Author: Art Ryan

Salesforce is increasing its focus on national security. The customer relationship management giant announced the creation of a new business unit called Missionforce on Tuesday. It will be focused on incorporating AI into defense workflows in three main areas: personnel, logistics, and decision-making, according to a company press release. Missionforce will be helmed by Kendall Collins, the CEO of Government Cloud. Collins joined Salesforce in 2023 and was previously the chief business officer and chief of staff to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. “With Missionforce, we’ll now bring the best of AI, cloud, and platform technology from the private sector…

When Mark Lee was a law student at Harvard, a trademark class exposed him to the staggering scale of counterfeiting, an illicit industry worth more than $3 trillion annually and set him on an unexpected path to entrepreneurship. “I was always broadly interested in technology and startups, but I never really thought I’d be an entrepreneur. I assumed I was set to become a lawyer; most of my family members are lawyers, and practicing law felt like a natural path,” Lee said in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch. But when he got to Harvard Law, the education wasn’t quite what he expected,…

Trade tensions between China and the U.S. regarding semiconductors just got even more strained. On Monday, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation ruled that semiconductor giant Nvidia was in violation of the country’s antitrust regulations, as first reported by Bloomberg. The ruling was in reference to Nvidia’s 2020 acquisition of Mellanox Technologies, a computer networking supplier, for $7 billion. An Nvidia spokesperson supplied the following statement, “We comply with the law in all respects. We will continue to cooperate with all relevant government agencies as they evaluate the impact of export controls on competition in the commercial markets.” China didn’t announce any…

OpenAI announced Monday that it’s releasing a new version of GPT-5 to its AI coding agent, Codex. The company says its new model, called GPT-5-Codex, spends its “thinking” time more dynamically than previous models, and could spend anywhere from a few seconds to seven hours on a coding task. As a result, it performs better on agentic coding benchmarks. The new model is now rolling out in Codex products — which can be accessed via a terminal, IDE, GitHub, or ChatGPT — to all ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business, Edu, and Enterprise users. OpenAI says it plans to make the model available…

American maritime technology company Mythos AI has completed the installation of its Advanced Pilot Assistance System (APAS) aboard the vessel CB Pacific, a chemical cargo ship owned by CB Tankers. The APAS project is designed to manage navigation at sea. Unlike most traditional systems in this space that depend largely on machine vision, APAS uses a radar-first approach, in combination with other sensing technologies. It connects directly to a ship’s radar and streamlines data so it can be used to alert a ship’s human crew if necessary during a journey. APAS is designed to support mariners, reduce cognitive load, and improve…

American financial giants are investing in Great Britain ahead of a U.S.-U.K. technology summit. The $1.6 billion investment is from companies including PayPal, Bank of America and Citigroup and will create 1,800 jobs in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the U.K. Department for Business and Trade said Saturday (Sept. 13). “Strengthening ties with the U.S. boosts our economy, creates jobs, and secures our role in global finance, delivering on our Plan for Change,” said Business and Trade Secretary Peter Kyle. “These investments reflect the strength of our enduring ‘golden corridor’ with one of our closest trading partners, ahead of the U.S. presidential state visit.” That visit is set to happen Tuesday…

The average person thinks of payments rarely, if it all. And when they do, they are most likely to consider them as infrastructure. Something important, but invisible. But that narrative is shifting to reveal a truth that industry insiders have long known: payments are increasingly a competitive differentiator. “We do a lot of painted door tests, which are helpful. If we put a payment method up and we’re seeing a lot of clicks on it, then that’s telling us something,” Sandra Alzetta, VP and Global Head of Commerce and Customer Service at Spotify, said during a discussion for the PYMNTS Monday Conversation…

A magazine publisher is accusing Google’s AI summaries of using its work without consent. Penske Media, which owns Rolling Stone, Billboard and Variety, has sued the tech giant in federal court in Washington, D.C., saying that its artificial intelligence (AI) search summaries are reducing its web traffic, Reuters reported Saturday (Sept. 13). The report noted that the suit is the first time a major American publisher has sued Google over the AI-generated summaries that have come to top its search results. In this case, Penske is accusing Google of only including publishers’ websites in search results if it can also use their articles in AI summaries. Absent this…

A year ago, it was “everything is about AI.” Months later, it was “everything is about gen AI.” Now the focus has shifted to agentic artificial intelligence (AI) and the topic is filled with gigabytes worth of opportunities and challenges. Even since summer’s end (just two weeks ago) this space has had its share of urgent developments, technical advancements and other innovations. All of which reinforce the momentum behind agentic AI. Let’s start with the past week, with two use cases from LinkedIn and Booking.com. LinkedIn Formalizes Its Agentic AI Stack InfoWorld reports that LinkedIn has gone beyond chatbots to build a full agentic AI platform that treats agents as part of its cloud-native architecture. At the center…

Abu Dhabi: Since launching its National Artificial Intelligence Strategy in 2017, the UAE has placed AI at the heart of its development agenda, with full integration across healthcare, transport, education, energy, and logistics targeted by 2031. The UAE is pursuing an ambitious multi-billion-dirham programme to cement its place as a global AI leader. AI to contribute 20% to GDP by 2031 Analysts say the strategy builds on the country’s advanced infrastructure, bold government policies, strategic alliances, and strong talent pipeline. AI is now central to efforts to diversify the non-oil economy and is forecast to contribute up to 20% of non-oil GDP…

The Generative AI in logistics market is set to grow from its current market value of more than $1.3 billion to over $23.1 billion by 2034, as reported in the latest study by Global Market Insights, Inc. “This technology is fundamentally transforming supply chain operations by delivering both real-time intelligence and long-term strategic forecasting. By simulating thousands of delivery routes and transport scenarios, logistics providers can fine-tune inventory planning, lower freight expenses, and stay prepared for unexpected disruptions,” the Global Market Insights study says. “AI-powered demand forecasting also streamlines resource use, while dynamic routing tools improve delivery timelines. As operational efficiency and…

Owner of VMware, Broadcom, announced that its VMware Cloud Foundation platform is now AI native at the VMware Explore conference a few weeks ago. It was the latest move by the company to keep up to speed with the rest of the technology industry’s wide and rapid adoption of large language models, yet came as the company battles bad press about licensing policy changes that have dogged it since it acquired virtualisation giant VMware in November 2023. The ending of the platform’s free tier, reports of aggressive sales tactics to keep subscribers on board, and several court cases focused on existing agreements, including extant perpetual…

Customers are discovering brands and learning about products and services in new ways from traditional search to AI search, to AI agents and more, the discovery journey has completely changed, and brands need to adapt to the new paradigm. Launched earlier this year, Yext Scout is an AI search and competitive intelligence agent that’s designed to boost brand visibility and uncover critical insights related to the new AI-driven search platforms, alongside ‘traditional’ searches as we know them. Scout is part of Yext, the leading brand visibility platform. Scout provides performance benchmarks laid out against a brand’s local competitors, and creates…

It’s hard to find programmers these days who aren’t using AI coding assistants in some capacity, especially to write the repetitive, mundane bits. But those who refused to try the tools when Coinbase bought enterprise licenses for GitHub Copilot and Cursor got promptly fired, CEO Brian Armstrong said this week on John Collison’s podcast “Cheeky Pint.” (Collison is the co-founder and president of the payments company Stripe.) After getting licenses to cover every engineer, some at the cryptocurrency exchange warned Armstrong that adoption would be slow, predicting it would take months to get even half the engineers using AI. Armstrong was shocked…

Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI laid off 500 team members on Friday night, according to internal messages viewed by Business Insider. These emails reportedly announce an immediate “strategic pivot,” with the company deciding to “accelerate the expansion and prioritization of our specialist AI tutors, while scaling back our focus on general AI tutor roles.” “As part of this shift in focus, we no longer need most generalist AI tutor positions and your employment with xAI will conclude,” xAI reportedly wrote. According to Business Insider, these cuts represent about one-third of xAI’s 1,500-person data annotation team — the team that works to…

Jie Bulu is a tea farmer from the Jinuo, one of the smallest ethnic minority groups in China, living in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture in southwest China’s Yunnan Province. For this year’s China International Fair for Trade in Services, he brought tea harvested from 300-year-old trees in his hometown, hoping to introduce the pride of his people to the rest of the country and the world. Jie Bulu is not alone at the exhibition of the “One Country, One Priority Product” platform, initiated by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Coffee…

Google has insisted that its AI-generated search result overviews and summaries have not actually hurt traffic for publishers. The publishers disagree, and at least one is willing to go to court to prove the harm they claim Google has caused. Penske Media Corporation, the parent company of Rolling Stone and The Hollywood Reporter, sued Google on Friday over allegations that the search giant has used its work without permission to generate summaries and ultimately reduced traffic to its publications. Penske’s argument is pretty simple: by showing an AI-generated summary of an article at the top of the page via Google’s AI Overview…

California’s state senate gave final approval early on Saturday morning to a major AI safety bill setting new transparency requirements on large companies. As described by its author, state senator Scott Wiener, SB 53 “requires large AI labs to be transparent about their safety protocols, creates whistleblower protections for [employees] at AI labs & creates a public cloud to expand compute access (CalCompute).” The bill now goes to California Governor Gavin Newsom to sign or veto. He has not commented publicly on SB 53, but last year, he vetoed a more expansive safety bill also authored by Wiener, while signing narrower legislation targeting issues like deepfakes. At the time, Newsom…

Super Micro Computer (NASDAQ: SMCI) is fueling the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution with cutting-edge servers and racks designed for Nvidia’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) Blackwell graphics processing units (GPUs). Revenue is soaring, partnerships are multiplying, and cooling technology is driving efficiency. But accounting concerns and squeezed margins bring volatility. Can Supermicro overcome these hurdles and continue its explosive growth? Should you invest $1,000 in Super Micro Computer right now? Before you buy stock in Super Micro Computer, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Super Micro Computer wasn’t one of them. The 10…

Albania’s prime minister has appointed an artificial intelligence-generated “minister” to tackle corruption and promote innovation in his new cabinet. The new AI minister, officially named Diella – the female form of the word for sun in the Albanian language – was appointed on Friday and is a virtual entity. Diella will be a “member of the cabinet who is not present physically but has been created virtually,” Prime Minister Edi Rama said in a post on Facebook. Mr Rama said the AI-generated bot would help ensure that “public tenders are completely free of corruption” and assist the government in operating…