THE RUNDOWN

Collette Kress, who has spent over a decade in senior finance roles at Nvidia, steps in as interim CEO while the company figures out its next move. Tech leaders across the industry have been vocal — many calling Huang's departure 'a mistake' given how deeply his vision is baked into Nvidia's DNA. Meanwhile, Congressional Democrats have launched a formal investigation into Nvidia's China sales and its alleged dealings with the Trump administration, and Jensen Huang is expected to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee before Thanksgiving. This story is nowhere near over.

As if the situation weren't strange enough, President Trump has reportedly expressed interest in having Apple CEO Tim Cook take the helm at Nvidia. Cook has not commented, and the idea raises obvious questions about what that would mean for Apple's own AI hardware ambitions. It's a wild card that the market is still trying to process.

Since around 1PM ET on Thursday, Outlook has been inaccessible for users across the web and mobile apps worldwide. Microsoft confirmed the outage is tied to 'elevated load' issues hitting multiple Microsoft 365 services including Teams. If you've been staring at a spinning wheel wondering if it's your Wi-Fi, it's not — and there's no confirmed fix yet. For anyone managing business communications, this is a painful reminder of how fragile centralised email infrastructure can be, especially relevant as more African enterprises migrate to cloud-based tools covered regularly on our news section.

Google rolled out its new Gemini 4 Hydrogen model, and the headline feature is better handling of genuinely complex, multi-part questions — the kind where current AI models either hallucinate or give you a vague non-answer. Google Search's AI Mode is also getting richer visual responses and improved link surfacing powered by the same model. It's a direct shot at competitors, and it matters for anyone relying on AI tools for research or work.

President Zelenskyy says Starshield — the military-grade version of Starlink — has been slowed down again, just three weeks after speeds were restored following the last throttling incident. Ukraine says this directly endangers its battlefield communications and defence operations. The pattern of throttling raises hard questions about the reliability of private satellite infrastructure as a wartime utility.

The Federal Aviation Administration has expanded an AI advisory tool to manage congestion across the entire US airspace — a significant step up from its earlier limited deployment. Airlines are praising it, but the air traffic controllers' union was notably left out of the process, which is raising concerns about implementation and worker safety. It's a preview of how AI is quietly moving into high-stakes physical infrastructure, a conversation worth watching closely on the AI beat.

Meta's AI agent Muse has quietly become more capable — it can now place outbound calls to US businesses on your behalf, handling things like appointments, reservations, and hold music. The catch is it's behind a paid subscription. It's a small but telling sign of where AI agents are headed: not just answering your questions, but acting in the world on your behalf.

Wearable fitness company Whoop has launched Whoop Humans, a social network where every user's profile is anchored to real biometric data from their device — heart rate, recovery scores, activity logs. The idea is that it's impossible to fake your stats the way you might fake a gym photo. It's an interesting experiment in what 'verified' identity could look like when it's tied to your body, though privacy questions are already swirling.

Humble Bundle's fresh redesign quietly removed the ability to add or update two-factor authentication from the settings page — a basic security feature that should never disappear in a storefront handling payment data. It hasn't been framed as a deliberate decision, but until it's restored, users are more exposed than they were yesterday. Worth checking your account settings if you use the platform, and a good reminder of why digital security hygiene matters even on familiar platforms.

Nearly a decade after Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Xbox and MachineGames have officially announced a third entry in the series. Details are thin for now, but the franchise has a dedicated following and the announcement signals Xbox is continuing to invest in its Bethesda catalogue. A quiet but welcome piece of news for gaming fans navigating an otherwise chaotic Thursday.

Between a CEO scandal that could reshape the AI chip industry, a global email outage, and Ukraine's battlefield communications being throttled by a private company — this was not a slow news day. Keep an eye on the Nvidia story especially; the Congressional hearings before Thanksgiving could surface details that go well beyond the personal drama.