Even if you only pay a little attention to the business world, its been hard to miss Oracles phenomenal week. The companys shares jumped nearly 40% on Wednesday, and CEO Larry Ellison briefly overtook Elon Musk as the worlds richest person (hes now essentially tied). Oracle also signed a staggering $300 billion deal with OpenAI for computing power over the next five years.
Even in the fast-moving world of AI, thats a lot in a short time. Investors cheered, but some Wall Street bulls are wondering if this is further inflating the AI bubbleand making a potential collapse all the more alarming.
Oracle’s rocket ride
Oracle shares spiked after the company reported fiscal first-quarter earnings Tuesday afternoon. It missed analyst expectations on earnings per share and revenue, but investors looked past that shortfall, thanks to booming cloud demand. Oracle said it has $455 billion in remaining performance obligations (that is, contracted revenue that has not yet been recognized), up 359% from a year ago. Wall Street was expecting that number to be closer to $180 billion.
By Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported the OpenAI deal, one of the largest cloud contracts ever signed. (It will require about as much power as 4 million homes.) The one-two punch gave Ellison the largest single-day jump in net worth ever recorded by Bloomberg, which tracks billionaire holdings.
Oracle’s rocket ride is not unlike the one Nvidia found itself on beginning in 2023 (a ride that is still going strong). But the high level of the stock is giving some observersand some insiderspause.
Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes,” said Open AI founder Sam Altman last month. “Is AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time? My opinion is also yes.
Oracle shares were trading at nearly 50 times the companys 12-month forward earnings on Wednesday. (The stock was down 5% in midday trading Thursday, to $311, but remains well above pre-earnings levels.) Thats the highest multiple since the dot-com crash (when the forward projected earnings hit 120).
Still, Oracle has some solid footing. Its expected cloud revenue and the OpenAI deal do give those stock escalations some footing. Investors are betting on informed company forecasts rather than blind hope.
Nvidia, meanwhile, has seen share prices jump 390% in the past two years and double since April. It has a market cap of $4.3 trillion, but is heavily reliant on two unknown customers who made up 39% of its Q2 revenuea red flag for the bulls.
An AI bubble?
Talk of an AI bubble didnt start this week, of course. Some analysts have been sounding alarms for months.
In July, Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, warned that AI stocks are even more overvalued than dot-com stocks were in 1999, putting the market at serious risk.
The difference between the IT bubble in the 1990s and the AI bubble today is that the top 10 companies in the S&P 500 today are more overvalued than they were in the 1990s, he wrote in a note to investors.
Put another way: Investors are betting so heavily on AI that the stock price of companies like Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, and others has become detached from their earnings.
Slok isnt alone. Alibaba Group chair Joe Tsai has warned that U.S. AI stocks are in a bubble; longtime tech executive (and former C3.ai CEO) Tom Siebel did too.
Part of what has them so nervous is the fact that the top five companies in the S&P 500 now hold 30% of the indexs wealth. Thats a higher share than during the dot-com era and well above the Nifty Fifty that dominated markets in the 1970s.
That concentration doesn’t clearly identify a bubble, but it does underline how dependent the market is on just a few companies that are all part of the same industry. If something goes wrong in AI, the ripple effects could be disastrous for the market.
Tariffs aren’t just bad for business and consumers: They will also increase the number of Americans living in poverty, according to new research.
An analysis out this week from The Budget Lab at Yale University found the Trump administration’s new 2025 tariff hikes will increase the number of Americans living in poverty by somewhere between 650,000 and 875,000 in 2026that’s 0.2% to 0.3% of the U.S. populationincluding some 150,000 to 375,000 children.
“Because tariffs directly reduce the purchasing power of low-income households (either by decreasing nominal incomes or by increasing prices), they also affect poverty,” the report said.
Yale researchers used the Official Poverty Measure, a standard metric for calculating poverty based on pre-tax income, and the Supplemental Poverty Measure, a more comprehensive measure which takes into account more information on household resources and the cost of living. They used data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
You can think of tariffs as indirect taxes, which increase prices, thereby decreasing the purchasing power and income of American households. That’s because tariff costs are often passed from businesses onto consumers. In fact, U.S. consumers absorbed 22% of tariff costs through June, and that number is expected to rise to 67% by October, according to an analysis from Goldman Sachs, CNN reported.
When Americans lose purchasing power (meaning they are not able to buy as much with the same income), households with the lowest income feel the most burden, and more end up falling below the poverty threshold. Lower-income families often use a bigger chunk of their earnings on living expenses than wealthier ones, making them more vulnerable to price shifts, CNN noted.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments on whether Trump’s sweeping global tariffs are legal. The Budget Lab estimated consumers face an overall average effective tariff rate of 18.6%, the highest since 1933.
A battery plant co-owned by Hyundai Motor is facing a minimum delay of two to three months following an immigration raid last week, Hyundai’s CEO Jose Munoz said Thursday.
The Georgia plant, which is operated through a joint-venture between Hyundai and South Korea’s LG Energy Solution, was at the center of the largest single-site enforcement operation in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s history.
Munoz, in his first public comments since the raid, said he was surprised when he heard the news and immediately inquired if Hyundai workers were involved. He said the company discovered that the workers at the center of the raid were mainly employed by suppliers of LG.
It is typical for an automotive battery plant to employ these workers as it’s getting off the ground, Munoz said.
For the construction phase of the plants, you need to get specialized people. There are a lot of skills and equipment that you cannot find in the United States,” Munoz said, on the sidelines of an automotive event in Detroit.
Nora Eckert, Reuters
Wind and solar power generated more than a third of Brazils electricity in August, the first month on record the two renewable sources have crossed that threshold, according to government data made public on Thursday and analyzed by energy think tank Ember.
The clean energy sources accounted for 34% of the countrys electricity generation last month, producing a monthly record of 19 terawatt-hours (TWh), enough to power about 119 million average Brazilian homes for a month, Ember told The Associated Press.
That surpassed the previous high of 18.6 TWh set in September 2024. The milestone came as hydroelectric output, Brazils dominant power source, fell to a four-year low.
Brazil shows how a rapidly growing economy can meet its rising need for electricity with solar and wind, said Raul Miranda, Embers global program director based in Rio de Janeiro.
Solar and wind are a perfect match for Brazils hydropower resources, taking the pressure off in drought years. A diversified mix is a fundamental strategy for tackling risks related to climate change,” he said.
Hydropower dips, fossil fuels stay low
Hydropower provided 48% of electricity in August, only the second month on record it has supplied less than half of Brazils power. Despite the weak hydro output, fossil fuel plants, mainly powered by natural gas, coal and oil, accounted for just 14% of generation, or 7.8 TWh. In past drought years, fossil fuel use has spiked to cover shortfalls, reaching 26% in August 2021.
Ember said the rapid growth of wind and solar helped Brazil avoid similar surges this year.
Wind and solar power are also reshaping the countrys energy mix. In 2024, they generated 24% of Brazils electricity, more than double their share from five years earlier. Solar power grew from just over 1% of generation in 2019 to 9.6% in 2024, while wind climbed from 8.8% to 15% over the same period.
Brazils power sector emissions peaked in 2014 and by 2024 had fallen 31% even as electricity demand rose 22%, Ember said. The think tank credited a fifteenfold increase in wind and solar generation with outpacing demand growth and cutting fossil generation by 45%.
Praise and warnings
Ricardo Baitelo, project coordinator at Brazils Institute for Energy and the Environment, said the record reflects more than a decade of steady growth in wind and solar capacity, with solar expanding rapidly in recent years.
This is a number that was expected, because the installed capacity of these sources has been built over at least 15 years and, more recently, with solar energy, he said. But it is undoubtedly symbolic, and you see these sources contributing a significant fraction of electricity at a given moment and showing that they are important. They are not alternative sources, they are already a well-represented part of Brazils electricity mix.
He said the milestone highlights Brazils shift from an almost entirely hydro-based power system to one built on three main pillars: hydro, solar and wind. He added that Brazil is the only G20 country currently on track to meet the goal of sharply increasing renewable energy within the next five years a target set at the U.N. COP28 climate summit in Dubai in 2023.
This is the big warning and a yellow light that could turn red, Baitelo said. And Brazil needs to take urgent measures to avoid losing this condition and this good example of wind and solar deployment.
Paulo Pedrosa, president of Abrace Energia, which represents large energy consumers, said Brazils heavy reliance on subsidies to expand renewables, particularly residential solar, has created distortions in the power market.
The excess of renewable energy subsidy models has increased the cost of energy and, ironically, promoted the contracting of expensive thermal energy, which is necessary to keep the system balanced when there is no wind and no sun, Pedrosa said.
He argued Brazil should focus on using its abundant clean, low-cost energy to boost industrial output and competitiveness while contributing to global decarbonization.
Baitelo warned that without reforms, fossil fuel interests could seize the opportunity to expand thermal generation in upcoming auctions, increasing greenhouse gas emissions even as renewables grow.
____
The Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find APs standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Steven Grattan, Associated Press
Trump signed off on the no tax on tips deduction as part of his Big, Beautiful Bill legislation on July 4th. But, while the provision had bipartisan support, experts say not all workers who make tips will end up qualifying.
In August, the U.S. Department of the Treasury released a preliminary list of the occupations that may be eligible. However, further guidance may be needed to determine who will actually qualify, as some jobs listed don’t meet the criteria laid out by the Trump administration.
Regularly tipped workers who received tips on or before Dec. 31, 2024 are eligible, according to the legislation. According to the bill, some tip workers will be able to deduct up to $25,000 of “qualified tips,” which means “voluntary cash or charged tips received from customers or through tip sharing.” For those making over $150,000 ($300,000 for joint filers), the deduction will go down accordingly.
But jobs that are “specified service trade or businesses” (SSTB) don’t qualify at all, according to the legislation. And, Ben Henry-Moreland, a certified financial planner with adviser platform Kitces.com, told CNBC, that, with the qualification in mind, the recent list could lead to confusion, as many “people will be surprised to find out that not every single occupation on [the Treasury list] is going to actually be eligible for the deduction.”
According to TurboTax, an SSTB is a trade or business that relies on the skills or reputation of an employee. “If your business provides a service rather than a product, the business likely classifies as a SSTB,” the site explains. And, the number of jobs that fall under those categories are fairly plentiful, according to the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants, which may lead to a letdown for many come tax season.
Which jobs are SSTBs?
Healthcare workers, such as doctors, nurses, physical therapists, pharmacists, and even massage therapists, or other spa workers who earn a decent chunk of their income from tips.
Legal workers, such as lawyers, paralegals, and mediators.
Financial service workers, such as financial planners, investment bankers, retirement advisers, and more.
Performers, such as artists, actors, directors, playwrights, and musicians.
Athletics, such as professional athletes, team owners, or team managers.
Businesses that earn income from endorsements or “use of an individual’s likeness, image, voice, etc.” or from making appearances.
You can find a comprehensive list of specified service trade or business jobs here.
According to the bill, the deadline for the list of occupations was published ahead of the October 2, 2025 deadline. The deduction will be effective from 2025 through 2026.
The European Central Bank left interest rates unchanged Thursday with inflation back under control and the economy weathering Trumps tariff onslaught better than expected.
The banks rate-setting council left its benchmark deposit rate unchanged at 2% at a meeting at its skyscraper headquarters in Frankfurt.
The focus in Europe has shifted to the fiscal crisis in France and any possible role for the ECB in containing potential market turmoil that could erupt from the countrys out-of-control deficit and political logjam.
Bank President Christine Lagarde said after the rate decision that monetary policy was in a good place and that decisions are being made meeting by meeting.” She gave no hint of future moves, saying the bank is not on a predetermined path.”
The ECB is standing pat on interest rates even as the US Federal Reserve has held the door open for a possible cut at its Sept. 17 meeting.
The 20 countries that use the euro currency and where the ECB sets rate policy showed 0.1% growth in the second quarter over the quarter before, not great but not sliding into outright recession either despite the disruption from U.S. President Donald Trumps new and higher tariffs. The S&P Global survey of purchasing managers, a key indicator of economic activity, came in at 51 in August, with readings over 50 indicating expansion.
The EUs executive commission calmed the mood somewhat by negotiating a 15% ceiling on US tariffs, or import taxes, on European goods brought into the US. While thats far higher than pre-Trump tariff levels, Trump had threatened even higher rates and the deal gives some certainty that trade will continue, albeit with higher costs.
“Trade uncertainty has clearly diminished, Lagarde said.
The ECBs deposit rate influences borrowing costs throughout the economy. The ECB raised rates sharply to combat a burst of inflation in 2021-23, and has since lowered them as inflation came back under control and concerns grew about growth. Higher rates fight inflation but can slow growth, while lower rates can stimulate economic activity by making borrowing cheaper for purchases.
Eurozone inflation was 2.1% in August, roughly in line with the banks target of 2%. With growth holding up, that means there was no great pressure to move rates Thursday. Analysts think another cut is possible in coming months.
Lagarde was asked several times about the French government’s fiscal crisis. The French governments bond-market borrowing costs have risen somewhat due to the inability of a divided parliament to tackle the large deficit, which was 5.8% of GDP last year. In case of a full-blown market panic that sends rates higher, the ECB could intervene to purchase French bonds and drive down borrowing costs. But thats only possible for countries that are obeying the EUs rules on limiting debt or are moving to comply, which France at this point is not.
Lagarde said the ECB’s emergency bond market backstop, dubbed the transmission protection instrument, was not discussed at the meeting and that the broader European bond market was functioning normally.
Im not commenting on any particular country, but suffice to say that we always monitor market developments and euro area sovereign bonds are orderly and are functioning smoothly with good liquidity, she said.
Analysts say the challenge for Lagarde is to avoid suggesting the ECB would bail out politicians who wont manage the governments finances properly, while not taking such a hard line that she unsettles bond markets.
David McHugh, AP business writer
Income inequality dipped, more people had college degrees, fewer people moved to a different home and the share of Asian and Hispanic residents increased in the United States last year, according to figures released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
These year-to-year changes, big and small, from 2023 to 2024 were captured in the bureau’s data from the American Community Survey, the largest annual audit of American life. The survey of 3.5 million households asks about more than 40 topics, including income, housing costs, veterans status, computer use, commuting, and education.
Here’s a look at how the United States changed last year.
Income inequality dips
Income inequality or the gap between the highest and lowest earners in the United States fell nationwide by nearly a half percent from 2023 to 2024, as median household income rose slightly, from $80,002 to $81,604.
Five Midwestern states Iowa, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin had statistically significant dips, along with Georgia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon and Puerto Rico.
North Carolina was the only state to see a statistically significant rise in inequality. North Carolina State economist Michael Walden said it reflected the state generating high-paying jobs in tech and other professional sectors, while the post-pandemic labor shortage which raised wages in lower-paying service jobs had ended.
In South Dakota, which had a leading 4% drop, the inequality dip could reflect stronger growth in the household income among lower and middle income households (or smaller growth in the income of the highest brackets), state demographer Weiwei Zhang said Wednesday in an email.
In Nebraska, it could be high employment rates across all demographic groups since high employment leads to income, thus less income inequality, said Josie Schafer, director of the Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Nebraska Omaha.
In Massachusetts, one of the traditional strengths of the state’s economy high-paying jobs in life science, high tech and research has been sluggish in the past two years, said Mark Melnik, director of economic and public policy research at a University of Massachusetts Amherst institute.
The typical jobs in this industry are the kind of thing that helps Massachusetts have the highest per capita (income) in the country but also exacerbates some elements of income inequality, Melnik said.
Greater diversity and fewer people married
The United States became more demographically diverse, and fewer people were married from 2023 to 2024.
The non-Hispanic white population, who identify with only a single race, dropped from 57.1% to 56.3%, while the share of the nation’s Asian population rose from 6% to 6.3% and the Hispanic population rose from 19.4% to 20%. The rate of the Black population stayed the same at 12.1%, as did the American Indian Alaska Native alone population at 1%.
In the marriage department, the share of men who have never married increased from 37.2% to 37.6%, and it rose from 31.6% to 32.1% for women.
Fewer people moved, as costs of renting and owning homes rose
Last year, only 11% of U.S. residents moved to another home, compared to 11.3% in the previous year. The decline of people moving this decade has been part of a continuous slide as home prices have skyrocketed in some metros and interest rates have gone up. In 2019, by comparison, 13.7% of U.S. residents moved.
The monthly costs for U.S. homeowners with a mortgage rose to $2,035 from $1,960. Homeowners with a mortgage in California ($3,001), Hawaii ($2,937), New Jersey ($2,797), Massachusetts ($2,755), and the District of Columbia ($3,181) had the highest median monthly costs.
Costs for renters also increased as the median rent with utilities went from $1,448 to $1,487.
Mike Schneider, Associated Press
When working parents consider going part-time, the question often sounds straightforward: Should I cut back my hours? But beneath that lies a tangle of deeper issuesidentity, ambition, money, family dynamics, and long-term career trajectory. Its rarely just about schedules or paychecks.
For some, the hope is relief from burnout or more presence with loved ones. For others, its a way to preserve their career by making it sustainable. Yet without clarity and intentional boundaries, part-time can just as easily create new pressures as it relieves old ones.
Here are some things to consider before making the decision:
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Start by naming what youre really after
When someone tells me theyre thinking about going part-time, my first question is always: What do you hope this will give you?
Sometimes the answer is obvious: more time with children, space to care for aging parents, recovery from burnout. Other times its murkier: a sense that life is slipping by too quickly, or that work has crowded out everything else that matters.
Its important to pause here. Because part-time is not a silver bullet. Working fewer hours wont automatically create balance, ease guilt, or generate fulfillment. In fact, unless youre clear about what you want to gainand disciplined about how youll use that timethe space you carve out can quickly fill with the same obligations, distractions, and patterns that left you depleted in the first place. Ive seen people go part-time only to spend their free hours running errands, fielding work emails, or taking on invisible labor at home. Instead of relief, they feel even more fragmented.
Thats why it helps to move beyond the surface question of Should I reduce my hours? and toward the deeper one: What is the life I want to create, and will going part-time bring me closer to it?
Questions to reflect on:
If I start working part-time, what exactly am I doing with the hours Ive freed up?
Am I seeking relief from something (stress, overwork, burnout), or am I moving toward something (a passion project, deeper presence with family)?
Would going part-time actually address the tension I feel, or am I hoping it will solve a deeper dissatisfaction with my work?
The practical realities (and the myths)
Theres the fantasy of part-timeleisurely mornings, meaningful afternoons, a career that flexes gracefully around life. And then theres the reality.
In some workplaces, part-time can mean doing nearly the same work in fewer hours, with less pay. Unless responsibilities are explicitly renegotiated, reduced hours often become compressed hours where the same expectations are squeezed into a smaller container. The result? More stress, not less.
This is why clarity and boundary-setting matter so much. Without a realignment of duties, you may find yourself trapped in what I call the illusion of part-timeofficially working 60 or 80%, but in practice carrying the same mental load, answering emails on your days off, and constantly feeling like youre falling short both at work and at home. It can leave you not only exhausted, but resentful.
Questions to reflect on:
If I reduce my hours, what tasks or responsibilities must I explicitly let go of?
Who will need to adjust their expectations of me, and how willing are they to do so?
How comfortable am I with disappointing others in order to protect the boundaries of a part-time schedule?
The dollars and cents of it all
Finances often make this decision feel tangible. A reduced salary is the most obvious consequence, but the subtler effects are equally important: diminished retirement savings, lower Social Security accrual, or loss of employer-sponsored benefits. These ripple effects compound over time.
That said, some professionals discover that once they account for reduced childcare, commuting, or outsourcing, the trade-off is manageable. Others find the long-term cost outweighs the short-term relief.
The question is not simply Can we afford it? but also What does this financial decision represent about what we value?
Questions to reflect on:
What would I need to give up financially, and does that feel tolerable or destabilizing?
How do I weigh immediate well-being against long-term financial security?
When I think about money, am I motivated more by fear of loss or by desire for freedom?
The psychological adjustment
Even when the numbers work, the inner shift can be surprisingly difficult. For many high achievers, work is not just a job, its a primary source of identity. Going part-time can feel like a loss of status, relevance, or ambition.
Ive seen professionals struggle with a quiet internal voice: Am I still serious about my career? Will people think Im less committed? Am I letting down my colleagues? Sometimes, they try to silence these doubts by working just as much in fewer hours, overcompensating to prove their worth. That undermines the very reason for going part-time in the first place.
This is where mindset matters. Part-time work requires redefining successnot by how many hours you log, but by how you use them. It requires tolerating the discomfort of doing less, while holding onto the bigger truth: that stepping back can be a strategic, intentional act, not a retreat.
Questions to reflect on:
How much of my self-worth is tied to being constantly available and productive?
What fears come up when I imagine saying no or being less visible at work?
Can I imagine new ways of defining professional success that dont hinge on hours logged?
The family system
Many women I work with often imagine that part-time work will instantly create harmony at home. More time for children, more support for a partner, more balance. And sometimes it does.
But it can also surface new tensions. If one partner reduces hours, assumptions about who shoulders domestic labor may shiftsometimes explicitly, but often invisibly. Children may not respond the way you imagine; more presence doesnt automatically translate ino more connection. And caregiving for elders can quickly exceed the hours youve carved out.
That doesnt mean the choice is wrong. It simply means it requires explicit conversations. What will this change look like day-to-day? How will household responsibilities shift? What do family members hope forand what do they fear? These conversations may be just as important as the HR paperwork.
Questions to reflect on:
What assumptions might my partner or children make if Im home more?
How do I want to use the time at home and what boundaries will I set there?
What conversations do we need to have as a family about expectations, roles, and values?
Career trajectory
For ambitious professionals, the biggest fear is often: What will this do to my career?
And the honest answer is: it depends. The hard truth is that, in some fields, part-time status is stigmatized. Colleagues may equate fewer hours with lesser commitment. Promotions or leadership opportunities may be harder to come by. In other fields, performance matters more than face time, and part-time professionals continue to advance.
But heres a reframe I often share with clients: Going part-time doesnt have to mean stepping off the track. It can mean running the race at your own pace. It can mean preserving your career by making it sustainable. It can even mean broadening your definition of achievement to include the personal, not just the professional.
What matters is intentionality. If you see part-time as a failure, others may too. If you frame it as a strategic decisiona way to align your work with your values and capacitiesit is more likely to be respected.
Questions to reflect on:
What career opportunities might I forgo by going part-time, and am I comfortable with that?
How do I want to explain this decisionto myself, to colleagues, to mentorsso it reflects strength, not retreat?
What kind of long-term professional identity do I want to build, and does part-time support that vision?
Alternatives worth exploring
Its also worth asking: Do you need part-time, or do you need something else?
Sometimes what people truly want is not fewer hours but greater autonomy. A flexible schedule. The ability to work remotely part of the week. A job crafted to shed responsibilities that drain energy but dont add value. In some cases, those adjustments can deliver as much relief as going part-time, with fewer trade-offs. Part-time can be the right choice. But its one option among many. Exploring the full menu can prevent premature decisions.
In closing
The decision to go part-time is rarely just about schedules. It reaches into questions of identity, ambition, money, relationships, and what it means to build a sustainable life.
The goal isnt to settle the question once and for all, but to respond to the realities of this moment. Life has seasons, and work can too. A part-time schedule may be exactly the right fit for a while, and then lose its utility. Full-time may feel overwhelming at one stage, and energizing at another. The point is not permanence, but responsiveness.
So instead of asking only, should I go part-time?, consider asking: What do I need in this season to make my work and life more sustainable? Your answer may shift over time, and thats the point. These choices can ebb and flow with you.
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Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. Im Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy.
This week, Im focusing on Californias SB 53, the states second attempt at meaningful AI safety regulation. I also look at the ongoing VC spend-fest on vibe coding startups, and at a few of the AI features in the new Apple AirPods Pro 3.
Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X (formerly Twitter) @thesullivan.
A new California AI safety bill is marching toward passage
After House Republicans tried to include a state-level ban on AI regulation in Trumps so-called Big Beautiful Bill in July, California is again moving to pass an AI safety law. Much of the countrys AI development happens in the state, and Californias approach often sets the tone for tech regulation nationwide. The first attempt (SB 1047) cleared the legislature in 2024 but was vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom after facing fierce opposition from AI startups and investors.
Now the author of SB 1047, Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), has introduced a revised bill, SB 53. It would require companies developing the largest frontier models to file regular confidential risk assessments of their models to the Governors Office of Emergency Services. Developers would also have to notify the state if their models attempted to deceive humans about the effectiveness of their built-in safety guardrails, such as refusing to help create a bioweapon.
The bill also calls for a public cloud compute cluster, CalCompute, to be housed at the University of California, which would provide free and low-cost access to compute for startups and academic researchers.
The California Assembly and Senate are expected to hold final votes on SB 53 before the legislative session ends at midnight on September 12. Recent amendments align the bill more closely with recommendations from Newsoms Joint Policy Working Group on Frontier AI Models, which was convened after his veto of SB 1047.
The final version of SB 53 will ensure California continues to lead not only on AI innovation, but on responsible practices to help ensure that innovation is safe and secure, Wiener said in a statement this week.
Money is rolling in for AI agents. So are the bugs
Earlier this week I published a feature on the rise of so-called vibe coding companies drawing major attention and capital from venture investors. Startups like Replit, Lovable, and Anysphere offer AI tools that let developers, and even complete amateurs, build apps and web services simply by describing them to an AI agent in plain language. The tools rely on large language models to interpret requests and translate them into working code. But as several sources note in my piece, these tools often generate code that doesnt integrate smoothly with other software within a codebase, creating security bugs and reliability problems that can emerge down the line.
But those concerns havent slowed the flood of venture cash. Just days after my article ran, Replit announced another $250 million funding round led by Prysm Capital, with participation from American Express Ventures, Googles AI Futures Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, and Y Combinator. The round nearly tripled Replits valuation to $3 billion. The company says it now has 40 million users and that its annualized revenue increased from $2.8 million to $150 million over the past year. With between 150 and 200 employees, that values Replit at between $15 million and $20 million per employee. That same calculation puts Cursor-maker Anysphere at about $66 million per employee.
Investors are certainly aware of some of the high-profile app fails and security breaches allegedly brought about by vibe coding. The repeated exposure of millions of pieces of sensitive personal data and private messages of users of the dating-intel app Tea were likely the result of code generated by an AI assistant. And in August, Replit itself suffered a public stumble when one of its agents, while helping SaaS investor Jason Lemkin build a web app, deleted an entire database of executive contacts. Lemkin, who built the app entirely through Replits chat agent over nine days, saw the data restored after the company apologized, but the incident underscored the fragility of vibe coding tools.
That said, the technology is improving. Developers say that systems like Anthropics Claude Code and OpenAIs Codex are getting far better at testing code and making changes that dont have adverse effects on other parts of a users code base. Replits new funding suggests investors expect smaller startups in the space to achieve similar gains with their respective coding tools. Some see AI coding assistants as the first true killer app of the generative AI boom. Maybe so, but the tools still have growing up to do.
Apple injects more AI into AirPods Pro 3
Apple said earlier this year that the much-hyped Apple Intelligence features it announced in 2024including a new highly personalized version of Siriare still not ready to ship and likely wont arrive until 2026. That gave many the impression Apple had fallen behind its peers in AI.
But the company could be biding its time, waiting for powerful use cases where large language models truly excel. On Tuesday, Apple announced that its AirPods Pro 3 will feature live translation powered by computational audio and Apple Intelligence. The beta feature fits naturally in AirPods because users dont need to fumble with a phone or device to follow a bilingual conversation. The translation feature supports English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish, with Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese coming by year’s end
The in-ear translation supports two interaction modes. An English speaker, for example, might display translations of their words on an iPhone for a non-AirPods-wearing Chinese speaker. Or, if both people wear AirPods, each will hear real-time translations of the others words directly in theirears. If the tech works as promised, AirPods translation could remove friction from personal and business travel with a relatively discreet, hands-free device.
Apple also introduced an AI-powered fitness feature called Workout Buddy. Users wearing earbuds during workouts can hear an AI-generated voice giving them personalized motivational insights that are based on their workout data and fitness history.
The $249 AirPods Pro 3 will go on sale September 19.
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The battle among billionaires for bragging rights as the world’s richest person got heated Wednesday with the surprising surge of an old contender: Larry Ellison.In a stunning few minutes after markets opened, stock in Ellison’s Oracle Corp. rocketed more than a third, enough for him to temporarily wrest the title from its longtime holder Elon Musk and hand it to the software giant’s co-founder.But the stock market is fickle, and Musk was back on top by the end of the day, at least according to Bloomberg, as Oracle gave up a bit of its earlier gains.For those keeping score, the difference now is a billion, which isn’t much given the size of the figures: Musk’s $384.2 billion versus $383.2 billion for Ellison.The dueling fortunes are so big each could fund the lifestyles of 5 million typical American families for a year, about the entire population of Florida, allowing them to all quit their jobs. Or they could just tell all of South Africa to take a vacation for year and produce nothing, based on its gross domestic product.The brief switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle powered by multibillion dollar orders from customers as the artificial-intelligence race heats up.Musk became the world’s richest person for the first time four years ago. A big reason is his stake in a hot, but now cooling, electric car maker, Tesla.Stock in the company has been moving in the opposite direction of Oracle’s, dropping 14% so far this year. Musk also controls several private companies, including rocket maker SpaceX, his artificial intelligence company xAI and the former Twitter, now called X.Ellison owns about 40% of Oracle, which means its surging stock added $100 billion to his net worth in little over a half-hour after the stock market opened.The night before, after trading had closed, the company announced in an earnings report that it had struck more than $300 billion worth of new deals, including contracts with the OpenAI, Meta, Nvidia and Musk’s xAI. It said that it now expects revenue from its cloud infrastructure business to jump 77% to $18 billion this fiscal year. then rise to $144 billion in four years after that.Ellison said in an earnings call that Oracle would not just be making money from its computing centers that help build the next chatbots, but from the day-to-day running of those AI systems to run robots in factories, design drugs in laboratories, place bets in financial markets and automate legal and sales work at companies.In other words, Ellison’s surge in wealth Wednesday morning reflected investor expectations that computers will take over many jobs now done by humans and Oracle will benefit.Or as the 81-year-old said on the call, “AI Changes Everything.”Musk is hoping the same for Tesla and his own net worth, but he’s been struggling to convince investors.The company had been promising a big turnaround in electric car sales after they fell sharply earlier this year, but the bounce back hasn’t happened. Musk has been downplaying the bad numbers by trying to shift investors’ focus to Tesla’s other business of making robots and advances in the artificial intelligence behind its cars and robotaxis.While he keeps talking up the Tesla future, though, the bad news keeps coming.Tesla sales in the European Union plunged 40% earlier this summer, the seventh month in row of drops, as customers balked at buying his cars after he took to X to support extreme right-wing politicians there. The company has been losing market share in the U.S., too, as buyers angry with his embrace of Donald Trump have stayed away from Tesla showrooms.Oracle stock closed Wednesday at $328.33, a 36% jump. Tesla was up less than 1% at $347.79.-AP writers Matt O’Brien and Michael Liedtke contributed to this story.
Bernard Condon, AP Business Writer
