Cloud computing

New AI boards help Pinterest users refine taste and shop

Pinterest is giving boards an AI upgrade, adding smarter recommendations, fresher layouts, and built-in shopping to help users move from ideas to action worldwide over the coming months.

New tabs tailor each board: Make it yours for fashion and some home decor, More ideas for categories like beauty or recipes, and All saves as a single place to find everything previously pinned.

In the US and Canada, Styled for you creates dynamic AI collages from saved fashion Pins, letting people mix and match apparel and accessories, preview outfits, and shop items that fit their taste.

Pinterest is also testing Boards made for you, personalised boards curated with editorial input and AI picks, delivered to home feeds and inboxes, featuring trending styles, weekly outfit ideas, and shoppable looks.

Executives say boards remain central to Pinterest’s experience; the new AI features aim to act like a personal shopping assistant while keeping curation simple and privacy-respecting by design.

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Yuan says AI ‘digital twins’ could trim meetings and the workweek

AI could shorten the workweek, says Zoom’s Eric Yuan. At TechCrunch Disrupt, he pitched AI ‘digital twins’ that attend meetings, negotiate drafts, and triage email, arguing assistants will shoulder routine tasks so humans focus on judgement.

Yuan has already used an AI avatar on an investor call to show how a stand-in can speak on your behalf. He said Zoom will keep investing heavily in assistants that understand context, prioritise messages, and draft responses.

Use cases extend beyond meetings. Yuan described counterparts sending their digital twins to hash out deal terms before principals join to resolve open issues, saving hours of live negotiation and accelerating consensus across teams and time zones.

Zoom plans to infuse AI across its suite, including whiteboards and collaborative docs, so work moves even when people are offline. Yuan said assistants will surface what matters, propose actions, and help execute routine workflows securely.

If adoption scales, Yuan sees schedules changing. He floated a five-year goal where many knowledge workers shift to three or four days a week, with AI increasing throughput, reducing meeting load, and improving focus time across organisations.

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Google commits to long-term power deal as NextEra advances nuclear restart

NextEra Energy and Google have launched a major collaboration to accelerate nuclear energy deployment in the United States, anchored by the planned restart of the Duane Arnold Energy Centre in Iowa. The plant has been offline since 2020 and is slated to be back online by early 2029.

Under their agreement, Google will purchase the plant’s energy output through a 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA). Additionally, NextEra plans to acquire the remaining minority stakes in Duane Arnold to gain full ownership.

Central Iowa Power Cooperative, which currently holds part of the facility, will secure the output under the same terms.

As the energy needs of AI and cloud computing infrastructure surge, the Duane Arnold partnership positions nuclear power as a reliable, carbon-free baseload resource.

The revival is expected to bring substantial economic benefits: thousands of direct and indirect jobs during construction and operation, and over US$9 billion in regional economic impact.

Beyond Iowa, Google and NextEra will explore broader nuclear development opportunities across the US, including next-generation technologies to meet long-term demand.

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Nvidia and Deutsche Telekom plan €1 billion AI data centre in Germany

Plans are being rolled out for a €1 billion data centre in Germany to bolster Europe’s AI infrastructure, with Nvidia and Deutsche Telekom set to co-fund the project.

The facility is expected to serve enterprise customers, including SAP SE, Europe’s largest software company, and to deploy around 10,000 advanced chips known as graphics processing units (GPUs).

While significant for Europe, the build is modest compared with gigawatt-scale sites elsewhere, highlighting the region’s push to catch up with US and Chinese capacity.

An announcement is anticipated next month in Berlin alongside senior industry and government figures, with Munich identified as the planned location.

The move aligns with the EU efforts to expand AI compute, including the €200 billion initiative announced in February to grow capacity over the next five to seven years.

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AI200 and AI250 set a rack-scale inference push from Qualcomm

Qualcomm unveiled AI200 and AI250 data-centre accelerators aimed at high-throughput, low-TCO generative AI inference. AI200 targets rack-level deployment with high performance per pound per watt and 768 GB LPDDR per card for large models.

AI250 introduces a near-memory architecture that boosts adequate memory bandwidth by over tenfold while lowering power draw. Qualcomm pitches the design for disaggregated serving, improving hardware utilisation across large fleets.

Both arrive as full racks with direct liquid cooling, PCIe for scale-up, Ethernet for scale-out, and confidential computing. Qualcomm quotes around 160 kW per rack for thermally efficient, dense inference.

A hyperscaler-grade software stack spans apps to system software with one-click onboarding of Hugging Face models. Support covers leading frameworks, inference engines, and optimisation techniques to simplify secure, scalable deployments.

Commercial timing splits the roadmap: AI200 in 2026 and AI250 in 2027. Qualcomm commits to an annual cadence for data-centre inference, aiming to lead in performance, energy efficiency, and total cost of ownership.

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Qualcomm and HUMAIN power Saudi Arabia’s AI transformation

HUMAIN and Qualcomm Technologies have launched a collaboration to deploy advanced AI infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, aiming to position the Kingdom as a global hub for AI.

Announced ahead of the Future Investment Initiative conference, the project will deliver the world’s first fully optimised edge-to-cloud AI system, expanding Saudi Arabia’s regional and global inferencing services capabilities.

In 2026, HUMAIN plans to deploy 200 megawatts of Qualcomm’s AI200 and AI250 rack solutions to power large-scale AI inference services.

The partnership combines HUMAIN’s regional infrastructure and full AI stack with Qualcomm’s semiconductor expertise, creating a model for nations seeking to develop sovereign AI ecosystems.

However, the initiative will also integrate HUMAIN’s Saudi-developed ALLaM models with Qualcomm’s AI platforms, offering enterprise and government customers tailor-made solutions for industry-specific needs.

The collaboration supports Saudi Arabia’s strategy to drive economic growth through AI and semiconductor innovation, reinforcing its ambition to lead the next wave of global intelligent computing.

Qualcomm’s CEO Cristiano Amon said the partnership would help the Kingdom build a technology ecosystem to accelerate its AI ambitions.

HUMAIN CEO Tareq Amin added that combining local insight with Qualcomm’s product leadership will establish Saudi Arabia as a key player in global AI and semiconductor development.

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Anthropic boosts cloud capacity with Google’s AI hardware

Anthropic has struck a multibillion-dollar deal with Google to expand its use of cloud computing and specialised AI chips. The agreement includes the purchase of up to one million Tensor Processing Units, Google’s custom hardware built to train and run large AI models.

The partnership will provide Anthropic with more than a gigawatt of additional computing power by late 2026. Executives said the move will support soaring demand for its Claude model family, which already serves over 300,000 business clients.

Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI employees, has quickly become a major player in generative AI. Backed by Amazon and valued at $183 billion, the company recently launched Claude Sonnet 4.5, praised for its coding and reasoning abilities.

Google continues to invest heavily in AI hardware to compete with Nvidia’s GPUs and rival US tech giants. Analysts said Anthropic’s expansion signals intensifying demand for computing power as companies race to lead the global AI revolution.

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Japan’s G-QuAT and Fujitsu sign pact to boost quantum competitiveness

Fujitsu and AIST’s G-QuAT have signed a collaboration to lift Japan’s quantum competitiveness, aligning roadmaps, labs, and funding toward commercialisation. The pact focuses on practical outcomes: industry-ready prototypes, interoperable tooling, and clear pathways from research to deployment.

The partners will pool superconducting know-how, shared fabs and test sites, and structured talent exchanges. Common testbeds will reduce duplication, lift throughput, and speed benchmarks. Joint governance will release reference designs, track milestones, and align on global standards.

Scaling quantum requires integrated systems, not just faster qubits. Priorities include full-stack validation across cryogenics and packaging, controls, and error mitigation. Demonstrations target reproducible, large-scale superconducting processors, with results for peer review and industry pilots.

G-QuAT will act as an international hub, convening suppliers, universities, and overseas labs for co-development. Fujitsu brings product engineering, supply chain, and quality systems to translate research into deployable hardware. External partners will be invited to run comparative trials.

AIST anchors the effort with the national research capacity of Japan and a mission to bridge lab and market. Fujitsu aligns commercialization and service models to emerging standards. Near-term work packages include joint pilots and verification suites, followed by prototypes aimed at industrial adoption.

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Diella 2.0 set to deliver 83 new AI assistants to aid Albania’s MPs

Albania’s AI minister Diella will ‘give birth’ to 83 virtual assistants for ruling-party MPs, Prime Minister Edi Rama said, framing a quirky rollout of parliamentary copilots that record debates and propose responses.

Diella began in January as a public-service chatbot on e-Albania, then ‘Diella 2.0’ added voice and an avatar in traditional dress. Built with Microsoft by the National Agency for Information Society, it now oversees specific state tech contracts.

The legality is murky: the constitution of Albania requires ministers to be natural persons. A presidential decree left Rama’s responsibility to establish the role and set up likely court tests from opposition lawmakers.

Rama says the ‘children’ will brief MPs, summarise absences, and suggest counterarguments through 2026, experimenting with automating the day-to-day legislative grind without replacing elected officials.

Reactions range from table-thumping scepticism to cautious curiosity, as other governments debate AI personhood and limits; Diella could become a template, or a cautionary tale for ‘ministerial’ bots.

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Sky acquisition by OpenAI signals ChatGPT’s push into native workflows

OpenAI acquired Software Applications Incorporated, the maker of Sky, to accelerate the development of interfaces that understand context, adapt to intent, and act across apps. Sky’s macOS layer sees what’s on screen and executes tasks. Its team joins OpenAI to bake these capabilities into ChatGPT.

Sky turns the Mac into a cooperative workspace for writing, planning, coding, and daily tasks. It can control native apps, invoke workflows, and ground actions in on-screen context. That tight integration now becomes a core pillar of ChatGPT’s product roadmap.

OpenAI says the goal is capability plus usability: not just answers, but actions completed in your tools. VP Nick Turley framed it as moving from prompts to productivity. Expect ChatGPT features that feel ambient, proactive, and native on desktop.

Sky’s founders say large language models finally enable intuitive, customizable computing. CEO Ari Weinstein described Sky as a layer that ‘floats’ over your desktop, helping you think and create. OpenAI plans to bring that experience to hundreds of millions of users.

A disclosure notes that a fund associated with Sam Altman held a passive stake in Software Applications Incorporated. Nick Turley and Fidji Simo led the deal. OpenAI’s independent Transaction and Audit Committees reviewed and approved the acquisition.

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