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- Google expands AI chip footprint, unveils 8th-gen TPUs for training and inference
Google expands AI chip footprint, unveils 8th-gen TPUs for training and inference
Bay Area Times
April 23, 2026
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Top stories today:
- Google expands AI chip footprint, unveils 8th-gen TPUs
- OpenAI launches workspace agents in ChatGPT for teams
- Alibaba’s Qwen3.6-27B open-weight AI model debuts
- DeepSeek eyed by Tencent, Alibaba for investment at $20B+ valuation
- SpaceX/xAI holds talks with Mistral on 3-way partnership with Cursor
- Tesla Q1 revenue +16% YoY, more affordable Model Y, 3 trims confirmed
0. Data and calendar
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All times are ET.
Listen to our AI-generated podcast summarizing today’s newsletter (beware of hallucinations):
1. Google expands AI chip footprint, unveils 8th-gen TPUs for training and inference
The TPU 8t is tailored for training, while 8i is designed for inference:
The 8t can scale up to clusters of 9.6K chips.
Delivers 124% higher performance per watt vs. the prior generation.
TPU 8i delivers a 117% performance gain vs. last-gen.
Later this year: the AI chips will be generally available.
Google also introduced the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform to manage AI agent lifecycles
Offers access to 200+ models, including from Anthropic.
Workspace Intelligence adds Gemini’s reasoning to Workspace apps.
Google Cloud and Wiz debuted AI security agents to counter automated zero-day exploits.
Mira Murati’s TML said to sign Google Cloud deal worth billions for AI systems access.
AI now generates 75% of new code at Google, up from 50% last fall.
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3. OpenAI launches workspace agents in ChatGPT, letting teams build shared tools
Once built, these can be used in ChatGPT or Slack.
Workspace agents are an evolution of GPTs, OpenAI said.
Agents can pull context from docs, email, chats, and systems, and take approved actions like creating docs or sending messages.
GPTs will remain available during testing, with tools coming soon to convert them into workspace agents.
Available in research preview for ChatGPT Business, Enterprise, Edu and Teachers plans.
Separately, OpenAI has released Privacy Filter, a small open-weight model for masking PIIs in text
1.5B parameters, with 50M active.
Apache 2.0 licensed.
Available via Hugging Face and GitHub.
GPT-5.5 is expected to be launched today as more intelligent pretrained models, relying less on reasoning
Models are becoming more intelligent with less reliance on reasoning, as reportedly shown by OpenAI’s Spud and Anthropic’s Mythos.
Stop swapping between tools. 150,000+ Microsoft customers use Slack to connect every tool and automate workflows.
Watch the demo to see integrations with Office and SharePoint, AI-powered automation, and no-code search.
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5. Alibaba’s Qwen3.6-27B open-weight AI model debuts with improved coding performance
Qwen3.6-27B delivered competitive results vs. Gemma4-31B and Claude Opus 4.5 on early benchmarks:
