Analyst Jordi Visser warns AI could make traditional stocks obsolete by speeding up innovation, making public companies inefficient investments. He said Bitcoin is a longer-lasting investment, based on belief rather than fleeting corporate ideas.
Visser suggested that AI could compress a century of innovation into just five years, reshaping finance and capital markets. He believes investors will prefer belief assets like Bitcoin, noting its long-term resilience mirrors gold’s role as a store of value.
Momentum behind Bitcoin adoption is also gathering elsewhere. Eric Trump told the Bitcoin Asia 2025 conference that the cryptocurrency could reach $1 million as nation states, companies, and wealthy families add it to their reserves.
Public firms are shifting business models to hold Bitcoin directly, diverting capital from traditional equity markets.
Bitcoin’s market capitalisation currently exceeds $2.1 trillion, and some analysts predict it could surpass gold in the decades ahead. Its global, yield-generating design in DeFi could help Bitcoin surpass gold as a store of value.
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Research and development spending will see a record 19.3 percent jump to 35.3 trillion won, with AI receiving the steepest increase. Planned AI expenditure of 10.1 trillion won marks a threefold rise over 2025 and includes procuring 15,000 high-performance GPUs.
Industrial policy funding will grow by 14.7 percent, while social welfare and defence allocations also rise by over 8 percent. The fiscal deficit is expected to widen to 4.0 percent of GDP, with the public debt ratio forecast to reach 51.6 percent.
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Estonia’s government-backed AI teaching tool, developed under the €1 million TI-Leap programme, faces hurdles before reaching schools. Legal restrictions and waning student interest have delayed its planned September rollout.
Officials in Estonia stress that regulations to protect minors’ data remain incomplete. To ensure compliance, the Ministry of Education is drafting changes to the Basic Schools and Upper Secondary Schools Act.
Yet, engagement may prove to be the bigger challenge. Developers note students already use mainstream AI for homework, while the state model is designed to guide reasoning rather than supply direct answers.
Educators say success will depend on usefulness. The AI will be piloted in 10th and 11th grades, alongside teacher training, as studies have shown that more than 60% of students already rely on AI tools.
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Led by CEO Nick Lahoika, the company has scaled rapidly, achieving upwards of 4 million downloads and serving approximately 160,000 active users.
Vocal Image positions itself as an affordable, mobile-first alternative to traditional one-on-one voice training, rooted in Lahoika’s own journey overcoming speaking anxiety.
The app’s design enables users to practice at home with privacy and convenience, offering daily, bite-sized lessons informed by AI that assess strengths, suggest improvements and nurture confidence with no need for human instructors.
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A hacker exploited Anthropic’s Claude chatbot to automate one of the most extensive AI-driven cybercrime operations yet recorded, targeting at least 17 companies across multiple sectors, the firm revealed.
According to Anthropic’s report, the attacker used Claude Code to identify vulnerable organisations, generate malicious software, and extract sensitive files, including defence data, financial records, and patients’ medical information.
The chatbot then sorted the stolen material, identified leverage for extortion, calculated realistic bitcoin demands, and even drafted ransom notes and extortion emails on behalf of the hacker.
Victims included a defence contractor, a financial institution, and healthcare providers. Extortion demands reportedly ranged from $75,000 to over $500,000, although it remains unclear how much was actually paid.
Anthropic declined to disclose the companies affected but confirmed new safeguards are in place. The firm warned that AI lowers the barrier to entry for sophisticated cybercrime, making such misuse increasingly likely.
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Microsoft has unveiled two new AI models, marking a major step in its efforts to build its own technology rather than rely solely on OpenAI.
The first model, MAI-Voice-1, generates high-fidelity audio and supports both single and multi-speaker scenarios. Microsoft said the system can create a full minute of expressive audio in under a second on a single GPU, making it one of the fastest of its kind.
MAI-Voice-1 is already available in Copilot Daily and Podcasts, while Copilot Labs allows users to experiment with storytelling and speech demos. Microsoft sees voice as a vital interface for future AI companions.
MAI-1 Preview is currently undergoing community testing on LMArena and will soon be integrated into selected Copilot use cases. Microsoft said it plans to expand its family of specialised models, aiming to orchestrate different systems for diverse user needs.
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China has set its most ambitious AI adoption targets yet, aiming to embed the technology across industries, governance, and daily life within the next decade.
According to a new State Council directive, AI use should reach 70% of the population by 2027 and 90% by 2030, with a complete shift to what it calls an ‘intelligent society’ by 2035.
The plan would mean nearly one billion Chinese citizens regularly using AI-powered services or devices within two years, a timeline compared to the rapid rise of smartphones.
Although officials acknowledge risks such as opaque models, hallucinations and algorithmic discrimination, the policy calls for frameworks to govern ‘natural persons, digital persons, and intelligent robots’.
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The US Department of Commerce has begun a pilot to publish official economic data on public blockchains to boost transparency and integrity. The first release included GDP figures on nine networks, among them Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and Polygon.
For the July 2025 update, the department issued a cryptographic proof confirming 3.3% annualised GDP growth. In some cases, the topline figure itself was also shared.
Major exchanges such as Coinbase, Gemini, and Kraken supported the rollout, while oracle providers Chainlink and Pyth made the data instantly available across hundreds of applications.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called the move practical and symbolic, highlighting the Trump administration’s aim to position America as a blockchain leader. He emphasised that putting government data on-chain ensures universal access and creates new opportunities for financial markets.
The pilot may expand to more chains, oracles, and market participants. Officials say future datasets may include inflation and other key metrics, potentially changing how public statistics are shared and used in decentralised finance.
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The US AI startup has announced an update to its data policy for Claude users, introducing an option to allow conversations and coding sessions to be used for training future AI models.
Anthropic stated that all Claude Free, Pro, and Max users, including those using Claude Code, will be asked to make a decision by September 28, 2025.
According to Anthropic, users who opt in will permit retention of their conversations for up to five years, with the data contributing to improvements in areas such as reasoning, coding, and analysis.
Those who choose not to participate will continue under the current policy, where conversations are deleted within thirty days unless flagged for legal or policy reasons.
The new policy does not extend to enterprise products, including Claude for Work, Claude Gov, Claude for Education, or API access through partners like Amazon Bedrock and Google Cloud Vertex AI. These remain governed by separate contractual agreements.
Anthropic noted that the choice will also apply to new users during sign-up, while existing users will be prompted through notifications to review their privacy settings.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT continues to dominate the consumer AI space, but rivals are beginning to catch up. Andreessen Horowitz’s latest Top 100 AI Apps report shows Google’s Gemini and Elon Musk’s Grok rapidly climbing the ranks across web and mobile platforms.
The report highlights a stabilising AI market, with fewer new entrants on the web but more originality emerging on mobile. Gemini has secured the number two position on web and mobile, while Grok has surged to fourth place on web following the release of Grok 4.
Meanwhile, Meta AI’s growth remains modest, and platforms like Claude and DeepSeek show slowing momentum.
China’s AI sector is also strengthening its presence. Apps such as Quark, Doubao, and Kimi are breaking into the global top 20, aided by China’s large domestic market and growing export of AI tools.
Additionally, many of the leading mobile apps in photo and video editing now come from Chinese developers, underscoring their increasing global influence.
The report also tracks consistent leaders, naming ‘All-Stars’ like ChatGPT, Midjourney, Perplexity, and Eleven Labs, while spotlighting emerging contenders on the ‘Brink List’.
The findings suggest that although ChatGPT retains its lead, the competitive landscape is shifting, with challengers closing the gap and new platforms poised to break through.
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