Boom or bubble? Inside the $3tn AI datacentre spending spree

The global investment spree in artificial intelligence is producing some remarkable numbers and a projected $3tn (£2.3tn) spend on datacentres is one of them.These vast warehouses are the central nervous system of AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Veo 3, underpinning the training and operation of a technology into which investors have poured vast sums of money.Despite concerns that the AI boom could be a bubble waiting to burst, there are few signs of it at the moment. The Silicon Valley AI chipmaker Nvidia last week became the world’s first $5tn company and Microsoft and Apple’s valuations hit $4tn, the latter for the first time

Knee-jerk corporate responses to data leaks protect brands like Qantas — but consumers are getting screwed

It’s become the playbook for big Australian companies that have customer data stolen in a cyber-attack: call in the lawyers and get a court to block anyone from accessing it.Qantas ran it after suffering a major cybersecurity attack that accessed the frequent flyer details of 5 million customers.The airline joined the long list of companies in Australia, dating back to the HWL Ebsworth breach in 2023, to go to the New South Wals supreme court to obtain an injunction against “persons unknown” – banning the hackers (and anyone else) from accessing or using the data under threat of prosecution.Of course, it didn’t stop hackers leaking the customer data on the dark web a few months later.But it might have come as a surprise when the ID protection company Equifax this month began alerting Qantas customers that their data had been leaked – since access to the data was supposedly banned

Ducking annoying: why has iPhone’s autocorrect function gone haywire?

Don’t worry, you’re not going mad.If you feel the autocorrect on your iPhone has gone haywire recently – inexplicably correcting words such as “come” to “coke” and “winter” to “w Inter” – then you are not the only one.Judging by comments online, hundreds of internet sleuths feel the same way, with some fearing it will never be solved.Apple released its latest operating system, iOS 26, in September. About a month later, conspiracy theories abound, and a video purporting to show an iPhone keyboard changing a user’s spelling of the word “thumb” to “thjmb” has racked up more than 9m views

Apple reports record iPhone sales as new lineup reignites worldwide demand

Apple reported its first quarterly earnings since the release of its new lineup of iPhones on Thursday, beating Wall Street analysts’ expectations. The company showed steady financial growth and a strong bottom line despite slow progress on artificial intelligence. The report comes just days after the company hit a $4tn market value for the first time.“Today, Apple is very proud to report a September quarter revenue record of $102.5 billion, including a September quarter revenue record for iPhone and an all-time revenue record for Services,” Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, said in a statement

Amazon reports strongest cloud growth since 2022 after major outage

Amazon has made its first financial disclosures since the disastrous outage suffered by its cloud computing division that brought everything from smart beds to banks offline.In spite of the global outage, Amazon Web Services has continued to grow, and this quarter reported a 20% increase in revenue year over year. Wall Street estimated that AWS would bring in $32.42bn in net sales in the third quarter, with the company reporting actual revenue of $33bn.“AWS is growing at a pace we haven’t seen since 2022,” CEO Andy Jassy said in a statement accompanying the earnings report

OpenAI thought to be preparing for $1tn stock market float

OpenAI is reportedly gearing up for a stock market listing valuing the company at $1tn (£760bn) as soon as next year, in what would be one of the biggest ever initial public offerings.The developer behind the hit AI chatbot ChatGPT is considering whether to file for an IPO as soon as the second half of 2026, according to Reuters, which cited people familiar with the matter. The company is thought to be looking to raise at least $60bn.A stock market float would give OpenAI another route to raising cash, supporting ambitions by the chief executive, Sam Altman, to splash trillions of dollars on building datacentres and other forms of infrastructure needed for the rapid buildout of its chatbots.During a staff livestream on Tuesday, Altman was reported to have said: “I think it’s fair to say it [an IPO] is the most likely path for us, given the capital needs that we’ll have