NerdNews

OpenAI and Microsoft's partnership is reportedly on shaky ground, with OpenAI considering a 'nuclear option' that involves accusing Microsoft of anti-competitive practices. The two companies have a unique relationship, with Microsoft providing cloud computing infrastructure for OpenAI's tools and earning a percentage of OpenAI's profits. OpenAI is seeking to become a for-profit company, but Microsoft is resistant to some of its goals, leading to tensions between the two.

Meta attempted to poach OpenAI's talent with $100M offers, but was unsuccessful. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed the reports, stating that his employees prefer OpenAI's mission and culture over Meta's high compensation packages. This highlights the challenges Meta faces in building a successful AI superintelligence lab.

Waymo is expanding its robotaxi service area by 80 square miles in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Silicon Valley, covering over 250 square miles across California. The company's commercial fleet includes over 400 vehicles in LA and over 600 in the San Francisco Bay Area, serving over a quarter million paid trips per week.

Adobe has released a dedicated Firefly app for image and video creation on both iOS and Android, allowing users to generate images and videos using AI models from Adobe and third-party providers like OpenAI and Google.

MiniMax, a Shanghai-based AI firm, has released an open-source reasoning model called MiniMax-M1, which challenges Chinese rival DeepSeek and US-based Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google in terms of performance and cost. The model boasts a context window of one million tokens, rivaling Google Gemini 2.5 Pro, and can manage 80,000 tokens in output. Backed by Alibaba Group, Tencent, and IDG Capital, MiniMax claims its Lightning Attention mechanism gives its M1 model an advantage in computing long context inputs and reasoning.

A chain of Sitecore Experience Platform vulnerabilities allows attackers to perform remote code execution without authentication. The exploit starts with a hardcoded 'b' password for an internal user, which can be used to gain authenticated access to internal endpoints. This can be followed by exploiting a Zip Slip flaw and a vulnerability in the Sitecore PowerShell Extensions module to achieve RCE.

Adobe Firefly Boards is a new collaborative moodboarding app that allows teams to work together in real-time. It includes AI-powered image generation, Adobe Stock integration, and auto-arrange features for presentation. The app is part of Adobe's Creative Cloud Pro subscription and is available on both desktop and mobile devices.

The rise of agentic AI systems requires a new approach to identity security, with a focus on dynamic, context-aware identity models and least-privilege principles to mitigate risks and enforce trust.

Google has unveiled its Safety Charter in India, aiming to combat rising digital fraud with AI-powered solutions. The company is expanding its security engineering center in India to develop local solutions and partner with the government and community to raise awareness about cybercrimes.

Salesforce is increasing prices for its products by an average of 6% due to increased integration with AI. The company is introducing new AI-powered features, including Agentforce, which starts at $125 per user per month. However, some customers are unhappy with the price hike, and Salesforce's own research has shown that AI agents can be unreliable.

AWS has announced that it has achieved 100% multi-factor authentication (MFA) enforcement for root users across all types of AWS accounts. This move is a significant step in enhancing cloud security. Additionally, AWS has introduced several new security capabilities, including an expanded AWS Identity and Access Management Access Analyzer and a preview of AWS Security Hub with enhanced security signals.

Figma introduces code layers, a feature that enables designers to create fully interactive elements for websites directly within the Figma interface. This feature offers full customization through a built-in AI-powered chat and a code editor, allowing users to build dynamic, production-ready experiences without requiring deep coding knowledge. Code layers support React, TypeScript, and Tailwind, and can be used to create interactive UI elements, animations, and tools.

Sword Health, an AI-powered digital health startup, has raised $40 million at a $4 billion valuation. The company is pushing back its IPO plans to at least 2028, citing a desire to expand its services and achieve more proof points at scale.

Coralogix, an Israeli startup, has raised $115 million at a pre-money valuation of over $1 billion. The company offers a full-stack observability and security platform and plans to expand its engineering base in India and develop its AI agent. Coralogix aims to solve the challenge of data observability with its AI observability agent, Olly, which utilizes a semantic layer to assist companies in understanding complex issues.

VMware Cloud Foundation 9 is a major upgrade that delivers Broadcom's vision for a modern private cloud, offering a single interface for all private cloud operations and self-service infrastructure provisioning for developers. The suite includes hundreds of new and enhanced features, such as GPU workload migration capability and enhanced analytics for chargeback and showback. However, some customers may be hesitant to adopt due to concerns over cost and complexity.

Tines' workflow orchestration and AI platform can automate IT ticket handling, reducing manual triage and speeding up resolution. A pre-built workflow uses AI to analyze and triage incoming requests, determining whether to auto-resolve or escalate them. This solution can save companies time and money, improve user experience, and enhance analyst morale.

Microsoft is working on a next-gen Xbox console in partnership with AMD, focusing on playing games anywhere, with a strategic multi-year partnership to co-engineer silicon across devices, including next-generation Xbox consoles and Xbox Cloud Gaming.

Anysphere has launched a new $200-a-month subscription plan for its AI coding tool, Cursor, offering 20x more usage on AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and xAI. The plan also includes priority access to new features, and is a result of multi-year partnerships with AI model providers.

Elon Musk's startup xAI is reportedly seeking a $4.3 billion equity investment, in addition to a $5 billion debt funding. The company spends money quickly due to its resource-intensive AI technology, including the chatbot Grok and image generator Aurora.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy warned staff that the company's increasing use of generative AI will lead to headcount reductions over the next few years. Jassy advised staff to learn new skills and experiment with AI to remain relevant. The company is accelerating its use of AI, with over 1,000 generative AI programs in development or completed.