OpenAI could buy Google Chrome, says Sam Altman — but only if this happens
Notably, Google lost an antitrust trial in the United States last year, where the judge ruled that the tech giant had illegally monopolized the online search market. As part of the remedial measures, the Department of Justice has suggested that Chrome be sold to an independent entity to level the playing field.
Speaking to reporters, Sam Altman said (as quoted by TechCrunch), 'If Chrome is really going to sell, we should take a look at it.'
'Is it actually going to sell? I assumed it wasn't gonna happen,' the OpenAI CEO added.
Meanwhile, there have been reports that OpenAI is building its own AI browser, and Altman confirmed that the recent addition of its CEO of Applications, Fidji Simo, means the company is working on many consumer applications outside of ChatGPT.
Altman also stated that OpenAI is interested in exploring a new social media platform, saying there is 'nothing' inspiring to him about the way AI is used on social media today, TechCrunch reported. He said OpenAI is interested in 'whether or not it is possible to build a much cooler kind of social experience with AI.'
The OpenAI CEO also confirmed that the company would be backing a neural interface startup called Merge Labs to compete with Elon Musk's Neuralink.
'I think neural interfaces are cool ideas to explore. I would like to be able to think something and have ChatGPT respond to it,' he added.
Notably, tensions have flared up between Musk and Altman over alleged Apple bias over App Store. While Musk accused the iPhone maker of being biased towards ChatGPT and not featuring his Grok AI application in any of its rankings, Altman took a dig at the billionaire over X's own policies of amplifying Musks' tweets to all users.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time of India
19 minutes ago
- Time of India
AI Companion Apps Set to Surpass $120M in Revenue
The Rise of Digital Friendship The Big Numbers and Bigger Impact Why Do We Seek AI Companions Live Events The Future is Friendly and Digital In the latest report from TechCrunch on AI companion that was offered by app intelligence company Appfigures. The demand of AI companion apps outside of the more known names such as ChatGPT and Grok other apps has also been witnessed. Out of 337 live AI companion apps which are revenue-generating apps which are launched for worldwide availability out of that 128 were launched in 2025 till date. This area of AI space has so far raised $82 million and with where it is going might draw more than $120 million through the current for a friend always there, never judging and can be tailored to suit you? Emotional intelligence and natural language processing-enabled AI companion apps are bringing that dream to life for millions. Through July 2025, those apps had already been downloaded over 220 million times on the Apple App Store and Google Play, with year-over-year downloads increasing 88%. Their marketplace, previously ruled by pilot chatbots, is now home to hundreds of applications with realistic characters, such as friends, dating companions, or eccentric anime only the first half of 2025 alone, AI companion apps generated $82 million in revenue , heading for a $120 million annual finish. The top 10% of these apps, including Replika, PolyBuzz, and Chai, generate an incredible 89% of total revenue. What's more, 17% of active apps contain "girlfriend" in their name, indicating how virtual romance is driving per download is also rocketing up from $0.52 in 2024 to $1.18 this year. Approximately 33 apps have already passed $1 million in lifetime consumer spend. Heavy hitters such as OpenAI, Google, and xAI are now joining in, adding new companion characters and reacting to user calls for more emotional connection with their AI "pals."The solution is both technological and profoundly human. AI companion employ emotional intelligence, customized chat, and evolving personalities to create realistic connection. Whether it's fighting loneliness, offering mental health help, or suggesting judgment-free interaction, these apps are addressing an expanding social rift. For others, AI companion has even offered life-saving aid in moments of can heal, connect, and entertain: AI companion is demonstrating tech isn't only for work it's for emotional health as well. The power to influence personalities, appearance, and interactions means that users are no longer passive recipients, but active creators of their online relationships . As users offer intimate thoughts to AI, designers of apps have new challenges on data safety and emotional more intelligent algorithms, greater adoption, and a constantly expanding repository of virtual personas, AI companion apps are more than a trend – they're a new frontier in how people interact with friendship and assistance in a digital world. For comfort, for chat, or just for curiosity, millions are finding that sometimes the greatest friend may reside right within your phone.
NDTV
3 hours ago
- NDTV
Delhi University Students To Get AI, Cybersecurity Training Under Google Cloud Collaboration
The University of Delhi (DU) has entered into a multi-year collaboration with Google Cloud to equip students with cutting-edge skills in artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, cybersecurity, data analytics, and digital literacy. The initiative will provide industry-recognised certifications, hackathons, mentorship opportunities, startup incubation support, and specialised Google workshops for education. Registrar Dr Vikas Gupta said the partnership is aligned with the objectives of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and is designed to boost students' career prospects. "Technology adoption is growing rapidly. DU has already launched several courses in line with NEP 2020, and this collaboration with Google Cloud will add immense value by offering students future-ready skills," he said. Dean of Colleges, Professor Balram Pani, added, "Delhi University is the number one university in the country. This collaboration will benefit both DU and Google." Google Cloud Managing Director (India) Shashi Sreedharan highlighted the significance of the partnership: "Technology is a powerful equaliser. It is vital that India's next-generation talent is equipped with practical, future-ready skills. Our collaboration with DU marks a major step in shaping an AI-enabled academic ecosystem in India." Professor Sanjeev Singh noted that the programme would include hands-on labs, assessments, and certifications in industry-leading courses. Students will also gain exposure through campus hackathons and webinars.
Time of India
3 hours ago
- Time of India
CEOs want their companies to adopt AI. But do they get it themselves?
Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads In March, Andy Katz-Mayfield, cofounder of the razor brand Harry's, started inviting junior employees to monthly meetings usually reserved for his most senior leaders. The purpose was for lower-level workers to show off how they were using generative artificial intelligence to improve the supply chain, finance and Katz-Mayfield had another purpose, too: getting the top executives comfortable with using AI themselves."Building familiarity with these tools opens people's eyes," said Katz-Mayfield, who is also a CEO of Harry's parent company, Mammoth Brands. "Through demos and stuff, people are like: 'Oh, that's cool. I didn't think about that, but I now realize why this is important for my team.'"Executives refer to the promise of AI with grandiose comparisons: the dawn of the internet, the Industrial Revolution, Carl Friedrich Gauss' discovery of number theory. But while boards and top executives may mandate using AI to make their businesses more efficient and competitive, many of those leaders haven't fully integrated it into their own with most technological advances, younger people have taken to AI more quickly than their elders. And the work that people do earlier in their careers -- inserting data into spreadsheets, creating decks, coming up with designs -- also lends itself to playing around with the technology. Top executives, on the other hand, are often several steps removed from the mechanics. Once they're in the C-suite, days are filled with meetings. Less doing, more to nudge high-level managers, CEOs who have fully embraced AI are trying new tactics. Some have told senior leaders to use Gemini, Google's AI assistant, before defaulting to Google search. Some are carving out time at corporate retreats to play around with generative AI tools like Mayer Brown, a law firm in Chicago, chair Jon Van Gorp has shared with the partners how he uses a generative AI tool built for legal professionals to help draft contracts and distill the most salient points from his own writing. At a fashion startup called Daydream, Friday lunches are devoted to employees' sharing how they're using generative AI tools; the chief technology officer has shared her Gemini prompts from the chief technology officer, Sandeep Chouksey, 41, is well aware of AI and has been playing around with ChatGPT since it came out nearly three years ago. But he found that watching the engineers on his team helped him understand the technology better. He figured his peers needed to get their eyes on it, too, and suggested inviting employees who were working closely with AI to the leadership work of senior executives "doesn't lend itself to actually experimenting with the technology," Chouksey said. "I knew that the other leaders needed to see what I was seeing -- all the bottom-up work that was happening."Chuck Whitten is witnessing how company executives are gradually wrapping their heads around the AI phenomenon. He is the global head of digital practices at Bain & Co., a management consulting firm where his job is to advise CEOs about technology. They understand the importance of integrating AI into their companies, he said, but don't yet have a feel for the technology was in their shoes not too long ago. In 2021, he left Bain after 22 years to become co-chief operating officer at Dell Technologies. He was in that job when ChatGPT rolled out. He describes it as a "lightning bolt" moment. Part of the reason he returned to Bain was realizing that senior leaders needed assistance entering the "golden age of artificial intelligence," he said."I think the majority that I see are just experimenting with the basics, sort of trying Copilot or ChatGPT for the occasional email, draft or quick fact check," Whitten said. "This is not a tool you can delegate down the hall to the chief information officer. They need to be hands-on in both where the technology is going and how they can apply it today."According to a survey of 456 CEOs by Gartner, a research and advisory firm, released in May, 77% of the executives thought AI is transformative for business, but fewer than half thought their technology officers were up to the task of navigating the current digital CEO is trying to "figure out whether they're set up for the future or not and how the world looks on the other side of this technology transformation," said Tom Pickett, CEO of Headspace, a wellness app. "They're facing this constant change, which just leads to stress and everyday anxiety."Pickett, 56, has dealt with his own anxiety by using AI chatbots as much as possible. He joined the company last August and said chatbots had helped him get up to speed in his role. He uses ChatGPT or Gemini to do research and receive advice about business moves, such as potential partnerships with other companies. He said it helped him "learn 10 times as much or test 10 times as many ideas in a very lightweight way."In the past, he said, "I would have had to ask the resident expert or somebody who worked with that company to really give me a debrief," Pickett said. "And instead, in five minutes, I'm like, 'Oh, OK, I get this.'" (He said he had also consulted people in his company, but now "the conversations are more productive.")Sarah Franklin, CEO of Lattice, a human resources software platform, said it can be difficult to get executives to use new tools, and in internal meetings she regularly asks, "Did you test that message with ChatGPT?"Franklin, who previously was chief marketing officer at Salesforce , has been using generative AI tools since they came on the market. But the technology is moving quickly, and everyone is trying to figure it out on the go."Nobody has 10 years of agentic AI experience right now. They at best have six months. So nobody is fully prepared," Franklin, 49, said. "What we have right now in the world is a lot of optimism combined with a lot of FOMO."Fear of missing out can be the mother of innovation, it January, Greg Schwartz , CEO of StockX, was scrolling the social platform X when he saw several users posting projects that they had made with various AI coding apps. He downloaded the hadn't written a line of code in years. But using the apps got his mind a corporate retreat in March, he decided to push 10 senior leaders to play around with these tools, too. He gave everyone in the room, including the heads of supply chain, marketing and customer service, 30 minutes to build a website with the tool Replit and make a marketing video with the app Creatify."I'm just a tinkerer by trait," Schwartz, 44, said. "I thought that was going to be more engaging and more impactful than me standing in front of the room."There was a "little bit of shock" when he presented the exercise, he said. But he tried to remind people it was a fun activity. They weren't being discomfort is normal, said Ethan Mollick, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and author of the newsletter One Useful Thing and the book "Co-Intelligence: Living and Working With AI.""AI is weird and off-putting," Mollick said. "There's a lot of psychological resistance to using the systems even for people who know they should be doing it."Many organizations, he added, have a "real failure of imagination and vision" when it comes to the power of these systems."The main issue is that leaders have to take a leading role," Mollick said. "They all say AI is the future, use AI to do stuff. And then they don't make any decisions or choices."About half of companies do not have road maps for integrating AI, according to a Bain survey. Whitten at Bain said that about only 20% of companies were scaling their AI bets and that most didn't have benchmarks for how workers should use Mammoth Brands, Katz-Mayfield said that he and his team had discussed providing incentives to employees who use AI but that they hadn't needed to. The energy around experimenting is working for the company. In the last meeting it had five demos on the docket but didn't get to all of them because senior leaders were "asking so many questions and wanting to see different things.""If the leadership team is excited and engaged in that stuff," Katz-Mayfield said, "that's probably more than half the battle."
