By Hisan Kidwai If you love bees and caring for them, Roblox has a fantastic experience for you. Bee…
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By Siôn Geschwindt The Dutch startup ecosystem has slipped to 10th place globally and sixth in Europe, according to the newly released Global Startup Ecosystem Index 2025.  The annual report, compiled by research platform StartupBlink, benchmarks the startup strength of over 1,400 cities and 110 countries worldwide.  The US took the top spot globally, with the UK coming in second. Among the European nations, Britain was followed by Sweden (sixth), Germany (seventh), and France (eighth). Switzerland claimed ninth place,  pushing the Netherlands down one spot.   However, it’s not all bad news for the Dutch startup ecosystem, which saw an above-average growth rate of…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

Microsoft Word’s spell check can already suggest words in real time, but imagine an “idea check” future in which AI suggests ideas on the fly as users type.

This is how Microsoft is evolving Copilot — as an AI assistant predicting ideas in real time by tapping into unique corporate and user data. That’s an idea the company shared for Microsoft 365 as generative AI technology sinks deeper into the guts of the software.

Specifically, Microsoft on Monday released a feature called Copilot Tuning, which will allow enterprises to deploy specialized AI models and agents that are fine-tuned to company operations and data. The feature was announced at Microsoft’s Build developer show being held this week.

With Copilot Tuning, companies can train models on their own data and deploy AI agents that make use of their unique terms, context, and processes, said Jason Henderson, corporate vice president of Microsoft 365 product management, in an interview with Computerworld.

“AI is going to have to … integrate the knowledge from your work into your specific Copilot so it can customize documents and workflows to the way your company works,” Henderson said.

The larger goal behind Tuning is to create an “enterprise brain” that is a digital representation of an organization’s unique way of handling information, processing it and making decisions. That is key to creating Copilots that can recommend ideas, Henderson said.

The ability to fine-tune AI to internal data changes the way model reasons and responds. That, in turn, changes how employees create documents and generate summaries.

Henderson gave the example of a longstanding law firm with more than 100 years of institutional knowledge and precedents. The partners are retiring and taking their knowledge with them.

“What they’re really interested in is fine-tuning into these models all these legal agreements that they have built over many, many years. And then being able to create new ones based on that learning,” Henderson said.

Microsoft Copilot launched in 2023 providing generic responses from genAI large language models (LLMs), notably OpenAI’s GPT series. About 70% of Fortune 500 companies are now using Copilot in some form, according to Microsoft.

Although LLM-based chatbots such as Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini and especially OpenAI’s ChatGPT remain popular, some companies are shifting to smaller reasoning models that are fine-tuned to domain data, finding the smaller models cheaper, faster, more customizable, and more secure.

Microsoft says Copilot Tuning is the starting point to creating hyper-personalized features, such as suggesting ideas in real time as a person writes a document in Word.

“I can think of this as a spell check of the future where it knows the words that your company uses. It’s going to predict based on what it knows about your company. It might be one thing in manufacturing versus in pharmaceuticals. It’s trying to help you get one step ahead by bringing to your fingertips what you need,” Henderson said.

Security is an important part of Copilot Tuning, and the data is usually pulled and referenced from Microsoft SharePoint, which monitors access to files. Microsoft is creating a chain of custody and security from documents to the model.

“We’re starting with SharePoint, but with connectors, we can bring in many, many different systems,” Henderson said.

Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI all offer ways to integrate enterprise data into LLMs as well. 

The new Copilot Tuning offering doesn’t require data scientists or coders, and it has a point-and-click interface within Copilot Studio. It can be used by regular employees who may think, “hey, I want to make my department’s life easier,” Henderson said.

Microsoft is also creating “recipes” that are targeted at generating documents and summaries, or for data analysis and accounting tasks.

“We’re going to identify which models best handle those recipes, doing a lot of experimentation to pick the right model for each particular recipe. Over the next six months, we’ll continue to build out more recipes as we identify durable problem spaces that companies are interested in addressing with Copilot Tuning,” Henderson said.

The Copilot Tuning functionality will begin rolling out to Microsoft 365 Copilot customers next month as part of its “Early Adopter Program.” Microsoft’s Copilot Wave 2 spring release — which includes a new Copilot app with new search, summarization, and personalization functionality — is now generally available.

Source:: Computer World

Microsoft writes on its blog that neither Azure nor the company’s AI technology has been used to harm people in Gaza. After allegations surfaced that these Microsoft products were being used by the Israeli military to harm civilians in Gaza, the company conducted internal and external reviews. “We have found no evidence to date that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza,” the tech giant stated.The company noted that it has a relationship with the Israeli Ministry of Defense (IMOD) but that this is designed as a typical commercial relationship. None of the reviews found evidence that the Israeli Ministry of Defense violated Microsoft’s terms of use or code of conduct.

At the same time, Microsoft stated that it has limited visibility into how its software is used on its customers’ own servers or devices.

Source:: Computer World

By Ray Fernandez Our latest and most advanced technologies — from AI to Industrial IoT, advanced robotics, and self-driving cars — share serious problems: massive energy consumption, limited on-edge capabilities, system hallucinations, and serious accuracy gaps.  One possible solution is emerging in the Netherlands. The country is developing a promising ecosystem for neuromorphic computing, which draws on neuroscience to boost IT efficiencies and performance. Billions of euros are being invested in this new form of computing worldwide. The Netherlands aims to become a leader in the market by bringing together startups, established companies, government organisations, and academics in a neuromorphic computing ecosystem. A Dutch…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Hisan Kidwai Roblox is home to millions of different experiences, and one of them is Bubble Gum Simulator…
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By Hisan Kidwai Inspired by the popular anime and manga series Black Clover, Grimoires Era is a fighting game…
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By Nadeem Sarwar Owing to pressure from EU regulators, Apple could allow users to replace Siri as the default virtual assistant on their devices, reports Bloomberg.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Deepti Pathak Internet slang changes fast, and sometimes you’ll see something in a message or a post that…
The post TIFU Meaning in Texts Explained: Use Cases & Examples appeared first on Fossbytes.

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This May Patch Tuesday release is very much a “back-to-basics” update with just 78 patches for Microsoft Windows, Office, Visual Studio, and .NET. Notably, Microsoft has not released any patches for Microsoft Exchange Server or Microsoft SQL Server.

Due to the concerns of publicly reported exploits for five Windows vulnerabilities, the Application Readiness team has recommended a “Patch Now” schedule for Windows and a standard release cadence for the other platforms. To help navigate these changes, the team from Readiness has provided a helpful infographic detailing the risks of deploying updates to each platform.

Known issues

There are still reports of issues with devices with Citrix Session Recording Agent (SRA) version 2411 installed on Windows 10 platforms. This is an ongoing issue, with no further reported fixes or updates from Citrix or Microsoft. Otherwise (at the time of writing), Microsoft has not reported any issues with this month’s update for its Windows desktop and server platforms.

Major revisions and mitigations

Microsoft has not published any major revisions or mitigations to its patches and security fixes for this May.

Windows lifecycle and enforcement updates

Microsoft has not published any enforcement updates this month.

Testing guidance

Each month, the team at Readiness analyzes the latest Patch Tuesday updates from Microsoft and provides detailed, actionable testing guidance. This guidance is based on assessing a large application portfolio and a comprehensive analysis of the Microsoft patches and their potential impact on Windows platforms and application deployments.

We have broken the most significant changes into feature-based groupings to help with testing prioritization. The Readiness team recommends the following areas for testing for the May Patch Tuesday patch cycle:

Remote Desktop, security, and identification

Test your Remote Desktop Gateway configurations. Establish sessions through the gateway and reconnect a few times to ensure stability.

Validate VPN creation, connection, and deletion. Also test fast reconnection and password change flows with PEAP-MSCHAPv2.

Load system level crypto libraries and validate CheckSignatureInFile behavior using legacy (2011) certificates.

Test secure boot scenarios, especially if running dual-boot with Linux. Ensure all logins work after this month’s updates.

Run PowerShell modules with and without AppLocker policies to confirm policy enforcement integrity.

Media and codecs

Check your subtitles in MKV formats for Blu-ray playback.

Test audio/video recording using both internal and external devices.

Validate DRM-protected content, especially in Microsoft Edge and Office apps. Testing regimes should include a cycle of playback, record, and stream — then check your system logs for crashes or errors.

Storage and filesystems

Perform Windows error log creation, appends, and reopen scenarios using Common Log File System APIs.

Simulate SMB folder access from multiple windows. Changes in one view should reflect in the other.

Validate UNC path access across apps. Run these tests with Microsoft Explorer and line-of-business apps that access network shares or log files.

Installation and application infrastructure

Given the focus of the Readiness team, it would be remiss to forget the changes to Microsoft’s update and application infrastructure with the following tests:

Conduct basic install, repair, roll-back and uninstall tests for MSI Installer packages. This process should be (mostly) automated by now.

If you’re an organization that employs App Silos, you will need create a test cycle that includes invoking the BFS driver via an isolated app context

Run web, file transfer, and messaging scenarios to test network throughput under load.

In addition to these specific test exercises, we highly recommend a full business logic test of your internal and line-of-business applications that have significant graphics requirements. This is required due to the changes to the Windows kernel and GDI (graphic) subsystems).

Readiness recommends your testing in priority in the following order: RDP and remote access, application installations, PowerShell testing, and then storage system testing.

Updates by product family

Each month, we break down the update cycle into product families (as defined by Microsoft) with the following basic groupings:

Browsers (Microsoft IE and Edge)

Microsoft Windows (both desktop and server)

Microsoft Office

Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server

Microsoft Developer Tools (Visual Studio and .NET)

Adobe (if you get this far)

Browsers

Microsoft has not released any native updates for its browsers this month. However, there were five Chromium updates (CVE-2025-4050, CVE-2025-4372, CVE-2025-4096, CVE-2025-4052, and CVE-2025-405) that will update Microsoft Edge. All of these low-profile changes can be added to your standard release calendar.

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft has released three critical updates, plus 41 patches rated as important. The critical updates affect Microsoft’s Remote Desktop platform and the Virtual Machine bus (VMBus).

Unfortunately, the following Windows desktop updates have been reported as exploited in the wild:

CVE-2025-30400

CVE-2025-32701

CVE-2025-32706

CVE-2025-32709

CVE-2025-30397

As a result of these zero-days, the Readiness team recommends a “Patch Now” schedule for these Windows patches.

Microsoft Office

Microsoft has released two critical rated updates (CVE-2025-30377 and CVE-2025-30386) for the Microsoft Office platform this month. Both of these patches were updated mid-week for documentation reasons.

Following these critical patches, Microsoft has released a further 16 patches that have been rated as important; they update Microsoft Office in general (as opposed to Word or Excel). Please add these Microsoft Office updates to your standard release calendar.

Microsoft Exchange Server

No updates for Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft SQL server this month. Good news for all the server teams.

Microsoft development platforms

A single critical update (CVE-2025-29813) to the Microsoft DevOps platform and four patches rated as important by Microsoft have been released to the developer platforms this month. All of the patches rated as important affect Visual Studio and Microsoft .NET. Add these updates to your standard release schedule.

Adobe Reader (if you get this far)

No Adobe updates (published by Microsoft) for this May patch cycle. Given the recent security advances implemented in Windows 11 23H2 and 24H2, I think that we will see much less of Adobe in this column.

Source:: Computer World

By Nick Godt Stellantis is dropping the Dodge Charger Daytona R/T for 2026

Source:: Digital Trends

Meta Platforms (Nasdaq:META) has decided to delay the public release of its most ambitious artificial intelligence model yet — Llama 4 Behemoth. Initially expected to debut at Meta’s first-ever AI developer conference in April, the model’s launch was pushed to June and is now delayed until fall or possibly even later.

Engineers at Meta are grappling with whether Behemoth delivers enough of a leap in performance to justify a public rollout, The Wall Street Journal reported. Internally, the sentiment is split — some feel the improvements over earlier versions are incremental at best.

The delay doesn’t just affect Meta’s timeline. It’s a reminder to the entire AI industry that building the most powerful model isn’t just about parameter count—it’s about usefulness, efficiency, and real-world performance.

Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst and CEO at Greyhound Research, interprets this not as a standalone setback but as “a reflection of a broader shift: from brute-force scaling to controlled, adaptable AI models.”

He said that while Meta has not officially disclosed a reason for the delay, the reported mention of “capacity constraints” points to larger pressures around infrastructure, usability, and practical deployment.

What’s inside Llama 4 Behemoth?

Behemoth was never intended to be just another model in Meta’s Llama family. It’s intended to be the crown jewel of the Llama 4 series, designed as a “teacher model” for training smaller, more nimble versions like Llama Scout and Maverick. Meta had previously touted it as “one of the smartest LLMs in the world.”

Technically, Behemoth is built on a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture, designed to optimize both power and efficiency. It is said to have a total of 2 trillion parameters, with 288 billion active at any given inference — a staggering scale, even by today’s AI standards.

What made Behemoth especially interesting was its use of iRoPE (interleaved Rotary Position Embedding), an architectural choice that allows the model to handle extremely long context windows—up to 10 million tokens. That means it could, in theory, retain far more contextual information during a conversation or data task than most current models can manage.

But theory doesn’t always play out smoothly in practice.

“Meta’s Behemoth delay aligns with a market that is actively shifting from scale-first strategies to deployment-first priorities,” Gogia added. “Controlled Open LLMs and SLMs are central to this reorientation — and to what we believe is the future of trustworthy enterprise AI.”

How Behemoth stacks up against the competition

When Behemoth was first previewed in April, it was positioned as Meta’s answer to the dominance of models like OpenAI’s GPT-4.5, Anthropic’s Claude 3.5/3.7, and Google’s Gemini 1.5/2.5 series.

Each of those models has made strides in different areas. OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo remains strong in reasoning and code generation. Claude 3.5 Sonnet is gaining attention for its efficiency and balance between performance and cost. Gemini Pro 1.5, from Google, excels in multimodal tasks and integration with enterprise tools.

Behemoth, in contrast, showed strong results in STEM benchmarks and long-context tasks but has yet to demonstrate a clear superiority across commercial and enterprise-grade benchmarks. That ambiguity is believed to have contributed to Meta’s hesitation in launching the model publicly.

Gogia noted that the situation “reignites a vital industry dialogue: is bigger still better?” Increasingly, enterprise buyers are leaning toward SLMs (Small Language Models) and Controlled Open LLMs, which offer better governance, easier integration, and clearer ROI compared to gargantuan foundation models that demand complex infrastructure and longer implementation cycles.

A telling sign for the AI industry

This delay speaks volumes about where the AI industry is heading. For much of 2023 and 2024, the narrative was about who could build the largest model. But as model sizes ballooned, the return on added parameters began to flatten out.

AI experts and practitioners now acknowledge that smarter architectural design, domain specificity, and deployment efficiency are fast becoming the new metrics of success. Meta’s experience with smaller models like Scout and Maverick reinforces this trend—many users have found them to be more practical and easier to fine-tune for specific use cases.

There’s also a financial and sustainability angle. Training and running ultra-large models like Behemoth requires immense computing resources, energy, and fine-grained optimization. Even for Meta, this scale introduces operational trade-offs, including cost, latency, and reliability concerns.

Why enterprises should pay attention

For enterprise IT and innovation leaders, the delay isn’t just about Meta—it reflects a more fundamental decision point around AI adoption.

Enterprises are moving away from chasing the biggest models in favor of those that offer tighter control, compliance readiness, and explainability. Gogia pointed out that “usability, governance, and real-world readiness” are becoming central filters in AI procurement, especially in regulated sectors like finance, healthcare, and government.

The delay of Behemoth may accelerate the adoption of open-weight, deployment-friendly models such as Llama 4 Scout, or even third-party solutions that are optimized for enterprise workflows. The choice now isn’t about raw performance alone—it’s about aligning AI capabilities with specific business goals.

What lies ahead

Meta’s delay doesn’t suggest failure — it’s a strategic pause. If anything, it shows the company’s willingness to prioritize stability and impact over hype. Behemoth still has the potential to become a powerful tool, but only if it proves itself in the areas that matter most: performance consistency, scalability, and enterprise integration.

“This doesn’t negate the value of scale, but it elevates a new set of criteria that enterprises now care about deeply,” Gogia stated. In the coming months, as Meta refines Behemoth and the industry moves deeper into deployment-era AI, one thing is clear: we are moving beyond the age of AI spectacle into an age of applied, responsible intelligence.

Source:: Computer World

By Deepti Pathak TikTok is constantly dropping new features that catch people’s attention, but sometimes they can get pretty…
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By Siôn Geschwindt Swiss tech startup Metafuels has unveiled plans to open its first commercial-scale sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) plant in the Port of Rotterdam.  Metafuels’ CEO Saurabh Kapoor told TNW that Turbe represents a “major step forward” toward ramping up SAF production. The startup also announced plans to build a similar facility in Denmark last year. “Europe has ambitious decarbonisation targets, but without scalable and affordable SAF production, aviation will struggle to keep up,” said Kapoor.  The facility, dubbed Turbe, will be built in collaboration with liquid energy storage provider Evos. Turbe will be integrated into Evos’ existing Rotterdam terminal, which offers…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Thomas Macaulay A Russian-born gaming mogul has been named the UK’s richest person under 40 — in a ranking dominated by tech entrepreneurs. Dmitry Bukhman, 39, built his fortune after founding mobile gaming giant Playrix. His estimated wealth of £12.54bn tops The Sunday Times 40 Under 40 Rich List — and makes up over a third of its £36.2bn combined total. His net worth has nearly doubled since last year. As a child in post-Soviet Russia, Bukman taught himself to code. Alongside his older brother Igor, he built his first game with an old Pentium PC given to them by their grandfather.…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Blair Marnell Get ready to spend the weekend on Hulu with Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation and two other great movies!

Source:: Digital Trends

AI agents will fundamentally change the value of content and the way people work with data and files, said Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, during a Wednesday webcast that was part of the company’s Content+AI Virtual Summit.

The traditional approach to managing content is fundamentally changing with AI, Levie said.

Over the last two decades, Box has changed its focus from file storage to extracting value from content in those files. The company provides collaborative tools and integrates popular apps for users to work with those files and data.

Extracting value from the content in stored files will take on new meaning with AI. The amount of unstructured data within files has grown at an exponential pace over the last few decades, but most of the data is underutilized, Levie said.

AI will provide instant answers from unstructured data, fundamentally changing the value of content stored in systems. It will also automate workflows and introduce an AI-first culture, Levie said.

“We have the opportunity to drive an incredible amount of new experiences,” Levie said. “We need a better and modern way to manage information.”

Box has kept up with various stages in AI evolution, with integration of AI models and more recently AI agents. As AI advances, the vendor is allowing its clients to do more advanced data extraction, multi-step reasoning, and more complex task planning.

“We didn’t think about AI as an add-on capability on the side,” but as central to the Box platform, Levie said.

For example, the Box interface has an agent that can answer queries and work with content within specific folders. It provides multimedia responses to queries, linking to videos, charts, and citations within files stored in the system.

The company on Wednesday launched a series of new AI agents that serve different objectives, including a “Search” agent for basic results from files and a “Deep Research” agent that digs deeper into information for more comprehensive answers.

The Deep Research agent works with large volumes of enterprise content in files, summarizes findings, and provides links to relevant files.

Box is also integrating a new AI agent for Microsoft 365 Copilot, allowing users of Word, PowerPoint, and other software to work with data stored in Box systems.

In the coming years, Microsoft plans to integrate thousands of agents from third parties such as Box and Adobe to improve user productivity.

Many of Box’s competitors are also offering their own AI technology, though agent-to-agent integrations between vendors are growing.

Forrester Research has a roadmap for broad adoption of various agent technologies in coming years. It shows helper-style agents like the ones announced by Box taking off gradually in 2026.

Helper-style AI agents will see broad adoption by next year, according to Forrester. More complex agents capable of executive decision-making will take a little longer.
Forrester Research

But as AI agents advance to solving problems and making executive decisions, things will get more complex, said Craig Le Clair, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester.

There’s a huge gap between vendors of AI agents and the actual adoption profile of users and buyers, Le Clair said. “The gap that exists there is astounding,” he said.

Companies are advancing with AI agents, but it’s much more complex when it comes to sophisticated solvers and managing agents, Le Clair said.

“If you’re in a financial institution, you’ve built all these layers of process, control, risk mitigation, and reporting around the technology underneath. And you don’t change that easily, because it takes legal, compliance, meetings, security. It takes longer to change the processes that sit above the technology,” Le Clair said.

Source:: Computer World

Saudi Arabia unveiled a series of blockbuster AI partnerships with US chip makers, cloud infrastructure providers, and software developers this week, signaling its ambition to become a global AI hub.

Leveraging its $940 billion Public Investment Fund (PIF) and strategic location, Saudi Arabia is forming partnerships to create sovereign AI infrastructure including advanced data centers and Arabic large language models. Google, Oracle, and Salesforce are deepening AI and cloud commitments in Saudi Arabia that will support Vision 2030, a 15-year program to diversify the country’s economy.

Within that, the $100 billion Project Transcendence aims to put the kingdom among the top 15 countries in AI by 2030.

The deals announced during this week’s US-Saudi investment summit in Riyadh include a $20 billion commitment from Saudi firm DataVolt for AI data centers and energy infrastructure in the US and an $80 billion joint investment by Google, DataVolt, Oracle, Salesforce, AMD, and Uber in technologies across both nations, according to a White House fact sheet

The Riyadh summit, attended by US President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, drew tech luminaries including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and AMD CEO Lisa Su.

AI factories

Humain, an AI company backed by PIF, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, was at the center of much of the deal-making. Nvidia said it will supply Humain with hundreds of thousands of its most advanced GPUs over the next five years with which the company will build “AI factories” with a capacity of up to 500 megawatts. The first of those will contain 18,000 Grace Blackwell GB300 systems, it said.

AMD announced a five-year, $10 billion collaboration with Humain to deploy up to 500 megawatts of AI compute in Saudi Arabia and the US, aiming to deploy “multi-exaflop capacity by early 2026.”

AWS, too, is expanding its data centers in Saudi Arabia to bolster Humain’s cloud infrastructure.

Saudi Arabia has abundant oil and gas to power those data centers, and is growing its renewable energy resources with the goal of supplying 50% of the country’s power by 2030.

“Commercial electricity rates, nearly 50% lower than in the US, offer potential cost savings for AI model training, though high local hosting costs due to land, talent, and infrastructure limit total savings,” said Eric Samuel, Associate Director at IDC.

Located near Middle Eastern population centers and fiber optic cables to Asia, these data centers will offer enterprises low-latency cloud computing for real-time AI applications.

Late is great

There’s an advantage to being a relative latecomer to the technology industry, said Eric Samuel, associate director, research at IDC. “Saudi Arabia’s greenfield tech landscape offers a unique opportunity for rapid, ground-up AI integration, unburdened by legacy systems,” he said.

Arun Chandrasekaran, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner, said the investments signify Saudi Arabia’s “ambition to become a central hub for AI development, rivaling established tech centers in the US and China.”

Other analysts weighed in on Saudi Arabia’s goals. Neil Shah, vice president research at Counterpoint Research, said the push could make it the next “oil hub” for AI, serving both local and global needs, while Amandeep Singh, practice director at QKS Group, said, “This isn’t just about money. It’s a strategic play to become a long-term AI power and a neutral meeting point for global AI.”

Despite the vast political and financial resources in play, though, the analysts forecast challenges ahead when it comes to attracting top talent, reducing reliance on Western chips, and building data governance trust.

While Saudi Arabia is a lucrative new market for companies such as Nvidia and AWS, “They must navigate questions of control and compliance,” said QKS Group’s Singh. Aligning with Saudi Arabia’s push for digital sovereignty requires a delicate balance between Western regulations, export restrictions, and the Kingdom’s drive for independence.

Political risks

IDC’s Samuel noted that initiatives like Humain can foster trust and alignment with national priorities, but added, “With the right oversight and governance, political risks can be managed and long-term AI development secured.”

Building a real AI power bloc in the Middle East is still a tough climb, the analysts said.

“Saudi Arabia’s ambition needs more than just cash to turn into real influence in the region,” said Singh. “They need shared tech foundations, common AI standards across countries, and everyone to agree on policies — and we’re not quite there yet.”

Making strong partnerships with other companies and countries will be key for Saudi Arabia to turn its big investments into lasting global influence, the analysts said, making sure its AI plans become more than just a showpiece.

Turning Saudi Arabia’s AI ambition into real regional power won’t be easy. “Money alone won’t get you there — you need shared foundations, aligned policies, and buy-in from the neighborhood,” said Singh.

Source:: Computer World

By Nick Godt Archer Aviation was named the exclusive air taxi provider for LA28.

Source:: Digital Trends

Microsoft faces more legal action in the UK, this time from a barrister named Alexander Wolfson who issued an opt-out class action claim this week alleging that public or private organizations in the UK that purchased certain software licenses (including for Microsoft Office and Windows) since October 1, 2015, were overcharged due to Microsoft’s market practices.

Wolfson, who retained the services of Stewarts LLP, a litigation-only law firm, said in a release issued on Wednesday, “Microsoft’s actions have had a significant and far-reaching impact on UK consumers, businesses, and public bodies.”

This claim, he said, “seeks to hold Microsoft to account and to secure compensation for the many affected members of the class. With billions of pounds potentially at stake, this case is about ensuring fairness in the digital marketplace and ensuring even the largest tech companies play by the rules.”

“Microsoft’s conduct has had a profound and costly impact on millions of individuals and private and public sector organizations that rely on its software for daily business operations,” said Kate Pollock, the head of competition litigation at Stewarts. “We believe that Microsoft abused its market dominance by imposing restrictive licensing practices that effectively shut down competition and inflated prices.”

Highlights an industry-wide issue

An FAQ created by the plaintiff explained the format of the suit: “Opt-out collective proceedings are a special form of court proceedings that enable a class representative to bring a claim on behalf of a defined class of persons in the UK affected by an infringement of competition law,” it said. “This means that if your organization fits within the class definition you will automatically be included in the claim and will be bound by any judgment or settlement unless you choose to opt-out of the proceedings.”

Ellora MacPherson, managing director and chief investment officer at Harbour, which has agreed to fund the case, described the suit as “likely to be one of the largest the UK has seen and is an example of how big corporate entities can be held to account.”

Forrester Senior Analyst Dario Maisto pointed out Wednesday via email, “this is not the first time that Microsoft gets attention for allegedly unfair commercial practices. Microsoft was also sued in the UK in 2024 over allegations that it overcharged Windows Server customers to use the software on competing cloud platforms.”

He added, “the Cloud Infrastructure Providers in Europe organization (CISPE) took a similar action on Microsoft’s licensing practices when its cloud computing competitors filed a complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission.”

According to Maisto, “while it is totally understandable why law firms and competitors keep engaging in such lawsuits against Microsoft, we should finally admit that these are all symptoms of a bigger issue, that is, people and organizations’ extreme [dependence] on third-party proprietary solutions and a fundamental lack of alternative standards.”

This is, he said, the problem that we as an IT industry need to solve, as we cannot keep relying on specific lawsuits to address — one at a time — all the problems of what we could start to define now as a much broader market disfunction.” 

Computerworld reached out to Microsoft for a comment but at press time had not received a response.

Source:: Computer World