Software Engineering & Open-Source

Jeff Bezos Launches ‘Project Prometheus’ AI Startup for Manufacturing Four years after stepping down as Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos is reportedly co-CEO of a new AI startup, Project Prometheus. The company will focus on developing artificial intelligence for engineering and manufacturing sectors and has allegedly secured a massive $6.2 billion in funding. Bezos will share the CEO role with tech executive Vik Bajaj. This new venture enters a highly competitive AI market, where substantial venture capital investments are being made in companies like OpenAI, raising questions about the long-term financial sustainability of the industry. ...

Bipartisan AI Task Force Formed to Address AI Risks and Innovation A bipartisan group of state attorneys general has established a new Artificial Intelligence Task Force to navigate the complexities of AI development. Chaired by North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson and Utah Attorney General Derek Brown, the initiative includes key partnerships with OpenAI and Microsoft. The task force’s core mission is to stay informed on AI advancements, protect the public—especially children—from potential AI-related harms, and develop foundational industry safeguards. This initiative aims to provide crucial consumer protection and a forum for coordination in the absence of comprehensive federal AI legislation. ...

SAP Boosts Enterprise AI with New Tools and Global Skills Initiative SAP has unveiled a suite of AI-powered enhancements for its SAP Build solution, featuring new data integration capabilities and intelligent automation via Joule Agents. These updates aim to accelerate developer workflows and transform how businesses leverage data and AI. Addressing the global demand for AI talent, SAP has also committed to upskilling 12 million people by 2030 through expanded training programs with partners like Coursera. The company introduced its first relational foundation model, SAP-RPT-1, designed for predicting business outcomes. Furthermore, SAP is expanding its Business Data Cloud ecosystem through a new partnership with Snowflake, enhancing existing integrations with Databricks and Google Cloud. ...

Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning New Open-Source Omni-Modal AI Model ‘LongCat-Flash-Omni’ Released A new state-of-the-art, open-source omni-modal AI model, LongCat-Flash-Omni, has been released. Featuring an impressive 560 billion parameters, this model marks a significant leap forward in the capabilities of open-source artificial intelligence. Its release is a major event for the AI community, equipping researchers and developers with powerful new tools for a diverse range of applications. Robotics & Autonomous Vehicles IIT Bombay Develops GPS-Free Control System for Autonomous Drone Swarms Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay have developed a groundbreaking control system enabling unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to fly in coordinated swarms without GPS, inter-drone communication, or a central controller. This innovative method relies on ‘bearing-only’ measurements, where each drone uses its onboard camera to observe neighbors and maintain formation based on relative positions. ...

Keenon Robotics Deploys Humanoid Service Robot in World-First Smart Hotel Scenario Keenon Robotics has deployed its humanoid service robot, the XMAN-R1, at the Shangri-La Traders Hotel at Shanghai Hongqiao Airport. This deployment establishes what is being called the world’s first smart scenario model demonstrating collaborative operations between general-purpose and special-purpose robots. The XMAN-R1 will serve as a greeter, using natural language and anthropomorphic actions to interact with guests. Meanwhile, other specialized Keenon robots will handle tasks like in-room deliveries, luggage transport, cleaning, and food delivery. This initiative is part of Keenon’s broader strategy to integrate its embodied robot solutions into various industries, with over 100,000 units already deployed in more than 60 countries. ...

Breakthrough in AI: Fine-Tuning LLMs with Less Data and Power Researchers at the University of California San Diego have pioneered a new method for fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) that requires significantly less data and computing power. This innovative technique avoids retraining a model’s entire parameter set, instead selectively updating only the most critical components. This approach dramatically reduces costs and minimizes the risk of overfitting. In tests on protein language models, the method achieved high accuracy with limited training data, proving to be 326 times more parameter-efficient than traditional fine-tuning. This breakthrough is poised to democratize AI, enabling smaller organizations with limited resources to customize powerful AI models for specialized applications. The findings were published in Transactions on Machine Learning Research. ...

Breakthrough in Soft Robotics: Shapeshifting Robot Moves Using Electric Fields In a significant advancement for soft robotics, researchers from the University of Bristol and Queen Mary University of London have created a highly agile, shapeshifting soft robot. According to a study in Advanced Materials, the innovation lies in an electro-morphing gel (e-MG) that enables the robot to bend, stretch, and perform complex movements by manipulating electric fields. This new material allows the jelly-like humanoid gymnast to swing its body and limbs to move from one location to another. ...

Infineon Launches Advanced Power Protection for AI Data Centers Infineon Technologies AG has introduced a new line of power path protection solutions engineered for the increasing demands of AI data center infrastructures. The new products include a family of 48-volt smart eFuses and a reference board for hot-swap controllers for 400V and 800V power architectures. These components are designed to improve the reliability, scalability, and monitoring of energy flow in high-performance computing environments. The company stated that these solutions aim to maximize server uptime, reduce operational costs, and extend the lifespan of critical equipment in AI data centers. ...

S&P Global and IBM Launch Agentic AI to Revolutionize Supply Chains S&P Global and IBM have announced a partnership to integrate IBM’s watsonx Orchestrate agentic AI framework into S&P Global’s offerings, starting with supply chain management. This collaboration aims to provide businesses with AI-powered tools to address global supply chain challenges by enhancing visibility and insights into vendor selection. S&P Global will develop new AI agents for IBM’s watsonx Orchestrate Agent Catalog, utilizing its proprietary data and analytics to help accelerate decision-making. The partnership is a key part of S&P Global’s strategy to use trusted AI agents to transform its enterprise services. Beyond the initial supply chain focus, S&P Global intends to integrate IBM’s AI technology into other risk intelligence services. ...

Google Unveils CodeMender AI to Automatically Fix Software Vulnerabilities Google DeepMind has introduced CodeMender, a groundbreaking AI agent designed to automatically detect, patch, and rewrite vulnerable code to thwart security exploits. This powerful cybersecurity tool operates both reactively, addressing new threats as they emerge, and proactively, hardening existing codebases to eradicate entire classes of vulnerabilities. Powered by Google’s advanced Gemini AI models, CodeMender can debug, identify, and resolve security flaws by targeting their root cause and validating patches to prevent regressions. Alongside this launch, Google has initiated an AI Vulnerability Reward Program to incentivize the discovery of AI-related issues in its products, reinforcing its commitment to AI-driven security. ...