Morning Scan

The OpenAI universe is having a very busy week: congressional probes, a restructured Microsoft deal, a potential new compute venture, and a cybersecurity platform launch — all while Sam Altman is apparently also thinking about spinning up another company. The U.S.-China tech cold war is escalating even as executives fly to Beijing for handshakes.

$97B — The gap between what OpenAI could have paid Microsoft ($135B through 2030) and the newly capped figure ($38B) — a restructuring that redraws the economics of the most important partnership in AI. (The Information)

Machines & Minds

OpenAI's New Revenue Terms Cap Microsoft Payments at $38B

The restructured deal is being framed as a win for OpenAI's independence, but it shows how thoroughly the relationship has shifted since the early Altman-Nadella years. (The Information)

Sam Altman May Start a New Compute Company

Essentially Stargate with a different legal wrapper — the idea is a standalone vehicle to raise capital and build data centers fast, which raises obvious questions about where his attention actually lives. (Alex Heath)

OpenAI Launches Daybreak Cybersecurity Initiative

OpenAI's answer to Anthropic's Project Glasswing uses GPT-5.5 and Codex Security to find and patch vulnerabilities — the enterprise security market is now an AI arms race. (The Verge)

Musk v. Altman: Satya Nadella Says Musk Never Raised Microsoft Concerns

Nadella's testimony undercuts a key plank of Musk's lawsuit — if he had real concerns about Microsoft's role, apparently no one told Microsoft. (CNBC)

Connected World

China Seeks AI Independence, Weakening Trump's Leverage

Beijing's progress toward technological self-sufficiency — highlighted by DeepSeek's trajectory — means the U.S. has less to bargain with than the summit optics suggest. (NYT)

Jensen Huang Skips Trump's China Business Delegation

Cook and Musk made the list; the CEO of the company whose chips China most desperately wants did not. (The Next Web)

Trump Administration Quietly Debates Banning Chinese Cellular Modules

The FCC is already pushing to reduce Beijing's telecom footprint, and a broader ban on cellular modules would hit industrial IoT and connected devices hard. (Financial Times)

Trump Actually Started to Decouple America from China

A sober assessment that structural decoupling is real and underway, even as the administration heads to Beijing looking for a deal. (Noahpinion)

Connected World

ServiceNow Lines Up $4B Bond Sale to Refinance Armis Acquisition Debt

A $4B bond offering to clean up M&A debt is routine corporate finance — until you account for how fast ServiceNow has been acquiring, and how much more it might want to buy. (The Next Web)

GitLab Announces Layoffs, Denies It's AI Optimization

"Not an AI optimization exercise" is doing a lot of work in that press release — the company is also shrinking its geographic footprint, which suggests the cuts run deeper than the positioning implies. (Bloomberg)

GM to Lay Off 500–600 IT Workers

The swap is explicit: legacy IT headcount out, staff with skills in newer tech areas in — a template other industrial giants are running in parallel. (Bloomberg)

iOS 26.5 Brings End-to-End Encrypted RCS in Beta

Encrypted cross-platform messaging between iPhone and Android users has been a long time coming — this beta rollout ends a years-long standoff. (Daring Fireball / Apple Newsroom)