Japanese technology giant SoftBank has announced plans to buy a $2 billion stake in Intel, signalling a stronger push into the American semiconductor industry.
The investment comes as Washington debates greater government involvement in the sector, with reports suggesting President Donald Trump is weighing a US government stake in the chipmaker.
SoftBank will purchase Intel’s common stock at $23 per share. Its chairman, Masayoshi Son, said semiconductors remain the backbone of every industry and expressed confidence that advanced chip manufacturing will expand in the US, with Intel playing a central role.
The move follows SoftBank’s increasing investments in the US, including its role in the $500 billion ‘Stargate’ AI project announced earlier this year.
Once a dominant force in Silicon Valley, Intel has struggled against rivals such as Nvidia and AMD. Under new CEO Lip-Bu Tan, the company is cutting 15% of its workforce and reducing costs to stabilise operations.
After a private meeting, Trump recently criticised Tan’s leadership but later softened his stance.
Shares in both companies slipped following the announcement, with SoftBank down 2.2% in Tokyo and Intel falling 3.7% in New York.
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A new report from the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA) and ThoughtExchange highlights the growing role of AI in K-12 communications, offering detailed guidance for ethical integration and effective school engagement.
Drawing on insights from 200 professionals across 37 states, the study reveals how AI tools boost efficiency while underscoring the need for stronger policies, transparency, and ongoing training.
Barbara M Hunter, APR, NSPRA executive director, explained that AI can enhance communication work but will never replace strategy, human judgement, relationships, and authentic school voices.
Key findings show that 91 percent of respondents already use AI, yet most districts still lack clear policies or disclosure practices for employee use.
The report recommends strengthening AI education, accelerating policy development, expanding the scope to cover staff, and building proactive strategies supported by human oversight and trust.
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The African Development Bank has strengthened Africa’s digital journey by backing a landmark AI training initiative linked to Agenda 2063. The effort aims to accelerate the continent’s long-term strategy, ‘The Africa We Want,’ by equipping states with practical expertise.
Through its Joint Secretariat Support Office, the Bank gave both technical and financial backing to the 5th Annual Training Workshop. The event focused on applying AI to monitoring, evaluation, and reporting under the Second Ten-Year Plan of Agenda 2063.
The Lusaka workshop, co-hosted by the African Union Commission and the African Capacity Building Foundation, featured sessions with Ailyse, ChatGPT, Google AI Studio, Google Gemini, and Perplexity. Delegates explored embedding AI insights into analytics for stronger policymaking and accountability.
By investing in institutional capacity, the AfDB and partners aim to advance AI-enabled solutions that improve policy interventions, resource allocation, and national priorities. The initiative reflects a broader effort to integrate digital tools into Africa’s governance structures.
The workshop also fostered peer learning, allowing delegates to share best practices in digital monitoring frameworks. By driving AI adoption in planning and results delivery, the AfDB underlines its role as a partner in Africa’s transformation.
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Tredence has launched Milky Way, a multi-agent, multi-turn system that uses autonomous AI agents to accelerate enterprise decision-making. The platform introduces specialised agents that collaborate like digital co-workers, combining reasoning and execution to deliver outcomes at scale.
The system addresses a common challenge: converting enterprise data into timely and actionable insights. The Milky Way incorporates over 15 prebuilt agents across key business roles and more than 50 specialised agents trained on real-world enterprise scenarios.
Agents span critical functions, from marketing analysts optimising campaigns to supply chain analysts anticipating disruptions. Technical agents, such as anomaly detection and Text-to-SQL, complement them by handling operational complexity with accuracy and transparency.
Early trials have shown striking results, with companies reporting up to five times faster insights and 50% lower analytics costs. Global retailers cut manual effort by 60%, while healthcare providers streamlined patient data aggregation and triage, supporting speedier diagnosis.
Designed for enterprise-grade use, Milky Way integrates seamlessly with existing data systems, offering role-based access, full audit trails, and domain expertise. Tredence positions it as a step towards AI agents that deliver context-aware, scalable business outcomes.
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Moving like this empowers enterprises to build AI agents tailored for multimodal understanding, software development, workflow automation and research.
The rollout extends beyond the initial model. Oracle plans to integrate the entire Gemini suite, including video, image, speech, and music generation, as well as vertically specialised models like MedLM for healthcare.
For customers, Oracle simplifies adoption: Gemini access is billed via Oracle Universal Credits, and no new contracts are required. Behind the scenes, OCI’s bare-metal GPU instances ensure optimised compute performance for demanding AI workflows.
This integration further strengthens Oracle’s position in enterprise AI, offering partners and clients a curated, model-agnostic environment that combines AI innovation with operational reliability.
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Singapore has launched a $27 billion initiative to boost AI readiness and protect jobs, as global tensions and automation reshape the workforce.
Prime Minister Lawrence Wong stressed that securing employment is key to national stability, particularly as geopolitical shifts and AI adoption accelerate.
IMF research warns Singapore’s skilled workers, especially women and youth, are among the most exposed to job disruption from AI technologies.
To address this, the government is expanding its SkillsFuture programme and rolling out local initiatives to connect citizens with evolving job markets.
The tech investment includes $5 billion for AI development and positions Singapore as a leader in digital transformation across Southeast Asia.
Social challenges remain, however, with rising inequality and risks to foreign workers highlighting the need for broader support systems and inclusive policy.
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Malaysia has intensified its push to build an AI-ready workforce, with Huawei pledging to train 30,000 local professionals under a new initiative. The plan aligns with Malaysia’s National Cloud Computing Policy, balancing sovereignty and digital economy competitiveness.
Digital Minister Gobind Singh Deo stressed that AI adoption must benefit all Malaysians, highlighting applications from small business platforms to AI-assisted diagnostics in remote clinics. He urged collaboration across industries to ensure inclusivity as the country pursues its digital future.
Huawei’s Gartner recognition for container management highlights its cloud-native strength. Its Pangu models and container products will support Malaysia’s AI goals in manufacturing, healthcare, transport, and ASEAN industries.
The programme will target students, officials, industry leaders, and associations while supporting 200 local AI partners. Huawei’s network of availability zones in ASEAN provides low-latency infrastructure, with AI-native innovations designed to accelerate training, inference, and industrial upgrades.
The government of Malaysia views AI as crucial to achieving its 2030 goals, which aim to balance infrastructure, security, and governance. With Huawei’s backing and a new policy framework, the country seeks to establish itself as a regional hub for AI expertise.
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Priorities include deploying 4G networks in remote regions, expanding public internet services, and reinforcing the Palapa Ring broadband infrastructure.
On the talent front, the government launched a Digital Talent Scholarship and AI Talent Factory to nurture AI skills, from beginners to specialists, setting the stage for future AI innovation domestically.
In parallel, digital protection measures have been bolstered: over 1.2 million pieces of harmful content have been blocked, while new regulations under the Personal Data Protection Law, age-verification, content monitoring, and reporting systems have been introduced to enhance child safety online.
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Parag Agrawal, the former Twitter chief executive removed after Elon Musk’s takeover in 2022, has re-entered the technology sector with a new venture.
His company, Parallel Web Systems, is developing AI tools designed to help AI agents gather and analyse information online without human input.
The company’s first product, Deep Research API, outperforms human researchers and advanced models such as OpenAI’s GPT-5 on specific benchmarks.
Agrawal revealed that the system already supports millions of tasks daily and is used by coding agents to locate documents and fix errors. Parallel has secured 30 million dollars in funding and employs around 25 staff.
Agrawal had been Twitter’s chief technology officer before succeeding Jack Dorsey as chief executive in late 2021. After leaving the company, he returned to academic research and coding instead of joining other struggling firms.
He has argued that the internet will eventually be dominated by AI agents rather than human users, predicting that individuals may soon rely on dozens of agents to act on their behalf.
His views echo predictions from Coinbase developers, who recently suggested that AI agents could become the most significant users of Ethereum.
They propose that autonomous systems can handle stablecoin transfers and e-commerce transactions, enabling services from self-driving taxis to AI-powered content platforms.
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OpenAI recently unveiled GPT-5, a significant upgrade praised for its advances in accuracy, reasoning, writing, coding and multimodal capabilities. The model has also been designed to reduce hallucinations and excessive agreeableness.
Chief executive Sam Altman has admitted that OpenAI has even more powerful systems that cannot be released due to limited capacity.
Altman explained that the company must make difficult choices, as existing infrastructure cannot yet support the more advanced models. To address the issue, OpenAI plans to invest in new data centres, with spending potentially reaching trillions of dollars.
The shortage of computing power has already affected operations, including a cutback in image generation earlier in the year, following the viral Studio Ghibli-style trend.
Despite criticism of GPT-5 for offering shorter responses and lacking emotional depth, ChatGPT has grown significantly.
Altman said the platform is now the fifth most visited website worldwide and is on track to overtake Instagram and Facebook. However, he acknowledged that competing with Google will be far harder.
OpenAI intends to expand beyond ChatGPT with new standalone applications, potentially including an AI-driven social media service.
The company also backs Merge Labs, a brain-computer interface rival to Elon Musk’s Neuralink. It has partnered with former Apple designer Jony Ive to create a new AI device.
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