Microsoft is overhauling Copilot's pricing to a usage-based model amid soaring costs from power users, while simultaneously exploring a fine-tuned, Azure-hosted version of DeepSeek V4 as a cheaper AI alternative to OpenAI and Anthropic, with a decision expected within weeks.
Databricks launches Genie One, an agentic AI coworker that automates enterprise work across marketing, finance, and sales by leveraging a self-improving context layer called Genie Ontology, which learns from tools like Slack, Jira, and Google Drive to deliver governed, data-grounded AI reasoning with no seat-based pricing.
Snap launches SPECS, a $2,195 pair of AR glasses powered by dual Snapdragon chips and contextual AI, offering a 51-degree field-of-view display and up to 20 hours of battery life, now available for pre-order ahead of a fall release in the US, UK, and France.
Microsoft launches Copilot Cowork globally after record-breaking Fortune 500 adoption, offering enterprise AI automation that runs 30-40% cheaper than competitors with usage-based billing starting today.
Factory 2.0 launches AI-powered 'software factories' that autonomously manage the entire software development lifecycle — from bug reports to deployment — with major enterprises like NVIDIA, Adobe, and Blackstone already running the systems in production, signaling a major shift where engineers govern AI rather than write code themselves.
IBM, NVIDIA, and Red Hat are spearheading DocLang, a groundbreaking open AI-native document format built to replace PDFs in enterprise AI pipelines, delivering up to 30x lower token costs while preserving semantic structure and slashing hallucination risks.
A new Python library called 'aisuite' unifies major AI providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google into a single API, letting developers switch between models with one string change, while also powering OpenCoworker, a desktop AI agent app for macOS and Windows capable of research, file management, and automated tasks.
A full GPT transformer implemented entirely in RTL Verilog is now running on a Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA, blazing through 69,200 tokens per second at 80 MHz after engineers overcame two critical synthesis bugs that silently zeroed ROM arrays and folded live registers, causing the board to hang despite passing simulation.
Tech layoffs surge to a two-year high with nearly 40,000 cuts as AI takes the blame for a third straight month, while a small circle of AI insiders mint billions through IPOs and skyrocketing valuations — sparking comparisons to post-2008 inequality backlash and warnings of an even more volatile public …
Salesforce acquires AI customer service platform Fin for $3.6 billion to supercharge its Agentforce platform as the company battles a stock slump of over one-third in 2026 amid fears that emerging AI could disrupt its core business model.