Digital business models

Startup raises $9m to orchestrate Gulf digital infrastructure

Bilal Abu-Ghazaleh has launched 1001 AI, a London–Dubai startup building an AI-native operating system for critical MENA industries. The two-month-old firm raised $9m seed from CIV, General Catalyst and Lux Capital, with angels including Chris Ré, Amjad Masad and Amira Sajwani.

Target sectors include airports, ports, construction, and oil and gas, where 1001 AI sees billions in avoidable inefficiencies. Its engine ingests live operational data, models workflows and issues real-time directives, rerouting vehicles, reassigning crews and adjusting plans autonomously.

Abu-Ghazaleh brings scale-up experience from Hive AI and Scale AI, where he led GenAI operations and contributor networks. 1001 borrows a consulting-style rollout: embed with clients, co-develop the model, then standardise reusable patterns across similar operational flows.

Investors argue the Gulf is an ideal test bed given sovereign-backed AI ambitions and under-digitised, mission-critical infrastructure. Deena Shakir of Lux says the region is ripe for AI that optimises physical operations at scale, from flight turnarounds to cargo moves.

First deployments are slated for construction by year-end, with aviation and logistics to follow. The funding supports early pilots and hiring across engineering, operations and go-to-market, as 1001 aims to become the Gulf’s orchestration layer before expanding globally.

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AWS outage shows the cost of cloud concentration

A single fault can bring down the modern web. During the outage on Monday, 20 October 2025, millions woke to broken apps, games, banking, and tools after database errors at Amazon Web Services rippled outward. When a shared backbone stumbles, the blast radius engulfs everything from chat to commerce.

The outage underscored cloud concentration risk. Roblox, Fortnite, Pokémon Go, Snapchat, and workplace staples like Slack and Monday.com stumbled together because many depend on the same region and data layer. Failover, throttling, and retries help, but simultaneous strain can swamp safeguards.

On Friday, 19 July 2024, a faulty CrowdStrike update crashed Windows machines worldwide, triggering blue screens that grounded flights, delayed surgeries, and froze point-of-sale systems. The fix was simple; recovery wasn’t. Friday patches gained a new cautionary tale.

Earlier shocks foreshadowed today’s scale. In 1997, a Network Solutions glitch briefly hobbled .com and .net. In 2018, malware in Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna knocked services offline, sending a community of 100,000 back to paper. Each incident showed how mundane errors cascade into civic life.

Resilience now means multi-region designs, cross-cloud failovers, tested runbooks, rate-limit backstops, and graceful read-only modes. Add regulatory stress tests, clear incident comms, and sector drills with hospitals, airlines, and banks. The internet will keep breaking; our job is to make it bend.

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SMEs underinsured as Canada’s cyber landscape shifts

Canada’s cyber insurance market is stabilising, with stronger underwriting, steadier loss trends, and more product choice, the Insurance Bureau of Canada says. But the threat landscape is accelerating as attackers weaponise AI, leaving many small and medium-sized enterprises exposed and underinsured.

Rapid market growth brought painful losses during the ransomware surge: from 2019 to 2023, combined loss ratios averaged about 155%, forcing tighter pricing and coverage. Insurers have recalibrated, yet rising AI-enabled phishing and deepfake impersonations are lifting complexity and potential severity.

Policy is catching up unevenly. Bill C-8 in Canada would revive critical-infrastructure cybersecurity standards, stronger oversight, and baseline rules for risk management and incident reporting. Public–private programmes signal progress but need sustained execution.

SMEs remain the pressure point. Low uptake means minor breaches can cost tens or hundreds of thousands, while severe incidents can be fatal. Underinsurance shifts shock to the wider economy, challenging insurers to balance affordability with long-term viability.

The Bureau urges practical resilience: clearer governance, employee training, incident playbooks, and fit-for-purpose cover. Education campaigns and free guidance aim to demystify coverage, boost readiness, and help SMEs recover faster when attacks hit, supporting a more durable digital economy.

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AI-generated images used in jewellery scam

A jeweller in Hove is dealing with daily complaints from customers of a similarly named but fraudulent business. Stevie Holmes runs Scarlett Jewellery but keeps receiving complaints from customers who confused it with the AI-driven Scarlett Jewels website.

Many reported receiving poor-quality goods or nothing at all.

Holmes said the mix-ups have kept her occupied for at least an hour a day since July. Without clarification, people could post negative comments about her genuine business on social media, potentially damaging its reputation.

Scarlett Jewels is run by Denimtex Limited with an address in Hong Kong, though its website claims a personal story of a retiring designer.

Experts say such scams are increasingly common due to how easy and cheap it is to create AI images. Professor Ana Canhoto from the University of Sussex noted AI-generated product photos often appear too perfect or flawed, while fake reviews and claims of scarcity are typical tactics to mislead buyers.

Trustpilot ratings for Scarlett Jewels are mostly one star, with customers describing items as ‘tat’ or ‘poor quality’.

Authorities are taking action, with the Advertising Standards Authority banning similar ads and Facebook restricting Scarlett Jewels from creating new adverts. Buyers are advised to spot off AI images, large discounts, and genuine reviews to avoid falling for scams.

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Bitcoin wallet vulnerability exposes thousands of private keys

A flaw in the widely used Libbitcoin Explorer (bx) 3.x series has exposed over 120,000 Bitcoin private keys, according to crypto wallet provider OneKey. The flaw arose from a weak random number generator that used system time, making wallet keys predictable.

Attackers aware of wallet creation times could reconstruct private keys and access funds.

Several wallets were affected, including versions of Trust Wallet Extension and Trust Wallet Core prior to patched releases. Researchers said the Mersenne Twister-32’s limited seed space let hackers automate attacks and recreate private keys, possibly causing past fund losses like the ‘Milk Sad’ cases.

OneKey confirmed its own wallets remain secure, using cryptographically strong random number generation and hardware Secure Elements certified to global security standards.

OneKey also examined its software wallets, ensuring that desktop, browser, Android, and iOS versions rely on secure system-level entropy sources. The firm urged long-term crypto holders to use hardware wallets and avoid importing software-generated mnemonics to reduce risk.

The company emphasised that wallet security depends on the integrity of the device and operating environment.

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Tailored pricing is here and personal data is the price signal

AI is quietly changing how prices are set online. Beyond demand-based shifts, companies increasingly tailor offers to individuals, using browsing history, purchase habits, device, and location to predict willingness to pay. Two shoppers may see different prices for the same product at the same moment.

Dynamic pricing raises or lowers prices for everyone as conditions change, such as school-holiday airfares or hotel rates during major events. Personalised pricing goes further by shaping offers for specific users, rewarding cart-abandoners with discounts while charging rarer shoppers a premium.

Platforms mine clicks, time on page, past purchases, and abandoned baskets to build profiles. Experiments show targeted discounts can lift sales while capping promo spend, proving engineered prices scale. The result: you may not see a ‘standard’ price, but one designed for you.

The risks are mounting. Income proxies such as postcode or device can entrench inequality, while hidden algorithms erode trust when buyers later find cheaper prices. Accountability is murky if tailored prices mislead, discriminate, or breach consumer protections without clear disclosure.

Regulators are moving. A competition watchdog in Australia has flagged transparency gaps, unfair trading risks, and the need for algorithmic disclosure. Businesses now face a twin test: deploy AI pricing with consent, explainability, and opt-outs, and prove it delivers value without crossing ethical lines.

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Wikipedia faces traffic decline as AI and social video reshape online search

Wikipedia’s human traffic has fallen by 8% over the past year, a decline the Wikimedia Foundation attributes to changing information habits driven by AI and social media.

The foundation’s Marshall Miller explained that updates to Wikipedia’s bot detection system revealed much of the earlier traffic surge came from undetected bots, revealing a sharper drop in genuine visits.

Miller pointed to the growing use of AI-generated search summaries and the rise of short-form video as key factors. Search engines now provide direct answers using generative AI instead of linking to external sources, while younger users increasingly turn to social video platforms rather than traditional websites.

Although Wikipedia’s knowledge continues to feed AI models, fewer people are reaching the original source.

The foundation warns that the shift poses risks to Wikipedia’s volunteer-driven ecosystem and donation-based model. With fewer visitors, fewer contributors may update content and fewer donors may provide financial support.

Miller urged AI companies and search engines to direct users back to the encyclopedia, ensuring both transparency and sustainability.

Wikipedia is responding by developing a new framework for content attribution and expanding efforts to reach new readers. The foundation also encourages users to support human-curated knowledge by citing original sources and recognising the people behind the information that powers AI systems.

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Australian students get 12 months of Google Gemini Pro at no cost

Google has launched a free twelve-month Gemini Pro plan for students in Australia aged eighteen and over, aiming to make AI-powered learning more accessible.

The offer includes the company’s most advanced tools and features designed to enhance study efficiency and critical thinking.

A key addition is Guided Learning mode, which acts as a personal AI coach. Instead of quick answers, it walks students through complex subjects step by step, encouraging a deeper understanding of concepts.

Gemini now also integrates diagrams, images and YouTube videos into responses to make lessons more visual and engaging.

Students can create flashcards, quizzes and study guides automatically from their own materials, helping them prepare for exams more effectively. The Gemini Pro account upgrade provides access to Gemini 2.5 Pro, Deep Research, NotebookLM, Veo 3 for short video creation, and Jules, an AI coding assistant.

With two terabytes of storage and the full suite of Google’s AI tools, the Gemini app aims to support Australian students in their studies and skill development throughout the academic year.

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Meta champions open hardware to power the next generation of AI data centres

The US tech giant, Meta, believes open hardware will define the future of AI data centre infrastructure. Speaking at the Open Compute Project Global Summit, the company outlined a series of innovations designed to make large-scale AI systems more efficient, sustainable, and collaborative.

Meta, one of the OCP’s founding members, said open source hardware remains essential to scaling the physical infrastructure required for the next generation of AI.

During the summit, Meta joined industry peers in supporting OCP’s Open Data Center Initiative, which calls for shared standards in power, cooling, and mechanical design.

The company also unveiled a new generation of network fabrics for AI training clusters, integrating NVIDIA’s Spectrum Ethernet to enable greater flexibility and performance.

As part of the effort, Meta became an initiating member of Ethernet for Scale-Up Networking, aiming to strengthen connectivity across increasingly complex AI systems.

Meta further introduced the Open Rack Wide (ORW) form factor, an open source data rack standard optimised for the power and cooling demands of modern AI.

Built on ORW specifications, AMD’s new Helios rack was presented as the most advanced AI rack yet, embodying the shift toward interoperable and standardised infrastructure.

Meta also showcased new AI hardware platforms built to improve performance and serviceability for large-scale generative AI workloads.

Sustainability remains central to Meta’s strategy. The company presented ‘Design for Sustainability’, a framework to reduce hardware emissions through modularity, reuse, and extended lifecycles.

It also shared how its Llama AI models help track emissions across millions of components. Meta said it will continue to

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Privacy laws block cross-border crypto regulation progress

Regulators continue to face hurdles in overseeing global crypto markets as privacy laws block effective cross-border data sharing, the Financial Stability Board warned. Sixteen years after Bitcoin’s launch, regulation remains inconsistent, with differing national approaches causing data gaps and fragmented oversight.

The FSB, under the Bank for International Settlements, said secrecy laws hinder authorities from monitoring risks and sharing information. Some jurisdictions block data sharing with foreign regulators, while others delay cooperation over privacy and reciprocity concerns.

According to the report, addressing these legal and institutional barriers is essential to improving cross-border collaboration and ensuring more effective global oversight of crypto markets.

However, the FSB noted that reliable data on digital assets remain scarce, as regulators rely heavily on incomplete or inconsistent sources from commercial data providers.

Despite the growing urgency to monitor financial stability risks, little progress has been made since similar concerns were raised nearly four years ago. The FSB has yet to outline concrete solutions for bridging the gap between data privacy protection and effective crypto regulation.

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