Boom Supersonic Goes AI, Waymo ~2x in 6 Months, Nvidia H200’s to China
This Week in AI Newsletter: 12/9/2025
Two new OpenAI models are set to launch after Sam Altman hits “code red,” pausing Sora development and AGI work for 2 months to improve ChatGPT, including for business customers. OpenAI’s scramble shows how intense the competition has become, with Google and Anthropic steadily gaining market share. More here
Source: Financial Times
Waymo’s weekly rides have surged to ~450,000 (up from ~250,000 in April) as its robotaxis begin operating on freeways. The company plans to launch in 12 additional cities in 2026 and now has roughly 2,500 robotaxis across six cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta. More here.
The U.S. Department of Commerce is allowing Nvidia to ship H200 AI chips to China to approved commercial customers vetted by Commerce. The decision underscores the tension between keeping U.S. chipmakers competitive and restricting China’s access to advanced AI hardware amid national-security concerns. There are still restrictions, as the H200s shipped will be roughly 18 months old and the U.S. will take a 25% cut of the sales.
Anthropic is launching Claude Code in Slack, letting developers delegate real coding tasks directly from chat threads. The beta, available Monday as a research preview, builds on Anthropic’s existing Slack integration by adding full workflow automation like spinning up coding sessions from thread context, posting progress updates, and sharing links to review work and open pull requests.
Boom Supersonic is launching a new business: a 42MW natural-gas turbine for powering AI data centers, starting with a 1.21GW order from CrusoeAI. Boom has spent years focused on bringing back supersonic passenger flight, so launching a gas turbine business for AI data centers is a surprising pivot. They say existing turbine setups lose a lot of output in extreme heat, while their supersonic-derived design should keep performance up and avoid the need for cooling water. More here.
A few months ago, I gave a demo of Apps in ChatGPT, where you could interact with different sites, with the promise that checkout would eventually happen right inside the chat. Now it’s real: you can go from planning a meal to building a cart and checking out with Instacart without ever leaving ChatGPT. More here.
Google is rolling out a shop-able discovery feed inside Doppl, its experimental AI try-on app, so users can browse personalized outfit suggestions and purchase items through merchant links. The feed is built around AI-generated videos of real products and is launching on iOS and Android in the U.S. for users 18+. More here.
Anthropic and Accenture struck a three-year partnership to sell Claude-powered AI services to business clients, aiming to help companies prove ROI from AI investments. Accenture will train about 30,000 employees on Claude and the pair will initially target highly regulated industries like financial services, healthcare, life sciences, and the public sector. More here.