OpenAI CEO Sam Altman may have the ear of seemingly every venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, but executives from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) are far less impressed. Per a New York Times report from earlier this week, TSMC’s leadership dismissed Altman as a “podcasting bro” and scoffed at his proposed $7 trillion plan to build 36 new chip manufacturing plants and AI data centers.
The news comes after Altman’s ill-fated PR tour of Asian chip manufacturers last winter when he met with Samsung and SK Hynix, in addition to TSMC, in search of investment for OpenAI’s artificial general intelligence goals. According to the Times, TSMC’s senior leadership derided Altman after his $7 trillion (that’s trillion with a “T”) request.
While Altman has not officially confirmed his pursuit of chipmaking capabilities, his apparent vision would eventually enable OpenAI to compete directly with both Nvidia and TSMC with in-house designed and fabricated chipsets. Reportedly, the investment would be spread across several years as the fabrication capacity is built out. But TSMC executives openly questioned how they would be able to mitigate the financial risks associated with such a plan.
This isn’t the first time that TSMC has thrown shade at OpenAI. During its 2024 Annual Shareholders Meeting, TSMC founder and CEO Dr. C. C. Wei characterized Altman as “too aggressive, too aggressive for me to believe.”
OpenAI has no shortage of potential investors, mind you. The company received $13 billion from Microsoft in 2023 and is reportedly closing in on another $6.5 billion round of funding that could close by the end of next week. The company is also rumored to be planning to effectively abandon its nonprofit business for a for-profit structure in an effort to make itself more attractive to investors.
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, despite OpenAI’s stated $4 billion annual income, the company is losing nearly double that amount ($7 billion) every year. The fact that OpenAI’s C-suite has become a revolving door of executives abandoning the company (CTO Mira Murati, CRO Bob McGrew, and senior research executive Barret Zoph, all resigned earlier this week) surely will not help assuage investors’ concerns either.
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).
Two residents of Chicago have filed a lawsuit in the US over claims that robots run by Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics captured their facial and hand measurements without consent, bringing renewed attention to the food delivery robots. The cases raise a troubling question: If a robot delivers food to your door, can it also be gathering sensitive information about you?
According to a report by The Associated Press, the proposed class-action lawsuits were filed in Cook County on Oct. 9 and allege violations of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. The complaints claim that the robots’ cameras and LiDAR sensors captured information on customers’ faces and hands as they approached the machines to pick up their orders. Both have denied the allegations.
Nearly a month after announcing the GPT-6.1 Sol model, OpenAI unveiled GPT-6.1 Terra today. The latest addition to the family focuses on computer use, visual reasoning, coding, and professional work, while costing 50% less through the API than GPT-5.6 Terra.
OpenAI says Terra can handle everything from filling out browser forms and working inside spreadsheets to interpreting technical drawings and editing videos. The company says it can also complete computer-based tasks more than three times faster than GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol.