generate its own power off the public grid. The project has already created over 3,000 construction jobs.
The roughly $50 billion Arizona campus in Cochise County could scale up to 6 gigawatts, though it still needs county approvals. The Starbase city commission will weigh a property tax break for the Texas project on December 9.
