Smart of Nvidia to nix Chinese data center compute revenue from its outlook earlier this year<\/a>? You bet. But never say never.\u00a0<\/p>\n Today\u2019s tech news below. \u2014Andrew Nusca<\/p>\n Want to send thoughts or suggestions to\u00a0Fortune Tech?\u00a0Drop a line\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Google rolls out its latest custom AI chips Courtesy Google<\/p>\n The eighth generation of Google\u2019s custom silicon has arrived.<\/p>\n Google Cloud announced on Wednesday<\/a> two new AI chips that it says are tailored to an agentic age. They\u2019re simply called TPU 8t and 8i. (TPU stands for \u201cTensor Processing Unit.\u201d)<\/p>\n The 8t system is optimized for so-called pre-training at a very large scale. The 8i, meanwhile, is built for post-training and high-concurrency reasoning.\u00a0<\/p>\n They\u2019re both intended for use in Google\u2019s supercomputers, which the company happily rents out (hourly or long-term) to clients like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Meta.<\/p>\n \u201cThe rise of agentic AI requires infrastructure that can handle long context windows and complex sequential logic,\u201d the company wrote in a blog post<\/a>, adding that the chips\u2019 use will help enable \u201cmillions of agents to practice and refine their reasoning in diverse simulated environments.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s good news for investors, who see Google\u2019s in-house chips as a major driver of future revenue across parent Alphabet.\u00a0<\/p>\n As DA Davidson analyst Gil Luria put it late last year<\/a>: \u201cThe chip business could ultimately be worth more than Google Cloud.\u201d Last I looked, Google Cloud was approaching 16% of all revenue at Alphabet, which is No. 7 on the Fortune 500. \u2014AN<\/p>\n Microsoft reportedly kicked the tires on Cursor<\/p>\n Big Tech intrigue!<\/p>\n Not long after the blockbuster news that Elon Musk\u2019s combined SpaceX and xAI signed a $60 billion option to acquire fast-growing AI coding startup Cursor comes news that, wait, there was another suitor in the wings.<\/p>\n No, not Musk\u2019s bitter rival OpenAI, but OpenAI\u2019s biggest outside investor: Microsoft.<\/p>\n The folks in Redmond\u2014who have their own AI coding tool called GitHub Copilot\u2014looked at buying San Francisco\u2019s Cursor but chose not to proceed, according to a new CNBC report<\/a>.<\/p>\n Why? We don\u2019t yet know. (My guess: The startup\u2019s unit economics. As one observer writes: \u201cEvery power user query that makes Cursor sticky also makes the margin problem worse.\u201d Oof.)<\/p>\n What we do know: GitHub Copilot enjoys about 5 million paying subscribers. Competition is growing in the form of Cursor, Windsurf, OpenAI\u2019s Codex tool, and Anthropic\u2019s Claude Code. And the entire category is growing as the velocity of software development increases thanks to AI.<\/p>\n In the bigger picture, Microsoft has underperformed its Big Tech peers in the stock market over the last year as investor fears manifest. They\u2019re worried that Microsoft\u2019s cloud computing platform, Azure, isn\u2019t growing fast enough; concerned that its massive AI spending won\u2019t see commensurate returns; and uneasy that its complicated relationship with OpenAI is less advantageous than it once was.\u00a0<\/p>\n One SaaSpocalypse at a time, I suppose. \u2014AN<\/p>\n Kalshi suspends politicians for insider trading<\/p>\n Prediction markets darling Kalshi said Wednesday that it fined and suspended three candidates for Congress for \u201cpolitical insider trading\u201d activity on their own campaigns.<\/p>\n The politicians are Mark Moran, a Democrat-turned-independent Senate candidate in Virginia; Minnesota state Sen. Matt Klein, running as a Democrat for the state\u2019s 2nd Congressional District; and Zeke Enriquez of Texas, running as a Republican for the state\u2019s 21st Congressional District.<\/p>\n \u201cAll three cases concern political insider trading and were flagged because of our newly released safeguards to block political candidates from trading on their own elections,\u201d Kalshi wrote in a blog post<\/a>. \u201cJust like in traditional financial markets, bad actors will try to cheat. Regulated exchanges must constantly evolve and adapt their systems to address insider threats.\u201d<\/p>\n The candidates differed in their responses. Moran (who was fined more than $6,000 and banned for five years) said<\/a> he \u201cwanted to get caught\u201d to show that Kalshi was \u201cdestroying young men\u201d by offering gambling by another name. Klein (about $500, five years) said he \u201cwas curious about how it worked\u201d and apologized. Henriquez (about $800, five years) offered no comment.<\/p>\n Kalshi is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Its director, David Miller, said last month<\/a> that it was a \u201cmyth\u201d that insider trading rules don\u2019t apply to prediction markets. \u2014AN<\/p>\n More tech<\/p>\n \u2014Trump’s pick to lead CISA<\/a>, Sean Plankey, withdraws from consideration after 13 months of waiting for a Senate confirmation.<\/p>\n \u2014LinkedIn\u2019s new CEO<\/a> is former COO Daniel Shapero.<\/p>\n \u2014IBM shares drop 7%<\/a> on fears of AI threatening its software and consulting businesses despite Q1 revenue that beat estimates and reaffirmed full-year guidance.<\/p>\n \u2014Alibaba debuts its Qwen3.6-27B AI model<\/a>. \u201cFlagship-level agentic coding performance,\u201d the Chinese tech giant promises.<\/p>\n \u2014Texas Instruments shares jump 10%<\/a> as data center and industrial chip business booms.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2014TSMC shuns ASML\u2019s latest chipmaking equipment<\/a> because, at $400 million per EUV machine, it\u2019s too expensive.<\/p>\n![\"Google's](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/google-tpu-8th-gen.jpeg\"\/)
<\/a>Google’s new TPU 8t and TPU 8i custom AI chips.<\/p>\n