Apple and Ford will build Apple Maps directly into cars on Ford's new universal electric vehicle platform, arriving in 2027. CarPlay carries on separately.

By Oliver Grant

Image: Alexander Migl / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

It is called Noestra and it gathers 44 Japanese companies around physical AI and robotics. Japan lost the race for large language models and picked a different one.

Japan looked at the race to build the biggest language models, saw the United States and China miles down the road, and did the thing it does best: it changed lanes. Forty-four Japanese companies have formed a sovereign AI consortium called Noestra, aimed squarely at physical AI and robotics. It is artificial intelligence that does not just live behind a screen. These are systems that sense their surroundings, make decisions and then move something in the…

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AMD's new EPYC Venice arrives with up to 256 cores, the Zen 6 architecture and TSMC's 2-nanometre process. What that means for data centres and for the race with Intel and Nvidia.

Two hundred and fifty-six cores. In one processor. That is the number AMD carried onto the Advancing AI stage in San Francisco, and it is the kind of number that only makes sense once you know where it is going: inside servers that spend all day training and serving artificial intelligence models. It is AMD's next generation of server processors, built on the Zen 6 architecture and manufactured on TSMC's 2-nanometre process. The top part reaches 256 cores…

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The first major penalty under the Digital Markets Act. Brussels says Google favoured its own services in search and blocked cheaper options in the Play Store.

The European Commission has fined Google 890 million euros for breaching the Digital Markets Act. It is the first major penalty issued under that law, and in cash terms it tops everything Brussels had previously levied on Apple and Meta combined. Two things, and the fine splits between them. The larger share, 460 million, concerns search: the Commission found Google was favouring its own services in results, pushing in-house comparison, hotel and flight…

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Apple launches Apple Upgrade on 28 July, a Klarna-backed program to lease iPhones, iPads, Macs and Apple Watches in monthly payments, with the option to keep or swap the device.

Buying a new iPhone keeps getting more expensive, so Apple is changing tack: instead of asking for the full price up front, it wants to lease you the phone. On 28 July it launches Apple Upgrade, a program built with Swedish fintech Klarna that turns the price of a device into a monthly payment. The idea is simple and familiar from cars: you pay a monthly fee for a fixed term and, at the end, you decide what to do. iPhones and Apple Watches can be leased…

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The government wants to copy the Sines playbook and open new industrial zones to pull data centres and AI infrastructure nationwide. Where they'll go and what they bring.

Portugal has decided its data centres shouldn't all cluster around Lisbon. The government wants to scatter these giant server halls across several regions — and it's literally preparing the ground for them. The plan is to bottle whatever worked in Sines and carry it inland. The idea is to build six new business reception areas, medium to large, with Minister for Territorial Cohesion Manuel Castro Almeida talking about plots of three to eight square…

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OpenAI has unveiled Presence, a platform for companies to build and manage AI voice and chat agents; it already runs OpenAI's own phone support and resolves 75% of cases with no human help.

After years of selling access to its models, OpenAI now wants to hand companies the worker ready-assembled. It's called Presence, and it's the latest move from the maker of ChatGPT: a platform for putting artificial-intelligence agents to work handling customers — on the phone and in the chat window. It's a platform for companies to build, govern and improve voice and text agents. Each agent is scoped to a specific task — customer support, sales, internal…

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YouTube has changed its monetisation rules to curb repetitive AI-generated content — so-called AI slop. Here's what changes for people who make videos.

YouTube has decided to put the brakes on the flood of mass-produced AI videos. The platform updated its monetisation rules to curb the spread of so-called AI slop — that repetitive, near-effortless content churned out purely to feed the algorithm and hoover up clicks. The message is clear: AI, fine; junk factory, no. It's the name for AI-generated content made in bulk and at low quality — synthetic voices reading articles, images assembled on a production…

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The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra headlined Samsung's London Unpacked, alongside a new wider Fold, the Z Flip 8 and a fresh watch. What changed and when it reaches Portugal.

The wait is over. After weeks of leaks, Samsung took the stage in London on Wednesday and showed off the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra — the flagship that succeeds last year's Fold, now thinner, with a triple camera and a silicon-carbon battery that promises to last longer without bulking up the phone. The night's real surprise sat right beside it. Samsung also revealed a "regular" Galaxy Z Fold 8 with a brand-new shape: a 7.6-inch inner screen in a 4:3 ratio,…

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Microsoft and Mistral have expanded their partnership with a multibillion-euro deal to grow AI compute in Europe, powered by thousands of Nvidia Vera Rubin GPUs.

Europe took another step this week toward weaning itself off the American cloud — and, ironically, with American money footing the bill. On 21 July, Microsoft and France's Mistral announced an expanded partnership underpinned by a multibillion-euro agreement to grow artificial-intelligence infrastructure on European soil. Here's how it fits together: Mistral will add compute capacity in Europe, drawing on thousands of the latest Nvidia Vera Rubin GPUs,…

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China's Moonshot AI paused new Kimi K3 subscriptions days after launch as demand maxed out its GPU capacity. It reopens in batches and promises the full model weights by 27 July.

There are good problems to have, and Moonshot AI is living one: Kimi K3 drew so much demand that the Chinese company had to shut the door on new customers. It launched the model on 16 July and, three days later, there were no spots left — paid subscription cards simply showed as sold out. The reason isn't a lack of interest, it's the opposite. Demand pushed Moonshot right up against its GPU limits, the chips that make AI run. Anyone already subscribed…

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Google is developing Frozen v2, a chip that etches part of Gemini into silicon and could serve 6 to 10 times more tokens per unit of power than its latest TPUs.

Google is designing a chip with a single purpose in life: run Gemini faster on far less power. It is called Frozen v2, and the idea is bold — instead of a general-purpose processor, part of the model's architecture gets permanently etched into the silicon, cutting the calculations and data shuffling behind every answer. The report alone was enough to send Alphabet shares up around 3% on Monday. It is a server chip built exclusively to serve Gemini models,…

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Databricks signed a Coatue-led funding deal valuing the data and AI company at $188 billion, up from $134 billion in February's Series L.

Databricks has signed a term sheet for a new funding round valuing the company at $188 billion — a $54 billion jump from February, when it closed a $5 billion Series L at $134 billion. Five months, roughly 40% added, and the data-and-AI company still is not listed on any exchange. The round is led by Coatue, already an investor, with new and existing backers joining, and is expected to close later this summer — the announcement is on Databricks' official…

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The European Commission fined AliExpress 550 million euros, the biggest Digital Services Act penalty yet, for failing to detect and remove illegal and counterfeit products.

The European Commission fined AliExpress 550 million euros on Monday — the biggest penalty ever issued under the EU's Digital Services Act. Brussels' conclusion, after a 28-month investigation, is blunt: the Alibaba-owned marketplace systematically failed to detect and remove illegal, unsafe and counterfeit products sold to European consumers. Because, according to the investigation, unsafe toys, dangerous cosmetics and counterfeit goods stayed on sale…

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The Pentagon is accelerating AI across military systems, including weapons able to pick their own targets. In Congress, some senators are trying to slow it down.

For years, the unwritten rule of American defence was simple: the machine assists, the human decides. That line is getting fainter. The US administration is pushing the armed forces to speed up the adoption of artificial intelligence — including, according to the American press, in weapons systems with the autonomy to pick and attack targets on their own, the step that was always treated as taboo. The budget request for 2026 includes 13.4 billion dollars…

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