Genius Pulse 360

Larry Ellison Back at the Top — 48 Years After Founding Oracle ⦿ At 81, Larry Ellison has seen his net worth surge near $400 billion, driven by Oracle’s massive cloud & AI infrastructure deals—especially the $300B deal with OpenAI. Oracle stock has jumped ~36%. ⦿ After years on the sidelines in the cloud race, Oracle is now front and center, landing marquee clients like OpenAI, Meta, and xAI. Ellison’s strategy: Partner with chip leaders (e.g. Nvidia), not build everything in-house. ⦿ This comeback isn’t just financial: Ellison is positioning Oracle as a major player in the AI infrastructure era, raising the stakes in tech & cloud services. It’s a return to influence nearly five decades in the making. #LarryEllison #Oracle #AIInfrastructure #CloudComputing #ReturnToPower #Leadership #TechResurgence

xAI Lays Off ~500 AI Tutors as It Shifts From Generalists to Specialist Roles ⦿ xAI has laid off at least 500 generalist data annotators—about one-third of its ~1,500-person annotation team—who help train its Grok chatbot by tagging, categorizing, and contextualizing raw data. ⦿ Affected employees received notice by email; their system access was cut off immediately, but they’ll be paid through contract end or November 30. ⦿ The move comes alongside a strategic pivot: xAI says it plans to scale up its specialist AI tutor team by 10×, focusing on domains such as STEM, finance, medicine, and safety. #AI #WorkforceChange #xAI #Grok #DataAnnotation #Specialization #TechIndustry

Invisible Microchips: New Material and Process Shrink Chip Features Beyond the Naked Eye Johns Hopkins researchers, along with global partners, have unveiled a breakthrough in microchip fabrication using metal-organic resists that work with beyond-extreme ultraviolet (B-EUV) light. Their method—called chemical liquid deposition (CLD)—lets them create patterns smaller than 10 nm on silicon wafers using special metal-organic materials like zinc + imidazole. The result? Microchips that are invisible to the eye, built more precisely and potentially more affordably. The technique could reshape how electronics are manufactured in the coming years. #Microchips #Fabrication #Semiconductors #MetalOrganic #Innovation #ElectronicsManufacturing #Nanotechnology

EU Users Won’t Get Live AI Translation on AirPods — At Launch ⦿ Apple’s new live translation feature for AirPods Pro 3 (and coming soon to certain older models) won’t be available to users physically in the EU or with Apple Accounts registered in the EU. ⦿ The restriction appears linked to EU regulations such as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), with concerns about interoperability, legal compliance, and previous fines facing Apple in the region. ⦿ Apple’s feature-availability page confirms the limitation but does not cite GDPR or data protection as reasons, despite those being frequent regulatory factors. #Apple #AirPods #AITranslation #EURegulation #DigitalMarketsAct #TechPolicy #ProductLaunch #UserExperience

U.S. Consumer Sentiment Slips to 4-Month Low as Inflation & Jobs Worry Mount ⦿ The University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index fell to 55.4 in September, down from 58.2 in August—marking the lowest level since May, and missing expectations. ⦿ Declines were pronounced among lower and middle-income households, driven by concerns over job security, personal finances, and eroding purchasing power. ⦿ Inflation expectations stayed high: 1-year ahead at 4.8%, while 5-year inflation outlook rose to 3.9%, adding to economic unease. ⦿ Tariffs remain on consumers’ minds—~60% explicitly mentioned them when talking about economic concerns. As headwinds persist—rising prices, weak labor signals, and policy uncertainty—these indicators may weigh heavily on consumer spending and broader growth in the months ahead. #ConsumerSentiment #Inflation #Economy #USMarkets #LaborMarket #EconomicOutlook

Google Quantum HW Breaks New Ground: Exploring Exotic Matter Beyond Classical Limits ⦿ An international team (TUM, Princeton, Google Quantum AI) has used Google’s superconducting quantum processor to realize a non-equilibrium quantum phase called Floquet topological order — a state that can’t exist in static (equilibrium) systems. ⦿ Experiments scaled up to 58 qubits, where classical simulations become infeasible. Key signatures observed include chiral edge modes and anyonic excitations — phenomena unique to certain topological phases. ⦿ New measurement protocols—such as quantum interference tests and bulk invariant metrics—helped detect this exotic order. Implications reach into error correction, quantum information science, and our ability to use quantum hardware as a research platform for physics that classical machines just can’t simulate. #QuantumComputing #TopologicalOrder #NonEquilibriumPhysics #QuantumResearch #GoogleQuantumAI #Qubits #Innovation

Perseverance Rover Finds Strongest Clues Yet of Ancient Life on Mars ⦿ NASA’s Perseverance rover has analyzed a core sample from “Cheyava Falls” in Jezero Crater’s Bright Angel formation, revealing a rock type called mudstone that contains organic carbon and signs of iron and phosphate minerals (vivianite, greigite), often linked with microbial activity on Earth. ⦿ The features—spot-like “leopard spots,” dark patches—form under low heat and mild conditions, strengthening the case for past life, though abiotic origins haven’t been ruled out yet. ⦿ These findings represent among the most compelling evidence to date for possible microbial life on Mars, but full confirmation awaits Mars Sample Return and detailed lab work. #Mars #Astrobiology #Perseverance #LifeOnMars #NASA #SpaceExploration #PlanetaryScience

OpenAI & Oracle Forge Historic Cloud Deal: $300B Deal Underpins AI Ambitions OpenAI is reportedly set to purchase $300 billion worth of computing power from Oracle over the next five years, starting in 2027. This mega-deal is part of Project Stargate, the broader $500B initiative involving SoftBank and Oracle to build massive AI-ready data center capacity. It signals a major shift: OpenAI continues to diversify beyond Microsoft Azure, and Oracle strengthens its position dramatically in AI cloud infrastructure. #AI #CloudComputing #ProjectStargate #OpenAI #Oracle #TechDeals #AIInfrastructure #DigitalTransformation

Big Breakthrough for Quantum Computing: PsiQuantum Raises $1B, Valued at $7B PsiQuantum has just closed a $1 billion Series E round, pushing its valuation to $7 billion—making it the largest funding round ever in the quantum computing space. Major backers include BlackRock, Temasek, Baillie Gifford, and Nvidia’s VC arm. They’re betting big on scaling with photonic qubits (using light on silicon chips) and building fault-tolerant, million-qubit systems. Infrastructure is expanding with new test sites planned in Brisbane and Chicago. If successful, this could accelerate practical quantum applications in materials science, cryptography, AI, and more. #QuantumComputing #PsiQuantum #VentureFunding #TechInnovation #PhotonicQubits #Supercomputing #QuantumRace #Nvidia #FutureTech

Mercor Aims Big: AI-Training Startup Targets $10B Valuation with $450M Run-Rate Mercor, the 2022-founded startup matching domain experts (scientists, doctors, lawyers, etc.) to AI labs like OpenAI, Meta, Google & Nvidia, is in talks for a Series C. It’s targeting a valuation of $10B+ and is nearing $450 million annualized run-rate revenue. It’s also profitable—reportedly made $6M in profit in H1. Expansion into reinforcement learning infrastructure & an AI-powered recruiting marketplace are part of its roadmap. #AI #StartupGrowth #Mercor #Valuation #RunRate #DeepTech #AITraining #VentureCapital #Innovation