OpenAI Scrambles for Computing Power - DTNS 5119

0:04This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, October 6th, 2025. We tell you what you need to know, follow up on the context of those stories, and help each other try to understand. Today, OpenAI is desperate for more servers, and who might take over for Apple's Tim Cook? We got an idea. I'm Tom Merritt. And I'm Rob Dunwood. Let's start with what you need to know with that big story. It's actually big stories. We have a trio of OpenAI-related stories to you this weekend. The Financial Times reports on the status of OpenAI's hardware effort. You might recall that OpenAI acquired one of Johnny Ives' companies in May, and the team around that has been building OpenAI's hardware strategy.

0:48FT sources say that it's a palm-sized device. There have been some other leaks that say this as well. About the size of a smartphone, but no screen. It has a camera or possibly multiple cameras, a microphone, some speakers, and it would be meant to sit on a desk and then respond to you. kind of like an Amazon Echo, but a lot smaller. And you could also carry it around if you want. It would always be on to collect data and would not need a wake word to interact with. It had previously been reported that the device might arrive by the end of next year, but Financial Times says that's probably gonna be later.

1:25Maybe we're looking at 2027. One challenge is deciding on the voice and the mannerisms of the device's personality. If you don't got a wake word, it needs to know when to talk and how to be useful and not annoy you. Another challenge is how to balance privacy. If it's collecting data all the time, how do you balance privacy with the utility of having the model know a lot about you? And another problem is, of course, how to get enough computing power to make these models work well for a large number of users. Sources told the Financial Times that all of these seem like normal problems in any product development process.

2:02I'm excited for these to come out. So Johnny Ive can show me exactly what I need to use it for because I still have not quite figured that out yet. And it's the same thing. When I first got my first Amazon Echo, I didn't really know how to use it until I figured out how to use it. And then I switched over to the Google Nest and kind of same thing there. Once you know how to use it, you know how to use it. But it wasn't clear when I first got it. So I'm looking at this. And even though we haven't seen anything yet, I'm wondering what am I going to use this for? but it's Johnny I, so it'll probably be awesome.

2:34Oh yeah. It'll be a big blank white room. Uh, I actually, he probably won't do that anymore. That's his Apple signature. But, uh, I, I get a little more from this financial times article about what this might end up being. Uh, and it's very much around the personality. It's very much sounds like a voice assistant, uh, but not one that's just meant to sit in a room that you talk to one that you could easily move with you takes up less space that makes me wonder well could i just do this on the phone but my guess is when open ai can control the hardware stack they can make it faster they can make it do things that it couldn't do on android or ios where they're having to negotiate with the operating system and the lockdowns and the privileges and all of that but then i as a consumer do i want to carry around two of these how expensive are they going to be maybe i'll i'll buy a couple of them and i I don't know.

3:29I'm sure that that is also part of the design challenge that they're dealing with as well. The carrying around of a palm-sized device with no screen but has cameras on it baffles me. It's like, where do I put it? I can't put it in my pocket. The cameras would be blocked. Do I wear it on a lanyard around my neck? I'm trying to understand that. It seems like it's meant to not be carried around, just that you could. I guess that's the answer to that. But then I want to have it with me if I'm, you know, am I just carrying it and then it's okay if it's blocked because I'm going to put it on the desk in the next period and I have to keep pulling it out and putting it in.

4:08And then, yeah, I'm with you there. I feel like it needs to be something you wear, but that doesn't seem to be where they are now. Maybe that's where they'll end up though. OpenAI Sora app for generating 10 second videos that you can put yourself and your friends in shot to the top of the apple app store over the weekend speaking of needing compute power as usage increased open ai has had to make adjustments to the app uh including tightening restrictions against copyright infringement uh they had a restriction that said no public figure should be allowed to be used unless that public figure had opted in uh but rights holders would would need to opt in uh to blocking uh their products from being used.

4:50In practice, it was blocking a lot of stuff that I don't think people had opted in, but they've tightened it up now. It is a lot harder to get it to output public figures and copyrighted material than it was. And they are now saying that they have added controls for rights holders so that they can decide, yes, you can use our property as long as you're not doing something political or something negative or this or that, right? OpenAI also added a feature that lets you restrict what kind of content your cameo, that's the video representation of yourself, can be used for. For instance, Justin Robert Young could stop all of us from putting him in videos with mayonnaise because he hates mayonnaise and there's been about a dozen made of him eating mayonnaise.

5:32Because of that, he could put in a little thing that says, don't let my cameo be used along with mayonnaise. And obviously, you could have other restrictions as well. You can already restrict who uses your cameo. Rob, I know you've been playing around with this, but you're on Android, so you've got a few restrictions on what you can do because of that. Well, thank you for my invite. You gave me an invite last Thursday, but this is the first time in a long time that I've actually felt like, oh, I'm an Android user. Therefore, I'm a second-class citizen because I cannot partake in all of the new hotness that Sora 2 offers because I don't have the ability to actually scan my own likeness and put my own voice in there and make stuff of myself.

6:14That being said, I've been playing around with it. Now I haven't really posted much yet, just because if I want to post stuff, I probably want to post stuff with me in it. But I have been playing around with it. And just before we did the show, I made a video and it was just make a Samsung commercial for a new smartphone with African-Americans that are Gen X. okay and it it did it it did that was the prompt it it just did it did a commercial that would have been passable i mean it could be a 10 second ad that you would skip when you're watching youtube videos it was it was it was that good yeah and then i started playing around and you know changing camera angles and you can actually make it zoom in so that that sore logo is kind of obscured on it a bit.

7:02This is impressive. I'm on the record. I think this thing is going to be huge. I mean like TikTok big. I think this is going to be one of the biggest social media platforms that we've seen since probably TikTok. Yeah, I was really having fun with it on Friday and Saturday. And then Saturday morning, they said, you've done too many requests. And they put me in timeout for like eight hours where I couldn't create anything. I could still view stuff and like it and all that. but they definitely are having a compute problem because this is more popular than they thought it would be. They thought it would be kind of popular, but they have found that it is more popular.

7:41And I was not the only one complaining that like, oh, I'm on timeout. I can't post anything. So I think it's a widespread issue as they grow that user base and need to add that compute. I also noticed when they added the copyright lockdown. Now, before they added the lockdown, there was a, I would say about 50 % of the stuff I was doing, they would say, that might infringe on a public likeness. That might infringe on a copyright. Once they added the lockdown, it went to like 70%. And I wasn't trying to make stuff that was infringing copyright. I was just like, oh, it'd be fun to do this. So it was interesting to me to hear that your Samsung went through, which implies either that slipped through the cracks or Samsung may have said, yeah, it's okay if they're making commercials of us, we'll let them do that.

8:24Well, here's the thing. I said Samsung, but it just showed me a non-iPhone smartphone. It didn't necessarily look like a Samsung phone. Gotcha. So I did notice that. I also noticed literally an hour before we are recording this show, I don't have any governors telling me that I've created too much, but the website is choppy. It's like it's taking its time to do stuff. And it's not just taking time to generate the video, just clicking on different areas, looking at my profile, going to look at other people's videos. It's definitely experiencing probably at this point, millions of people trying to use it.

9:01Yeah, it's straining under the load, maybe billions. I doubt it, but maybe getting closer to that. And then speaking of compute, OpenAI continues to strike deals to add more computing power, the latest being its intent to purchase six gigawatts worth of data centers powered by AMD chips, starting with the MI450 in the coming year. They're going to do one gigawatt in the coming year with the MI450. These will be for inferencing. I see everybody, including the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, saying this is a shot over the bow of NVIDIA. But I think what OpenAI is saying is no one can provide all the compute we think we need.

9:42So we're going to buy AMD chips to supplement the inferencing. NVIDIA is still the preferential partner and will do almost all of the training that they do. OpenAI will also receive stock options that could see it take up to a 10 % stake in AMD. OpenAI has announced deals in the last few weeks with NVIDIA as its preferred chip provider, with Oracle, and with Broadcom to start designing its own chips. And CNBC reports OpenAI has now narrowed down sites for its new data centers in the SoftBank-funded Stargate project to 20 sites. So they're making some progress there as well. I'm not sure where the stock price, AMD stock price, is right now.

10:25but in the after hours when this news came out, it shot up like 25%. So AMD is probably saying thank you very much to OpenAI for this because it's just like if OpenAI says that we're doing business with you, that company, they get a boost unlike anything we've seen going back to like the dot-com era. It's just like instantaneous up if you are dealing with OpenAI at this point. And it is a scramble. OpenAI, that's what I look at this and I'm like, yes, They are scrambling to buy as much computing power as possible because they're looking at little things. Sora is a little thing for them in the grand scheme of things.

11:02And they are chugging under the weight of that. They want to have dozens of Sora-type products out there. They want to have that little desktop device. And they're hoping that millions of people will buy that and use that. And they're going to need a lot of compute and a lot of power to make all of that work. They absolutely are. DTNS is made possible by you, the listener. Thanks to Philip Les, Howard Yermis, John Atwood, and our brand new patrons, Jet Boyd and Gary. And we've also got a raise from Andrew. Hey, welcome Jet Boyd and Gary. And thank you very much, Andrew. That is awfully kind of you.

11:40There's more we need to know today. Let's get to the briefs. A couple of interesting pieces of Apple news. An investigation into Apple's collection of user recordings for Siri. has been referred to the Office for Combating Cybercrime in Paris. Apple requires users to opt into a program to let Apple retain recordings for up to two years to help improve Siri. The complaint says sensitive conversations can be listened to by contractors. And Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says his sources say that Apple's COO, Jeff Williams, is leaving at the end of the year. Apple needs to find a new potential successor to CEO Tim Cook.

12:14Gurman believes the most likely candidate is hardware engineering chief, John Ternus. We are thrilled to introduce the impossibly thin iPhone Air. At 5.6 millimeters, it's the thinnest iPhone we've ever made. And it's also exceptionally light. It's unlike anything you've ever held before, and it's packed with our most advanced features. Ternus introduced the iPhone Air in the latest Apple announcement. He's 50 years old and trusted by Cook to contribute to product maps beyond the scope of the hardware chief. Yeah, it's still early, but Gurman seems convinced. I don't think Cook's going to be stepping down anytime soon, but investors like to know that there's somebody waiting in the wings for that sort of thing.

12:56So with Jeff Williams leaving, obviously, they are going to want to make it clear. It feels like leaking this out to Gurman is their way of making it clear without making it clear, if that makes sense. Yes. Apple wants to do an heir apparent. I don't think anything is going to happen anytime in the foreseeable future, even. It's probably years out. But here's who we're thinking. Let's let that slip out there. How does the market react to it? How does IRF react to it? Okay, it didn't implode. Maybe that's what we'll do in a couple of years. Yeah, or if it does, if they do get flack, maybe they change it.

13:30And who knows if it's actually John Ternus by the time Tim Cook ends up needing to step down. They could absolutely say, I don't know why you guys listen to that Garmin guy that gets stuff right most of the time. You know, most of the time he gets it right, but there are times like this when he does it. Maybe, maybe. Here's a cautionary tale for all of us. South Korea's Ministry of the Interior and Safety reported Wednesday that a fire at the National Information Resource Service's Daejeon headquarters destroyed a G-Drive cloud storage system that contained files for more than 750 ,000 civil servants.

14:05The system had been in use since 2018 and gives each worker up to 30 gigabytes of storage. However, because of that large capacity, they had not done external backups. Now, not all ministries relied on the system exclusively, thankfully, but some did. And some official documents were also stored in the government's Onora system and may be recoverable once that system is restored. Uh, but yeah, uh, local, uh, uh, on-device local and external backup, external backup, very important in that system. It is, it's kind of crazy to me that they're, they're not backing this stuff up. 750 ,000 people's work is gone.

14:47Maybe you can get some of it back. There's a potential chance that you're not going to get a lot of it back. That just, that, that, that violates so many principles of good data recovery, uh, strategy is that you have to have an off-site back, or at least have some off-site cold storage or something. Cold storage, right. So maybe you lose a little, but not everything. But yeah, just saying we hope it doesn't happen is not a good strategy for protecting against this. This is actually kind of insane to me. Yeah. An important part of understanding this story too is that they were encouraging people not to keep files on their local machines, but to back them up to the system.

15:26So while some of the files will be local, a lot of them, because of the policy, were not. So it's going to cause some problems in government processing for a while, I feel. I'm guessing the procedure will change. Instagram will update its map feature to make it easier to see if you're sharing location. An indicator of whether you're sharing location or not will show up at the top of the map under the profile photo in the notes tray and on the DMs page. location is off by default. Instagram has also removed profiles from the map to make it clear that locations are not real time. And a reminder will show up when you add location to a post if you have location on for that post.

16:07The map feature, which is available in Canada and the United States, is expanding to India as well. Man, people lost their minds when they launched this feature. It was off by default. That was the only thing I needed to see. I was like, oh, okay, so if I don't do anything, nothing happens. But even if I did turn it on, it was making a map of places I've been, not tracking me at the time. And people didn't understand that. So Instagram still doing spin control here. Yeah. I'm wondering, did, you know, how did it, I don't want to blame Instagram for this because it's like, here's a feature that we don't turn on and doesn't really do anything nefarious.

16:43No, but I think this, the way that people saw it, maybe they misunderstood it and it just went rampant with, Oh no, I can't stand this. This is the worst thing ever. Instagram can't believe you're doing this. So it was really interesting to see how that propagated to where it's like they told you that we've added a feature that is not turned on by default. We are a culture that jumps to conclusions. And this is an example of that. Europe is getting some increased attention from multiple tech sectors. A track of shares for European data center and infrastructure operations is up 23 % on the year.

17:19So this is like a bundle of shares in those sectors, power generators in particular leading the charge as investors expect there to be a lot of data centers built in Europe and new power capacity needed for them. Reuters also reports that Chinese autonomous car makers now targeting Europe for expansion of their sales. Chinese EVs have been moving into Europe and autonomous cars are coming on their heels, or I guess on their bumpers. Yeah, EVs made in China, they are there. Tesla is still Tesla, but they are there. They are competing quite well, pretty much everywhere that is not the United States.

17:56All right, finally, some quick headlines that are just good to know if you want to understand the news in the future. Google followed Apple in removing apps from its store that let users track and report sightings of US immigration and customs enforcement agents after they violated Google policies over user-generated content moderation. Microsoft felt compelled to tell Windows Central over the weekend, quote, we are actively investing in our future first-party consoles and devices designed, engineered, and built by Xbox. They're not abandoning Xbox. The brand has put together an orange skin for Pixel phones that are color-matched to Apple's cosmic orange.

18:37It is a fine color, I might say. The color is also available for the Switch 2, AirPods cases, the Galaxy S25, laptops, and more. DeepMind released details of a research project called CodeMender, which can automatically detect, patch, and rewrite vulnerable code. On Saturday, October 4th, YouTube streamer Kurt J. Mack finished his 14-year walk in Minecraft to the edge of the match, which he began in March of 2011. Wow. Sega and the International Olympic Committee have reached a licensing deal to sell official Olympic merchandise with Sonic the Hedgehog and the Olympic rings. Match made in heaven.

19:17That's awesome. And former PayPal CEO Dan Schulman will take over as CEO for Verizon from Hans Vestberg, who will depart the company on October 4th, 2026. All right, folks, some of these were submitted by folks on our subreddit. What would you like to hear us talk about? Let us know in that very subreddit, reddit.com slash r slash daily tech news show.

19:43We in every episode of DTNS with some shared wisdom today. Mohan shares a concern about Amazon streaming apps for its Vega OS powered Fire TV stick. Yeah, see, I made the remark. Well, I guess it's not a problem since your streaming video is coming from the cloud. Anyway, Mohan said, yes, Tom, we can't watch our shows if the internet is down, but streaming the app on Amazon's Luna OS, I think he meant Vega OS, is a great idea till AWS goes down. Rob, are you worried about AWS going down? I'm not particularly worried about AWS going down, but I will say this, AWS has gone down more than the internet has gone down.

20:23So there's that. has AWS gone down more than your personal internet has gone down? I doubt it very, very seriously. I doubt it very, very seriously. And when AWS goes down and I'm not saying it never goes down, it's a big deal and it affects a lot of websites and stuff too. So Mohan's not wrong. I'm not, I'm not disputing that, but I still feel like that's an edge case. It's not going to happen all that often. I would imagine that if the internet is up and AWS is going down, there's still other things you're not going to be able to do just because that affects so much other stuff. Being able to watch content is probably not the biggest thing.

20:59But Mohan's right. If you have Android TV or Apple TV or Roku, you will not have that problem. Although one of your services might have that problem, you won't have the problem of your apps not being able to stream. Well, folks, we want to know what you're thinking about. So if you've got some insight into a story, Share it with us at feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com. Yeah, big thanks to Mohan for contributing to today's show. Thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You keep us in business. If you're not a patron, we've got some great stuff that you can get by becoming one. And you lose the ads.

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21:42The DTNS family of podcasts. Helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.