Category: Biz Tech

Abu Dhabi — The Strategic Directions Committee of the UAE Research Programme for Rain Enhancement Science has completed a midterm site visit to Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, assessing progress on its Cycle 5 project “Identification of Clouds’ Microphysical Seedability in an Actionable Manner.” Led by Prof. Daniel Rosenfeld of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the initiative is executed in partnership with the National Centre of Meteorology, MBZUAI, Wuhan University in China and the University of California, San

The European Commission plans to issue a formal charge sheet to Meta Platforms, accusing the company of failing to adequately police illegal content on Facebook and Instagram, a move that could trigger fines of up to 6 per cent of Meta’s global annual turnover. The charge stems from findings that Meta lacks an effective “notice-and-action” mechanism allowing users to flag illegal posts, as required under the Digital Services Act. Meta has denied breaching the law, stating it is “in negotiation” with

The decentralized finance space is undergoing a critical transformation in 2025, ushering in what many observers call “DeFi 3.0.” While the earlier waves of DeFi focused on decentralized exchanges and liquidity incentives, the next generation is centered on permissionless lending, composability, capital efficiency, and real-time adaptation. As platforms such as Euler, Morpho and Hyperliquid gain traction, the shifts promise to reshape how capital moves, how risk is priced, and how users access financial services. The term “DeFi 3.0” reflects the

A critical security flaw in NVIDIA’s Merlin Transformers4Rec framework allows threat actors to execute code remotely with root-level access, raising alarm across the AI ecosystem. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-23298, stems from unsafe deserialization in the model checkpoint loading routine. Attackers exploiting this flaw can submit crafted model files that, when deserialized via Python’s built-in mechanisms, trigger arbitrary command execution within the process’s context. Given that AI infrastructure often runs with escalated privileges in production, the outcome may extend far beyond

Meta has partnered with Circus SE, a leading European AI company, to extend its artificial intelligence capabilities to the defence and security sectors. This collaboration signals Meta's growing commitment to leverage AI technologies for a range of applications, including military and security operations, aiming to strengthen both European and global defence strategies. Meta, which has been investing heavily in AI over the past few years, is shifting its focus towards the strategic use of its advanced models in sectors beyond traditional

A newly disclosed vulnerability allows threat actors to surreptitiously install arbitrary extensions on Chromium-based browsers within Windows domain environments, circumventing typical user alerts and security checks. The technique hinges on manipulating how Chrome and its derivatives store extension settings and validations in preference files. Security researchers demonstrated that by editing specific preference files in a user’s profile, an attacker can mark a malicious extension as a “component” extension—a category normally reserved for built-in browser modules and hidden from extension management pages.

Abu Dhabi’s Presight and investment company Shorooq have introduced a $100 million fund called Presight–Shorooq Fund I to back artificial intelligence start-ups worldwide. The fund, which is hosted in the Abu Dhabi Global Market, combines both capital investment and access to infrastructure to help scale promising ventures. The fund targets start-ups at early and growth stages developing in areas such as AI/ML, smart cities, energy, fintech, AR/VR, gaming, Industry 4.0, and deep tech. Beyond funding, the initiative provides portfolio companies with

OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank have unveiled plans for five new artificial intelligence data centres across the United States under their Stargate infrastructure initiative, pushing the programme’s capacity to almost 7 gigawatts and investment to over US$400 billion over the next three years. Three of the new sites will be developed in partnership between OpenAI and Oracle, located in Shackelford County, Texas; Doña Ana County, New Mexico; and an undisclosed Midwest location. The remaining two centres, in Lordstown, Ohio, and Milam County,

As medicine keeps changing, regenerative science is becoming an exciting area for doctors who want to help their patients even more. Imagine being able to fix damaged tissues and organs, heal long-lasting wounds, and treat serious diseases with new and powerful methods. This science could change the way patients are treated and help them feel better faster. Doctors who want to keep up with these new ideas need to understand the basics of regenerative science. This article will explain the important

SpyCloud’s 2025 Identity Exposure Report reveals that 91% of organisations reported suffering an identity-related incident in the last year, nearly double the proportion seen the year before. Data troves comprising stolen credentials, phishing logs, malware infection records and session cookies have expanded dramatically, but many firms remain overconfident in their ability to defend against evolving identity threats. The volume of distinct identity records recaptured by SpyCloud has jumped by 22%, from 43.7 billion to 53.3 billion. Almost 80% of breaches still

Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange has listed the Boreas Solactive Quantum Computing UCITS ETF under the ticker QUANTM, offering investors exposure to 25 companies pioneering quantum computing technologies. This marks the first thematic ETF of its kind on ADX, and joins 16 other ETFs already trading on the platform. The new fund tracks the Solactive Developed Quantum Computing Index, representing firms active in hardware, software & algorithms, and communication & sensing segments of quantum computing. Global tech giants such as Alphabet, Amazon,

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence firm, xAI, has raised $10 billion in its latest financing round, pushing its valuation to $200 billion. The capital includes a split between debt and equity, as Musk’s firm accelerates plans for infrastructure expansion and model development. xAI’s funding round was structured as $5 billion in debt, comprising secured notes and term loans, and another $5 billion via strategic equity investment. The raise, led by Morgan Stanley among others, is aimed at strengthening its data centre capacity

Luxury jewellery house Tiffany & Co. has disclosed that personal data and gift card information belonging to more than 2,500 customers were compromised in a cyber incident originating in May 2025. Legal filings with the Maine Attorney General’s Office describe that names, postal and email addresses, phone numbers, sales data, internal reference numbers, plus gift card numbers and PINs were accessed by an unauthorised party. Tiffany determined on 9 September that an intrusion dated to on or around 12 May had

U. S. regulators have launched legal action against Live Nation Entertainment and its Ticketmaster unit, accusing them of enabling deceptive resale practices that force fans to pay well above face value for live events. The Federal Trade Commission, joined by attorneys general from seven states, filed the lawsuit in California, alleging that Ticketmaster colluded with brokers to violate ticketing limits and mislead consumers about final costs. The complaint states that Ticketmaster allowed brokers to bypass purchase caps imposed by artists by

A federal judge has ordered a high-stakes remedies hearing to begin this week in the case United States v. Google LLC, where Google was found to hold an illegal monopoly in key segments of the digital advertising technology market. The court declared that Google unlawfully monopolised the open-web display publisher ad server and ad exchange markets, tying its publisher ad server to its ad exchange in ways that harm competition. The remedy phase will decide how far Google must

Abu Dhabi and Baku have sealed two Memoranda of Understanding between Presight and Azerbaijan’s government aimed at fuelling the country’s Artificial Intelligence Strategy 2025–2028, with strong emphasis also placed on education. The agreements were formalised with top-level signatories during the state visit of the UAE President to Azerbaijan. Under the deal with the Ministry of Digital Development and Transport, Presight will act as a strategic advisory and implementation partner. It will assist in deploying advanced AI technologies, support government-led digital

Apple is preparing to launch a MacBook Pro with an OLED display that also supports touch input, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Mass production is set to begin in late 2026, with a global release likely slipping into early 2027. The device will use “on-cell” touch technology, integrating touch sensors directly into the top layer of the display rather than adding a separate touch layer. This represents Apple’s first pivot away from its long-standing policy of keeping MacBook screens

OpenAI has announced a suite of new protections that will tailor the ChatGPT experience depending on whether the system estimates a user is under 18, including stricter content filters, parental controls, and new distress-alerts. The company will use an automatic age-prediction model to infer whether someone is a teenager based on usage patterns, with the safer, under-18 mode activated by default if there is any doubt. Users flagged this way will be routed to a version of ChatGPT that blocks graphic

Samsung Electronics has secured the largest exhibit space in its history for CES 2026, relocating its main showcase to the Wynn and Encore Las Vegas. The company’s pavilion will span approximately 4,628 square metres, about 40 per cent larger than its display at CES 2025, making it the biggest individual booth among all exhibitors. Taking place from 6 to 9 January in Las Vegas, CES is drawing growing attention from both industry insiders and consumers given Samsung’s decision to shift away

ManageEngine has rolled out substantial enhancements to its unified security solution, Log360, aimed at reducing the volume of false alarms faced by security operations centre teams. The upgraded detection system introduces over 1,500 prebuilt, cloud-delivered detection rules mapped to MITRE ATT&CK and SIGMA frameworks, along with advanced filtering and prioritisation features. The alert fatigue that has long plagued SOC analysts is being addressed through a reengineered detection architecture that centralises all detection content—rules, correlation logic, user and entity behaviour analytics, and

Security systems observed a sharp increase in API incidents in the first half of 2025, with over 40,000 security events targeting more than 4,000 environments globally. These incidents indicate that APIs — the unseen conduits connecting apps, payments and authentication — are now at the forefront of cybercriminal strategies. Thales’ API Threat Report for H1 2025, built on Imperva telemetry, shows APIs represent about 14 percent of an organisation’s total attack surface but now draw 44 percent of advanced bot traffic.

Saudi Arabia’s AI company Humain is engaged in detailed negotiations with leading private equity and investment firms, including Blackstone Inc. and BlackRock Inc., over a major funding alliance aimed at strengthening its data centre infrastructure and other AI-related operation capacities. Key participants say the deal size could run into the billions of dollars. Humain, which is wholly owned by the Public Investment Fund and chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, began construction of its first two data centres

Abu Dhabi – Inception, the AI division of G42, has made seven of its domain-specific enterprise products available through Microsoft Azure Marketplace, looking to streamline global access to its scalable, enterprise-grade AI tools. The suite includes: ExecEdge, which automates executive meeting workflows and connects with Microsoft 365; Genius for business strategy research and reporting; Alpha to analyse unstructured data for investment decisions; Business Procurement for supplier discovery, contract sourcing and regulatory compliance; Business Process, a no-code platform for designing and deploying

A framework agreement has been reached between the United States and China that will shift control of TikTok to a US‐based ownership, while aiming to protect both national security and the app’s “Chinese characteristics,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said after trade talks in Madrid. The deal, though lacking full disclosure of commercial details, is to be finalised when President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping speak on Friday. The framework responds to a deadline that could force TikTok offline in

Financial institutions across the Middle East are grappling with a sharp increase in fraud driven by synthetic identities and AI-powered deepfakes, placing traditional verification systems under intense strain. Rob Woods, director of fraud and identity at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, says fraudsters are now exploiting a mix of demographic complexity and regulatory fragmentation in the region to bypass security checks. The region’s high number of expatriates and frequent cross-border mobility provide both cover and confusion in identity verification. Deepfake tools—once primitive—are now

OpenAI’s latest working paper, published via the National Bureau of Economic Research, reveals that 52% of ChatGPT users are women, reversing an earlier dominance by men, who made up about 80% of users in the service’s first months. The study, based on 1.5 million messages from about 130,000 consumer users between May 2024 and July 2025, shows that users aged 18-25 generate nearly half of all messages. Work-related use is much lower among that age cohort: just 22.5% of

Malicious actors are exploiting Remote Monitoring and Management tools such as ITarian, PDQ Connect, SimpleHelp, Atera, and ConnectWise ScreenConnect, to embed long-lasting remote access inside compromised systems. These operations make use of highly convincing phishing lures—fake browser-updates, meeting or party invitations, government or tax forms—to trick users into installing legitimate-looking software that gives attackers administrator-level control. Phishing pages often mimic trusted brands or meeting applications like Microsoft Teams and Zoom, with AI-generated content, obfuscated URLs, or hijacked email threads

Bitcoin mining operations are undergoing a transformation as firms leverage their substantial electricity capacity and infrastructure to meet booming demand for artificial intelligence compute. Companies that once focused solely on mining are now converting parts of their facilities into AI data centres, pressing for more stable revenue amid tightening profit margins in crypto. CoreWeave’s $9 billion acquisition of Core Scientific stands out as a major move in this trend, enabling CoreWeave to control more high-performance data centre capacity and eliminate costly

Quadrille Capital has completed a €500 million capital raise aimed at funding technology ventures in Europe and the United States. The firm has allocated €285 million for direct investments, €70 million for its primary fund backing VC and growth funds, and €150 million for a secondary fund focused on later-stage opportunity. The fundraising elevates its assets under management to approximately €1.8 billion. Jérôme Chevalier, CEO, noted that the multi-strategy model positions Quadrille to capture value across software, artificial intelligence, healthcare,

OpenAI will purchase approximately $300 billion worth of cloud computing capacity from Oracle over a five-year period beginning in 2027, according to statements from the companies and industry analysts. The deal is among the largest ever in the cloud infrastructure sector, and is intertwined with OpenAI and Oracle’s joint Stargate initiative. The agreement requires Oracle to supply 4.5 gigawatts of power-capacity for the data centres that will be built as part of the Stargate project, an initiative shared with SoftBank

Security researchers at ESET have identified a new malware strain called HybridPetya that combines traits of Petya and NotPetya ransomware with advanced boot-kit functionality to infect systems protected by UEFI Secure Boot. It exploits the vulnerability CVE-2024-7344 in the Howyar “Reloader” UEFI application to bypass signature checks, allowing unverified code execution. HybridPetya was first spotted when samples uploaded to VirusTotal in February 2025 caught the eye of ESET’s threat analysts. The malware installs a malicious EFI application into the

The role of artificial intelligence in reshaping the global economy has never been more critical. According to the latest projections, AI is poised to add a staggering $15.7 trillion to global GDP by 2030. This growth is expected to revolutionise various sectors and create new economic paradigms as nations and industries race to harness the transformative potential of AI. The growth trajectory of AI is being driven by four interconnected factors: compute, data, models, and talent. As these elements evolve,

The OpenSearch Software Foundation has appointed Bianca Lewis as its new Executive Director, tasking her with guiding the foundation’s strategy, growing its community engagement, and maintaining vendor-neutral development. She takes on the post as the foundation marks its first year under the Linux Foundation banner. Lewis arrives with more than two decades of experience in technology, entrepreneurship, and business strategy, having held leadership roles at firms such as Opster and Logz. io. She serves on the advisory boards of several

Via Transportation raised US$492.9 million through its initial public offering, with the shares priced notably higher than expected. The transit-tech company sold 10.7 million Class A common shares at US$46 apiece, above its marketed range of US$40 to US$44. The valuation implied by this pricing is around US$3.65 billion. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in New York, Via specialises in software and technology solutions that optimise public transit systems across more than 30 countries. Its platform supports local governments, transport