European Union regulators ordered Meta on June 9 to give third-party AI chatbots free access to WhatsApp, a decision that could reshape how artificial intelligence services reach users on the world's most widely used messaging platform. The European Commission ruled that WhatsApp qualifies as a core platform service under the Digital Markets Act, and that Meta must allow rival AI assistants to connect to its 2.8 billion users without charging fees for that access. The order m

On September 1, 2026, Tim Cook will step down as chief executive officer after 15 years in the role, with hardware engineering chief John Ternus set to take over the company in his stead. Cook, who succeeded Steve Jobs in 2011, will remain as executive chairman of the board. He told employees in a memo that the decision was his own. "Leading Apple has been the privilege of a lifetime, and I am deeply confident in John's ability to carry Apple forward," he wrote. Ternus, a 22-

SK Hynix announced on June 7 that it has signed a multi-year agreement to supply Nvidia with next-generation memory chips, deepening a partnership that has become central to the global AI supply chain. The South Korean chipmaker said it will begin delivering high-bandwidth memory 4 (HBM4) chips to Nvidia in the second half of 2026, following months of qualification testing. The chips are critical components in Nvidia's most advanced AI processors, including the B200 and upcom

SpaceX has reached an agreement with Google Cloud to access artificial intelligence computing infrastructure, adding a significant technology partnership as the company prepares for a public listing later this year. The deal follows a separate pact with AI startup Anthropic announced last month, under which SpaceX will use Claude models for internal automation and satellite operations. Together, the two agreements signal that SpaceX, known primarily for rockets and Starlink

Meta introduced a new AI agent for businesses on June 3, positioning the tool to compete with Microsoft, Salesforce, and Google in the market for workplace automation. The product, called Meta Business Agent, is built on the company's Llama 5 model and can handle tasks such as scheduling, expense reporting, customer support, and internal data analysis without requiring users to switch between multiple applications. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, said the agent was d

AirTrunk, the Australian data centre operator, announced on 1st June that it will invest $21 billion in India over the next decade, a capital outlay that ranks among the largest foreign investments in the country's digital infrastructure. The bulk of the spending will go toward building hyperscale data centres in Mumbai, Chennai, and the National Capital Region, with the first facility expected to open in Mumbai by early 2028. AirTrunk founder and chief executive Robin Khuda

The U.S. Commerce Department proposed a rule on June 1 that would block Nvidia from selling advanced artificial intelligence chips to Chinese companies through their subsidiaries in third countries, aiming to close a widely exploited loophole in export controls. The proposed regulation extends licensing requirements to cover sales of Nvidia’s H200 and B200 processors to any entity globally that is more than 25 percent owned by a Chinese parent company. Until now, restrictions

Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.8 on May 28, a new flagship AI model that the company says outperforms competitors from OpenAI, Google, and Meta across major reasoning and coding benchmarks. The model arrives roughly five months after Claude 4.5 Sonnet and marks a return to the Opus line, which Anthropic had previously paused to work on efficiency and safety. Chief product officer Mike Krieger said Opus 4.8 was trained with a focus on extended reasoning tasks, allowing it to

South Africa's communications minister Solly Malatsi unveiled a seven-member expert review panel on May 26 to guide the redrafting of the country's national AI policy, one month after the original draft was withdrawn when it was found to contain fictitious academic references generated by AI. Briefing parliament's portfolio committee on communications and digital technologies, Malatsi acknowledged that the department had failed to detect the fabricated citations before they w

In Beijing this month, Trump and Xi met for the first time in over six months, with AI now sitting alongside trade, Iran, Taiwan and nuclear issues on the agenda. Trump has been explicit that he wants to remind Xi that the United States leads in artificial intelligence, framing AI as a core part of the broader power balance between Washington and Beijing. At the working level, officials from both sides have started talking about “guardrails” for advanced AI models, with plans