Microsoft is coaching its salespeople to talk down the models it still runs on
Microsoft is coaching its salespeople to talk down the models it still runs on

Microsoft executives spent an internal meeting on Tuesday teaching the sales force how to run down OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, which would be unremarkable except that two of those companies supply the models inside Microsoft’s own products. The sess…

WHO warns Europe’s AI health governance gap is becoming irreversible
WHO warns Europe’s AI health governance gap is becoming irreversible

Hans Kluge opened his speech in Lisbon with a number, which is not how the World Health Organization usually does this. “Let me start with a number: 8%,” the WHO Regional Director for Europe told delegates on 15 July. “That’s the share of countries in …

Europe’s best earnings quarter in three years is an energy story, not an AI one
Europe’s best earnings quarter in three years is an energy story, not an AI one

European companies are heading into their strongest quarterly earnings season in more than three years, and almost none of it is about AI. STOXX 600 constituents are forecast to grow second-quarter profits by 15.3% year on year, according to LSEG I/B/E…

Jensen Huang thanks Sega for the $5m that saved Nvidia from bankruptcy in 1995
Jensen Huang thanks Sega for the $5m that saved Nvidia from bankruptcy in 1995

Nvidia and Sega go back 30 years. Jensen Huang flew to Tokyo to thank the games maker for a $5m investment that saved his company from bankruptcy in 1995. “If not for what Sega did for Nvidia, Nvidia would not be here today.” That is Jensen Huang, chie…

Doubao’s AI companions are gone. Users get 3 months to screenshot what is left.
Doubao’s AI companions are gone. Users get 3 months to screenshot what is left.

The notice read like housekeeping. Take screenshots while you still can, ByteDance told Doubao users, or export the text. On 15 July the custom agents they had built stopped working, and what is left is a read-only archive with a closing date attached:…

OpenAI’s first Jony Ive device is a screen-free speaker built to feel alive
OpenAI’s first Jony Ive device is a screen-free speaker built to feel alive

OpenAI’s consumer hardware push begins in the living room. The company’s first device designed with Jony Ive is a mobile, screen-free smart speaker meant to sit in a home and behave like a humanlike companion, according to people familiar with the proj…

ASML’s $400M chipmaking machine just shipped its first laptop processors
ASML’s $400M chipmaking machine just shipped its first laptop processors

High NA EUV was supposed to debut on Intel’s 14A node towards the end of the decade. It has turned up early, on Panther Lake, patterning layers that are also qualified to run on the old tools. A machine that costs about $400mn is now printing a handful…

xAI is running 59 unpermitted gas turbines, twice what it has admitted
xAI is running 59 unpermitted gas turbines, twice what it has admitted

Emails between regulators and xAI’s consultants put most of the turbines in Southaven, Mississippi. Within five miles on the Tennessee side, about 94% of residents are Black. Ervin Laws lives in Colonial Hills, a neighbourhood in Southaven, Mississippi…

DeepSeek’s Liang Wenfeng overtakes Amodei and Brockman as AI’s richest founder
DeepSeek’s Liang Wenfeng overtakes Amodei and Brockman as AI’s richest founder

Liang Wenfeng is now the wealthiest founder in artificial intelligence, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which revalued his stake in DeepSeek on 13 July and added roughly $19bn to his fortune overnight. His net worth is put at about $36bn…

Masayoshi Son says AI will cost $5tn a year by 2040, and calls bubble talk absurd
Masayoshi Son says AI will cost $5tn a year by 2040, and calls bubble talk absurd

“Every year $5 trillion, or 800 trillion yen, you might think that’s a lie, but I am confident that’s what it will cost.” That was Masayoshi Son on Tuesday, at SoftBank’s annual corporate conference in Tokyo, telling the room what building artificial i…