The Dutch government has pledged €70 million to build a new AI facility in Groningen to establish a European hub for AI research and development.
A consortium of Dutch organisations will manage the plant and focus on healthcare, agriculture, defence and energy applications.
The government is also seeking an additional €70 million in EU co-financing and has welcomed a separate €60 million contribution from the Groningen regional administration.
The plant is expected to be commissioned in 2026 and reach operation by early 2027 if funding is secured.
Minister of Economic Affairs Vincent Karremans emphasised the need to develop domestic AI capacity, warning that dependence on foreign technologies could threaten national competitiveness and digital independence.
‘Those who do not develop the technology themselves depend on others, ’ Karremans said on the government’s website.
European countries have grown increasingly concerned over their reliance on AI technologies developed by US companies.
The Groningen initiative marks a broader effort by the EU to build its own AI infrastructure instead of leaving strategic control in foreign hands.
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More than 40% of agentic AI projects will likely be cancelled by the end of 2027 due to rising costs, limited business value, and poor risk control, according to research firm Gartner.
These cancellations are expected as many early-stage initiatives remain trapped in hype, often misapplied and far from ready for real-world deployment.
Gartner analyst Anushree Verma warned that most agentic AI efforts are still at the proof-of-concept stage. Instead of focusing on scalable production, many companies have been distracted by experimental use cases, underestimating the cost and complexity of full-scale implementation.
A recent poll by Gartner found that only 19% of organisations had made significant investments in agentic AI, while 31% were undecided or waiting.
Much of the current hype is fuelled by vendors engaging in ‘agent washing’ — marketing existing tools like chatbots or RPA under a new agentic label without offering true agentic capabilities.
Out of thousands of vendors, Gartner believes only around 130 offer legitimate agentic solutions. Verma noted that most agentic models today lack the intelligence to deliver strong returns or follow complex instructions independently.
Still, agentic AI holds long-term promise. Gartner expects 15% of daily workplace decisions to be handled autonomously by 2028, up from zero in 2024. Moreover, one-third of enterprise applications will include agentic capabilities by then.
However, to succeed, organisations must reimagine workflows from the ground up, focusing on enterprise-wide productivity instead of isolated task automation.
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On the final day of the Internet Governance Forum 2025 in Lillestrøm, Norway, stakeholders from governments, civil society, technical communities, and the private sector gathered to launch the new work cycle of the Policy Network on Internet Fragmentation (PNIF). Now entering its third year, the PNIF unveiled a structured framework to analyse internet fragmentation across three dimensions: user experience, internet governance coordination, and the technical infrastructure layer.
The session emphasised the urgent need for international cooperation to counter growing fragmentation threats, as enshrined in paragraph 29C of the Global Digital Compact. Speakers raised alarm over how political and economic forces are re-shaping the global internet.
With internet shutdowns and digital censorship increasingly normalised as tools of state control—highlighted by Iran’s recent 90-million-person shutdown—concerns about sovereignty overriding openness were prominent. Michel Lambert described this shift as a ‘political normalisation of network control.’
Marilia Maciel, Director of Digital Trade and Economic Security at Diplo, emphasised how trade and investment policies fuel economic fragmentation. Cuts to internet freedom funding were highlighted by both Lambert and Joyce Chen, who noted severe consequences for underserved regions like the Pacific.
Marilia Maciel, Director of Digital Trade and Economic Security at Diplo
From the technical community, Dhruv, representing the Internet Architecture Board, stressed the importance of safeguarding the internet’s interoperability by including technical experts in regulatory processes. Joyce Chen also pointed to successful coordination initiatives such as the Technical Community Coalition on Multi-Stakeholderism (TCCM).
Naim Gjokaj, State Secretary in Montenegro, offered a government perspective, advocating for stronger legal frameworks and regional coordination to avoid inadvertent fragmentation while supporting connectivity in rural areas.
The session concluded with a call to action: PNIF will focus its upcoming work on developing concrete, risk-based recommendations to implement the Global Digital Compact. Co-facilitators Sheetal Kumar and Bruna Santos encouraged broad community participation, aiming to deliver a final report by 1 November.
Despite the challenges, the atmosphere remained collaborative and forward-looking, reinforcing the importance of inclusive dialogue to ensure the internet remains a unified, accessible, and resilient resource for all.
Track all key moments from the Internet Governance Forum 2025 on our dedicated IGF page.
YouTube is launching a new AI-powered search feature that mirrors Google’s AI Overviews, aiming to improve how users discover content on the platform.
The update introduces an ‘AI-powered search results carousel’ when YouTube users search for shopping, travel, or local activities.
The carousel offers a collection of video thumbnails and an AI-generated summary highlighting the key topics related to the search. For example, someone searching for ‘best beaches in Hawaii’ might see curated clips of snorkelling locations, volcanic coastlines, and planning tips — all surfaced by the AI.
Currently, the feature is available only to YouTube Premium users in the US. However, the platform plans to expand its conversational AI tool — which provides deeper insights, suggestions, and video summaries — to non-Premium users in the US soon.
That tool was first launched in 2023 to help users better understand content while watching.
YouTube is doubling down on AI features to keep users engaged and make content discovery more intuitive, especially in categories involving planning and decision-making.
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The launch of DeepSeek’s next-generation AI model, R2, is expected to face delays due to a shortage of NVIDIA H20 chips in China.
These chips, designed specifically for the Chinese market following US export restrictions, are essential for running DeepSeek’s highly optimised models.
The ban on H20 shipments in April has triggered widespread concern among cloud providers about the scalability of R2, especially if it outperforms existing open-source models.
CEO Liang Wenfeng has reportedly held back the model’s release, expressing dissatisfaction with its current performance.
Engineers continue refining R2, but the lack of compatible hardware poses a deeper challenge. DeepSeek’s reliance on NVIDIA architecture makes switching to Chinese chips inefficient, as the models are tightly built for NVIDIA’s software and hardware ecosystem.
Some Chinese firms have begun using workarounds by flying engineers to Malaysia, where NVIDIA chips are still available in local data centres.
After training their models abroad, teams return to China with trained systems. Others rely on gaming GPUs like the RTX 5090, which are easier to access via grey markets despite restrictions.
While Chinese tech giants ordered 1.2 million H20 chips earlier in 2025 to meet demand sparked by R1’s success, inventory is still unlikely to support a full R2 rollout.
Companies outside China may launch R2 more easily without facing the same export hurdles.
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Meta has reportedly hired AI researcher Trapit Bansal, who previously worked closely with OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever on reinforcement learning and co-created the o1 reasoning model.
Bansal joins Meta’s ambitious superintelligence team, which is focused on further pushing AI reasoning capabilities.
Former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang leads the new team, brought in after Meta invested $14.3 billion in the AI data labelling company.
Alongside Bansal, several other notable figures have recently joined, including three OpenAI researchers from Zurich, a former Google DeepMind expert, Jack Rae, and a senior machine learning lead from Sesame AI.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is accelerating AI recruitment by negotiating with prominent names like former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Safe Superintelligence co-founder Daniel Gross.
Despite these aggressive efforts, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that even $100 million joining bonuses have failed to lure key staff away from his firm.
Zuckerberg has also explored acquiring startups such as Sutskever’s Safe SuperIntelligence and Perplexity AI, further highlighting Meta’s urgency in catching up in the generative AI race.
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Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani has warned of mounting global uncertainty driven by tariff wars, AI and the ongoing energy transition.
At the company’s 44th annual general meeting, he urged businesses to de-risk sourcing and diversify supply chains as geopolitical trade tensions reshape global commerce.
He described a ‘perfect storm’ of converging challenges pushing the world away from a single global market and towards fragmented trade blocs. As firms navigate the shift, they must choose between regions and adopt more strategic, resilient supply networks.
Addressing AI, Nilekani acknowledged the disruption it may bring to the workforce but framed it as an opportunity for digital transformation. He said Infosys is investing in both ‘AI foundries’ for innovation and ‘AI factories’ for scale, with over 275,000 employees already trained in AI technologies.
Energy transition was also flagged as a significant uncertainty, as the future depends on breakthroughs in renewable sources like solar, wind and hydrogen. Nilekani stressed that all businesses now face rapid technological and operational change before they can progress confidently into an unpredictable future.
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Google has introduced Gemini CLI, a free, open-source AI tool that connects developers directly to its Gemini AI models. The new agentic utility allows developers to request debugging, generate code, and run commands using natural language within their terminal environment.
Built as a lightweight interface, Gemini CLI provides a streamlined way to interact with Gemini. While its coding features stand out, Google says the tool handles content creation, deep research, and complex task management across various workflows.
Gemini CLI uses Gemini 2.5 Pro for coding and reasoning tasks by default. Still, it can also connect to other AI models, such as Imagen and Veo, for image and video generation. It supports the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and integrates with Gemini Code Assist.
Moreover, the tool is available on Windows, MacOS, and Linux, offering developers a free usage tier. Access through Vertex AI or AI Studio is available on a pay-as-you-go basis for advanced setups involving multiple agents or custom models.
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Nvidia shares hit an all-time high on 25 June, rising 4.3 percent to US$154.31. The stock has surged 63 percent since April, adding another US$1.5 trillion to its market value.
With a total market capitalisation of about US$3.77 trillion, Nvidia has overtaken Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable listed company.
Strong earnings and growing AI infrastructure spending by major clients — including Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet and Amazon — have reinforced investor confidence.
Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, told shareholders that demand remains strong and that the computer industry is still in the early stages of a major AI upgrade cycle.
Despite gaining 15 percent in 2025, following a 170 percent rise in 2024 and a 240 percent surge in 2023, Nvidia still appears reasonably valued. It trades at 31.5 times forward earnings, below its 10-year average and close to the Nasdaq 100 multiple, even though its projected growth rate is higher.
Analyst sentiment remains firmly bullish. Nearly 90 percent of analysts tracked by Bloomberg recommend buying the stock, which trades below their average price target.
Yet, Nvidia is less widely held among institutional investors than peers like Microsoft and Apple, indicating further room for buying as AI momentum continues into 2026.
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Bosch CEO Stefan Hartung has cautioned that Europe could slow its progress in AI by imposing too many regulations. Speaking at a tech conference in Stuttgart, he argued that strict and unclear rules make the region less attractive for innovation.
Bosch, which holds the most significant number of AI patents in Europe, plans to invest 2.5 billion euros in AI development by the end of 2027. The company is focusing on AI solutions for autonomous vehicles and industrial efficiency.
Hartung urged lawmakers to focus on essential regulations rather than attempting to control every aspect of technological progress. He warned that over-regulation could hinder Europe’s global competitiveness, particularly as the US and the EU ramp up AI investments.
The warning follows significant funding announcements, with the US committing up to 500 billion dollars and the EU planning to mobilise 200 billion euros for AI infrastructure.
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