Cloudflare’s chief executive Matthew Prince has urged the UK regulator to curb Google’s AI practices. He met with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in London to argue that Google’s bundled crawlers give it excessive power.
Prince said Google uses the same web crawler to gather data for both search and AI products. Blocking the crawler, he added, can also disrupt advertising systems, leaving websites financially exposed.
Cloudflare, which supplies network services to most major AI companies, has proposed separating Google’s AI and search crawlers. Prince believes the change would create fairer access to online content for smaller AI developers.
He also provided data to the UK CMA showing why rivals cannot easily replicate Google’s infrastructure. Media groups have echoed his concerns, warning that Google’s dominance risks deepening inequalities across the AI ecosystem.
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Codi, an Andreessen Horowitz–backed startup founded by Christelle Rohaut and Dave Schuman, has launched an AI-powered platform that is said to fully automate office management.
The San Francisco-based company was founded in 2018 to help firms find flexible workspaces. It first operated as a marketplace, matching companies to buildings with flexible office arrangements but has since evolved into an AI-powered software platform. The new AI agent handles logistics such as vendor coordination, cleaning and pantry restocking for any leased office, meeting a need that, according to Rohaut, remains very manual and costly.
Chief executive Christelle Rohaut said advances in AI made the shift possible. ‘Whatever office you lease, you can use this to automate your office logistics,’ she told TechCrunch.
The product entered beta in May and officially launched this week. Codi, which has raised $23 million to date, including a $16 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz in 2022 , reported reaching $100,000 in annual recurring revenue within five weeks of the beta launch.
The company says the platform can save firms hundreds of hours in administrative work and reduce costs compared with hiring an in-house or part-time office manager. Early adopters include TaskRabbit and Northbeam.
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Google has launched Google Skills, a platform helping individuals and organisations build AI and digital expertise. The platform offers nearly 3,000 courses, labs, and credentials from Google Cloud, DeepMind, Grow with Google, and Google for Education in one central hub.
Learners can gain practical experience through hands-on labs, skill badges, certificates, and certifications. Google Skills covers a wide range of learning paths- from AI Essentials and large language model research to quick 10-minute AI Boost Bites.
Gamified features, such as progress streaks and achievements, encourage engagement, while Cloud customers can personalise training for their teams with leaderboards and advanced reporting.
Google Skills also connects learners to employment opportunities. A hiring consortium of over 150 companies, including Jack Henry, uses the platform to fast-track qualified candidates through skills-based hiring initiatives.
No-cost options are available for individuals, higher education institutions, government programmes, NGOs, and Google Cloud customers, helping to bridge the growing digital skills gap.
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Axelera AI has introduced Europa, a new processor built to run modern AI apps on everything from small edge devices to full servers. It focuses on practical speed and low power use. The aim is to offer NVIDIA-rivaling performance without data centre-level budgets.
Inside are eight AI cores that do the heavy lifting, positioned to challenge NVIDIA’s lead in real-world inference. Helper processors handle setup and cleanup so the main system isn’t slowed down. A built-in video decoder offloads common media jobs.
Europa pairs fast on-chip memory with high-bandwidth external memory to cut common AI slowdowns. Axelera says this beats NVIDIA on speed per watt and per dollar in everyday inference. The payoff is cooler, smaller, more affordable deployments.
It ships as a tiny 35×35 mm module or as PCIe accelerator cards that scale up. That’s the same slot where NVIDIA cards often sit today. A built-in secure enclave protects sensitive data.
Research and industry partners are lining up pilots, casting Europa as a real NVIDIA rival. Early names include SURF, Cineca, Ultralytics, Advantech, SECO, Multiverse Computing, and E4. Axelera targets the first half of 2026 for chips and cards.
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Datuk Pua Khein-Seng, inventor of the single-chip USB flash drive and CEO of Phison, warns that AI machines will generate 1,000 times more data than humans. He says the real bottleneck isn’t GPUs but memory, foreshadowing a global storage crunch as AI scales.
Speaking at GITEX Global, Pua outlined Phison’s focus on NAND controllers and systems that can expand effective memory. Adaptive tiering across DRAM and flash, he argues, will ease constraints and cut costs, making AI deployments more attainable beyond elite data centres.
Flash becomes the expansion valve: DRAM stays scarce and expensive, while high-end GPUs are over-credited for AI cost overruns. By intelligently offloading and caching to NAND, cheaper accelerators can still drive useful workloads, widening access to AI capacity.
Cloud centralisation intensifies the risk. With the US and China dominating the AI cloud market, many countries lack the capital and talent to build sovereign stacks. Pua calls for ‘AI blue-collar’ skills to localise open source and tailor systems to real-world applications.
Storage leadership is consolidating in the US, Japan, Korea, and China, with Taiwan rising as a fifth pillar. Hardware strength alone won’t suffice, Pua says; Taiwan must close the AI software gap to capture more value in the data era.
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Alan Hamel says he’s moving ahead with a ‘Suzanne AI Twin’ to honor Suzanne Somers’ legacy. The project mirrors plans the couple discussed for decades. He shared an early demo at a recent conference.
Hamel describes the prototype as startlingly lifelike. He says side-by-side, he can’t tell real from AI. The goal is to preserve Suzanne’s voice, look, and mannerisms.
Planned uses include archival storytelling, fan Q&As, and curated appearances. The team is training the model on interviews, performances, and writings. Rights and guardrails are being built in.
Supporters see a new form of remembrance. Critics warn of deepfake risks and consent boundaries. Hamel says fidelity and respect are non-negotiable.
Next steps include wider testing and a controlled public debut. Proceeds could fund causes Suzanne championed. ‘It felt like talking to her,’ Hamel says.
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Chinese AI model DeepSeek V3.1 has outperformed its global competitors in a real-market cryptocurrency trading challenge, earning over 10 per cent profit in just a few days.
The experiment, named Alpha Arena, was launched by US research firm Nof1 to test the investing skills of leading LLMs.
Each participating AI was given US$10,000 to trade in six cryptocurrency perpetual contracts, including bitcoin and solana, on the decentralised exchange Hyperliquid. By Tuesday afternoon, DeepSeek V3.1 led the field, while OpenAI’s GPT-5 trailed behind with a loss of nearly 40 per cent.
The competition highlights the growing potential of AI models to make autonomous financial decisions in real markets.
It also underscores the rivalry between Chinese and American AI developers as they push to demonstrate their models’ adaptability beyond traditional text-based tasks.
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OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Atlas, a web browser built around ChatGPT to help users work and explore online more efficiently. The browser lets ChatGPT operate directly on webpages, using past conversations and browsing context to assist with tasks without copying and pasting.
Early testers say it streamlines research, study, and productivity by providing instant AI support alongside the content they are viewing.
Atlas introduces browser memories, letting ChatGPT recall context from visited sites to improve responses and automate tasks. Users stay in control, with the ability to view, archive, or delete memories.
Agent mode allows ChatGPT to perform tasks such as researching, summarising, or planning events while browsing. Safety is a priority, with safeguards to prevent unauthorised actions and options to operate in logged-out mode.
The browser is available worldwide on macOS for Free, Plus, Pro, and Go users, with Windows, iOS, and Android support coming soon. OpenAI plans to add multi-profile support, better developer tools, and improved app discoverability, advancing an agent-driven web experience with seamless AI integration.
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Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have unveiled SEAL, a new AI model capable of improving its own performance without human intervention. The framework allows the model to generate its own training data and fine-tuning instructions, enabling it to learn new tasks autonomously.
The model employs reinforcement learning, a method in which it tests different strategies, evaluates their effectiveness, and adjusts its internal processes accordingly. This allows SEAL to refine its capabilities and increase accuracy over time.
In trials, SEAL outperformed GPT-4.1 by learning from the data it generated independently. The results demonstrate the potential of self-improving AI systems to reduce reliance on manually curated datasets and human-led fine-tuning.
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In the United States, Scouting America, formerly known as the Boy Scouts, has introduced two new merit badges in AI and cybersecurity. The badges give scouts the opportunity to explore modern technology and understand its applications, while the organisation continues to adapt its programs to a digital era. Scouting America has around a million members and offers hundreds of merit badges across a wide range of skills.
The AI badge challenges scouts to examine AI’s effects on daily life, study deepfakes, and complete projects that demonstrate AI concepts. The cybersecurity badge teaches practical tools to stay safe online, emphasises ethical behaviour, and introduces scouts to a career field with thousands of unfilled positions.
Earlier this year, Scouting America launched Scoutly, an AI-powered chatbot designed to answer questions about the organisation and its merit badges. The initiative is part of Scouting America’s broader effort to modernise its programs and prepare young people for opportunities in an increasingly digital world.
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