Tech
X launches stand-alone XChat app on iOS
XChat, X’s stand-alone messaging app, launched to the public on Friday. Initially available on iOS devices, the new app allows users to connect with their X contacts for messaging, file sharing, audio and video calls, as well as group chats.
The company first began publicly testing XChat with a small group of beta users earlier this year to get their feedback about the new experience.
The XChat app is a key piece to the strategic vision for the company, which sees the social network as a jumping-off point for other services, like messaging or payments. (The latter is also being tested as a dedicated app, though it is not yet available publicly.)
However, X’s decision to break out of a piece of its platform to become its own dedicated app is a shift away from owner Elon Musk’s earlier plan to make X an “everything app,” which would provide a single place to access messaging, payments, creator content, shopping, AI, and more.
Instead, xAI (Musk’s AI company that owns X and is itself owned by Musk’s other company SpaceX) is now offering a suite of apps to provide more consumer touchpoints with its services.
At launch, the XChat app offers support for messaging and calling, as well as other features that it says are privacy protected, including the ability to edit and delete messages for everyone in the chat; support for disappearing messages; and the ability to block screenshots. X claims there are no ads or tracking mechanisms in the app.
The company also claims that all messages are end-to-end encrypted and PIN protected — though security experts have previously disputed the company’s encryption claims.
Security experts had earlier warned potential users that the XChat service appears to be less secure than other encrypted messaging apps, like Signal, when the app was first introduced. They will need to evaluate the dedicated XChat app again, now that it’s broadly available, to see if the necessary improvements have been made.
In addition to offering a place to have private chats or group chats, XChat is also stepping in to serve as the new destination for X’s Communities, which the company has decided to shut down due to lack of use and high amounts of spam. The timing of that news could give XChat an early boost in new installs, as community members make the shift.
More updates to XChat are seemingly still planned, according to X lead designer Benji Taylor, who teased that the app is “just the beginning of what we’re building for messaging.”
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Tech
Anthropic created a test marketplace for agent-on-agent commerce
In a recent experiment, Anthropic created a classified marketplace where AI agents represented both buyers and sellers, striking real deals for real goods and real money.
The company admitted this test — which it called Project Deal — was only “a pilot experiment with a self-selected participant pool” of 69 Anthropic employees who were given a budget of $100 (paid out via gift cards) to buy stuff from their coworkers.
Nonetheless, Anthropic said it was “struck by how well Project Deal worked,” with 186 deals made, totaling more than $4,000 in value.
The company said it actually ran four separate marketplaces with different models — one that was “real” (where everyone was represented by the company’s most-advanced model, and with deals actually honored after the experiment) and another three for study.
Apparently, when users are represented by more advanced models, they get “objectively better outcomes,” Anthropic said. But users didn’t seem to notice the disparity, raising the possibility of “‘agent quality’ gaps” where “people on the losing end might not realize they’re worse off.”
Also, the initial instructions given to the agents didn’t appear to affect sale likelihood or the negotiated prices.
Tech
Nuclear startup X-energy raises $1B in data center-driven IPO
Nuclear startup X-energy raised $1 billion in its initial public offering yesterday, selling 44.3 million shares for $23 each, a hefty premium above the $16 to $19 per share it was seeking. Initially, the company had hoped to raise around $800 million.
The stock is expected to begin trading on Friday on the Nasdaq Exchange under the ticker XE.
X-energy is building small modular reactors capable of generating electricity or delivering heat to industrial processes. The company has a deal with Dow to provide heat and power to a chemical plant in Texas and another with Amazon to sell as much as 5 gigawatts of nuclear power by 2039. Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund led X-energy’s Series C-1 round.
Nuclear startups like X-energy have been buoyed by surging demand for electricity from data centers and other parts of the economy that have been electrifying.
The company says its reactors will generate 80 megawatts of electricity. Each Xe-100 reactor is cooled by helium gas, which flows over billiard ball-sized “pebbles” that are packed with BB-sized TRISO fuel pellets. TRISO fuel, which contains a kernel of uranium wrapped in carbon and silicon, was developed years ago to be safer than existing fuel designs, though it hasn’t been widely used. X-energy says its fuel can withstand higher temperatures, helping to keep the fuel contained and reduce the potential of a meltdown.
Tech
Marked-up Mac minis flood eBay amid shortages driven by AI
Overpriced Mac minis are flooding eBay amid shortages of the sold-out machines, which have become a favored tool for running on-device AI models like OpenClaw.
This week, reports indicated that the $599 M4 Mac mini base model with 16GB RAM and 256GB of storage is sold out on Apple’s retail website, with no options for delivery or in-store pickup. The shortages have since extended to other configurations of the base model, regardless of the amount of memory selected. This is the first time the base model has been sold out, some outlets noted. Meanwhile, models with higher storage (512GB and up) are only available to ship starting in June.
As a result, eBay has become a secondary market for these in-demand computers. On the site, various configurations of the M4 Mac mini are available for sale at higher prices than if buying direct from Apple, which is no longer an option.
Apple’s power-efficient Mac minis have become popular devices for testing and running at-home, on-device AI models, beginning with the OpenClaw craze but now extending to OpenClaw alternatives like ZeroClaw, other AI tools from Anthropic and OpenAI, Perplexity Computer, or other specialized local models. Unlike some PCs, Mac minis also run quietly and tend to be more reliable for 24/7 use, compared with laptop computers.
The shortage of the devices also comes alongside an industry-wide memory crunch and plans for a Mac mini refresh, according to Bloomberg. However, refreshes of product lines haven’t led to shortages before.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This perfect storm of supply chain stress and increased demand for AI-friendly machines has inflated the prices of used consumer electronics.
As of Friday morning, M4 base models with the 16GB RAM/256GB SSD configuration were selling at markups like $715-$795 for a new, “open box” model, and as high as $979 for an “excellent” refurbished version. Some “lightly used, pre-owned” Mac minis with this configuration were selling for around $700 — more than $100 more than the price of a new base model.
There was also a single listing for a $925 brand-new M4 Mac mini with the same 16GB RAM and 256GB storage; the listing warned in bright red text: “Last one.”
While you still may be able to score a reasonably priced refurb if you keep a close eye out (or if you win an eBay auction where the bid has started at a lower price point), it seems that the demand for the device is going to keep prices up until Apple’s supply chain refreshes.
And now that the Mac mini is unavailable, Apple has begun to see increased demand for the Mac Studio, too. That computer is also now sold out across several configurations.
As Ars Technica pointed out, you can still get a MacBook Pro with 128GB RAM and larger SSDs within a few weeks, and even the new and popular MacBook Neo is still shipping within two to three weeks. This suggests the real issue is consumer demand for the Mac mini itself.
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