Alibaba Group recently launched Qwen 3.5, a 397-billion-parameter open-weight AI model with visual agentic features that enable it to execute actions autonomously across mobile and desktop platforms.  The new model activates only 17 billion parameters during each forward pass through a hybrid mixture-of-experts architecture, delivering what Alibaba claims is 60 percent lower operating costs and eight times better efficiency for large-scale workloads compared to the previous g

Image Credits: Generated with Gemini Anthropic announced on 13th February that it closed a Series G funding round raising $30 billion at a post money valuation of $380 billion, more than doubling its September 2025 valuation and marking the second largest private tech fundraising on record after OpenAI.  The round includes investments from NVIDIA and Microsoft that were first announced in November 2025, with NVIDIA committing $10 billion and Microsoft committing $5 billion. A

The Indian government notified amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules on 10th February, formally bringing AI generated content within India's intermediary regulation framework for the first time.  The amendments, set to take effect 20th February, mandate that all synthetically generated audio, visual, or audiovisual content appearing real must be prominently labeled as AI generated before publication on any platf

xAI co-founders Tony Wu and Jimmy Ba resigned on 10th February, leaving the company they started with Elon Musk less than three years ago. The departures mean six of xAI's 12 original co-founders have now left the company. Wu announced his exit on 9th February in a post on X, followed by Ba the next day, who said it was his last day at the firm (Bloomberg, 2026). Neither detailed their reasons for leaving or outlined next plans, though both thanked Musk in their posts. The Fi

At a summit on responsible military use of AI in Spain, 35 of 85 participating countries agreed to a political declaration on how they will develop and deploy AI in warfare, while the United States and China declined to sign.  The non-binding declaration endorses states to maintain human responsibility over AI enabled weapon systems, ensure clear chains of command, and share information about national oversight where security considerations allow. It also calls for rigorous t

Image Credit: Generated with Gemini Britain has announced a new partnership with Microsoft, academic researchers and technical experts to build a national framework for detecting harmful deepfakes online.  The project will evaluate tools that can spot deceptive AI generated audio and video and will be used to set consistent standards for how platforms and companies should assess deepfake detection technologies. The partnership is part of a broader effort to define benchmarks

Image Credit: Generated with Gemini The Trump administration is prepared to allow China’s ByteDance to purchase Nvidia’s H200 artificial intelligence chips, but the sale is on hold because Nvidia has not agreed to the conditions attached to the export license.  The United States indicated about two weeks ago that it would approve the license, but the draft terms include a Know-Your-Customer requirement designed to ensure China’s military cannot access the chips, along with ot

Andhra Pradesh recently announced that it will establish India's first fully dedicated Artificial Intelligence university in Amaravati in partnership with Nvidia.. The AI university was conceptualized following discussions held in 2024 between Andhra Pradesh IT Minister Naral Lokesh and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in Mumbai. The initiative aims to position Amaravati as a major hub for AI education, research, and innovation at both national and global scales. Union IT Minister Ash

Amazon is in discussions to invest as much as $50 billion in OpenAI, according to a Reuters report on 30th January. CEO Andy Jassy is leading negotiations as OpenAI attempts to raise approximately $100 billion total. The proposed investment comes as OpenAI faces mounting competition from rivals Anthropic and Google. In December, OpenAI issued an internal "code red" alert after Google's Gemini 3 received favorable reviews. OpenAI is now working to catch up in AI coding capabil

Tesla announced on 28th January that it will invest 2 billion dollars in xAI, the artificial intelligence company founded by CEO Elon Musk. This is the first time such a large investment has been made by the electric vehicle manufacturer to AI development outside of its automotive operations. Alongside the investment announcement, Tesla reiterated that production plans for its Cybercab robotaxi and Semi trucks remain on track to begin this year. The company has previously sta

India's Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser released a white paper on 23rd January, outlining a "techno-legal" framework for AI governance that integrates legal safeguards, technical controls, and institutional mechanisms to balance innovation with risk.  The framework departs from prescriptive European approaches and data-restrictive Chinese models, proposing instead a governance-led ecosystem emphasizing responsible innovation and deployment. Central to the initiativ

The Indian Army signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Indian Institute of Science on 23rd January to develop a fully indigenous artificial intelligence-based system through collaborative research and innovation.  The initiative aims to address emerging challenges in digital information landscapes and represents a strategic commitment to building self-reliant defense capabilities. The partnership brings together institutional military experience, academic expertise fro

Cloudflare announced on Thursday, 15th January, that it has acquired Human Native, an artificial intelligence data marketplace that facilitates transactions between AI developers and content creators. Human Native is a U.K.-based startup that manages agreements between developers who need training data for AI models and content creators who own the intellectual property being used. The acquisition gives Cloudflare ownership of the platform's infrastructure for managing these

Indian IT services company LTIMindtree secured a   ₹3,000 crore contract from the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) this week, to develop and manage an AI-driven tax analytics system called "Insight 2.0."  The contract led to company shares going up by over 4%. Tax authorities drown in data. Millions of returns filed annually, billions of data points, patterns that humans cannot detect fast enough to be useful. The CBDT needed an AI-powered system that could process this v

OpenAI and Cerebras announced a multi-year compute partnership on 14th January, in which Cerebras will provide dedicated infrastructure for OpenAI's models.  The arrangement involves a $10 billion commitment from OpenAI to secure computing capacity for running inference at scale. Cerebras stated that the partnership will help OpenAI models deliver faster response times for complex, time-consuming tasks. OpenAI is no longer relying solely on internally-managed infrastructure o

Apple and Google announced on 12th January that they are partnering on artificial intelligence, with Google's Gemini models powering Apple's next-generation Siri voice assistant.  The multi-year agreement makes Google's technology the foundation for Apple's foundational models going forward, ending years of Apple pursuing AI independence. Apple stated that after "thorough assessment," Google's technology offers "the most robust foundation" for building AI systems at Apple sca

Torq, an AI-driven security operations platform, completed a $140 million Series D funding round led by Merlin Ventures on 11th January, 2026. The round brings the company's total valuation to $1.2 billion and total funding to $332 million. Existing investors including Bessemer Venture Partners and Insight Ventures Partners had participated. Torq builds AI agents that automate security operations workflows such as alert triage, investigations, and response handling, at enterp

OpenAI and SoftBank Group announced a $1 billion co-investment into SB Energy on 9th January, to accelerate the buildout of AI infrastructure.  SB Energy will construct and manage a 1-gigawatt data center facility in Milam County, Texas, which was initially announced in September. The investment is part of the broader Stargate initiative announced last January, which targets $500 billion in total capital deployment. The partnership combines SoftBank and Ares Management's expe

Elon Musk's xAI closed a $20 billion Series E funding round on January 6, 2026, exceeding its original $15 billion target. The round included backing from Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity, Qatar Investment Authority, and strategic investors like Nvidia and Cisco. The company now sits at a $230 billion valuation. In 2025, OpenAI raised $40 billion, Anthropic raised $13 billion, and Project Prometheus launched with $6.2 billion. Roughly 15 AI companies collectiv

India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued a formal notice to X on January 1 flagging serious lapses in how the platform is managing Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot.  The government has directed X to undertake a comprehensive technical and governance review of Grok's prompt processing and output generation, with a requirement to submit a detailed action taken report within 72 hours. Rather than allowing companies to self-regulate AI safety, the government i

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang announced at CES 2026 that the company's next-generation Vera Rubin platform is now in full production and will ship to customers including Microsoft and Amazon in the second half of 2026.  The announcement accelerates the timeline by six months compared to NVIDIA's previously stated schedule and just shows that demand for next-generation AI infrastructure is so urgent the company is ramping production ahead of schedule. The Vera Rubin platform compris

Five days after India's Ministry of Electronics issued a formal notice to X demanding a comprehensive review of Grok's safety failures, X has still not submitted the required compliance report.  The government responded on January 6 by issuing a formal directive requiring the immediate removal of all vulgar and obscene content generated by Grok, with a new 24-hour compliance window closing January 7 at midnight. The first notice had given X a period of 72 hours to conduct a t

Qualcomm announced a full suite of robotics technologies designed to power physical artificial intelligence systems ranging from household robots to full-size humanoids.  Technology companies approach AI deployment differently now, moving from software-first to hardware-centric strategies where processors, chipsets, and sensor integration become the actual competitive differentiator. The portfolio includes processors specifically designed for robotic inference, computer visio

India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued a formal notice to X on January 1 flagging serious lapses in how the platform is managing Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot.  The government has directed X to undertake a comprehensive technical and governance review of Grok's prompt processing and output generation, with a requirement to submit a detailed action taken report within 72 hours. Rather than allowing companies to self-regulate AI safety, the government i

Meta acquired Manus, a Singapore-based AI agent startup, for more than $2 billion on December 30. Manus launched in spring 2025 and reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue by December, making it one of the fastest-growing AI applications. Meta has invested heavily in building its own AI models such as Llama and Meta AI, but these internal efforts apparently moved too slowly for Zuckerberg. Rather than wait for internal teams to build agent capabilities, Meta purchase

SK Telecom, which is also South Korea’s leading mobile operator, announced the release of A.X K1 on December 28. It is a 519-billion-parameter AI model trained by a consortium of South Korean companies as part of the government's "Sovereign AI Foundation Model" project.  The model represents Korea's ambition to become a top-three global AI power alongside the United States and China. The advancement is more geopolitical than technical. At 519 billion parameters, A.X K1 is com

China has released new draft regulations aimed specifically at governing artificial intelligence systems that mimic human communication patterns.  The rules represent the first major regulatory framework that addresses the behavioral and psychological impacts of interactive AI systems. The requirements are as follows: AI service providers must actively identify users' emotional states and monitor for signs of dependence on the service. If users display extreme emotions or add

Image on Unsplash Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi recently launched AILA (Artificially Intelligent Lab Assistant), an AI system that conducts scientific experiments with minimal human intervention.  The team demonstrated the system controlling an Atomic Force Microscope, which is a highly complex nanotechnology instrument, where it made real-time decisions during experiments and analysed results without manual supervision. AILA operates through a simpl

Understanding the Acquisition Nvidia recently announced its acquisition of Groq, an AI accelerator company founded by former Google TPU engineers. This deal, valued at approximately $20 billion, marks Nvidia's largest acquisition to date. Groq has developed specialized hardware designed specifically for AI inference. Inference is the process of running trained models on new data. While many companies focus on training large models, Groq has prioritized efficient execution at

Image on Unsplash Fujitsu announced on 24th December the development of Kozuchi Physical AI 1.0, a framework integrating physical and agentic AI. The technology combines NVIDIA's software stack with Fujitsu's own systems to automate confidential business workflows. But the more significant announcement came the same day. The University of Tokyo and Fujitsu launched a trial starting in January 2026 to shift computational workloads between regional data centers based on real-ti

Image generated with Gemini Making Science, a global digital acceleration consultancy, announced on December 23 the launch of AWAKE Venture Studio. The model is designed to identify, prototype and scale both internal proprietary AI solutions and independent AI-native startups. The studio operates from centers in Chicago, Madrid and Tbilisi. The company claims to have achieved a 2x acceleration in tech feature development through its internal integration of AI agents. One star

Image generated with Gemini Digantara announced that it's pivoting from space debris tracking to missile detection. The Indian startup launched its first commercial surveillance satellite called SCOT in January 2025 and now plans to launch 15 more satellites by 2026-27 specifically for tracking missiles and early warning systems. CEO Anirudh Sharma explained the logic behind this. The company's expertise came from monitoring fast moving space objects in low Earth orbit. That

Image on Unsplash Adobe announced on December 16 that Firefly is now offering unlimited video generation. This removes the friction points that used to slow down AI video creation. No more credits, generation limits, and waiting periods between attempts. Earlier this year, OpenAI released Sora 2, Google expanded Veo 3, and a handful of Chinese companies built models that can generate multi-minute videos with solid continuity. The video generation market has suddenly matured t

Image on Unsplash Tata Consultancy Services announced that it has upgraded TCS BaNCS, its core banking platform, with a new tool called AI Compass. The tool lets banks build and use their own AI agents without writing code. Banks have been waiting for tools that let them implement AI without infrastructure investment or hiring specialized teams. TCS BaNCS AI Compass addresses that directly. It includes pre-built agents for common banking use cases, machine learning capabiliti

Image on Unsplash Yahoo Finance awarded OpenAI its 2025 Company of the Year on Monday, selecting the AI model company over Nvidia, the semiconductor giant that has dominated headlines and stock prices throughout the year.  The story is no longer about who makes the best chips. The story is now about who makes the best models. For most of 2025, Nvidia occupied the center of the AI investment narrative. The company's GPUs are the infrastructure layer that everyone building AI m

Image on Unsplash Google unveiled Project Suncatcher this week, an initiative to launch a constellation of solar-powered satellites equipped with AI processing chips into Earth's orbit.  The project promises unlimited access to renewable energy and a way to move the carbon footprint of AI training away from data centers on the planet. The company plans to launch the first prototypes in 2027. AI data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity, and that electricity demand

Image on Unsplash Nvidia launched Nemotron 3, a family of open-source AI models. This marks an unusual shift for the world's most dominant semiconductor manufacturer.  The models are designed to be faster, cheaper, and more efficient than previous offerings, and the company is positioning them as an answer to the rise of open-source models from Chinese AI laboratories that have begun challenging Nvidia's market dominance. Nvidia has spent the past two years dominating the har

Image on Unsplash A Stanford University report released this week places India as the world's third-most competitive nation in artificial intelligence development and deployment, behind only the United States and China.  India is moving into the top tier alongside established AI powerhouses despite having entered the frontier race way more recently than Silicon Valley or Beijing. The report measures competitiveness across multiple dimensions including research output, corpora

Image on Unsplash OpenAI announced GPT-5.2 on Thursday, marking an accelerated response to Google's Gemini 3. Gemini displaced OpenAI from the top position on leaderboards in November and prompted CEO Sam Altman to declare code red at the company.. The new model comes in three variants. ‘Instant’ for fast information retrieval and writing, ‘Thinking’ for complex tasks like coding and planning, and ‘Pro’ for highest-accuracy scenarios requiring advanced reasoning. OpenAI claim

Image in Unsplash Disney announced on Thursday that it would invest one billion dollars in OpenAI as part of a three-year partnership. They will be integrating more than two hundred characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars franchises into Sora, OpenAI's video generation tool. The partnership is a significant moment in the evolution of artificial intelligence and intellectual property. Disney, instead of restricting access to its characters, is in fact collaboratin