Tech workers, once resistant to unions, are increasingly organizing due to AI-driven layoffs, increased workloads, and ethical concerns over AI deployment. Drives at Google DeepMind, Meta UK, and University of California highlight a shift in power dynamics and a demand for worker voice.
Madhu Gurumurthy, formerly Google's head of product for Gemini, has joined Meta to build AI products. Gurumurthy announced his departure from Google in May, highlighting his role in developing AI businesses. He expressed excitement about Meta's potential to advance AI agents.
Salesforce, which owns Slack, is promoting Anthropic's Claude Tag AI agent within Slack, causing confusion among its employees. This rival product competes with Salesforce's own AI offerings, Slackbot and Agentforce, despite Salesforce investing heavily in both and paying Anthropic millions.
Meta's AI glasses now disable the camera if the recording LED is tampered with, a response to privacy concerns. Despite this, Meta continues to push features that collect user data for AI training, facing ongoing lawsuits and investigations over privacy violations.
Popular TV tracking app TV Time will cease operations on July 15, 2026. The company cited the expense of running the free platform and a lack of demand for a paid version as reasons, but a strategic shift towards AI by its owner, Whip Media, is the primary driver.
Hong Kong's exports surged by 40.8% year-on-year in May, reaching HK$611.2 billion, marking the second consecutive month of over 40% growth. This robust expansion is primarily attributed to strong global demand for AI-related electronic products, despite a trade deficit of HK$44.2 billion.
TechCrunch and VivaTech 2026 are collaborating to spotlight emerging startups and enterprise AI innovations. The partnership aims to showcase European companies focusing on industrial AI applications, moving beyond consumer-facing models to address complex integration and deployment challenges.
Microsoft faces challenges in maintaining its lead in AI and developer tools, with issues like GitHub downtimes, disappointing uptake of Copilot, and competitors like Anthropic's Claude Code gaining ground. Scott Hanselman discusses the company's efforts to adapt, including the adoption of OpenClaw for its Scout product.
GitLab is laying off 350 employees (14% of workforce) and exiting 22 countries to focus on the AI-driven 'agentic era'. The company reported strong Q1 results, beating Wall Street estimates, and plans to reinvest savings into R&D, particularly its Duo Agent Platform.
USEN & U-NEXT GROUP's USEN announced two new AI products for restaurants on May 22: "USEN AI Tencho" for management analysis and "Drink Level Detection Service" using AI sensor cameras.
Intuit is laying off 3,000 employees (17% of its workforce) to simplify its structure and focus resources on integrating AI into its products, despite recent revenue and profit growth.
Alibaba Group projects AI-driven annualised recurring revenue to hit $4.42 billion by year-end, with AI products expected to generate over 50% of cloud-computing revenue within a year, driven by triple-digit growth in AI-related products for the 11th consecutive quarter.
A Chinese court has ordered a tech company to pay 260,000 yuan (£28,000) to an employee who was fired after being replaced by AI, highlighting China's balancing act between AI adoption and job security amid high youth unemployment.
Chloe Wang, a 26-year-old fund employee in Shenzhen, said she “definitely wouldn’t” pay for a subscription to Doubao, Chinese tech giant ByteDance’s artificial intelligence chatbot, at its proposed price. “I’m willing to pay for AI tools, but I don’t think it’s worth that much – even though I find Doubao relatively easy to use among domestic AI products,” said Wang, who uses the app occasionally for work-related queries. “If I had to pay for an AI tool as a productivity aid, I’d probably rather...
Microsoft, Google DeepMind and xAI products to be vetted for cybersecurity, biosecurity and chemical weapons risksThe US government has struck deals with Google DeepMind, Microsoft and xAI to review early versions of their new AI models before they are released to the public.The Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI), part of the US Department of Commerce, announced the agreements on Tuesday, saying the review process would be key to understanding the capabilities of new and powerful AI models as well as to protecting US national security. These collaborations will help the federal government “scale (its) work in the public interest at a critical moment”, the agency said in a press release. Continue reading...
DeepSeek has reduced prices for its AI models by up to 97%, making V4-Pro cost US$0.0036 per million input tokens versus OpenAI's GPT-5.5 at US$0.5, potentially triggering a price war in the competitive AI market. The cuts for API users are effective immediately and permanent.
OpenAI outlines a five-pillar strategy for Q2 to dominate enterprise AI, focusing on model performance, agent platforms, AWS integration, full-stack adoption, and deployment services while addressing competition from Anthropic.
