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Microsoft Corp. is moving more artificial intelligence work inside its own systems, replacing some OpenAI and Anthropic models in products such as Excel and Outlook as pressure grows to reduce the cost of running generative AI at scale. The shift marks a notable change for one of the technology industry’s biggest AI spenders. Microsoft has relied heavily on OpenAI’s models to power Copilot features across its software […]

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G42 and Microsoft have deepened their artificial intelligence alliance through a new collaboration linking Inception42’s Catalyst agentic AI platform with Microsoft Copilot, a move designed to shift AI agents from limited trials into day-to-day government and enterprise operations. The agreement, announced on Monday, allows organisations to build, govern and monitor AI agents on Catalyst while making them available through Microsoft 365 applications including Teams, Outlook and Word. […]

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A fileless malware framework is abusing Google’s Blogspot platform to deliver PureLog Stealer directly into computer memory, sharpening concerns that trusted web services are being turned into staging grounds for credential theft. The campaign, tracked as Veil#Drop, begins with a JavaScript file disguised as a document, such as “transcript. pdf. js”. Once opened on a Windows system, the file runs through Windows Script Host and launches PowerShell […]

SINGAPORE – Media OutReach Newswire – 1 July 2026 – Global beauty brand LUX, in collaboration with VML Singapore, has launched #LUXMyWill — an initiative that transforms one of social media’s most talked-about beauty trends into a formal, lasting declaration of personal style.

#LUXMyWill: Beauty Brand LUX Turns "#BuryMeInThis" From Social Media Trend Into Legal Declaration

Over the past year, women across TikTok and Instagram have embraced hashtags such as #BuryMeInThis – a viral expression of ultimate obsession, where users name the look they would want to be remembered in. What began as playful, dramatic content quickly evolved into a cultural signal: a new generation of women declaring that they are not dressing for occasions – they are the occasion.

LUX recognised the deeper meaning behind the trend and partnered with legal experts to give it permanence. #LUXMyWill enables women to turn a fleeting social post into a formally recognised personal style wish – one that can be witnessed, documented and preserved.

The initiative invites women to declare their chosen look on camera and tag someone they trust to honour it. Legal specialists worked alongside the brand to define what gives such a declaration standing, and to create simple, accessible content explaining the process. Selected participants also received a LUX My Will box, designed to preserve their chosen outfit alongside their recorded declaration.

“Beauty has always been a powerful form of self-expression. Today, women are taking that further – not waiting for occasions, but becoming them,” said Judy Zu, Global Brand Director, LUX. “This trend showed us that when a woman chooses how she wants to be remembered, it’s not frivolous – it’s a statement of identity. We wanted to give that statement the recognition it deserves.”

The movement built organically. Creators who had previously posted under #BuryMeInThis revisited their content to make it official, tagging friends who, in turn, created declarations of their own. Each tag became a new participant. Each declaration, a witnessed moment. Each video, a permanent expression of personal style.

Through this chain of participation, #LUXMyWill expanded rapidly – creator by creator, tag by tag – turning individual expressions of glamour into a collective cultural movement.

At its core, #LUXMyWill reinforces LUX’s enduring belief: beauty is not just something you wear for a moment. It is something you embody, define, and leave behind – because you are the occasion.

Hashtag: #LUXMyWill ##BuryMeInThis

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

About LUX

LUX has been celebrating beauty and femininity since 1925. We stand for beauty that does not blend in: bold, sassy and maximalist. We will continue to support efforts that help women express their Main Character Beauty.

About VML

VML is a leading creative company that combines brand experience, customer experience, and commerce, to create connected brands that drive growth. The agency is a leading global marketing and systems integration partner, specializing in creating innovative solutions for business transformation. VML is celebrated for its award-winning work with blue chip client partners including AstraZeneca, Colgate-Palmolive, Dell, Ford, Intel, Microsoft, Nestlé, The Coca-Cola Company, and Wendy’s. The agency is recognized by the Forrester Wave™ Reports, which name WPP a “Leader” in Commerce Services, Global Digital Experience Services, Global Marketing Services and, most recently, Marketing Measurement & Optimization. VML’s global network is powered by 28,000 talented people across 60-plus markets, with principal offices in Kansas City, New York, Detroit, London, São Paulo, Shanghai, Singapore, and Sydney.

by Alexandra Govorukha Between 70% and 95% of digital transformation efforts fail. That’s not a technology problem. Boston Consulting Group research reveals roughly 70% of challenges in AI projects stem from people and process issues, not technical ones. Yet most organisations continue to treat transformation as a deployment challenge, not a communications one. My Executive Master’s in Digital Transformation and Innovation Leadership from IE Business School gave me […]

Alibaba Cloud has been named a Leader in Omdia’s Market Radar for Agentic AI Cloud Titans in Asia & Oceania, 2026, strengthening its position in a fast-expanding field where cloud providers are racing to turn generative AI into autonomous enterprise systems.

The ranking places Alibaba Cloud among the region’s most advanced providers of agentic AI infrastructure and development platforms. The company achieved the highest scores across six of nine evaluation dimensions, with its full-stack agentic AI approach highlighted as a key differentiator. That framework spans infrastructure, foundation models, model services, enterprise development tools and deployment systems designed to help companies build AI agents capable of planning, reasoning and executing tasks across business workflows.

The recognition comes as agentic AI shifts from experimental pilots to enterprise adoption. The Asia and Oceania market for agentic AI software is projected to grow from $782 million in 2025 to $11.2 billion by 2030, implying a compound annual growth rate of about 94 per cent. The surge reflects demand from banks, retailers, logistics companies, manufacturers and public-sector organisations seeking systems that can automate multi-step work rather than merely generate text, code or images.

Alibaba Cloud’s pitch rests on a vertically integrated stack. Its Qwen foundation models underpin a growing range of cloud services, while Model Studio gives developers access to Qwen-Max, Qwen-Plus, Qwen-Turbo, Qwen-VL, Wan and other model families. The company has also been expanding Platform for AI, Lingjun infrastructure and agent-building toolkits intended to make AI deployment easier for enterprises that lack large in-house research teams.

The company’s Singapore push has become central to its international AI strategy. At its first international Qwen Conference in Singapore in May, Alibaba Cloud introduced Qwen3.7-Max through Model Studio in the Singapore region, unveiled Qwen Cloud as an AI-native platform, and launched agent products aimed at helping companies build and manage autonomous systems. The Skills portal converts capabilities across more than 60 cloud products into agent-callable functions, allowing AI agents to interact with databases, security tools, big-data services and operations systems.

Alibaba Cloud’s commercial momentum has also improved. Cloud Intelligence Group revenue rose 38 per cent year on year to RMB41.63 billion in the January-March quarter, while external cloud revenue grew 40 per cent. AI-related products accounted for about 30 per cent of external cloud revenue and delivered triple-digit growth for the eleventh consecutive quarter. Annualised AI-related product revenue surpassed RMB35.8 billion, indicating that enterprise demand has moved beyond proof-of-concept budgets.

The company is investing heavily to defend that position. Alibaba has indicated that spending on AI and cloud infrastructure will exceed its earlier three-year plan of up to RMB380 billion, as executives prioritise market share and capacity expansion over near-term margins. That strategy carries risks. The group’s earnings have been pressured by high capital expenditure, competition in commerce and infrastructure costs linked to advanced computing demand.

The broader market remains intensely contested. Regional and global cloud providers are building agentic AI platforms that combine foundation models, orchestration layers, retrieval systems, governance tools and specialised compute. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Huawei Cloud, Tencent Cloud and Baidu AI Cloud are all competing for enterprise workloads tied to automation, coding agents, customer-service agents and industry-specific decision systems.

Alibaba Cloud’s advantage in Asia rests partly on its ability to link AI models with commerce, logistics, finance, cloud and developer ecosystems. Its Qwen family has gained traction among developers because of open-source releases and multilingual capabilities, while its enterprise services are being positioned for customers that need lower latency, data-residency options and region-specific compliance controls. The company also benefits from its leadership in Asia-Pacific infrastructure-as-a-service revenue, where it held a 22.5 per cent regional share in 2025.

The agentic AI market, however, faces unresolved issues around reliability, accountability and security. Autonomous agents can call tools, access corporate data and act across software systems, raising concerns over permission controls, audit trails, hallucinated actions and exposure of sensitive information. Enterprise buyers are increasingly looking for guardrails, monitoring, role-based access and human approval mechanisms before allowing agents to handle financial, legal or operational decisions.

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  • 18% of Hong Kong workers using AI are the most advanced group known as Frontier Professionals, higher than the global average at 16%
  • Just 19% Hong Kong AI users say leadership is clearly and consistently aligned on AI, and only 10% say they’re rewarded for reinvention even when results aren’t immediate
  • Organizational factors such as culture, manager support, and talent practices drive 2x more AI impact than individual factors alone
  • Microsoft is also announcing the launch of Copilot Cowork, bringing multi-model capabilities to help organizations close the gap between AI adoption and how work is designed by enabling end-to-end, multi-step workflows

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach Newswire – 22 June 2026 – Hong Kong employees are moving faster than their organizations when it comes to using AI, creating a growing gap between AI adoption and how work is actually designed, according to Microsoft’s 2026 Work Trend Index. The research warns of a “Transformation Paradox”: while AI use is accelerating across the workforce—with more Frontier Professionals using agents for multi-step workflows and building multi-agent systems, leadership alignment, culture, and operating models are not evolving at the same pace, limiting impact and increasing pressure on employees.

The 2026 Work Trend Index draws on analysis of trillions of anonymized Microsoft 365 productivity signals, combined with survey insights from AI users and perspectives from experts in AI, work, and organizational psychology. The conclusion is consistent: the constraint is no longer what people can do, but how work is structured around them.

  • AI is lifting output but not yet transforming organizations. The data shows that AI is already raising the ceiling on individual performance in Hong Kong. A privacy-preserving analysis of more than 100,000 chats in Microsoft 365 Copilot shows that 49% of all conversations support cognitive work—helping workers analyze information, solve problems, evaluate and think creatively. This shift is visible in outcomes: 57% of AI users in Hong Kong say they are producing work they could not have a year ago, rising to 73% among Frontier Professionals, the most advanced AI users in the research.
  • The Transformation Paradox reflects the need for systemic change, with the gap more pronounced in Hong Kong than globally. 75% of Hong Kong AI users fear falling behind if they do not adapt quickly, yet 57% say it feels safer to focus on current goals than to redesign work with AI. [i] At the same time, only 19% say their leadership is clearly and consistently aligned on AI, and just 10% say they are rewarded for reinventing work with AI even when results are not immediate, revealing a widening gap between individual adoption and organizational change. [ii]
  • As AI and agents take on more execution, human value is shifting rather than diminishing. When asked which skills matter most as AI becomes more embedded in work, Hong Kong AI users ranked quality control of AI output (48%) and critical thinking (42%) at the top, underscoring that AI is redesigning work, not replacing people.

From Using AI to Being Frontier Professionals Who Refuse to Outsource Thinking
The Work Trend Index identifies the rise of Frontier Firms—organizations that deliberately rebuild their operating models around human‑agent collaboration, rather than layering AI onto existing ways of working.

Realizing this shift requires transformation at both the individual and organizational level. The research outlines four modes of human-AI collaboration to help employees take the first step toward becoming Frontier Professionals, before progressing to designing agentic workflows:

  • Delegate execution—Employees hand off routine or repeatable tasks to AI to gain speed and scale, while retaining responsibility for the outcome.
  • Ask for information—Employees turn to AI for context, clarification, or insight when they need to quickly get up to speed.
  • Collaborate on reasoning—People work alongside AI to analyze information, test ideas, and solve problems, using AI as a thought partner rather than a shortcut.
  • Explore new possibilities—AI is used to explore open‑ended questions, reframe problems, and surface options when the path forward is not yet clear.

These patterns matter because Frontier Firms do not aim to maximize AI use everywhere. Instead, they intentionally match the right level of human involvement to the outcome, enabling speed without sacrificing quality or accountability.

Leadership and Culture Are the Real Multipliers
The research makes clear that technology alone is not the differentiator, but by how organizations lead, operate, and evolve. Organizational factors, including culture, manager support, and talent practices, account for more than twice the AI impact of individual mindset and behavior. In Hong Kong, Frontier Professionals are significantly more likely to say their managers set clear quality standards for AI work[iii], create space for experimentation[iv], and encourage more ambitious redesign of work[v].

“This is the Transformation Paradox facing Hong Kong today,” said Leo Liu, General Manager of Microsoft Hong Kong and Macau. “AI adoption is moving fast on the ground, but many organizations are still trying to fit it into old operating models. To unlock real value, leaders must move beyond pilots and productivity gains, and intentionally redesign how work gets done—how teams collaborate, how managers lead, and how success is measured.”

Microsoft is also announcing the launch of Copilot Cowork, designed to support this shift toward workflow redesign. Built on Microsoft’s multi-model approach, this agentic system enables long-running tasks across multiple tools, with usage-based pricing, cost management, and governance capabilities to balance quality, performance, and cost, and helps organizations run complex workflows more efficiently at scale.

Microsoft brings this perspective as Customer Zero, applying the same principles internally to redesign workflows, build human‑agent teams, and embed continuous learning into everyday work. Using Copilot Studio and Microsoft Foundry, Microsoft transformed its “Ask Microsoft” web agent from a standalone chatbot into a multi‑agent system that routes conversations more effectively and supports more dynamic, context‑aware interactions. This shift improves how customer intent is understood and addressed, while steering queries to the right resources or teams and allowing sales to focus on higher‑value, high‑intent engagement.

The solution delivered measurable business impact across customer engagement and operational efficiency, achieving up to 61% lower response latency and 70% fewer human escalations. Users who engaged with the agent were 10 times more likely to sign up for services and drove a 16% increase in product trial initiations.

“Inside Microsoft, we’ve learned that AI transformation is not a tooling exercise. It’s an operating model shift,” said Lorraine Bardeen, Corporate Vice President, MCAPS AI Transformation, Microsoft. “When leaders clarify how humans and agents work together, set standards for quality and judgment, and create room to experiment, organizations move faster and learn faster. That’s what separates Frontier Firms from everyone else.”

“We are entering a new era of work, where the traditional value formula is being rewritten,” said Nancy Wang, Head of LinkedIn Greater China. “We call it the ‘new math of work’—a concept introduced in LinkedIn’s new book, Open to Work. The people and organizations that emerge strongest will be those who use the time freed up by AI to build work around what’s actually harder to automate—the specific, contextual, human judgment that no tool can fully replicate, because no tool has lived what you’ve lived or knows what you know.”

The message of the 2026 Work Trend Index is clear: access to AI will soon be table stakes. How work is designed around it will define the next generation of competitive advantage for Hong Kong organizations. For more insights, read the 2026 Work Trend Index Report.


[i] A higher share of AI users in Hong Kong are Frontier Professionals (18% vs. 16% globally), reflecting talent readiness. However, despite greater pressure to adapt to AI (75% vs. 65% globally), day-to-day demands often take precedence, with more in Hong Kong choosing to prioritize current goals over redesigning work with AI (57% vs. 45% globally).

[ii] This pattern is closely linked to limited organizational support. Only 19% of Hong Kong AI users say their leadership is clearly and consistently aligned on AI (vs. 26% globally), and just 10% say they are rewarded for reinventing work with AI even without immediate results (vs. 13% globally). Without stronger top-down direction, support, and recognition, employees naturally default to the safer path.

[iii] 79% Frontier Professionals say their manager sets quality standards for AI work, compared with 59% of Non-Frontier Professionals.

[iv] 80% Frontier Professionals say their manager creates space for experimentation, compared with 61% of Non-Frontier Professionals.

[v] 81% Frontier Professionals say their manager encourages more ambitious work redesign, compared with 63% of Non-Frontier Professionals.

Hashtag: #Microsoft

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) creates platforms and tools powered by AI to deliver innovative solutions that meet the evolving needs of our customers. The technology company is committed to making AI available broadly and doing so responsibly, with a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

Amazon Web Services has unveiled AWS Continuum, an AI-powered vulnerability management platform designed to discover, prioritise, validate and remediate code security flaws as enterprises struggle with rising software risk and expanding backlogs. The platform, announced on June 17, 2026, is available in gated preview and begins with code vulnerabilities, covering first-party and third-party code before AWS expands it to other areas of security. It uses multiple frontier […]

NEW YORK, US – Media OutReach Newswire – 17 June 2026 – GLM, a fashion and tech accessories brand, today announced the launch of the Essential Clutch – Limited Edition, a slim laptop clutch designed to complement the Microsoft Surface Laptop, 13.8-inch. Available in limited quantities, the piece is equally suited to slim laptops from all manufacturers and continues GLM’s approach of treating tech carry with the same design intent applied to fashion accessories. GLM is a Designed for Microsoft Surface Partner, recognizing products built to meet Microsoft’s standards for fit, protection, and design alongside Surface devices.

Photo Courtesy of GLM
Photo Courtesy of GLM

The Essential Clutch – Limited Edition is made from cactus leather, a plant-based vegan leather, with 100% recycled fabrics used for lining, straps, and protective padding, consistent with the materials across GLM’s collection. The interior lining, an exclusive Art Deco print, was designed to align with the Microsoft Surface Laptop, 13.8-inch, offering device owners a complementary piece that stands on its own as a considered accessory. As a limited-edition release, the restricted quantities reflect both the seasonal nature of the colorway and the brand’s broader commitment to low-waste production. The clutch is designed to carry necessary technology without bulk, supporting commutes, office environments, evening engagements, and travel days that require consolidation. It can be worn on its own or nested inside a larger tote to distribute weight across bags.

The Essential Clutch joins GLM’s existing range of slim laptop bags, which launched in the U.S. earlier this year. GLM was founded by Candina Weston, who brings more than 25 years of experience across technology, the PC industry, retail, marketing, and operations, including senior leadership roles in structured technology environments and brand-led businesses. This background informs the brand’s focus on real-world professional carry needs: device protection, a slim and structured silhouette, and a design philosophy that treats laptop carry as a daily requirement rather than purely functional.

GLM identifies its target audience as professionals across industries who care about style and whose daily routines involve movement.

“The Essential Clutch – Limited Edition is a natural extension of what GLM is built on,” said founder Candina Weston. “We designed it to sit alongside the devices people already carry, while keeping the same focus on slim, considered design that runs through the rest of the collection.” GLM currently serves customers in the United States and Singapore, with plans to expand into additional international markets within the next 12 months.Hashtag: #GLM



The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

About GLM

GLM designs slim laptop bags for professionals who carry technology as part of daily work and travel. Founded by Candina Weston, who brings over 25 years of experience across the PC industry, retail, and operations in the US, Europe, and Asia, the company produces laptop bags in multiple styles using plant-based vegan leather and recycled fabrics, with a focus on integrating laptop carry into fashion-led design. GLM is a Designed for Microsoft Surface Partner.

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