Category: Biz Tech

Spotify has expanded its mobile app with playlist folders, bulk editing, queue management, reshuffle controls and background downloads, marking one of its most practical upgrades for listeners who organise large music, podcast and audiobook libraries on phones. The update brings several desktop-style controls to iOS and Android, with playlist folders and in-playlist bulk actions being rolled out globally to all users. Premium subscribers gain additional tools, including queue bulk editing, one-tap reshuffling and background downloads on iOS, a change aimed at

Meta Platforms has launched paid “Plus” subscriptions for Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, marking a wider shift by the social media group towards recurring consumer revenue while keeping the core versions of its apps free. The new plans, announced by Meta head of product Naomi Gleit, add optional premium features across the company’s three biggest consumer services. Instagram Plus and Facebook Plus are priced at $3.99 a month, while WhatsApp Plus costs $2.99 a month. The rollout is global, though feature availability

Google Cloud has moved deeper into AI-native cybersecurity with Google AI Threat Defence, an autonomous security platform aimed at helping enterprises detect, prioritise and remediate attacks at machine speed as rivals Anthropic and OpenAI push frontier models into vulnerability discovery and code defence. The launch marks a sharper contest in enterprise security, where artificial intelligence is shifting the centre of gravity from manual patching and alert handling to continuous analysis, contextual triage and automated response. Google Cloud is positioning its platform

ByteDance is weighing capital expenditure of as much as $70 billion this year as the TikTok owner accelerates an artificial intelligence push aimed at strengthening its position in China’s intensifying technology contest. The Beijing-based group is discussing one of the largest spending programmes by a private technology company outside the United States, with funds expected to go into data centres, AI chips, networking equipment and model development. The scale under review would mark a sharp escalation from earlier plans that placed

Microsoft is preparing to scale back internal use of Anthropic’s Claude Code and move thousands of developers towards GitHub Copilot CLI, marking a sharper push to consolidate AI coding work around tools it owns and governs more directly. The reported shift affects the company’s Experiences and Devices division, which covers major product groups including Windows, Microsoft 365, Outlook, Teams and Surface. Engineers using Claude Code have been given a June 30 deadline to move their workflows to Copilot CLI, aligning the

Qualcomm has secured a major opening in artificial intelligence infrastructure through a deal to supply ByteDance with chips for AI data centres, giving the San Diego-based group a high-profile customer as it pushes beyond its traditional smartphone processor business. The agreement covers application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, designed to support AI workloads in ByteDance’s expanding data-centre operations. The chips are expected to be used for AI agent software, a fast-growing area in which companies are racing to lower inference costs while

Microsoft has opened a clearer path for Windows 11 users and administrators to remove Copilot, marking a notable shift in its handling of artificial intelligence features that have become increasingly visible across the operating system. The change means Copilot can be removed like a conventional app on many devices, while IT administrators managing business PCs now have policy tools to uninstall or prevent the Microsoft Copilot app across fleets. The move forms part of a wider Windows 11 clean-up effort aimed

Microsoft’s early lead in AI-assisted software development is coming under pressure as outages at GitHub, leadership changes, security incidents and fast-moving rivals reshape one of the most important contests in enterprise technology. GitHub Copilot gave Microsoft a commanding start in the AI coding race. It was launched before many competitors had mature developer products, and it benefited from GitHub’s position at the centre of global software collaboration. More than 150 million developers use GitHub, while Copilot has become one of Microsoft’s

Security researchers have flagged a privacy weakness in WhatsApp’s Apple apps, warning that chat databases on macOS and iOS may sit unencrypted inside shared app group containers, creating a gap between the platform’s end-to-end encryption claims and the way messages are handled after they reach a user’s device. The concern centres on local storage, not message transmission. WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption is designed to prevent outsiders, network operators and even the company itself from reading messages while they travel between sender and

Vibe coding has moved from a developer shortcut to a mainstream software-building habit, with non-developers now making up 63 per cent of users creating applications through natural-language prompts rather than conventional programming. The shift is drawing writers, students, founders, investors, teachers and small businesses into a field that had long required technical training. These users are building websites, internal dashboards, classroom tools, workflow apps and lightweight commercial products in hours, helped by AI platforms that translate plain English into code, databases,

OpenAI-generated images are now easier to trace after the company added two embedded provenance signals to pictures created through ChatGPT, Codex and its application programming interface, marking a significant shift for users who rely on AI visuals but cannot openly disclose generative AI use. The change, introduced on May 19, places OpenAI’s image tools inside a widening industry push to label synthetic media as platforms, publishers, regulators and technology firms confront the spread of realistic AI-made pictures. The system combines C2PA

Huawei has deepened its Saudi Arabia cloud strategy through a distribution partnership with Gulf Applications, widening enterprise access to cloud infrastructure, artificial intelligence tools and disaster recovery services as the kingdom pushes ahead with its Vision 2030 digital agenda. The agreement appoints GAPP as Huawei Cloud’s official cloud solutions distributor in Saudi Arabia, placing the company at the centre of Huawei’s channel expansion in one of the Gulf’s fastest-growing technology markets. The arrangement is designed to give enterprises and secondary distributors

Texas has sued Meta Platforms and WhatsApp, accusing the messaging service of misleading users over the strength of its encryption and privacy protections, opening a fresh legal front in the global debate over encrypted communications, consumer rights and platform accountability. The lawsuit, filed in Harrison County, alleges that WhatsApp has assured users their messages are protected by end-to-end encryption while Meta and WhatsApp retain access to “virtually all” private communications on the app. The claim strikes at the centre of WhatsApp’s

Anthropic PBC is moving towards closing a funding round that could exceed $30 billion at a valuation above $900 billion, a transaction that would place the Claude maker among the world’s most valuable private companies and intensify the capital race reshaping artificial intelligence. The San Francisco-based company is expected to complete the round as soon as next week, though final terms could still change. The deal, if sealed near the levels under discussion, would more than double Anthropic’s valuation from the

Google and Blackstone have agreed to create a $5 billion TPU-powered cloud company, widening the battle for artificial intelligence infrastructure as enterprises seek alternatives to graphics processing units that dominate AI training and inference. The US-based venture will offer data centre capacity, operations, networking and Google Cloud’s Tensor Processing Units through a compute-as-a-service model. Blackstone is making the initial equity commitment, with the first 500 megawatts of capacity expected to come online in 2027. Google will supply the TPUs, software and

Google has begun replacing the Fitbit app with Google Health 5.0, marking one of the company’s biggest consumer health software changes since it completed the Fitbit acquisition and moved the brand deeper into its devices and services ecosystem. The update, rolling out from 19 May to 26 May, turns the existing Fitbit app into Google Health rather than requiring users to install a separate application. It brings a redesigned interface, a Gemini-powered Health Coach, a new Android home-screen widget and a

Core42 has secured $550 million in structured trade finance from HSBC to accelerate artificial intelligence cloud and compute deployments across the United States and Europe, strengthening the Abu Dhabi group’s position in the global race to build large-scale AI infrastructure. The financing, arranged through two non-equity dilutive facilities, gives the G42 company additional capital without requiring a share sale. The first facility, worth $240 million, was completed in February 2026, while the second, worth $310 million, was completed in May 2026.

SpaceX is pitching its planned public listing as a bet on artificial intelligence as much as rockets, telling prospective investors that AI services could open a $26.5 trillion market opportunity and transform the company from a launch-and-satellite operator into a global computing platform. The shift marks a striking turn for Elon Musk’s space company as it prepares for what could become the largest stock-market debut on record. The offering is being built around three linked businesses: reusable rockets, Starlink satellite internet

Cisco has issued an urgent security fix for a maximum-severity flaw in Secure Workload that could let unauthenticated attackers obtain Site Admin privileges and reach sensitive enterprise resources through internal REST API endpoints. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-20223, has been assigned a CVSS v3.1 base score of 10.0, the highest rating under the widely used severity system. It is classified as CWE-306, or missing authentication for a critical function, a category that signals a failure to enforce identity checks before allowing

Samsung Electronics is preparing one of the largest employee bonus packages in the global technology sector after a last-minute wage agreement with unions averted a threatened strike at its South Korean chip operations, where soaring demand for artificial intelligence memory has transformed the company’s earnings outlook. The tentative deal could channel about 40 trillion won, or roughly $26.6 billion, to semiconductor employees this year, implying an average payout near $340,000 for eligible workers if profit targets are met and the distribution

OpenAI will commit more than S$300 million, or about US$234 million, to build its first Applied AI Lab outside the United States in Singapore, marking a significant step in the company’s international expansion and the city-state’s push to become a global centre for practical artificial intelligence deployment. The multiyear partnership with Singapore’s Ministry of Digital Development and Information will operate under the “OpenAI for Singapore” initiative, aimed at bringing frontier AI into public services, finance, healthcare, digital infrastructure, education and small

Elon Musk has lost a major legal battle against OpenAI after a federal jury in Oakland, California, found that he waited too long to bring claims accusing the artificial intelligence company and its leaders of abandoning its founding mission. The unanimous verdict delivered a significant courtroom victory to OpenAI, chief executive Sam Altman, president Greg Brockman, the OpenAI Foundation and Microsoft, all of whom were targeted in Musk’s case. Jurors found that the claims were barred by statutes of limitations, ending

Ultra-light gaming laptops are moving from niche showpieces to a mainstream performance category as chipmakers, display suppliers and PC brands push more power into thinner machines without abandoning battery life or portability. The shift is being driven by a convergence of faster mobile graphics processors, AI-assisted rendering, high-efficiency CPUs, brighter OLED displays and more sophisticated cooling systems. Models weighing around 1.5kg to 2kg are now targeting users who want credible AAA gaming performance, content creation capability and everyday mobility in the

OpenAI and Anthropic have pushed their rivalry deeper into corporate technology budgets by launching dedicated enterprise deployment ventures aimed at turning powerful AI models into production systems for businesses. The moves mark a shift from selling access to chatbots and application programming interfaces towards embedding engineers, consultants and workflow specialists inside companies that want AI to reshape operations rather than sit on the edge of office software. Both companies are trying to solve the same problem facing large organisations: many executives

KnowBe4 has launched CAPY, a free online family cyber safety hub aimed at helping children, parents, older adults and everyday internet users build stronger defences against scams, phishing, cyberbullying, sextortion and AI-driven abuse. The programme, formally called Cyber Awareness Program for You, marks a shift by the Tampa Bay-based digital workforce security company from corporate training into a broader public education model. It arrives as online risks once treated as workplace security issues are increasingly reaching homes through messaging apps,

SpaceX is moving towards a record-breaking stock market debut that could value Elon Musk’s rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence empire at about $1.75 trillion, placing public investors before one of the most ambitious and complex listings ever attempted on Wall Street. The company is preparing to list on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX as early as June, with plans that could raise roughly $75 billion. Such a deal would eclipse Saudi Aramco’s 2019 market debut and transform SpaceX from a closely

Malta has struck a landmark agreement with OpenAI to provide ChatGPT Plus access across the country, making it the first government-backed national rollout of the paid artificial intelligence service tied to a public AI literacy programme. The partnership, announced on 16 May 2026, will allow eligible Maltese citizens to use ChatGPT Plus at no personal cost for one year after completing a free course on artificial intelligence. The programme is scheduled to begin in May and expand as participants complete the

Lumen Technologies is expanding its long-haul fibre network with a new Seattle-to-Minneapolis route designed to carry heavier artificial intelligence and cloud traffic across a growing northern US data corridor. The project, named NorthLine, is expected to be available by the end of 2026 and will initially support 100G and 400G wavelength services. The route is being positioned as a low-latency link between the Pacific Northwest and central US markets, giving enterprises, cloud providers and AI infrastructure operators a more direct path

Claude has overtaken ChatGPT in paid adoption among US businesses for the first time, marking a shift in the enterprise artificial intelligence market as companies move beyond experimentation and begin choosing tools for daily operations. Payments data covering more than 50,000 businesses showed Anthropic’s Claude products used by 34.4 per cent of firms in April, ahead of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and related services at 32.3 per cent. Overall paid AI adoption among the surveyed businesses reached 50.6 per cent, underlining how quickly

Floci has crossed 10,000 GitHub stars as software teams look for a free, no-account alternative to LocalStack for local AWS emulation after a licensing and distribution change disrupted established development workflows. The milestone, reached on May 15, 2026, marks a sharp rise for the MIT-licensed project, which presents itself as a drop-in replacement for LocalStack’s former community edition. The shift has drawn attention from developers running automated tests, integration suites and CI/CD pipelines that depend on simulated cloud services rather than

A Bitcoin holder’s claim that Anthropic’s Claude helped unlock a college-era wallet containing 5 BTC has stirred fresh debate over artificial intelligence, digital forensics and the vast store of cryptocurrency believed to be stranded behind forgotten passwords. The pseudonymous user, posting on X, said access was regained after more than a decade of failed attempts to recover an old wallet created during college years. At current market levels, the recovered coins are worth about $396,000, though the exact value would move

Jurors in Oakland are set to begin deliberations on Monday in a closely watched trial over whether OpenAI’s leadership broke charitable-trust obligations as the maker of ChatGPT shifted from its nonprofit origins into a profit-seeking artificial intelligence powerhouse. The nine-person jury will consider claims brought by Elon Musk against OpenAI, chief executive Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman after three weeks of testimony that exposed deep divisions over the company’s founding mission, commercial growth and control of advanced AI systems.

Two vulnerabilities in the Avada Builder plugin have exposed around one million WordPress websites to attacks that could reveal sensitive files or extract database information, prompting urgent calls for administrators to update to the fully patched version 3.15.3. The flaws affect Avada Builder, also known as Fusion Builder, a widely used page-building plugin bundled with the Avada WordPress theme. The higher-rated issue, tracked as CVE-2026-4798, is an unauthenticated time-based SQL injection vulnerability affecting versions up to and including 3.15.1. The second,

Singapore will host the first stop of a new Sea and OpenAI Codex hackathon series across Asia Pacific, placing the city-state at the centre of a wider push to accelerate AI-native software development among experienced builders. The Sea x OpenAI Codex Hackathon is scheduled for 6 June 2026 and will bring together more than 150 developers, engineers and AI builders working in up to 40 teams. Participants are expected to build practical AI applications using Codex and related coding-agent tools, with