Author: GT

The next frontier for edge AI medical devices isn’t wearables or bedside monitors—it’s inside the human body itself. Cochlear’s newly launched Nucleus Nexa System represents the first cochlear implant capable of running machine learning algorithms while managing extreme power constraints, storing personalised data on-device, and receiving over-the-air firmware updates to improve its AI models over time.For AI practitioners, the technical challenge is staggering: build a decision-tree model that classifies five distinct auditory environments in real time, optimise it to run on a device with a minimal power budget that must last decades, and do it all while directly interfacing with human neural tissue.Decision trees meet…

The latest MCP spec update fortifies enterprise infrastructure with tighter security, moving AI agents from pilot to production.Marking its first year, the Anthropic-created open-source project released a revised spec this week aimed at the operational headaches keeping generative AI agents stuck in pilot mode. Backed by Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, and Google Cloud, the update adds support for long-running workflows and tighter security controls.The market is drifting away from fragile, bespoke integrations. For enterprises, this is a chance to deploy agentic AI that can read and write to corporate data stores without incurring massive technical debt.MCP advances from ‘developer…

Indonesia’s push into AI-led growth is gaining momentum as more local organisations look for ways to build their own applications, update their systems, and strengthen data oversight. The country now has broader access to cloud and AI tools after Microsoft expanded the services available in the Indonesia Central cloud region, which first went live six months ago. The expansion gives businesses, public bodies, and developers more options to run AI workloads inside the country instead of overseas data centres.The update was shared at the Cloud & AI Innovation Summit in Jakarta, where business and government leaders met to discuss how…

Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty ImagesWhen ChatGPT launched in 2022, Google was caught flatfooted, but the launch of Gemini 3 and the Ironwood AI chip this month has experts raving about Alphabet’s AI comeback. Google kicked off November by unveiling Ironwood, the seventh generation of its tensor processing units, or TPUs, that the company says lets customers “run and scale the largest, most data-intensive models in existence.” And last week, Google launched Gemini 3, its latest artificial intelligence model, saying it requires “less prompting” and provides smarter answers than its predecessors. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff captured the excitement around…

On Wednesday evening at PlayGround Global in Palo Alto, some very smart people who are building things you don’t understand yet will explain what’s coming. This is the final StrictlyVC event of 2025, and truly, the lineup is ridiculous. The series has traveled around the globe under the auspices of TechCrunch. Steve Case rented a theater in D.C.; we talked to Greece’s prime minister in Athens; and Kirsten Green hosted us at the Presidio in San Francisco. The concept is always the same, though: bring together people who are working on genuinely important developments in a smaller setting, before everyone…

Alibaba announced plans to release a pair of smart glasses powered by its AI models. The Quark AI Glasses are Alibaba’s first foray into the smart glasses product category.AlibabaAlibaba’s artificial intelligence-powered smart glasses went on sale on Thursday as the Chinese tech giant looks to ramp up its focus on consumer AI in an increasingly competitive market. The Quark AI Glasses, first announced in July, come in two variants — the S1, which starts at 3,799 Chinese yuan ($536) and G1 at 1,899 yuan.The tech giant has integrated its Qwen AI models — Alibaba’s version of ChatGPT — with the…

The tech layoff wave is still kicking in 2025. Last year saw more than 150,000 job cuts across 549 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. So far this year, more than 22,000 workers have been the victim of reductions across the tech industry, with a staggering 16,084 cuts taking place in February alone. We’re tracking layoffs in the tech industry in 2025 so you can see the trajectory of the cutbacks and understand the impact on innovation across all types of companies. As businesses continue to embrace AI and automation, this tracker serves as a reminder of the human…

Europe, with its fragmented markets, is often said to be operating in the shadow of the U.S. and China when it comes to scaling AI. But the very factors that challenge its growth as a major player may yet give it an edge when it comes to future-proofing the critical warehouses that power the AI boom.The world is racing to double, if not triple, the entire data center capacity that has been built over the last forty years, Pankaj Sachdeva told CNBC, McKinsey senior partner in technology, with McKinsey estimating that build-out will cost up to $7 trillion by 2030. He expects the U.S. to account for the lion’s…

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership with Apple for its generative AI offering, Apple Intelligence, the release of GPT-4o with voice capabilities, and the highly-anticipated launch of its text-to-video model Sora. OpenAI also faced its share of internal drama, including the notable exits of high-level execs like co-founder and longtime chief…

Fresh off a $350 million raise, battery recycler and cathode-maker Redwood Materials is reportedly cutting around 5% of its workforce, according to Bloomberg News. Nevada-based Redwood employees around 1,200 employees, so the cuts affect a few dozen workers. The company, founded in 2017 by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel, initially focused on recycling scrap from battery cell production, consumer electronics, and used EV batteries. The company extracts materials like cobalt, nickel, and lithium from those discarded goods and then sells them back to its customers, which include Panasonic. Redwood has since added cathode production. It recently launched a new business…