Author: Art Ryan

The Dubai AI Festival 2025 is proud to announce Himanshu Shrivastava, Group Chief Technology Officer at Al-Futtaim, as one of its influential speakers. A strategic technology leader overseeing one of the region’s most diversified business groups, Shrivastava brings extensive expertise in driving enterprise-wide digital transformation, AI adoption, and data platform innovation across multiple industries. His keynote will provide rare and actionable insight into how large-scale, multi-sector conglomerates can harness AI, automation, and digital platforms to drive performance, innovation, and customer-centric growth. Leading Technology at One of the Region’s Largest Business Groups At the helm of Al-Futtaim’s technology function, Himanshu Shrivastava…

The Dubai AI Festival 2025 is honored to welcome Nigel Toon, a pioneering force in the AI hardware revolution and a globally respected entrepreneur, as one of its featured speakers. As the founder of Graphcore, Toon has been instrumental in shaping the infrastructure powering today’s most advanced artificial intelligence systems. With a rare blend of deep technical knowledge, startup success, and national advisory experience, Nigel Toon brings unmatched insight into the future of AI computing—and how to build technology that thinks more like us. Engineering the Future of AI with Graphcore At the core of Nigel Toon’s legacy is Graphcore,…

The Dubai AI Festival 2025 proudly welcomes Parminder “Parry” Bhatia, a leading voice in the application of artificial intelligence in healthcare, as one of its esteemed speakers. As a senior executive at GE HealthCare, Bhatia plays a critical role in driving the next frontier of AI integration in medical devices, patient care, and hospital systems—transforming healthcare into a smarter, more connected, and limitless experience. Pioneering AI in the Heart of Healthcare Innovation At GE HealthCare, Parry is focused on embedding artificial intelligence across the entire patient journey, from diagnostics to treatment planning and hospital operations. His work spans AI-enabled smart…

The Dubai AI Festival 2025 welcomes Suzan Kereere, President of Global Markets at PayPal, as a prominent voice in the conversation on the future of financial technology and intelligent commerce. A powerhouse in global business leadership, Kereere brings unmatched expertise in scaling digital innovation, fostering inclusive financial ecosystems, and driving strategic growth across markets worldwide. Steering PayPal’s Global Impact In her role as President, Global Markets, Suzan Kereere leads PayPal’s regional operations, client engagement, and market expansion strategies across the globe. Under her leadership, PayPal continues to strengthen its position as a premier digital payments platform trusted by millions of…

The Dubai AI Festival 2025 is proud to announce Dr. Hakim Hacid, Chief Researcher at the Artificial Intelligence and Digital Science Research Center within the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), as one of its distinguished speakers. A global leader in large language models (LLMs) and machine learning systems, Dr. Hacid is at the forefront of the UAE’s ambitious push to build sovereign, open, and scalable AI infrastructure. His groundbreaking leadership in the development of Falcon LLM and the next-generation Falcon Mamba has firmly placed the UAE on the global map as a creator—not just a consumer—of advanced AI technologies. Pioneering LLM…

The Dubai AI Festival 2025 is proud to announce Prof. Yoav Shoham, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Stanford University and one of the most influential minds in artificial intelligence, as a featured keynote speaker. With a trailblazing career that bridges academic excellence, entrepreneurial success, and global AI policy leadership, Prof. Shoham’s participation marks a highlight of this year’s event. Academic Excellence and Global Recognition Prof. Shoham is widely recognized as a foundational figure in AI and multi-agent systems. He is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and…

The Dubai AI Festival 2025 continues to cement its reputation as a global hub for pioneering thinkers and policymakers in artificial intelligence and emerging technologies. Among this year’s high-profile speakers is His Excellency Gevorg Mantashyan, the First Deputy Minister at Armenia’s Ministry of High-Tech Industry, who will represent one of the Caucasus region’s most dynamic voices in digital innovation and tech policy. Driving Armenia’s High-Tech Renaissance With a steadfast commitment to building a digitally resilient and innovation-driven economy, H.E. Mantashyan plays a pivotal role in Armenia’s national strategy for technological advancement. As First Deputy Minister, he is instrumental in shaping…

Three Days. Endless Innovation. One Bold Future. ✅ Mission Accomplished: Africa Leads the Digital Age GITEX Africa 2025 has officially wrapped up after three groundbreaking days in Marrakech, Morocco, from April 14–16. The event wasn’t just a success—it was a defining moment for Africa’s digital transformation journey. Over the course of the summit, thousands of startups, investors, government leaders, tech pioneers, and global innovators converged to celebrate and accelerate the continent’s rise as a global tech powerhouse. The message was clear: Africa is no longer catching up—it’s setting the pace. 🌐 A Platform of Progress and Possibility From bustling exhibit…

OpenAI says that it deployed a new system to monitor its latest AI reasoning models, o3 and o4-mini, for prompts related to biological and chemical threats. The system aims to prevent the models from offering advice that could instruct someone on carrying out potentially harmful attacks, according to OpenAI’s safety report. O3 and o4-mini represent a meaningful capability increase over OpenAI’s previous models, the company says, and thus pose new risks in the hands of bad actors. According to OpenAI’s internal benchmarks, o3 is more skilled at answering questions around creating certain types of biological threats in particular. For this reason —…

Windsurf, the maker of a popular AI coding assistant, is in talks to be acquired by OpenAI for about $3 billion, Bloomberg reported. If the deal happens, it would put OpenAI in direct competition with a number of other AI coding assistant providers, including Anysphere, the maker of Cursor, which OpenAI backed from its OpenAI Startup Fund. The acquisition could jeopardize the credibility of the OpenAI Startup Fund, given that it is one of Cursor’s biggest investors, said a person familiar with Cursor’s cap table. It’s not clear whether OpenAI approached Cursor about an acquisition. In addition to what sources told…

An organization OpenAI frequently partners with to probe the capabilities of its AI models and evaluate them for safety, Metr, suggests that it wasn’t given much time to test one of the company’s highly capable new releases, o3. In a blog post published Wednesday, Metr writes that one red teaming benchmark of o3 was “conducted in a relatively short time” compared to the organization’s testing of a previous OpenAI flagship model, o1. This is significant, they say, because additional testing time can lead to more comprehensive results. “This evaluation was conducted in a relatively short time, and we only tested [o3] with…

OpenAI announced on Wednesday the launch of o3 and o4-mini, new AI reasoning models designed to pause and work through questions before responding. The company calls o3 its most advanced reasoning model ever, outperforming the company’s previous models on tests measuring math, coding, reasoning, science, and visual understanding capabilities. Meanwhile, o4-mini offers what OpenAI says is a competitive trade-off between price, speed, and performance — three factors developers often consider when choosing an AI model to power their applications. Unlike previous reasoning models, o3 and o4-mini can generate responses using tools in ChatGPT such as web browsing, Python code execution,…

In a bid to inject AI into more of the programming process, OpenAI is launching Codex CLI, a coding “agent” designed to run locally from terminal software. Announced on Wednesday alongside OpenAI’s newest AI models, o3 and o4-mini, Codex CLI links OpenAI’s models with local code and computing tasks, OpenAI says. Via Codex CLI, OpenAI’s models can write and edit code on a desktop and take certain actions, like moving files. Codex CLI appears to be a small step in the direction of OpenAI’s broader agentic coding vision. Recently, the company’s CFO, Sarah Friar, described what she called the “agentic software engineer,” a…

Microsoft researchers claim they’ve developed the largest-scale 1-bit AI model, also known as a “bitnet,” to date. Called BitNet b1.58 2B4T, it’s openly available under an MIT license and can run on CPUs, including Apple’s M2. Bitnets are essentially compressed models designed to run on lightweight hardware. In standard models, weights, the values that define the internal structure of a model, are often quantized so the models perform well on a wide range of machines. Quantizing the weights lowers the number of bits — the smallest units a computer can process — needed to represent those weights, enabling models to run on chips…

Deck, a startup that claims to be building “the Plaid for the rest of the internet,” has raised $12 million in a Series A funding round — about nine months after closing its seed financing, it tells TechCrunch exclusively. The new raise, led by Infinity Ventures, brings Montreal-based Deck’s total raised since its January 2024 inception to $16.5 million. Golden Ventures and Better Tomorrow Ventures co-led its seed raise. Deck claims that it is building the infrastructure for user-permissioned data access — across the entire internet. Its browser-based data agents “unlock” the data from any website through automation. To put it more…

Capsule is upgrading its AI-powered video editing assistant for marketing, sales, and media teams following the close of a $12 million round of Series A funding, the company announced on Wednesday. The upgraded editor will include new features like AI suggestions and support for real-time collaboration. The new version of its studio software will feature an AI-powered co-producer that provides suggestions designed to help brands elevate their storytelling capabilities. “[It’ll be] more of an interactive experience where the AI is suggesting things to you based on what it thinks is going to make your video easier to understand and have better performance,” Capsule…

A pseudonymous developer has created what they’re calling a “free speech eval,” SpeechMap, for the AI models powering chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and X’s Grok. The goal is to compare how different models treat sensitive and controversial subjects, the developer told TechCrunch, including political criticism and questions about civil rights and protest. AI companies have been focusing on fine-tuning how their models handle certain topics as some White House allies accuse popular chatbots of being overly “woke.” Many of President Donald Trump’s close confidants, such as Elon Musk and crypto and AI “czar” David Sacks, have alleged that chatbots censor conservative views. Although none of these AI…

Artificial intelligence services at their heart are massive data plays: You need data — a lot of it — to build the models, and then the models need efficient ways to ingest and output data to work. A company called Hammerspace has built a system to help AI and other organizations tap into data troves with minimal heavy lifting, and it’s been seeing impressive adoption. Now, with customers including Meta and the Department of Defense, as well as other very recognizable names, Hammerspace is announcing $100 million in funding to expand its business. The funding is being described as a “strategic venture round,” and…

Grok, the chatbot from Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has gained a canvas-like feature for editing and creating documents and basic apps. Called Grok Studio, the feature was announced on X late Tuesday. It’s available for both free and paying Grok users on Grok.com “Grok can now generate documents, code, reports and browser games,” wrote the official Grok account on X. “Grok Studio will open your content in a separate window, allowing both you and Grok to collaborate on the content together.” Today, we are releasing the first version of Grok studio, adding code execution and google drive support. Grok StudioGrok…

Semiconductor giant Nvidia is facing unexpected new U.S. export controls on its H20 chips. In a filing Tuesday, Nvidia said it was informed by the U.S. government that it will need a license to export its H20 AI chips to China. This license will be required indefinitely, according to the filing — the U.S. government cited “risk that the [H20] may be used in … a supercomputer in China.” Nvidia anticipates $5.5 billion in related charges in its Q1 2026 fiscal year, which ends April 27. The company’s stock was down around 6% in extended trading. The H20 is the most…