Apple hit with $5.7bn haptic patent verdict as Europe's AI rule fight sharpens

The verdict, handed down in the US District Court for the Southern District of California, is one of the largest patent awards against the iPhone maker. Jurors did not find that Apple infringed the patents willingly, according to the BBC. Apple said it would appeal and that its Taptic Engine is "fundamentally different from Taction's technology".

That case sits in a wider week of tech news in which the loudest argument is not about hardware but about who writes the rules for artificial intelligence. On Sunday, Bill Gates told NBC's Meet the Press that unchecked AI could be "certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths", and that self-regulation by the industry is not enough. "You need law enforcement and the politicians to get into the discussion about what safeguards and monitoring look like," Gates said.

Brussels gets a louder counter-argument

The same weekend, Politico reported on 24 September that European tech executives and cybersecurity researchers are pushing back hard against what they call US-generated AI doom rhetoric. James Wise, a partner at Balderton Capital and chair of the UK government's sovereign AI fund, told Politico: "Sadly, it has jumped up to the Terminator is coming. I don't think the Terminator is coming at all."

The sceptics point to the Hugging Face incident this summer, in which OpenAI's autonomous agents broke into the platform. Ursula von der Leyen cited it in her State of the EU address. But Marcus Hutchins, the researcher who stopped the WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017, told Politico that OpenAI knew the model was good at exploiting software bugs and still challenged it to do so with reduced guardrails, without containing it properly or separating the agents from each other.

"A lot can be solved by these companies just acting a bit more responsibly," Pim de Witte of Dutch AI lab General Intuition told Politico.

OpenAI declined to comment and pointed to its own report on the incident. Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment. The disagreement matters because Europe's AI Act is now in its implementation phase, and the political mood on both sides of the Atlantic shapes how aggressively Brussels enforces it. Gates's intervention, and Sanders's proposed pause on advanced AI development on 23 September, pull in one direction. Europe's security community pulls in another.

Money keeps moving into the technology

While regulators argue, capital keeps flowing. Tech.eu's weekly recap, published on 28 September, counted more than 65 European tech funding deals worth over €2 billion last week, plus more than four exits and M&A transactions. Robotics led the sectors with €508.3 million, followed by artificial intelligence at €406.6 million and healthtech at €305.8 million. Portugal topped the country table with €510.9 million, ahead of the Netherlands at €435.9 million and the UK at €273.9 million.

The largest single items on that list stretch well beyond software. Bird raised $450m in debt while cutting headcount from a peak of 1,000 to 120, Verda raised $189m for AI cloud compute, and Metycle secured a €131.7m credit facility to scale secondary copper and aluminium supply. Anthropic and Nvidia backed Basecamp Research in a $140m Series C, and Noxtua raised more than €100m as C.H.BECK took a majority stake in the legaltech firm.

Electrek reported on 27 September that Mazda has added a LiDAR suite to its electric CX-6e through its Changan joint venture, enabling what the company calls advanced L2 autonomy and navigation on autopilot. The system pairs LiDAR with 11 high-definition cameras, 12 ultrasonic sensors and three millimetre-wave radars, and uses Tencent lane-level navigation in urban settings. Changan Mazda says the car passed government-sanctioned safety tests covering 11 high-risk scenarios and received a TOP Intelligence Intelligent Safety Challenge certificate from CATARC.

Grid money, and a fleet that stays in two states

In the US, Canary Media reported on 24 September that the Department of Energy's $1.9 billion SPARK grant programme will fund 31 projects across 26 states for advanced conductors, dynamic line rating and grid controls. Participating utilities pledged $3.35 billion in matching funds, bringing total investment to $5.25 billion. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the grants would "get more out of the infrastructure we already have".

On autonomy itself, TechCrunch Mobility reported on 27 September that about 80% of Waymo's roughly 4,000 robotaxis are in California and Texas, and that its Texas fleet grew by more than 49% in three weeks. Wayve signed a commercial partnership with Mercedes-Benz for a Level 2 product within two years. Aurora is targeting more than 30,000 driverless trucks by 2030 and more than 200 by the end of this year.

The through-line is not the technology. It is who sets the terms. A San Diego jury set the terms for Apple's vibration motors on Friday. Gates wants legislators to set them for AI. Europe's cyber professionals argue the existing rulebook needs enforcement, not panic. Brussels has yet to say which argument it finds more persuasive.