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Woman walking next to humanoid robot carrying shopping bags
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one-stop bot shop

Americans still have hang-ups about using AI as a shopping assistant

Could ChatGPT’s new instant checkout help move the needle?

Tom Jones

Chat, is this $30 handmade candle in the shape of a cutesy Highland cow actually worth it? 

Yesterday, Sam Altman’s OpenAI announced that ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Free users can now buy Etsy products directly through the chat, meaning they won’t have to move to another tab after it tells them exactly which artisanal birthday gift captures the perfect balance of thoughtfulness and thrift while ensuring it can still be delivered in time for their friend’s party in three days. 

Investors in Etsy and Shopify, another platform that will soon benefit from ChatGPT’s new instant checkout feature, cheered the news; some consumers, with various reservations about AI shopping assistants, may still take a little more persuading.

AI shopping assistants chart
Sherwood News

Per a YouGov survey published this summer, American adults have held back from using chatbots to help them shop for a number of reasons, from concerns about not getting the right information to preferring to enlist the help of a real person in the retail process.

Still, putting aside the hang-ups expressed by some potential users, the same polling found that many Americans have already been experimenting with using AI as personal shopping assistants — particularly younger generations. Indeed, 24% of Gen Z respondents said they’d already used the tech on a website, app, or other platform, while a further 20% said they’d be interested in using it going forward, suggesting that the true age of chatbot shopping could be just around the corner.

Whether “it’s the thought that counts” will still hold true if an LLM picked out the gift and even helped you purchase it going forward, however, is another matter entirely.

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Rani Molla

After Tesla earnings, prediction markets think unsupervised FSD is less likely than ever to be rolled out this year

Tesla’s unsupervised full self-driving technology, which would autonomously ferry passengers around without a human driver having to pay attention, is supposed to help catapult the electric vehicle company’s valuation further into the stratosphere. It was also supposed to be available this year, but prediction markets participants, as well as former Tesla self-driving leaders, no longer think that will happen.

On Tesla’s earnings call this week, CEO Elon Musk said the company now had “clarity” on achieving unsupervised full self-driving — something he’s repeatedly said would be available at least in some markets this year.

The comments seemed to give Polymarket prediction markets participants some clarity. There, the market-implied probability that Tesla will release unsupervised FSD this year reached its lowest point since the event contract was opened in May.

The odds of it happening had been pretty high up until late June, when Tesla’s long-awaited robotaxi launched with a safety driver in the passenger seat. The unsupervised FSD event contract specifies the feature can have “no requirement for human intervention.”

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Rani Molla

Banks prepare record $38 billion debt financing to fund Oracle-tied data centers

Banks led by JPMorgan and Mitsubishi UFJ are preparing a $38 billion debt offering to fund two Oracle-tied data centers in Texas and Wisconsin, Bloomberg reports. The projects, developed by Vantage Data Centers, will support Oracle’s $500 billion Stargate AI infrastructure push with OpenAI and Nvidia.

The loans — $23.25 billion for Texas and $14.75 billion for Wisconsin — are expected to mature in four years, price about 2.5 percentage points higher than the benchmark rate, and mark the largest AI infrastructure financing to date.

Oracle executives recently said that the company anticipates cloud gross margins will reach 35% and that it expects to see $166 billion in cloud infrastructure revenue by FY 2030.

Oracle is up 1.5% premarket.

Record $38 Billion Debt Sale Nears for Oracle-Tied Data Centers

Record $38 Billion Debt Sale Nears for Oracle-Tied Data Centers

The loans — $23.25 billion for Texas and $14.75 billion for Wisconsin — are expected to mature in four years, price about 2.5 percentage points higher than the benchmark rate, and mark the largest AI infrastructure financing to date.

Oracle executives recently said that the company anticipates cloud gross margins will reach 35% and that it expects to see $166 billion in cloud infrastructure revenue by FY 2030.

Oracle is up 1.5% premarket.

tech
Rani Molla

Google rises on official announcement of Anthropic deal worth “tens of billions”

Google has made its deal to expand AI compute to Anthropic, reported earlier this week by Bloomberg, official. In order to train and serve its Claude model, Anthropic has agreed to pay Google Cloud “tens of billions of dollars” to access up to 1 million tensor processing units, or TPUs, as well as other cloud services.

Google, of course, has a 14% stake in Anthropic, making this one of the many circular AI deals happening at the moment.

“Anthropic and Google have a longstanding partnership and this latest expansion will help us continue to grow the compute we need to define the frontier of AI,” Anthropic CFO Krishna Rao said in the press release. “Our customers — from Fortune 500 companies to AI-native startups — depend on Claude for their most important work, and this expanded capacity ensures we can meet our exponentially growing demand while keeping our models at the cutting edge of the industry.”

The announcement has sent Google up again, more than 1% premarket.

tech
Rani Molla

Report: Snap seeking $1 billion to finance its AR glasses division in “existential” fundraise

Snap is down more than 1% this morning following news that the company is attempting to raise $1 billion for its AR glasses unit in what someone told Sources.news was an “existential” fundraise.

A Snap spokesperson countered, “We do not need to raise money to execute against our plans to publicly launch Specs in 2026, but remain open to opportunities that could accelerate our growth.”

Multiple investors are involved in the talks, including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, according to Sources.news. The report also noted that Snap plans to turn the unit that makes its Specs glasses into an independent subsidiary à la Google’s Waymo “that can continue raising capital from investors.”

Snap plans to produce about 100,000 units of next year’s Specs, pricing them around $2,500.

The beleaguered stock saw quite a bit of retail interest last month, amid r/WallStreetBets chatter that its low nominal price made it a potential acquisition target.

Snap eyes $1 billion fundraise for AR glasses

Snap eyes $1 billion fundraise for AR glasses

Multiple investors are involved in the talks, including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, according to Sources.news. The report also noted that Snap plans to turn the unit that makes its Specs glasses into an independent subsidiary à la Google’s Waymo “that can continue raising capital from investors.”

Snap plans to produce about 100,000 units of next year’s Specs, pricing them around $2,500.

The beleaguered stock saw quite a bit of retail interest last month, amid r/WallStreetBets chatter that its low nominal price made it a potential acquisition target.

Rani Molla
10/23/25
After a record quarter, analysts point out that Tesla’s car sales don’t really matter anymore

Tell that to Apple and its iPhone.

New Tesla Model 3 With Full Self-Driving Activated

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