From the archive
Follow the latest AI news and artificial intelligence developments across models, agents, robotics, research and the wider industry. Explore new AI tools, advances in computing, business moves, safety and policy, with clear reporting and useful sources. Read the stories, catch up with News in Brief and join the conversation.
Lead story
Physical AI is attracting a surge of investment as AI moves from screens into robots, drones and industrial machines. Investor Anton Alikov argues that the opportunity comes with a less fashionable constraint: hardware, testing and factory integration move at the speed of the physical world, not a software…
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Behavox has committed $8 million to secure dedicated GPU capacity from UK cloud provider Civo, for processing regulated customers’ data in the UK. The deal gives financial institutions another option for keeping sensitive data within the country while running AI models, though it is not evidence of a…
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AI coding tools are making some businesses reconsider whether to buy software or build a tailored alternative. A Forbes article reports that 32% of organisations in a McKinsey survey had passed on at least one software product or feature because they could build it in-house with agentic coding…
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Claude Opus 5.5 leads Lilt’s multilingual coding benchmark, with the company reporting a small score gain over Opus 5 and lower task costs. The results suggest language coverage and the number of steps an agent takes can matter as much as the model’s headline price.
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AI can make it easier to send institutions more material than they can assess. New Scientist argues that this pressure is reviving an old, awkward question: when does gatekeeping protect quality, and when does it become exclusion?
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AI agents are moving beyond screens towards factories, power grids and other physical systems, argues Archetype AI co-founder Brandon Barbello. His case is that models able to interpret sensor data could help operators spot equipment problems before production stops, where a digital mistake can be corrected but a…
Astera Labs Watch
Astera Labs has announced a broad PCIe 7 signal-conditioning portfolio for AI infrastructure, spanning copper and optical connections. Its central pitch is flexibility: customers can choose the link technology to suit the reach, power and density they need, with the product family expected to begin sampling to selected…
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AI agents are forcing companies to look beyond documented workflows and examine the judgement employees use when a process reaches an exception. Masa Maruyama, chief executive of Saison Technology International, argues that deciding what an agent should do means deciding which unwritten practices are worth keeping.
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Riskified has launched a service to help merchants assess the people and behaviour behind AI shopping agents, with a limited beta planned for December. The move brings fraud checks into the emerging world of assistants that can place orders and request refunds for customers.
Microsoft AI Watch
Microsoft’s Agent Framework 1.21 adds full-buffer Purview policy evaluation for streamed responses, alongside new agent guidance and connectors. For developers, it is a practical set of changes to how agents handle tools, data and streamed output, rather than a new model announcement.
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Industrial AI may depend less on a cleverer model than on what technicians already know about their machines. MaintainX chief executive Chris Turlica argues that firms should start by making front-line maintenance knowledge usable, with practical steps for doing so.
Meta AI Watch
Meta plans to bring its Muse AI assistant into a small, character-shaped wearable called Muse Charm, due for release in December in the US, Esquire reports. The device’s cute design may make an AI agent feel less like software and more like a companion, just as it is…
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Every co-founder Dan Shipper and head of platform Willie Williams say the company’s workplace AI experiments favoured a shared agent over personal assistants that each employee had to maintain. Their account, drawn from a conversation on the Every podcast, offers a useful counterweight to the idea that every…
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Abu Dhabi has launched AiNative, a programme aiming to train 20,000 government employees in AI by the end of 2026. The practical point is that the training is being tailored to people’s jobs, with guidance on what government information may be entered into AI systems.
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Godel Technologies has launched Godel Factory, a Claude-powered engineering service that it says will run inside customers’ own technology environments. The pitch is to use AI agents for repeatable engineering work while people retain approval over architecture, security and production changes.
TSMC Watch
TSMC has agreed a five-year, $2bn manufacturing deal with GlobalFoundries for silicon interposers used in its CoWoS advanced-packaging ecosystem. The planned Malta, New York production would give TSMC a US-based source for a component increasingly important to AI and high-performance computing chips.
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Ten major AI developers have changed, or promised to change, how they handle personal data after scrutiny by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The regulator is also examining whether autonomous AI agents can follow the rules when they act with less human supervision.
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Mark Zuckerberg helped shape a voluntary AI safety accord signed by technology executives at the White House, CNN reports. The episode puts a practical question at the centre of AI policy: who gets to write the rules when the rules are voluntary?
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Robots can now use vision-language-action models to handle tasks such as packing a lunchbox, but they are still likely to fail at jobs beyond their training examples. MIT Technology Review’s account explains why progress in robot AI is real, while claims of near-term general-purpose humanoids remain a much…
