NerdNews

The future of AI is not about having the best models, but about owning the infrastructure that AI must flow through. Five archetypes of businesses will dominate the AI era: knowledge compounders, workflow commons, reality's gatekeepers, marketplaces, and vertical transformers. These companies will build competitive advantages by controlling organized data, workflows, regulatory compliance, and market access.

Amazon bought Bee, an AI wearable device that can be worn as a clip-on pin or bracelet, to extend its reach outside the home. Bee learns from users and provides personalized insights, and Amazon plans to integrate it with Alexa in the future.

Meta is launching its own AI infrastructure initiative, Meta Compute, to expand its energy footprint and build out capacity for its AI business. The initiative will be led by executives Santosh Janardhan, Daniel Gross, and Dina Powell McCormick, and aims to drastically expand Meta's energy footprint in the coming years.

Apple has chosen Google's Gemini to power its AI features, including Siri. The multi-year partnership will involve Apple using Google's Gemini models and cloud technology for future Apple foundational models. The deal is not exclusive and Apple will maintain its privacy standards throughout the partnership.

Google introduces Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) for agentic AI commerce, allowing users to shop without leaving Google's ecosystem. Major retailers like Shopify, Target, and Walmart support the protocol.

Nvidia and Eli Lilly are investing up to $1 billion in a research lab to advance AI-assisted drug discovery using Nvidia's BioNeMo software platform and Vera Rubin accelerators. The lab will focus on creating foundation models for biology and chemistry, and will also explore applications for AI in clinical development, manufacturing, and commercial operations.

A recent survey by the World Economic Forum found that 64% of business leaders assess AI tools' security risks before deploying them, a significant increase from 37% last year. The survey also found that nearly all respondents believe AI will be the most significant driver of cybersecurity change in 2026, and 87% think associated vulnerabilities have increased.

Google has announced plans to turn Gemini into a merchant and launched an open-source standard called the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) to streamline AI-powered shopping. The UCP is designed to facilitate communication between AI agents and retailers' systems, enabling features like direct checkout and post-purchase support. This move aims to dominate the AI-powered shopping ecosystem, with Google partnering with major retailers like Shopify, Walmart, and Target.

Anthropic launches Cowork, a feature that brings Claude Code's capabilities to general office work. Users can give Claude access to a folder and provide plain language instructions for tasks like filling out expense reports or writing reports. Cowork is currently available as a research preview to Max subscribers.

Spec Driven Development (SDD) is a new architectural paradigm where specifications become the executable backbone of a system. It elevates abstraction to the system level, allowing engineers to define intent declaratively, and platforms to materialize execution through generation and validation. SDD provides architectural determinism, reduced systemic drift, and multi-language parity, but introduces new complexity surfaces and a significant cognitive shift for engineers.

Anthropic's Cowork tool allows users to designate a folder for Claude to read or modify files, with instructions given through a chat interface, making it more accessible to non-technical users. The tool is built on the Claude Agent SDK and is currently in research preview, available to Max subscribers.

Ofcom is investigating X due to reports of its AI chatbot Grok generating sexualized images without user consent. The UK government has expressed support for a robust regulatory response, with potential penalties including fines of up to £18 million or 10% of worldwide revenue.

Google released Gemma Scope 2, a suite of tools to interpret the behavior of Gemini 3 models, enabling researchers to analyze emergent model behaviors and devise mitigation strategies against security issues.

Cloudflare has implemented Infrastructure as Code with automated policy enforcement, eliminating manual configuration errors and catching security violations before deployment. The company uses Terraform, Atlantis, and GitLab to manage production account configurations, with a custom Go program and Open Policy Agent framework for policy enforcement.

Anthropic is bringing its AI platform Claude to the healthcare industry with HIPAA-ready enterprise tools, allowing healthcare providers to automate tasks such as billing and prior authorization, and improving revenue cycle and compliance.

Meta is reportedly cutting about 1,500 jobs in its Reality Labs division, which focuses on virtual and augmented reality, as the company shifts its priorities to artificial intelligence. The move is part of a larger effort by Meta to become a leader in AI, with plans to build out its data center capacity and invest in AI infrastructure.

Microsoft has abruptly retired the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT), a set of free tools for deploying Windows operating systems and applications. The company recommends alternatives such as Windows Autopilot or Configuration Manager Operating System Deployment (OSD). The retirement of MDT was announced with immediate notice, meaning no further fixes, support, updates, security patches, or enhancements will be provided.

Meta's Reality Labs team is expected to lose around 10% of its staff, with layoffs concentrated on the division's metaverse employees. The layoffs are apparently a side effect of Meta's AI ambitions, which are pulling focus away from its virtual reality division.

Microsoft has shared a progress update on TypeScript 7, revealing a fundamental transformation of the TypeScript compiler with a native implementation in Go, promising performance improvements of up to 10x faster build times and significantly reduced memory usage. The update also enables strictness by default, representing a breaking change from previous versions.

India's government has updated regulations for cryptocurrency services, requiring them to register, implement strict client due diligence, and collect customer identity documents, bank account details, and selfies to prove they are real. The regulations also require constant transaction monitoring and reporting of suspicious transactions.