News & Announcements

UK-based robotics startup Humanoid said on 21st July it has raised $152 million in a Series A funding round, reaching a post-money valuation of $1.35 billion as investment flows into companies merging artificial intelligence with physical machines. The round was led by Prime Movers Lab, with participation from Schaeffler, Bosch, Fubon Financial Holding Venture Capital, and Aglaé Ventures. Humanoid has now raised $270 million in total. The company plans to use the capital to d

Chinese startup Moonshot launched Kimi K3 on 17th July, a 2.8 trillion-parameter open-weight artificial intelligence model that it described as the largest of its kind and said narrows the performance gap with leading U.S. systems. The model is designed for advanced reasoning, long-horizon coding, and knowledge work, with a context window of one million tokens. Moonshot claimed Kimi K3 outperformed Anthropic's Opus 4.8 and OpenAI's GPT-5.5 and GPT-5.6 Sol on GPU kernel optimi

Image Source: Yahoo Finance Micron Technology has signed a long-term supply agreements with Qualcomm, Harman, and several automotive parts makers, locking in orders for memory and storage components that power AI-enabled vehicles. The deals also include Visteon, JOYNEXT, DENSO, Astemo, and Hyundai Mobis, aiming to provide stable supply and pricing for advanced vehicle platforms. Qualcomm chief executive Cristiano Amon said automakers increasingly need technology platforms tha

Image source: The Hill Apple filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and two former employees on 10th July, alleging the ChatGPT maker orchestrated a systematic effort to steal trade secrets and accelerate its push into consumer hardware. The complaint, lodged in federal court in California, marks a sharp escalation in tensions between the two companies, which have a partnership that puts ChatGPT on iPhones. The suit names former Apple senior system electrical engineer Chang Liu and f

OpenAI released GPT-Live on July 8, a new family of voice models capable of listening and speaking simultaneously in real time, a shift from the turn-based interactions that have defined most AI voice assistants. Two versions, GPT-Live-1 and GPT-Live-1 mini, are rolling out to users globally. The launch extends work OpenAI began in May, when it introduced three audio models for its developer platform. Those were designed to make voice-based software agents more conversational

Image source: Medium Chinese authorities have held discussions with leading technology firms about potentially restricting foreign access to the country's most advanced artificial intelligence models. The meetings, led by the Ministry of Commerce over the past month, included Alibaba, ByteDance, and startup Z.ai, and signal that Beijing now views cutting-edge AI as a strategic asset requiring tighter control. Officials raised the possibility of limiting both closed-source and

India and Japan signed a set of agreements early in July to deepen cooperation in artificial intelligence, critical minerals, energy, and defence, adding a joint economic security roadmap to a partnership that both sides described as increasingly vital amid global uncertainty. The pacts were finalised after talks in New Delhi between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Sanae Takaichi, who arrived with a large business delegation for a three-day visit. Th

Together AI said on 1st July that it has raised $800 million in a Series C funding round led by Aramco Ventures, more than doubling the startup's valuation to $8.3 billion as demand surges for platforms that let companies run artificial intelligence workloads on open-source models. The round included Vista Equity Partners, General Catalyst, Emergence Capital, Nvidia, Salesforce Ventures, March Capital, Pegatron, and SentinelOne's S Ventures. The new valuation is a steep climb

Chinese memory chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies has signed a multi-year agreement to supply Tencent with server DRAM chips worth more than 20 billion yuan, or roughly $2.94 billion. The contract spans up to five years and arrives at a time when a prolonged global chip shortage has made long-term memory supply a strategic priority for cloud and AI workloads. The deal is a significant endorsement for the Hefei-based firm, which has long trailed global leaders Samsung and

The U.S. government has partially reversed its 12th June order blocking access to Anthropic's most advanced AI models, allowing the company to release its Claude Mythos 5 system to a select group of more than 100 American companies and institutions. The approved organizations include many Fortune 500 firms that operate and defend critical infrastructure, a source familiar with the directive said. Anthropic had abruptly disabled both Mythos 5 and the consumer-facing Fable 5 tw

Qualcomm said on 24th June it will acquire AI startup Modular in an all-stock deal valued at nearly $4 billion, a purchase that gives the chipmaker software capable of running AI models across different processors without requiring developers to write code for each chip. The transaction puts Qualcomm in direct competition with Nvidia’s CUDA platform, the proprietary software layer that has locked millions of developers into Nvidia’s ecosystem and helped drive the company to a

Japanese AI startup Sakana launched a new system called Fugu that outperformed Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 on key coding benchmarks, a notable result given that Fable 5 was pulled back by the U.S. government just three days after its release. Fugu is not a single model. It coordinates multiple AI models through one API to solve complex tasks, an approach that reflects growing interest in system-level intelligence rather than monolithic models. Sakana released two versions. Fug

China's commerce ministry announced a set of 17 measures on 18th June aimed at integrating artificial intelligence into the country's consumption landscape, targeting everything from home electronics to humanoid robots and public services. The measures, reported by state broadcaster CCTV, split their focus between goods and services. On the goods side, the ministry wants to push consumer electronics beyond basic functionality toward intelligent, adaptive features. It also sig

SpaceX said on 16th June it will acquire Anysphere, the startup behind the AI coding agent Cursor, for $60 billion in an all-stock transaction, a deal that pushes the newly public company deeper into enterprise artificial intelligence. The acquisition comes days after SpaceX's Nasdaq debut, where its valuation surged past $2 trillion. By paying in stock rather than cash, SpaceX is using its elevated share price to absorb a fast-growing AI company without drawing on the roughl

Alibaba released a new family of artificial intelligence models on 16th June designed to control robots and autonomous machines, a step that reflects a wider industry shift from text-based chatbots to AI agents that can take physical action. The models, part of Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen series, are trained on sensor data, motion commands, and simulation environments. Alibaba Cloud said the largest of the models can process visual, audio, and touch signals simultaneously, enabl

Austrian printed circuit board maker AT&S said on 15th June it will invest up to €2 billion in a new production facility in Malaysia, aiming to meet surging demand for advanced substrates used in artificial intelligence processors. The plant, to be built in Kedah state, will produce IC substrates, the layers that connect chips to circuit boards and manage high-speed data flow. These components have become a bottleneck in AI hardware supply chains as chipmakers push for denser

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

Meta has offered rival AI chatbots, including OpenAI, limited free access to WhatsApp in Europe, according to sources cited by Reuters, but the offer would switch to paid access once usage crosses a messaging threshold. The proposal was submitted to EU antitrust regulators last week as the European Commission considers whether to require Meta to provide access while its investigation continues. WhatsApp is one of the largest consumer messaging platforms in the world, and acce

Huawei announced on May 25 that its upcoming Kirin smartphone chips, set to launch this fall, will be the first to use a new design approach called LogicFolding. The announcement, made at the 2026 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems in Shanghai, marks the company's latest attempt to advance its semiconductor capabilities despite ongoing U.S. restrictions that limit its access to cutting-edge manufacturing equipment.. He Tingbo, president of Huawei's semicondu

Nvidia will invest roughly $150 billion each year in Taiwan, CEO Jensen Huang said on May 27, describing the island as the centre of the global AI supply chain. It is a sharp increase from the $10 to $15 billion the company spent annually four to five years ago and the roughly $100 billion it is spending now. Huang made the announcement at a launch event for Nvidia's new Taipei headquarters, a building named Constellation that will break ground late this year and open by 2030

Healthcare AI company Commure has raised $70 million at a $7 billion post-money valuation in a round led by General Catalyst, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Morgan Stanley, and Kirkland & Ellis. The financing suggests investors continue to see value in healthcare AI companies tied to operational and financial workflows rather than narrower experimental use cases. Commure’s platform is positioned across revenue cycle management, ambient documentation, practice mana

AI is moving into places that do not usually get framed as AI stories, including Formula One. Reuters reported in May that eight new AI partnerships had been signed in the sport over the previous six months, according to Ampere Analysis. That makes sense once you think about what Formula One already is. It is a sport built on data, optimisation, simulation, and marginal gains, which makes it a natural setting for AI deployment. The interesting part is not that AI has entered

Investors are focusing on artificial intelligence rather than trade politics ahead of a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. For many of them, the most important issue is whether the United States might ease restrictions on advanced AI chip exports to China. A few investors expect a major diplomatic breakthrough from the meeting itself. Instead, attention has shifted to the policies that could shape AI development, particularly around

Microsoft is exploring acquisitions of artificial intelligence startups as it looks to reduce its dependence on OpenAI. The company is pursuing two priorities at once: bringing in AI talent and supporting its effort to build a frontier AI model of its own by next year. Reuters reported that Microsoft had considered acquiring Cursor, the fast-growing code generation startup, earlier this spring (Reuters, 2026). The company ultimately stepped away because of concerns that the d

Nokia announced on 12th May that it has launched new agentic AI capabilities for home and broadband networks, adding AI agents and natural-language interaction across its Altiplano, Corteca, and Broadband Easy platforms. According to the company, the new capabilities are designed to support telecom providers across customer care, network engineering, operations, sales, and field technician workflows. Nokia said the tools can be used for planning, rollout, service qualificatio

Elon Musk has lost a key round in his legal fight against OpenAI. Reuters reported on May 18 that a federal jury did not accept Musk’s claim that OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman had broken their agreement with him over the company’s direction. The case had become one of the most closely watched disputes in AI because it turned a personal and ideological split into a courtroom battle over what OpenAI was supposed to be. Musk argued that the compan

OpenAI said on Monday that it is setting up a new company with more than $4 billion in initial investment and acquiring AI consulting firm Tomoro to speed up the effort. This new unit, called OpenAI Deployment Company, is built around sending engineers into organisations so they can work through the awkward, expensive, and time-consuming part of AI adoption with the people who actually have to live with it day to day. For all the industry’s confidence about AI becoming centra

Anthropic has committed to spend $200 billion with Google Cloud over five years, according to a report cited by Reuters, in a deal that reportedly covers cloud services and chip capacity (Reuters, 2026). The same report said the agreement includes multiple gigawatts of tensor processing unit capacity expected to come online from 2027. Access to compute is no longer a background requirement that companies sort out after building a model; it is becoming the centre of strategy,

The European Union has reached a provisional deal to delay some of the most consequential parts of its AI Act, pushing rules for high-risk systems involving biometrics, critical infrastructure and law enforcement to December 2, 2027 from the earlier August 2026 deadline. The agreement still needs formal approval from EU governments and the European Parliament, but the direction is already clear enough (Reuters, 2026). The shift came after a steady campaign from major European

SpaceX has signed a deal to give Anthropic access to Colossus 1, its large AI data center in Memphis, bringing together two of the more prominent companies in the current AI infrastructure race. Under the agreement, Anthropic will use the full computing power of the facility to expand capacity for its Claude Pro and Claude Max assistants and raise usage limits for subscribers. Colossus 1 houses more than 220,000 Nvidia processors and will give Anthropic 300 megawatts of new c

Anthropic has launched 10 new AI agents for banks and insurers, deepening its push into financial services. The announcement places the company more directly in a sector where software adoption tends to be shaped by process, documentation, and internal controls rather than by novelty alone. Anthropic is trying to position its products closer to day-to-day institutional work. In banking and insurance, the value of AI depends less on broad capability claims and more on whether