The Swedish-Swiss electrical engineering corporation ABB has agreed to sell its Robotics division to Japan’s SoftBank Group for an enterprise value of $5.375 billion, abandoning plans for a spin-off.
However, the move marks one of the most significant robotics transactions in recent years, and reflects both firms’ ambition to drive the next era of AI-based automation.
A divestment that will allow ABB to focus on its core businesses in electrification and automation, while SoftBank expands its ‘Physical AI’ strategy.
ABB said the sale would create immediate shareholder value and that proceeds would be used according to its capital allocation principles.
The Robotics division, which employs around 7,000 people and generated $2.3 billion in 2024 revenues, will become part of SoftBank’s portfolio upon completion of the deal, expected by mid-to-late 2026. The transaction is projected to yield ABB a pre-tax book gain of about $2.4 billion.
SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son said the acquisition aligns with his vision to combine artificial superintelligence and robotics to ‘propel humanity forward’.
ABB’s CEO Morten Wierod said the partnership would unite ABB’s industrial expertise with SoftBank’s AI capabilities, strengthening its global leadership in advanced robotics.
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Google is expanding access to Opal, its no-code AI mini-app builder. Introduced two months ago within Google Labs, the tool enables users to create AI-powered mini-apps through natural language prompts, eliminating the need for coding.
According to Megan Li, Senior Product Manager at Google Labs, the expansion follows strong early engagement from creators. Users can access Opal at opal.withgoogle.com and join its builder community through Discord.
New debugging features aim to make workflows more transparent and efficient. Users can now run workflows step by step in a visual editor or adjust specific steps in the console, with real-time error reporting.
Meanwhile, Google DeepMind has launched Gemini 2.5 Computer Use, a specialised model capable of interacting with user interfaces. Available in preview through the Gemini API, it can be accessed via Google AI Studio and Vertex AI Studio.
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Kazakhstan’s Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov has directed the full implementation of AI across government agencies to meet President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s goal of reducing the shadow economy’s share in GDP to 15 percent in 2025.
At a government session, Bektenov said progress must go beyond reports and correspondence, calling for structural reforms in taxation, digitalisation, and business regulation. He urged ministries to pursue a ‘transparent economy’ through comprehensive AI and data integration initiatives.
Bektenov stressed that digitalisation projects such as cashless payments and the digital tenge have already proven effective in curbing unrecorded transactions and improving financial oversight.
AI will also be deployed in customs risk profiling and cargo inspection analysis to detect fraud and reduce corruption.
The Ministries of Finance, Justice, Trade, and National Economy were instructed to integrate databases under the Smart Data Finance system and to finalise an automated risk management system for company registration by 25 November.
Deputy Prime Minister Serik Zhumangarin will oversee coordination.
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US electric utilities are set to spend nearly $208 billion on the power grid in 2025 and more than $1.1 trillion over the next five years, according to the Edison Electric Institute. The surge in investment reflects rising demand from data centres, artificial intelligence, and wider electrification across the economy.
EEI data shows that investor-owned utilities spent $765 billion on capital projects in the five years to 2024. The new spending represents a significant increase and is aimed at upgrading and expanding infrastructure to keep pace with the accelerating demand for electricity.
The growing investment comes as demand from energy-intensive technologies continues to rise. Data centres and AI workloads are driving sustained growth in US power consumption, placing unprecedented pressure on existing infrastructure and prompting utilities to scale up their spending plans.
David Weeks, supply chain industry practice lead at Moody’s, warned that the escalating energy crisis could become a limiting factor across multiple industries. He said grid constraints and permitting delays must be factored into corporate supply chain strategies to avoid future disruptions.
As electrification spreads across the economy, grid reliability and capacity are becoming critical considerations for companies. The planned investment underscores the urgency of modernising the power grid to support economic growth while adapting to new technological demands.
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Researchers at MIT have developed a predictive model that could make fusion power plants more reliable and safe. The approach uses machine learning and physics-based simulations to predict plasma instabilities and prevent damage during tokamak shutdowns.
Experimental tokamaks use strong magnets to contain plasma hotter than the sun’s core. They often face challenges in safely ramping down plasma currents that circulate at extreme speeds and temperatures.
The model was trained and tested on data from the Swiss TCV tokamak. Combining neural networks with physics simulations, the team achieved accurate predictions using few plasma pulses, saving costs and overcoming limited experimental data.
The system can now generate practical ‘trajectories’ for controllers to adjust magnets and temperatures, helping to safely manage plasma during shutdowns.
Researchers say the method could be particularly important as fusion devices scale up to grid-level energy production. High-energy plasmas in larger reactors pose greater risks, and uncontrolled terminations could damage the machine.
The new model allows operators to carefully balance rampdowns, avoiding disruptions and ensuring safer, more efficient operation.
Work on the predictive model is part of wider collaboration with Commonwealth Fusion Systems and supported by the EUROfusion Consortium and Swiss research institutions. Scientists see it as a crucial step toward making fusion a practical, reliable, and sustainable energy source.
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MIT and McMaster researchers used AI to map how a narrow-spectrum antibiotic attacks harmful gut bacteria. Enterololin targets E. coli linked to Crohn’s flares while preserving most of the microbiome, providing a precise alternative to broad-spectrum antibiotics.
AI accelerated the process of identifying the drug’s mechanism of action, reducing a task that usually takes years to just months.
The team used DiffDock, a generative AI tool developed at MIT, to predict how enterololin binds to a protein complex called LolCDE in E. coli. Laboratory experiments, including mutant evolution, RNA sequencing, and CRISPR knockdowns, confirmed the AI predictions.
The method demonstrates how AI can provide mechanistic insights, guide experiments, and speed up early-stage antibiotic development.
Enterololin improved recovery and preserved the microbiome in mouse models compared with conventional treatments. Researchers aim to develop derivatives against resistant pathogens like Klebsiella pneumoniae, with early work underway at spinout company Stoked Bio.
The study highlights broader implications for precision antibiotics, which could treat infections without disrupting beneficial microbes. AI-driven mechanism mapping could speed up drug discovery, cut costs, and help tackle antimicrobial resistance.
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Google has expanded its AI Mode in Search, supporting over 35 new languages and 40 more countries and territories. The rollout expands access across Europe and other regions, reaching over 200 countries and territories worldwide.
The update aims to make AI-powered Search more accessible globally, allowing people to interact with Search in their native language. Expanding language support, Google will enable users to ask questions and access information in their preferred language.
AI Mode is powered by Google’s latest Gemini models, which deliver advanced reasoning and multimodal understanding. These capabilities help the system grasp the subtleties of local languages and provide relevant, context-aware answers, making AI Mode genuinely useful across diverse regions.
According to Google, people using AI Mode tend to explore topics in far greater depth, with queries nearly three times longer than traditional searches. The enhanced experience will continue to roll out globally over the coming week.
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Google DeepMind has launched the Gemini 2.5 Computer Use model, a specialised version of Gemini 2.5 Pro designed to let AI agents interact directly with digital user interfaces.
Available in preview through the Gemini API, developers can build agents capable of performing web and mobile tasks such as form-filling, navigation and interaction within apps.
Unlike models limited to structured APIs, Gemini 2.5 Computer Use can reason visually about what it sees on screen, making it possible to complete tasks requiring clicks, scrolls and text input.
While maintaining low latency, it outperforms rivals on several benchmarks, including Browserbase’s Online-Mind2Web and WebVoyager.
The model’s safety design includes per-step risk checks, built-in safeguards against misuse and developer-controlled restrictions on high-risk actions such as payments or security changes.
Google has already integrated it into systems like Project Mariner, Firebase Testing Agent and AI Mode in Search, while early testers report faster, more reliable automation.
Gemini 2.5 Computer Use is now available in public preview via Google AI Studio and Vertex AI, enabling developers to experiment with advanced interface-aware agents that can perform complex digital workflows securely and efficiently.
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Joining the broader trend, Denmark plans to ban children under 15 from using social media as Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced during her address to parliament on Tuesday.
Describing platforms as having ‘stolen our children’s childhood’, she said the government must act to protect young people from the growing harms of digital dependency.
Frederiksen urged lawmakers to ‘tighten the law’ to ensure greater child safety online, adding that parents could still grant consent for children aged 13 and above to have social media accounts.
Although the proposal is not yet part of the government’s legislative agenda, it builds on a 2024 citizen initiative that called for banning platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram.
The prime minister’s comments reflect Denmark’s broader push within the EU to require age verification systems for online platforms.
Her statement follows a broader debate across Europe over children’s digital well-being and the responsibilities of tech companies in verifying user age and safeguarding minors.
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The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis for their experiments that brought quantum mechanical effects into macroscopic systems.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited their ‘discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit’.
In classic quantum mechanics, particles can sometimes cross through energy barriers via a process known as tunnelling, behaviour that typically occurs at atomic or subatomic scales.
The laureates’ work showed that such quantum phenomena can appear in larger electrical circuits using superconductors and Josephson junctions, systems that were thought to be firmly in the domain of classical physics.
Their experiments (conducted in the mid-1980s) involved circuits made of superconducting materials separated by a thin insulating barrier. By finely tuning currents and electromagnetic stimuli, they were able to force a system to switch between zero-voltage and finite voltage states, essentially demonstrating that the circuit could ‘tunnel’ from one state to another.
In addition, they demonstrated energy quantisation in these systems, that the circuits absorb and emit energy in discrete packets, consistent with quantum theory.
This work is widely viewed as a foundational bridge between theoretical quantum mechanics and practical quantum technology. Superconducting circuits (such as qubits in quantum computers) rely on precisely these kinds of effects, and the laureates’ results helped validate the notion that quantum engineering is possible in engineered devices.
As the Nobel announcement puts it, their experiments ‘revealed quantum physics in action’ in a device small enough to hold in hand.
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