AI News Roundup: Nvidia-OpenAI Drama, Robot Brains, and Space Data Centers This Week

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AI News Roundup: Nvidia-OpenAI Drama, Robot Brains, and Space Data Centers This Week

Grab your coffee and settle in. The AI world had another wild week, and I've gathered the most important developments you need to know about. Whether you're a developer, investor, or just AI-curious, here's your 5-minute briefing on what happened while you were busy building things.

The Nvidia-OpenAI Saga: He Said, He Didn't Say

Let's start with the drama everyone's talking about. According to Reuters, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang came out swinging against reports suggesting friction between his company and OpenAI.

"It's nonsense," Huang told reporters in Taipei, dismissing claims that he was unhappy with the ChatGPT maker. But here's where it gets interesting: while he confirmed Nvidia still plans a "huge" investment in OpenAI, he quickly clarified it wouldn't be anywhere near the previously announced $100 billion figure. When asked directly, his response was blunt: "No, nothing like that."

So what's really going on? According to TechCrunch, the original September announcement had Nvidia committing up to $100 billion. Now we're seeing the classic Silicon Valley dance of managing expectations while keeping the relationship alive.

Why this matters: Nvidia's relationship with OpenAI isn't just about money. It's about compute infrastructure, chip access, and the future of AI development. Any tension here ripples through the entire ecosystem.

Physical Intelligence: Building Brains for Robots

While we're talking about big money, let's shift to robotics. According to TechCrunch, Physical Intelligence is making waves as Silicon Valley's buzziest robotics AI startup.

Co-founder Lachy Groom, a Stripe veteran, is working with researchers who've spent decades on this problem. The company is backed by heavy hitters including Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Thrive Capital. Their mission? Building general-purpose AI that can control any robot.

Think about it: right now, every robot needs custom programming for specific tasks. Physical Intelligence wants to create a brain that can learn to control different robot bodies, similar to how foundation models work for language. It's ambitious, expensive, and according to the team, the timing is finally right.

The bottom line: We've seen AI master language, images, and video. Robotics is the next frontier, and Physical Intelligence is positioning itself at the center of that race.

AI Assistants Are Getting... Social?

Here's something weird and fascinating. According to TechCrunch, the viral AI assistant formerly known as Clawdbot (then briefly Moltbot) has rebranded again as OpenClaw and is now building its own social network.

Yes, you read that right. AI assistants creating a social network for AI assistants.

This connects to a broader conversation happening in the tech community. A post trending on Hacker News titled "Outsourcing thinking" is sparking debate about what happens when we lean too heavily on AI assistants for cognitive tasks. The discussion has 64 comments and counting.

Meanwhile, according to Wiki Education, Wikipedia spent 2025 learning hard lessons about AI-generated content. Their findings? AI can assist, but it can't replace human judgment in editing. The nuances of fact-checking, context, and neutrality still require humans in the loop.

The tension: We're simultaneously building more autonomous AI systems while discovering the limits of automation. OpenClaw's social network might be innovative, but Wikipedia's lessons remind us that not everything should be automated.

The Wild Card: SpaceX Wants 1 Million Satellites

And now for something completely different. According to TechCrunch and The Verge, SpaceX filed a request with the FCC on Friday seeking approval to launch 1 million solar-powered data center satellites into orbit.

Yes, one million.

The filing describes this as "a first step towards becoming a Kardashev II-level civilization — one that can harness the Sun's full power." Elon being Elon, the FCC is unlikely to approve anywhere near that number. SpaceX has a pattern of requesting unrealistically large satellite constellations as a negotiating starting point.

But here's the AI connection: this is directly about compute infrastructure. Training and running large AI models requires massive amounts of power and cooling. Solar-powered orbital data centers would solve both problems simultaneously while avoiding Earth-based energy grid constraints.

Reality check: This is SpaceX opening negotiations, not announcing a real deployment plan. But it shows how seriously companies are thinking about AI infrastructure needs in the coming decades.

What This All Means

Let's connect the dots. This week's news reveals three major themes:

Infrastructure is everything. Whether it's Nvidia's chips, Physical Intelligence's robot platforms, or SpaceX's orbital data centers, the conversation is shifting from "what can AI do?" to "how do we build the infrastructure to support it?"
The agentic AI wave is real. OpenClaw building social networks, Physical Intelligence creating general robot brains, and Wikipedia's AI editing experiments all point to AI systems becoming more autonomous and interconnected.
We're still figuring out the guardrails. The Nvidia-OpenAI relationship tension, the "outsourcing thinking" debate, and Wikipedia's cautionary lessons remind us that massive AI deployment still has unsolved governance challenges.