Latest Technology News Today: 13 November 2026

Malaysia is probing whether Speedmatrix, a Megaspeed subsidiary, re-exported AI hardware it imported, while Singapore charged an executive over 917 servers that may contain Nvidia accelerators. The moves follow the resignation of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang over reported affairs, including with a possible Chinese intelligence asset. Megaspeed said it hired a US law firm to inventory its GPUs and assess compliance with US export rules.

OpenAI launched ChatGPT Wallet on Friday, letting its AI agents, called dots, choose items and complete online purchases for users. The feature starts with a limited group of US ChatGPT Pro subscribers aged 18 and up who use US-issued Visa, Mastercard or American Express cards. Users review items, totals and cards, then approve with Face ID or a fingerprint, while a payment token keeps card details from the agent and merchant.

Apple has opened preorders for the first Apple Home Collection devices, developed with LG Electronics and Schneider Electric, with delivery expected in mid-December. The Siri AI-powered HomeView smart display is available now, and LG Outdoor Cam, Indoor Cam and Video Doorbell can be preordered for estimated shipping from December 11 to 17. Other collection items have no ship date.

Uber is notifying thousands of drivers that personal and driver's license information was stolen in an October breach at tech provider Fireworks AI. Notices filed with US attorneys general say 2,567 Massachusetts, 3,430 South Carolina and 1,873 Rhode Island drivers were affected, with more notifications expected. Fireworks attributed the breach to financially motivated cybercriminals seeking to sell LLM access tokens.

Bloomberg reports SpaceX and Tesla boards are negotiating a merger that could close as soon as December or slip into 2027. The combined firm would be worth $3 trillion, spanning space, electric vehicles and batteries. Musk says a solar powered space data center called Starmind is a key motivator, and SpaceX has ordered 100 gigawatts of annual solar production equipment from Singulus.

Palantir won a five year 10.1M pound contract with Bedfordshire Police, Cambridgeshire Constabulary and Hertfordshire Constabulary after London Mayor Sadiq Khan blocked a separate Metropolitan Police deal. The platform will provide data integration and analytics across policing systems. Former Metropolitan Police commissioner Dame Cressida Dick has advised Palantir since September 2025, while MPs warned of vendor lock in to US suppliers.

Microsoft is retiring some Compatibility Mode settings in Word, which may change the layout of documents created or last saved in Word 2010 or earlier. Affected files may show text reflow, spacing changes, different page counts, or images and shapes moving to another page. Windows rollout begins in December 2026 and completes by January 2027, with Mac following in early 2027. Microsoft advises users to export documents to PDF before the change.

Bloomberg reported a network of Chinese firms tied to Alice Huang obtained Nvidia AI chips banned in China, including H800, H100 and H200 units at a Shanghai facility. Aperia Cloud Services bought 22 Dell servers with H800 chips, while Shanghai Longteng filings listed 52 Supermicro servers with H100 or H200 chips. Her husband, fund manager Kang Wei, introduced her to Nvidia chief Jensen Huang, whom US officials believe she spied on for China.

Whoop has launched Whoop Humans, a social network where members can share sleep, recovery, strain and activity data from their Whoop wearables. The company says the data is verifiable because it comes from the devices, and users can follow friends and family, comment and react to posts, and share workout photos through Moments. Members can keep Moments private and choose which workout types or achievements appear.

Stela, a new Linux-based UEFI application by Tyler Smith, presents a virtual M2 Mac Mini to macOS 27 and translates Apple's AArch instructions to x86-64. The project uses ahead-of-time and just-in-time compilation and converts Metal graphics calls to Mesa's NIR instructions. The author says it is slow and not very stable, while requirements include an x86-64-v2 CPU, 8 GB of RAM, UEFI and an Nvidia 16xx-series or newer graphics card.

Official figures show only five or six NHS trusts are using Cancer 360, Palantir's app on the 330 million Federated Data Platform, despite praise for cutting diagnosis times. NHS England said five trusts were using it as of March 2026 and only two were benefiting, while October data said six trusts were using it and five were benefiting. NHS England replies show two trusts cited for successful pilots had zero unique users in the last 12 months.

BYD apologized after some Great Tang electric SUVs had wider rear wheel rims installed on the front and narrower front rims on the rear. The company traced the error to a Hubei wheel mesh assembly supplier and said there was no safety risk. BYD will replace rims free, offer transport compensation, and restart warranties. The SUV has 150,000 orders in China and is planned for European and Asian markets outside China by early 2027.

C++26 may be delayed after its Draft International Standard failed an ISO ballot in October, with 13 votes in favor, 9 against and 12 abstentions. The dispute centers on Contracts, which would add preconditions, postconditions and assertions to catch errors. C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup opposes the proposal as complex and bloated, while others say late vetoes damage the language.

Nvidia chief Jensen Huang resigned on Thursday and was replaced on an interim basis by CFO Colette Kress after reports of affairs, including with Alice Huang, a suspected Chinese spy. Pressure grew on Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick over a delay in adding Singapore's Megaspeed, linked to Alice Huang, to a US national security blacklist. White House officials are discussing whether to fire Lutnick, who is set to testify before Congress.

A new Chinese rumor says Huawei will launch the Mate X8 on November 24, with a thinner and lighter design than the Mate X5, X6 and X7. The phone is said to support the Ruiying Z10 external camera module, which has a 1-inch RYYB sensor and 10x continuous optical zoom, and previous rumors point to Kirin 9050 or Kirin 9050 Pro chips, an 8.15-inch main display and a battery of at least 6,000 mAh.

Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs said its police and customs agencies investigated Alice Huang's company Megaspeed in February 2025 over possible false declarations in server purchases. The ministry said US authorities gave only limited help, while police later suspected Supermicro had a role. Huang, an alleged Chinese intelligence asset who had an intimate relationship with former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, was not investigated for espionage.

Microsoft said a global outage affecting Outlook, Teams and Copilot was caused by servers unexpectedly becoming unavailable, straining remaining systems. Outlook problem reports peaked at nearly 140,000 around 18:00 GMT on Thursday, with users in the US, Japan and Singapore affected. The company warned some restored services could become unresponsive again, and OpenAI said it was investigating issues with its connections to Microsoft.

Seagate's FireCuda Forge is an external hard drive that pairs a 20TB mechanical drive with a user-installed NVMe SSD in an M.2 slot. Its Alkemi platform monitors file activity and moves frequently accessed files to the faster flash storage, while less active data remains on the larger disk. Seagate says the design, which recalls hybrid drives from about 20 years ago, is aimed at gamers and creators who want capacity and responsiveness.

Austin-based Nous Research has applied post-training to Alibaba's open-weight Qwen3.8-27B model, releasing a version called Arete that it says reinforces Western values on a Chinese-trained model. The lab argues Chinese open-weight models ship with state-aligned behavior, while Anthropic has claimed Qwen lab operators used Claude outputs to train competing models.

The FAA is expanding its $875 million SMART AI tool to all 22 centers across the country to help manage air traffic. The agency said the system, first used in Washington, D.C., has rerouted 180 flights with average savings of 10 minutes and 80 gallons of fuel, and that controllers keep final say. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association said it was not involved in the rollout, and House Democrats asked the GAO to review it.

Ukrainian drone strikes in October hit data center sites in six Russian regions, including facilities linked to Yandex, VK, Sberbank and the Federal Tax Service. As domestic cloud capacity nears 90% occupancy, companies are looking to Kazakhstan and Belarus for backup hosting. President Vladimir Putin has ordered privately operated data centers to reserve 10% of capacity for Russian information services within 10 days.

Xbox announced Wolfenstein 3, a new mainline sequel from MachineGames, nearly a decade after Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus launched in 2017. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma shared the title and a photo of a script, while MachineGames said the game is in production and posted a motion-capture image. IGN reports that Brian Bloom and Debra Wilson are reprising their roles as BJ Blazkowicz and Grace Walker.