Baidu unveils ERNIE 5.0 multimodal AI model claiming to outperform GPT-5 and Gemini 2.5 Pro in visual tasks while pricing competitively at $0.85-$3.40 per million tokens as the Chinese tech giant expands globally with AI tools that already power 83% of livestreamers during major shopping events.
Alembic Technologies secures $145M Series B funding with valuation skyrocketing 16-fold as the startup builds an Nvidia Blackwell GPU-powered supercomputer to deliver enterprise causal AI that understands cause-and-effect relationships for regulated industries.
AI coding startup Cursor raises $2.3 billion at a $29.3 billion valuation, nearly tripling its worth in six months while crossing $1 billion in annualized revenue with backing from major investors including Nvidia and Google.
Elon Musk's AI startup xAI secures $15 billion in funding, reaching a $200 billion valuation, while Musk simultaneously denies the reports as 'false' on X, creating confusion as the company faces criticism over its chatbot spreading misinformation and environmental concerns from energy-intensive data centers.
Salesforce acquires one-year-old Israeli AI startup Doti for $100 million, delivering a massive 1,300% return on the company's modest $7 million in funding while strengthening Salesforce's enterprise AI capabilities with Doti's 'Organizational Brain' platform that helps companies access internal knowledge through workplace tools like Slack.
Department of Energy warns blackouts could surge 100-fold by 2030 as 104 gigawatts of reliable power plants shut down without replacement, while AI data centers and advanced manufacturing drive electricity demand to record highs, potentially causing annual outage hours to skyrocket from single digits to over 800 hours yearly.
Electricity prices skyrocket 40% since 2020 as AI data centers and electric vehicles shatter two decades of stable power demand, forcing utilities to spend over $1 trillion on new infrastructure while regulators battle over who pays the massive costs.
New survey reveals 87% of organizations now use AI services, but nearly one-third lack the security expertise to protect them, with 25% admitting they don't even know what AI services are running in their systems.
Google DeepMind releases SIMA 2, a Gemini-powered AI agent that learns to navigate 3D video games like No Man's Sky through trial and error, potentially paving the way for real-world robotics applications despite current limitations with complex tasks and memory.
OpenBuilder launches as a free open-source alternative to Lovable, offering non-technical developers powerful AI-powered building tools that match Claude Sonnet 4's performance while eliminating high costs and bugs that typically derail coding projects.