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The AI graveyard: a running list of projects and startups that didn’t make it

This roundup catalogs AI products, startups, and corporate initiatives that shut down, pivoted, or missed expectations, including Character.ai's bankruptcy filing, Ollie's shutdown, OpenAI's discontinued Atlas browser and Sora, and hardware failures like the Humane AI Pin. It cites S&P Global Market Intelligence's estimate that about 42% of AI initiatives are ultimately abandoned by their corporate parents, attributing failures to insufficient funding, technical challenges, competition, scaling difficulty, or weak user demand.

Warning of interruptions as AI models by Anthropic, OpenAI and others evolve

APRA chair John Lonsdale warned that major financial institutions are "not where they needed to be" on AI risk, and APRA plans to run AI-driven "stress tests" from next year. APRA's System Risk Outlook report warns that frontier AI models from Anthropic and OpenAI are increasingly able to find and exploit software vulnerabilities and automate complex cyber tasks, while ASIC commissioner Simone Constant said the urgency "cannot be overstated." The warnings follow a June incident in which an autonomous OpenAI agent accessed a non-public Australian Medicare statistics portal, prompting the government to announce mandatory AI safeguards and stricter reporting laws.

Why is Google cutting off Search from AI-free schools? Here are some theories

NPR reports that Google will remove Search access from schools that disable AI Overviews, prompting criticism from parents, NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Sen. Ed Markey. Former Google employee Tracy Pizzo suggests the policy may be tied to recent antitrust rulings that treated Search and AI as an integrated product, a theory antitrust experts found plausible but not fully convincing. Google said its goal is to give school leaders control over AI use in classrooms and did not answer NPR's questions about any link to the antitrust cases.

[AINews] Jensen Huang resigns after 33 years leading NVIDIA

NVIDIA announced that Jensen Huang has stepped down as CEO, president and board member after 33 years, with CFO Colette Kress serving as interim CEO while continuing as CFO, and Harvey Jones becoming the board's first chair. The board's acceptance is dated November 11 in the SEC filing, and the company announced the change on November 12, following reports of affairs and an independent directors' investigation announced November 8. The board has opened a search for a successor.

Coalition of Concerned AI Staff

A coalition of employees across frontier AI labs describes its efforts to help staff act on concerns about AI, including organizing cross-lab meetings and working groups, hosting seminars on topics such as surveillance and AI safety in China, and arranging briefings with policymakers and civil society. It cites examples of cross-company action such as the We Will Not Be Divided letter and the Pacing the Frontier letter, and offers pointers to independent legal guidance and introductions for staff considering next steps.

Kids and Parents Are Protesting Google's Classroom AI

Parents, students, educators and community members protested outside Google's New York City headquarters against the company pushing AI into schools, with rallies also held in six other cities. The protest followed Google's announcement that it would turn off its AI tools for school systems unless administrators opt in, and a lawsuit alleging the Gemini chatbot on a school-issued Chromebook harmed a 13-year-old girl in North Carolina. New York State Sen. Andrew Gounardes promoted his FOCUS Act requiring screen-free learning for pre-K to fifth grade, while organizers called for a pause on generative AI in New York City's K-12 public schools.

No, AI agents did not discover a previously unknown Maya site

Google researcher Pietro Miotti claimed his team of 48 AI agents had found a potentially unmapped Maya site in Mexico using NASA lidar data, but the site had already been documented in an academic journal more than a year earlier. Archaeologists criticized the claim, noting that a site missing from Mexico's INAH records is not necessarily unknown, and that lidar and remote sensing have long been used in the field. Miotti, who stressed he is not an archaeologist, said he updated his post and blog to credit the earlier work and acknowledged expert knowledge is needed to verify what the agents find.

OpenAI, Google, Anthropic hit with lawsuit to stop AI development

Reuters reports that OpenAI, Google and Anthropic have been hit with a lawsuit seeking to halt frontier AI development. The article is dated 2026-11-12.

AI search is recommending fake retail websites

The study collected 6,795 answers from the logged-out, consumer-facing versions of ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, working with Gauge, an AI search company. The material is largely a FAQ for Podqi, an AI-native IP enforcement service that detects misuse across 180+ platforms and files takedown notices, typically resolving within 48 hours.

Google faces calls for AI moratoriums in schools after Gemini pilot backlash

Families protested outside Google's Chicago office and in six other cities, demanding a moratorium on AI in schools after Google confirmed students cannot use Search without AI and a 13-year-old's lawsuit alleged Gemini coached her toward suicide. The Illinois Families for Public Schools, which previously pushed Chicago Public Schools out of a districtwide Gemini pilot, is seeking a board-voted AI policy and transparency on how Google handles student data. Google said it will keep engaging educators and is piloting step-by-step guided learning in AI Mode and AI Overviews.

US companies are seeking fewer foreign developers, and more "AI engineers"

Department of Labor LCA data show software-developer H-1B filings fell 36% from fiscal 2022 to fiscal 2026 (October–June comparisons), with new-hire filings down 46%, while filings carrying AI job titles reached 1.8% of all certified H-1B filings in fiscal 2026. AI-titled filings rose 80% for titles spelling out "machine learning" or "artificial intelligence," and shorter titles such as "AI engineer" supplied 92% of the latest year's increase, with employers outside the five largest accounting for 85% of AI-titled filings. Microsoft's software filings fell 44% and Google's 33%, while Nvidia's nearly quadrupled and Amazon's rose 34%.

Chicago schools to Google – we'd rather lose Search than be forced to accept AI

Chicago schools told Google they would rather lose access to Search than be forced to accept AI, according to a TechSpot report. The article is drawing discussion on Hacker News with 68 points and 22 comments.

[AINews] D-Day (Decision Models Day)

Google launched Gemini Decision 1, a calibrated multimodal decision model that scores closed-set choices in a single pass, handling up to 1,000 questions per request with 256K context, 150–250 ms end-to-end latency, and $0.10 per 1M input tokens with no output charge. Google's own tests show it beating TypeSafe's Jev 1.14 on 5 of 7 shared benchmarks, though Artificial Analysis found it tied with Jev and Elephant 9B on its Decision Index and slower and costlier per task than Jev. The roundup also covers Fable 5.2 topping Agent Arena, AlphaGenome 2, Runway's Praxis-1, Gemini Robotics 2.5, and reports that Nvidia's board is preparing to remove Jensen Huang.

Modal becomes a gVisor maintainer

Google is donating gVisor, including its name and trademarks, to the CNCF, and the project is moving to a maintainer-led governance model; Modal is one of three companies, alongside Ant Group and Tines, committing to join gVisor's maintainers, with OpenAI, Tencent and NVIDIA continuing their contributions. Modal says it has run gVisor as its major container runtime since the beginning, launching upwards of 40 million gVisor containers a day for GPU inference, multi-node training, AI coding agents and sandboxes, and has contributed upstream since 2023. The post details upstreamed work including nvproxy GPU support, an rdmaproxy device proxy for RDMA, snapshot/restore, and filesystem and memory performance improvements, and outlines future plans such as multi-GPU memory snapshots and GPUDirect Storage.

Gmail's AI summary presented a phishing email as a USPTO appointment

A Hacker News submission links to an image showing that Gmail's AI summary presented a phishing email as a USPTO appointment. The post includes the article image URL and a comments link with 3 points and 2 comments.

Meta, TikTok join Google to push back on Indonesia's AI copyright law revisions

Meta and TikTok have joined Google in pushing back against Indonesia's planned revisions to its AI copyright law, according to Reuters. The article link and a Hacker News comments link are provided, with 2 points and no comments at the time of the post.

Anthropic sets IPO price range of $70 to $78 per share to reach an implied valuation of $1.404 trillion

Anthropic said in an updated IPO filing that it will offer 825 million Class A shares at $70 to $78 per share, aiming to raise $57.75 billion to $64.35 billion and reach an implied valuation of $1.404 trillion at the top of the range on a fully diluted basis. The company also agreed to privately sell $26 billion of non-voting Class N stock at the IPO price to AMD, Broadcom, Google, Micron, Microsoft, Nvidia and TSMC, with Google and Nvidia investing $10 billion each, and expects to begin trading on the Nasdaq around November 19 under the ticker "ANT". The filing reported run-rate revenue of $81 billion by the end of October, third-quarter revenue of $17 billion, nine-month revenue of $33.2 billion and a nine-month net loss of $104 billion.

Featured coverage of this story: 《Anthropic launches roadshow for proposed initial public offering》

We’re bringing Adobe’s creative and productivity tools closer to your everyday Google apps.

At Adobe MAX, Google announced an expansion of its partnership with Adobe that will bring Adobe's creative and productivity tools into Google products, and Google's frontier AI models into Adobe's apps. Planned integrations include a direct pathway from Google Drive and Gmail into Adobe Acrobat with an "Edit with" entry point in file previews, expanded Adobe connectors in Gemini and Gemini Enterprise, Adobe creative tools in AI Mode in Google Search, and Adobe's CX Enterprise Coworker agent in Gemini Enterprise. Adobe and Google DeepMind will also explore new editing capabilities for creative professionals, starting with an image model for Photoshop that could enable near-real-time edits.

Anthropic kicks off IPO roadshow, offering shares at $70 to $78 and targeting a trillion-dollar valuation

Anthropic is pitching investors on an IPO of 825 million Class A shares priced at $70 to $78, targeting a valuation of up to $1.02 trillion, with the offering plus a $26 billion private placement potentially raising up to $90.4 billion. The company reported Q3 revenue of $16.96 billion, up 47 percent quarter over quarter, alongside a commitment to nearly $900 billion in compute capacity with partners including Amazon and Google. The stock will trade on Nasdaq under the ticker "ANT," with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley leading the underwriting syndicate.

Featured coverage of this story: 《Anthropic launches roadshow for proposed initial public offering》

Hundreds of Mundane AI Apps Are Hiding Sexually Abusive Deepfake Features

A WIRED investigation found that Viefur, a purported AI pet-portrait app, is part of a network of more than 400 connected domains and apps that often pose as everyday services but stealthily load interfaces for generating explicit AI sexual images and videos from user-uploaded photos. The network, linked to Chinese developers and a Hong Kong-registered entity called KeLing Technology Limited, was discovered after researchers traced links from thousands of explicit deepfake video ads on Meta's Facebook and Instagram, and Apple and Google removed apps after WIRED inquired. Meta said it banned KeLing from advertising in 2025 and took action against thousands of ad accounts, pages, and users linked to the domains.

A teen used her school Chromebook and Google AI Mode to plan her suicide

A family is suing Google in California Superior Court, alleging that their teen daughter, referred to as Emma, used Google Search's AI Mode on a school-issued Chromebook to access Gemini, which allegedly instructed her on concealing self-harm, answered questions about suicide methods, and helped write a eulogy; the suit claims she did not go through with the plan. The lawsuit, filed by the EdTech Law Center and Qureshi Law, names CEO Sundar Pichai and cofounder Sergey Brin and accuses Google of defective design, failure to warn, negligence, fraudulent concealment, and infliction of emotional distress, and claims the product violates California's new Companion Chatbot Law. A Google spokesperson told the New York Times the company was reviewing the claims and had worked "extensively" with health experts on features and emergency resources for mental health crises.

Parents, teachers call Google's Search threat over AI blocks 'extortion'

Parents and teachers across the US criticized Google's announcement that schools blocking its AI tools would also lose access to Google Search, with some calling the move "extortion." Google said access to Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom and Google Search will be off for K-12 student accounts until administrators explicitly turn them on. Some respondents instead urged schools to teach responsible AI use rather than block it.

We Opted Out of Google AI Search – Here's What Happened

A publisher opted out of Google's AI search features for 28 days and found AI search impressions (500–1000 daily, about 10% of total search impressions) dropped to zero within an hour, then returned after opting back in. Statistical analysis estimated an AI search CTR of about 0.9% (range 0.7%–1.1%), more than double the site's roughly 0.4% overall Google CTR, and a small but significant ~2.3% halo effect on regular organic CTR. Combined, the authors estimate Google's AI search was responsible for about 23% of total search clicks to the site, though they caution the single-site results are directional only.

AI Companies Want to Buy Your Work Files and Emails

AI labs and data-acquisition startups are paying media companies, graduate students, and businesses for old work records—documents, emails, Slack messages, and tickets—to train models, with pitches reaching individual inboxes. Companies like Mercor, Micro1, and Handshake describe a fast-growing market, while privacy advocates question whether anonymization fully removes personal data, as seen in objections to Spirit Airlines' proposed sale of its digital assets. Critics note the practice can enlist workers without explicit consent in efforts that may ultimately automate their work.

Crusoe sells troubled Wyoming data center project to Google

Crusoe, a Denver-based data center developer recently valued at $30.9 billion, confirmed it sold an unfinished data center project in southeastern Wyoming to Google, which had been a customer Crusoe failed to land for the site and is now planning to invest $17 billion in the campus. Google did not disclose the purchase price, and the deal highlights the difficulty independent developers face in delivering massive projects on time and within budget. Crusoe is still developing another data center for Google near Amarillo, Texas, and raised a $3.9 billion round in September despite the Wyoming setback.

AI Text Watermarking May Not Be Able to Meet the E.U.'S New Rules

Tests of OpenAI's textGrain watermark, released in October to comply with the E.U. AI Act's transparency obligations, show detection falls to about 80% for 200-token texts versus 95% for 400-token texts, and replacing 25% of words with synonyms cuts detection from 92% to 17%. The E.U. Code of Practice does not require watermarks on outputs shorter than 200 tokens, and with no measurable legal thresholds and no peer-reviewed evaluation yet, it is too early to say whether textGrain meets the requirements. OpenAI says textGrain matched or outperformed Google's SynthID Text in its own unverified tests, and researchers including Cornell's John Thickstun and KInIT's Dominik Macko have only just gained access to evaluate it.

Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic back a shared robots.txt AI training signal

Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic are backing a shared robots.txt signal for AI training, according to a report from Coywolf. The item was shared on Hacker News with 2 points and no comments.

SpaceX launched Google AI chips to orbit with Planet Labs satellites

SpaceX's Falcon 9 launched Planet Labs satellites on the Transporter-18 mission, including a solar-powered prototype carrying Google tensor processing units, marking the first in-orbit test for Alphabet's Project Suncatcher. Alphabet said its team confirmed contact with the satellite and that it is operating as expected, calling the launch a first step in research into whether space could host scalable machine learning infrastructure. Alphabet, which holds a SpaceX stake valued at over $82 billion, said satellites in low Earth orbit can access near-constant sunlight and generate up to eight times more solar power than on Earth.

The Blue Tsunami Is a Victory for Democracy — and a Wake-Up Call for Silicon Valley

The midterm elections delivered a Democratic wave that the newsletter frames as a win for decency and a warning to tech and AI companies that had aligned with Trump, with AI infrastructure and chip stocks falling Thursday on fears of slower data center buildout. It reports that voters rejected data centers in all but one of 41 state and local ballot measures, that average data center projects now take 33% longer due to public opposition and grid delays, and that Texas governor-elect Gina Hinojosa's win threatens Elon Musk's plans in his home state. The piece also covers Menlo Ventures data on enterprise AI adoption, funding rounds for Fal, Zipline, Northwood Space, Applied Compute and Traversal, and stories on Google's school AI policy, a New York Times profile of Dario Amodei, and AI-enabled reverse engineering of SaaS software.

Google: Schools can keep search while skipping Gemini, but AI search is non-negotiable

Google clarified its new K–12 AI policy after backlash, stating that schools using Google apps must opt into its AI products, and because Google counts Search among them, schools must specifically enable it for logged-in student accounts. The company said the approach gives schools more control, and rather than turning off search itself, it will let schools decide based on their internal AI policies.

Google offers schools AI-boosted search or none at all

A CBC News article reports that Google is offering schools a choice between an AI-boosted version of its search tools or no search access at all. The piece is linked from a Hacker News discussion thread.

Stocks plunge as midterm results send AI trade into a tailspin

The Nasdaq Composite fell as much as 5.7% Thursday, entering correction territory, as investors weighed whether Democratic midterm gains could slow the data center buildout, with Texas' Democratic gubernatorial victory a key factor given the state's role in AI infrastructure. Nvidia fell 7%, a chipmaker index dropped 10%, and CoreWeave and Nebius plunged roughly 11% and 15%, while the VIX surged 50% to a seven-month high. Yardeni called a slowdown in the "too frenzied and speculative" AI buildout a potential silver lining, while Truist's Lerner said the risk-reward is improving for longer-term investors.

Which AI labs pay the most for engineers? Disclosed base pay, October 2026

Anthropic had the highest median disclosed base pay for engineer roles among 49 AI labs tracked in October 2026, at $402,500 across 154 roles, followed by MatX at $380,000 and OpenAI at $339,000. The figures are midpoints of posted base salary ranges in US dollars, excluding equity, bonuses and offers, and labs are ranked only where at least ten open engineer roles disclosed a usable range. Frontier labs had the highest median by kind at $330,000, while defense companies were lowest at $190,000, a figure driven almost entirely by Anduril and Shield AI.

Apple slashes internal AI budgets, with deeper cuts still planned

According to Bloomberg, Apple cut some engineers' daily token budget from $300 to $200 last month, with plans to potentially lower it to $100 a day and as low as $25 for some non-technical teams, and employees needing more can request exceptions from management. Employees have access to Anthropic's Claude, OpenAI's ChatGPT, and Google's Gemini, and some teams will be shifted to cheaper models or AI that runs locally on devices. The cuts fit the direction of new CEO John Ternus, who has pushed to make the company leaner, even as Apple's R&D spending jumped 32 percent in fiscal year 2026, driven by higher infrastructure and AI costs.

Big Tech’s big AI buildout will not end until someone stops it

Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta told investors they plan to spend at least $720 billion on capital expenditures this year, mostly on AI infrastructure, on top of at least $1 trillion in commitments for coming years, even though they have not yet made money from AI. Alphabet posted its worst one-day stock drop, sinking 13%, after acknowledging that Google Cloud's AI-driven growth came at the expense of its core Search business, where ad revenue growth slowed to 12% from 17% a year earlier. Microsoft was the only one of the four to avoid Wall Street's ire, reporting $45.2 billion in quarterly capex, below the expected $50 billion, due to third-party capacity delays, and it later announced a $25 billion bond sale.

AI Is Never Wrong

A roundup of documented incidents in which AI systems produced nonexistent case citations, false medical records, exposed private chats, or unauthorized intrusions, including a CPS prosecutor citing an imaginary 2024 Court of Appeal case and a wrongful death suit alleging ChatGPT advised stopping seizure medication. Other entries cover fines and sanctions against lawyers, a voided ₹425 crore Indian customs penalty, a halted California court translation rollout, and OpenAI agents breaching Australian government systems.

Google to cut Search access for schools that block new AI tools

Google announced Nov. 3 that its "AI in the Learning Era 2026" rollout adds "Guided Learning" features to Google Search and Google Classroom, which prompt students with step-by-step questions instead of giving final answers. K-12 administrators can enable or disable AI products such as Gemini and Gemini Notebook on managed student accounts, with the tools off by default in early 2027 and requiring schools to opt in. Because generative AI is integrated into core Search, districts that fully block AI tools will lose access to the search engine, with students seeing a message from their school, Chris Phillips told The New York Times.

Google Says K-12 Students at Schools That Turn Off Its AI Tools Will Lose Search

A ghacks.net article reports that Google says K-12 students at schools that turn off its AI tools will lose Google Search. The item links to the article and to a Hacker News discussion thread with 2 points and 2 comments.

Apple Is Putting Employees on an AI Budget

Bloomberg reports that Apple is curtailing employee AI use to cut costs, limiting some engineers to $200 per day for AI spending in October, down from $300, with possible further cuts to $100 and some teams capped at $25. Apple is asking some teams to use less expensive models or switch to on-device AI, and employees needing more can request increases from executives. Some Apple employees told Bloomberg that few were using their full $300 daily limit, so the savings may be small.

DuckDuckGo pitches itself to schools amid backlash over Google’s AI policy

After Google told schools they could disable Gemini but said turning off its other AI features would also cost them Google Search, DuckDuckGo promoted its own service as a replacement default search engine for schools. DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg pointed to documentation on switching search engines and offered help, while its public affairs chief criticized Google, and the company said Google could easily turn off Search's AI features for schools if it wanted to. DuckDuckGo offers its own AI features but lets users disable them, including via noai.duckduckgo.com, and said earlier this year its app installs were up 30%.