[AI WEEKLY NEWS RUNDOWN] Pentagon’s AI Deals, $725B Tech Capex, and Apple’s “RAMageddon” (Apr 27 – May 03 2026)

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Summary: In this weekly briefing, we analyze the intersection of AI, national security, and massive capital expenditure. We deconstruct the Pentagon’s decision to integrate AI from 7 major tech firms into classified networks, and the resulting employee mutiny at Google. We explore the staggering $725 billion Capex guidance from Big Tech and Tim Cook’s warning of a “RAMageddon” memory chip shortage. We also dive into the dramatic courtroom testimony between Elon Musk and OpenAI, the pivot toward physical AI robotics (SoftBank’s Roze, 1X Humanoids, Meta acquisitions), and OpenAI’s strategic shift to Amazon AWS and smartphone hardware.

Important Topics:

• Pentagon AI Integration & Protests: The DoD strikes classified network deals with OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and others, sparking a 600-employee protest at Google over military AI use.

• $725B Big Tech Capex: Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta forecast a 77% YoY jump in infrastructure spending, hitting $725 billion for 2026.

• Apple’s “RAMageddon”: Apple posts a record $111.2B quarter, but CEO Tim Cook warns that AI industry demand has quadrupled memory chip prices.

• Musk vs. OpenAI Trial: In federal court, Elon Musk accuses OpenAI of “stealing a charity,” while admitting xAI used distillation techniques on OpenAI models to train Grok.

• The Robotics Pivot: SoftBank prepares a $100B IPO for data-center robotics firm “Roze,” 1X opens a US humanoid factory targeting 100,000 robots, and Meta acquires Assured Robot Intelligence.

• Geopolitical Roadblocks: China blocks Meta’s $2B acquisition of Manus AI, and the EU orders Google to open the Android ecosystem to AI rivals.

  

• OpenAI Hardware & Cloud Pivot: OpenAI ends its Microsoft cloud exclusivity to launch on Amazon Bedrock, while supply chain leaks reveal plans for an OpenAI smartphone by 2028.

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Pentagon signs AI deals with 7 companies

• The Pentagon has struck deals with seven AI companies — SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, NVIDIA, Reflection, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services — to bring their tools onto the Defense Department’s classified networks at Impact Levels 6 and 7.

• The Pentagon said the agreements will speed up its push to become an “AI-first fighting force,” helping with data synthesis, situational understanding, and warfighter decision-making across complex operational environments and all domains of warfare.

• Anthropic is notably absent after a dispute with the Pentagon over guardrails on military use of its AI tools, which led the department last month to label the company a supply-chain risk, barring it from Pentagon contractors.

Meta acquires robotics AI startup

• Meta has bought Assured Robot Intelligence, a startup founded by ex-Fauna Robotics co-founder Lerrel Pinto and former Nvidia researcher Xiaolong Wang, folding its whole-body robot control models and tactile sensor technology into Meta Superintelligence Labs.

• The deal gives Meta e-Flesh, a tactile sensor that reads deformations in 3D-printable microstructures through magnets and magnetometers, plus Wang’s activation-aware weight quantisation work that shrinks AI models to run on a robot’s limited onboard compute.

• Meta wants to be the Android of humanoids, supplying the intelligence layer while others build the machines, a strategy that competes with Google DeepMind’s Gemini Robotics and its Apptronik partnership but sidesteps vertically integrated makers like Tesla and 1X.

Apple raises Mac mini price

• Apple has quietly removed the $599 base Mac mini from its U.S. online store, pushing the entry price for its smallest desktop up to $799 as the 256GB configuration disappears from standard, education, and military storefronts.

• On Apple’s April 30, 2026 earnings call, Tim Cook said demand for Mac mini and Mac Studio has outpaced supply and will take months to stabilize, driven partly by interest in running AI workloads locally on compact Macs.

• With the Mac mini no longer offering a $599 starting point into macOS, that role shifts to the MacBook Neo, though refurbished listings still carry lower-priced Mac mini units when limited inventory allows.

xAI launches Grok 4.3 with voice cloning

• xAI has released Grok 4.3, a new base large language model with a 1 million-token context window and always-on reasoning, alongside a Custom Voices suite that clones a person’s voice from a reference clip as short as 120 seconds.

• Grok 4.3 costs $1.25 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens, roughly 40% and 60% cheaper than Grok 4.2, and xAI now charges a $0.05 fee for requests blocked by safety filters.

• The model ranks #1 on Vals AI’s CaseLaw v2 and CorpFin benchmarks, but Andon Labs reported “narcolepsy problems” on Vending-Bench 2, and it scored just 11% on ProofBench for difficult math.

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People are finally using Reddit’s search

• Reddit’s long-criticized search function is finally catching on with users, with CEO Steve Huffman reporting a 30% year-on-year jump in weekly search users after the company poured money into its search engine and added AI features.

• Huffman said search DAUs, WAUs, and queries are all up meaningfully year-over-year, crediting the team for better integrating Reddit Answers into the product and calling search a major driver of user acquisition and retention.

• Reddit ended the quarter with 493 million weekly active unique users and 126 million daily active unique users, and posted $663 million in revenue, beating Wall Street’s expectation of $609.8 million.

Apple hits record sales despite chip shortage

• Apple brought in $57 billion from iPhone sales during its record March quarter, contributing to total revenue of $111.2 billion, with Tim Cook crediting strong demand for the iPhone 17 lineup on Thursday’s earnings call.

• Cook cautioned that memory chip costs will climb significantly starting in June due to “RAMageddon,” the AI industry’s heavy appetite for memory chips, which has already quadrupled RAM prices and may push iPhone prices higher.

• Apple’s March spending on memory chips already rose, though the company offset costs by selling stockpiled inventory, and Cook told Reuters there is “just a little less flexibility in the supply chain at the moment for getting more parts.”

Musk says xAI trained Grok on OpenAI

• Elon Musk admitted on the stand in a California federal court on Thursday that xAI trained Grok using distillation on OpenAI models, saying the practice was common across AI companies when asked directly.

• The admission came during Musk’s trial against OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Greg Brockman, where he alleges they broke the original nonprofit mission by shifting the entity to a for-profit structure.

• Musk also ranked the leading AI providers during testimony, placing Anthropic first, followed by OpenAI, Google, and Chinese open source models, and described xAI as a smaller company with just a few hundred employees.

Tesla starts Semi truck mass production after 9 years

• Tesla has kicked off mass production of its Semi electric truck nearly a decade after the 2017 unveiling, with the first big rig rolling off the high volume line at a dedicated plant near Gigafactory Nevada.

• The Semi comes in a 325-mile Standard Range trim priced around $260,000 and a 500-mile Long Range version near $300,000, both packing a 1,072HP tri-motor system that charges at up to 1.2MW on Megachargers.

• Deliveries start later this year and undercut the Freightliner eCascadia ($400,000, 230 miles) and Volvo VNR Electric ($350,000, 275 miles), though Tesla won’t hit the factory’s 50,000-truck yearly peak output.

  
  
  

Meta fires 1,100 AI trainers over Ray-Ban leaks

• Meta has cut ties with Sama, a Kenya-based contractor that trained its generative AI systems using Ray-Ban smart glasses footage, triggering the layoff of 1,108 workers after some spoke out about the recordings they reviewed.

• Sama employees told Swedish newspapers in February that they labeled footage showing banking information, private conversations, naked people in bathrooms, and intimate encounters, often captured from subjects who seemingly did not know they were being recorded.

• Meta says its terms of service cover these details and the glasses need explicit permission to engage AI mode, but Sama workers reported being forced to sit idle under tighter security as the firm hunts for the whistleblowers.

1X opens US humanoid factory targeting 100,000 NEO robots

• 1X has begun full-scale production of its NEO humanoid robot at a new 58,000-square-foot factory in Hayward, California, with plans to build more than 100,000 units per year by 2027.

• The factory uses a vertically integrated model, with 1X designing and making motors, batteries, sensors, structures, and transmission systems in-house, and its first-year run of over 10,000 units sold out within five days of its October launch.

• Each NEO runs on NVIDIA’s Jetson Thor platform for onboard AI inference and is trained using NVIDIA Isaac simulation tools, with customer shipments starting in 2026 through a $20,000 early access program or a $499 monthly subscription.

Big Tech capex hits $725 billion in 2026

• Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta plan to spend a combined $725 billion on capex in 2026, a 77% jump from last year’s record $410 billion, driven by AI infrastructure demand and climbing memory chip prices.

• Microsoft set 2026 capex at $190 billion, with CFO Amy Hood blaming $25 billion of that on memory chip and component costs, while warning the company will stay capacity-constrained through at least 2026.

• Alphabet matched Microsoft’s $190 billion capex guidance after Google Cloud revenue grew 63% to $20 billion and its contract backlog doubled to $460 billion, pushing shares up 7% toward a $4.3 trillion valuation.

White House blocks Anthropic Mythos expansion

• The White House has pushed back on Anthropic’s plan to widen access to its Mythos AI model to around 70 companies and organizations, according to an administration official who spoke anonymously on Wednesday night.

• US officials worry Anthropic lacks the computing power to serve more Mythos users without hurting the government’s own use of the model, which the company says is strong enough to enable dangerous cyberattacks.

• Mythos, unveiled in early April, can reportedly detect and exploit vulnerabilities in critical software, and a small group of unauthorized users on a private online forum gained access the same day Anthropic announced its limited release plan.

Apple reportedly abandons Vision Pro

• Apple has reportedly stopped work on the Vision Pro after weak sales of the M5 chip model released in October, which kept the $3,499 price tag and added a more comfortable head strap, according to MacRumors.

• The product engineering team is being moved to other projects across the company, with a near-term focus on AR glasses to compete with Meta and longer-term work on a cheaper Pro-style successor.

• Apple is also shifting engineering resources toward Siri and Apple Intelligence ahead of WWDC in June, as recent delays to its AI work have hurt the company’s reputation with users and developers.

SoftBank is creating a robotics company that builds data centers

• SoftBank is planning to launch and list a standalone AI and robotics company in the U.S. called “Roze,” which will build data centers and use robotics to make AI infrastructure construction more efficient, the Financial Times reported Thursday.

• Masayoshi Son is leading the push, with executives targeting a roughly $100 billion valuation and an IPO as soon as this year, though the timeline could shift partly due to uncertainties from the conflict in the Middle East.

• Roze could bundle existing energy, land and infrastructure assets from SoftBank’s portfolio along with ABB Robotics, which SoftBank agreed to buy last year, and the listing may help offset its $30 billion-plus commitment to OpenAI.

Uber enters the hotel booking business

• Uber has launched hotel bookings inside its app for US customers, giving access to over 700,000 hotels worldwide through a partnership with Expedia Group, with Vrbo vacation rentals set to join later this year.

• Uber One subscribers will get 20% off a rolling list of 10,000 hotels booked through the app, plus 10% back in Uber Credits on all bookings, as the company pitches the subscription harder.

• CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga said agentic AI tools like Cursor cut the hotel booking feature’s build time in half, alongside other launches including travel mode, a room service hub in Uber Eats, and Eats for the Way.

Spotify introduces verified artist badges to help distinguish humans from AI

• Spotify is rolling out a new “Verified by Spotify” badge that marks human artists in good standing, shutting out AI-generated or AI-persona profiles as streaming sites deal with a flood of machine-made tracks clogging their platforms.

• To qualify for the light green checkmark, artists must show consistent listener engagement, follow platform policies, and display “signals of a real artist,” with over 99 percent of actively sought-out artists verified at launch.

• Spotify is also testing a new context section on artist profiles, described as “nutrition facts,” showing career milestones, release activity, and touring activity in the About section on mobile over the coming weeks.

Elon Musk says OpenAI betrayed its mission

• Elon Musk told jurors in an Oakland federal court that OpenAI abandoned its founding mission when it shifted from a charity to a for-profit company, arguing the pivot amounts to “stealing a charity” and sets a dangerous precedent.

• OpenAI’s lawyer William Savitt countered that Musk himself pushed to restructure OpenAI as a for-profit in 2017 and wanted majority control, saying the lawsuit is really an attempt to hobble a rival to Musk’s own AI company, xAI.

• The three-week trial could reshape OpenAI as it approaches a trillion-dollar valuation and a planned public offering, with Musk seeking a court order to unwind the October for-profit conversion that gave Microsoft a 27% stake and the nonprofit 26%.

OpenAI launches models on AWS

• OpenAI’s models and its Codex coding agent are coming to Amazon Web Services through Amazon Bedrock, the two companies said Tuesday, with general availability expected in the next few weeks for AWS customers to try.

• A new service called Amazon Bedrock Managed Agents powered by OpenAI will let developers build customized agents that remember previous interactions, going beyond the open-weight OpenAI models that came to AWS back in August.

• The news follows Monday’s reworked Microsoft deal letting OpenAI serve customers on any cloud, and builds on a $38 billion AWS commitment from November plus a $50 billion Amazon investment tied to two gigawatts of Trainium chips.

EU says Meta fails underage user checks

• The European Commission has preliminarily ruled that Instagram and Facebook breach the Digital Services Act by failing to diligently identify and block children under 13 from using the platforms, despite Meta’s own age restrictions.

• Regulators said minors can enter false birth dates with no effective checks, Meta’s tools for reporting underage users are hard to use, and the company does not follow up on reports, letting children keep their accounts.

• If confirmed, the findings could lead to a fine of up to 6pc of Meta’s worldwide annual turnover, and the Commission wants Meta to overhaul its risk assessment and bring in age-assurance technologies that are accurate and non-intrusive.

Anthropic unveils Claude for Creative Work

• Anthropic has rolled out Claude for Creative Work, a set of integrations that plug its AI directly into creative software from Adobe, Autodesk, Ableton, Blender, and Splice rather than asking users to adopt a separate tool.

• Each connector targets a specific task: conversational 3D modelling in Autodesk Fusion, natural-language scripting in Blender, real-time visual control in Resolume, prompt-to-3D concepts in SketchUp, and in-app royalty-free sample search through Splice.

• Anthropic has also joined the Blender Development Fund as a patron and is partnering with the Rhode Island School of Design, Ringling College of Art and Design, and Goldsmiths to give students and faculty access to Claude.

China halts new self-driving permits after Baidu outage

• China has stopped issuing new licenses for autonomous vehicles after more than 100 Baidu Apollo Go robotaxis suddenly stalled on the streets of Wuhan on March 31, stranding passengers and snarling city traffic.

• Three agencies including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology met with officials from robotaxi pilot cities, calling for a full self-review and better safety monitoring, with no clear end date for the suspension.

• The freeze blocks companies from adding robotaxis, starting test projects, or expanding to new cities, and it covers level four vehicles, sending Baidu, Pony AI, and WeRide shares lower in Wednesday trading.

OpenAI missed its own revenue and user growth targets

• OpenAI fell short of its internal goals for ChatGPT users and revenue last year, never reaching its target of one billion weekly active users, while CFO Sarah Friar warned that rising compute costs could outrun incoming revenue.

• The company has committed roughly $600 billion to future data-center spending under Altman’s bet on compute scarcity, and board directors are now questioning why he keeps chasing more computing capacity despite the slowdown.

• Rival Anthropic has quietly passed OpenAI on Forge Global, trading at about $1 trillion versus OpenAI’s $880 billion, and Myriad users give Anthropic a 64% chance of carrying out its IPO first.

Google employees urge Pichai to reject Pentagon AI deal

• Roughly 600 Google workers have signed an open letter asking CEO Sundar Pichai to walk away from talks with the Pentagon that would let the Department of Defense use the company’s Gemini AI models in classified settings.

• The signatories argue that contract wording is not enough protection, pointing to how Anthropic was labeled a “supply chain risk” after refusing “all lawful purposes” language, while OpenAI revised its Pentagon deal to block mass surveillance of U.S. persons.

• The letter follows Google’s recent rewrite of its AI Principles, which in 2018 promised staff the company would not design or deploy AI for weapons or surveillance, language that employees say has since shifted.

Google is testing AI chatbot search for YouTube

• Google is trying out an AI Mode-style conversational search for YouTube, and the experiment is open now to YouTube Premium subscribers in the US who are 18 or older, with plans to expand it to other users.

• An “Ask YouTube” button in the search bar brings up a page that mixes summary text, bulleted milestones, timestamped longform videos, Shorts galleries, and suggested follow-up prompts related to what you searched for.

• In a test about Valve’s new Steam Controller, Ask YouTube got the basics right but incorrectly said the old Steam Controller had no joysticks, a reminder that these AI-built result pages can include factual errors.

Apple plans iPhone Ultra and MacBook Ultra

• Apple is preparing to expand its Ultra branding into new product tiers, with plans for a foldable iPhone Ultra and a touchscreen OLED MacBook Ultra that will sit above the existing Pro lineup through 2027.

• According to a Macworld report citing a source familiar with Apple’s plans, the Ultra name gives the company a place for new form factors without disrupting the Pro lineup, which has covered iPhone, iPad, and Mac for years.

• The Ultra tier lets Apple ship foldable displays and OLED touchscreen Macs in limited quantities at higher prices, fitting its shift toward raising revenue per user as global smartphone growth slows.

EU orders Google to open Android to AI rivals

• The European Commission has told Google it must open up Android so rival AI services can match what Gemini does on the phones, a decision that came out of a specification proceeding started in January.

• Gemini currently gets special treatment at the system level on any Google-powered Android phone, and the commission says too many Android experiences only work with Google’s AI, which must change.

• The order comes from the Digital Markets Act, which labels seven dominant firms as “gatekeepers,” and the commission may force Google to make the Android AI changes this summer despite Google calling it “unwarranted intervention.”

China blocks Meta’s $2B Manus acquisition

• China has blocked Meta’s $2 billion purchase of AI start-up Manus, with the National Development and Reform Commission telling both parties to withdraw from the deal, citing Chinese laws on foreign investment in the company.

• Manus is based in Singapore but owned by Chinese parent Butterfly Effect Technology, and Meta had already absorbed its staff and paid out investors including Tencent Holdings, ZhenFund and Hongshan before the ruling came down.

• A source told the Financial Times the NDRC’s move was “harsh” and meant as a warning against similar follow-on deals, serving as leverage ahead of next month’s planned meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.

OpenAI plans an AI smartphone to rival iPhone

• OpenAI is building a smartphone to take on the iPhone, according to supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who says MediaTek and Qualcomm will supply the chips and Luxshare will handle manufacturing, with mass production set for 2028.

• Kuo argues the phone is the only device that captures a user’s full real-time state, including location, activity, and communication, and that controlling both the operating system and hardware is needed to deliver AI agent services.

• The phone marks a reversal from OpenAI’s previously reported hardware plans with Jony Ive, which focus on a smart speaker, smart glasses, a smart lamp, and earbuds, with the first announcement expected in late 2026.

Musk is about to launch his ‘everything app’

• Elon Musk is about to roll out X Money, a banking and payments platform that turns X into the “everything app” he promised when he renamed Twitter in 2023, according to Bloomberg.

• The finance feature will reportedly offer a savings account with 6 per cent interest and 3 per cent cashback on some transactions, building on a Visa partnership announced last year for a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payments.

• The launch will be limited because X still lacks licences in key states like Massachusetts and New York, and Senator Elizabeth Warren has written to Musk raising concerns about scams, fraud, and data privacy on the platform.

John Ternus to launch 10 new Apple products

• Incoming Apple CEO John Ternus is set to roll out ten new products during his tenure, starting with the iPhone 18 Pro, 18 Pro Max, and the company’s first foldable iPhone at the September hardware event.

• Beyond the iPhone Fold, Mark Gurman reports that Apple’s pipeline includes a Smart Home Hub, a Tabletop Robot with a 9-inch screen on a robotic arm, a Home Security System, smart glasses, and AirPods with cameras.

• Also on the list are an AI Pendant worn as a necklace, a touchscreen MacBook with an OLED display due in late 2026 or early 2027, lightweight AR glasses, and a foldable iPad with a 20-inch screen that may be scrapped.

Microsoft ends exclusive OpenAI cloud deal

• Microsoft and OpenAI have signed a new deal that removes Microsoft’s right of first refusal to serve as OpenAI’s compute provider, ending a key piece of exclusivity between the two companies after years of a tight partnership.

• Microsoft now owns roughly 27 percent of OpenAI’s new public benefit corporation, worth about $135 billion today, and its IP rights to OpenAI models and products stretch to 2032 and now cover post-AGI models.

• OpenAI has agreed to spend another $250 billion on Azure services, can jointly develop some products with third parties, and can sell API access to US government national security customers through any cloud provider.

Meta signs space solar power deal

• Meta has struck a deal with startup Overview Energy for up to 1 gigawatt of solar energy collected in space, aiming to power its artificial intelligence data centers through satellites that orbit Earth and beam electricity back.

• Overview Energy plans to gather sunlight using satellites orbiting Earth and convert it into electricity that can support the grid, offering Meta a new source to meet its growing demand for power.

• The 1 gigawatt volume from the agreement is roughly equal to the output of a single nuclear reactor, showing the scale Meta is chasing as it hunts for ways to feed its data centers.

What Else Happened in AI and Tech from April 27th to May 03rd 2026?

Meta opened its ads platform to third-party AI tools via a new MCP server, allowing advertisers to manage campaigns through Claude, Cursor, or any connected agent.

OpenAI announced that it has already surpassed its 2029 Stargate goal of securing 10 GW of compute, with 3 GW added in the last 3 months.

Elon Musk revealed during questioning in his trial vs. OpenAI that xAI has used distillation techniques to train on OpenAI models.

Anthropic launched the public beta for Claude Security, a system that leverages Opus 4.7 to scan codebases for vulnerabilities and help enterprises generate patches.

Cursor released Security Review, which also deploys autonomous agents to check for vulnerabilities and run scheduled codebase scans with results posted to Slack.

ElevenLabs launched ElevenMusic, a streaming platform with built-in AI remixing and AI-assisted track creation, already hosting 4k+ artists and offering creator payouts.

Two U.S. House committees opened probes into Cursor-maker Anysphere and Airbnb over Chinese AI use, with Composer 2 built on Kimi and Airbnb’s agent on Qwen.

Mistral AI launched Vibe remote agents, cloud sessions that run coding tasks in parallel, powered by the company’s new open-weights Medium 3.5 model.

Google added file creation into Gemini, allowing the model to output formats like Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, Microsoft Word and Excel files, Markdown, and more.

OpenAI released a Cybersecurity Action Plan to “democratize” AI cyber defense and work with the U.S. government and industry on threat coordination and defender tools.

OpenAI announced that GPT-5.5, Codex, and Managed Agents are now available via Amazon Bedrock, coming a day after its new contract restructure with Microsoft.

NVIDIA released Nemotron 3 Nano Omni, a new open model that can handle vision, audio, and text at 9x the speed of rival open multimodal models.

The WSJ reported that OAI fell short of its targets for revenue and user growth, with CFO Sarah Friar questioning its massive spending — with OAI calling it “ludicrous.”

Anthropic added new connectors for a broader range of creative workflows, including apps like Blender, Adobe Creative Cloud, Autodesk Fusion, SketchUp, and more.

Xiaomi open-sourced MiMo-V2.5-Pro, which ties Kimi K2.6 on Artificial Analysis’ leaderboard, featuring a 1M context window and strong efficiency for agentic tasks.

SpAItial launched Echo-2, a new SOTA world model that turns text or photos into explorable 3D worlds, claiming to beat World Labs’ Marble 1.1 across benchmarks.

The trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI kicked off on Monday with the start of jury selection, with the two sides trading barbs on X ahead of opening statements.

Tech analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said OpenAI is working on its own smartphone alongside MediaTek and Qualcomm, with native AI agents and production likely in 2028.

Adobe opened access to its new Firefly AI Assistant in public beta, letting creators prompt multi-app Creative Cloud workflows while keeping outputs editable.

Alibaba’s new Happy Horse video model rolled out across video platforms, with the release taking the top spot on Artificial Analysis’s video leaderboard.

Taylor Swift filed three federal trademarks for her likeness and voice, joining actor Matthew McConaughey in taking legal action to fight and prevent AI deepfakes.

xAI launched Grok Voice Think Fast 1.0, a new SOTA voice agent that tops speech benchmarks across the board, and is already running Starlink’s phone support line.

Google is investing up to $40B in Anthropic, including $10B now at a $350B valuation, and $30B more if Anthropic hits performance targets, plus 5GW of Cloud compute.

Meta signed a deal with AWS to add millions of its Graviton5 core chips to power agentic AI workloads, making it one of AWS’s top buyers.

The United Arab Emirates announced a two-year plan to deploy agentic AI across 50% of government services, with mandatory AI training for every federal employee.

Cohere agreed to acquire Germany’s Aleph Alpha, with the $20B merger targeting governments and companies wary of relying on U.S. AI giants for critical tools.