Microsoft is in the final phases of building the $3.3 billion Wisconsin facility it says will be the most powerful AI data center in the world when it comes online in early 2026 to train the next decade of artificial intelligence models. The software giant has already begun staffing the operation and is already planning further expansion, with another $4 billion to be spent in the next three years to build a second data center of similar size and scale — bringing the total investment in Wisconsin to more than $7 billion. Located in Mount Pleasant, the nearly completed facility will be the first in what Microsoft is calling its Fairwater family of hyperscale data centers. Continue reading Microsoft Details $7 Billion Future of Wisconsin AI Data Center

Meta Connect just wrapped after showcasing the company’s latest offerings in XR, Meta AI wearables, and more. The long-awaited reveal of the Meta Ray-Ban Display smart glasses confirmed they are the first Meta glasses with a built-in high-resolution HUD color screen and use an EMG wristband for controls. Meta’s high-performance sports eyewear got an upgrade with the Oakley Meta Vanguard, offering Garmin and Strava integration and video recording in 3K Ultra HD. The Quest VR headset’s new beta feature, Hyperscape, was previewed, turning real-world spaces into virtual worlds. Also, the Quest now features a Horizon TV entertainment hub for streaming. Continue reading Meta Platforms Unveils New Smart Glasses and AI Wearables

Zoom Communications on Wednesday launched new products at its Zoomtopia conference, including an upgraded AI companion that can work across meeting apps with the ability to add notes, organize meeting schedules and — on the horizon — deploy look-alike avatars. The features are designed to make Zoom more competitive with vertical AI productivity startups. Available as a Zoom Workplace add-on, the Zoom AI Companion 3.0 has upgraded agentic features including for Voice Recorder and Tasks, plus new features for Zoom Meetings, Zoom Team Chat, Zoom Whiteboard, Zoom Revenue Accelerator and more. Continue reading Zoom Enhances Its Agentic AI Capabilities with New Features

AI-powered creator tools were a central focus at this week’s Made on YouTube event, where the company unveiled Veo 3 Fast, a “quicker and more cost effective version” of Google’s powerful video model, Veo 3 that is being made available free for creators in YouTube Shorts. Veo 3 Fast generates outputs with lower latency at 480p and also generates sound, a first for YouTube Shorts. YouTube created the mobile-first Veo 3 Fast model in partnership with artificial intelligence research lab Google DeepMind. Video creators will soon be able to leverage Veo 3 Fast to add backgrounds and objects or change styles using prompts. Continue reading YouTube Unveils Array of New AI Tools, Including Video Model

YouTube Live is getting upgrades including AI-generated highlights and soon the ability to simultaneously broadcast in both horizontal and vertical formats, allowing creators “to reach viewers on every screen.” Playables on live minigames have been added as a way to ease newbies into live streaming. Creators can chat with their audience while playing from among 75+ games, monetizing the stream just like any other live broadcast. Next year, YouTube will begin testing live reactions, enabled by starting a mobile live stream to share reactions with others who are currently live. Continue reading YouTube Adds Dual-Format Streaming, Live Minigames, More

Google has introduced the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), an open protocol designed to securely address the challenges of having AI agents make payments on behalf of humans. AP2 can be used as an extension of the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol and Model Context Protocol (MCP). “In concert with industry rules and standards, it establishes a payment-agnostic framework for users, merchants, and payments providers to transact with confidence across all types of payment methods,” explains Google, listing American Express, Coinbase, Etsy, Intuit, Mastercard, PayPal and Salesforce among 60 collaborators that provided development input. Continue reading Google AP2 Protocol Allows AI to Make Payments for Humans

Meta Platforms has unveiled new advertising options at its annual Brand Building Summit, touting in-stream opportunities for Reels and carousel ads for Threads, which now has 400 million monthly active users. To make it easier for brands to leverage that user base, Meta has enabled the creation of a Threads profile using an Instagram account. Additionally, existing Facebook or Instagram posts can now be used to create a Threads ad in Ads Manager. Meta also says that as of November, qualified advertisers will be able to use Ads Manager to tap into Reels trending content on a self-serve basis. Continue reading Meta Rolls Out New Advertising Options for Reels and Threads

Amazon Music has a new AI-powered personalization feature called Weekly Vibe that is designed to keep playlists fresh and prevent listeners from tiring of the same songs. The feature is available to iOS and Android users in the U.S. across all subscription tiers. Every Monday, Weekly Vibe will update playlists to reflect recent listening choices, taking into account musical interests and moods. It will also suggest new music based on demonstrated patterns and preferences. Weekly Vibe builds on the Maestro AI playlist generator Amazon Music launched in beta last year. Continue reading Amazon Music Adds Weekly Vibe AI Playlists Across All Tiers

Four years after its announcement, Spotify Lossless is arriving for Premium subscribers, offering HD-quality sound for just about every song in the catalog. The reveal was issued by Spotify VP of Subscriptions Gustav Gyllenhammar, who attributed the delay to “time to build this feature in a way that prioritizes quality” and ease of use. Spotify Lossless enables streaming in up to 24-bit/44.1 kHz FLAC. Lossless joins the previous settings of Low, Normal, High and Very High for data management across Wi-Fi, cellular and downloads. Spotify has also added Smart Filters for better playlist building. Continue reading Spotify Delivers New Lossless Audio Tech for Premium Subs

In one of the largest cloud computing deals ever, OpenAI has contracted with Oracle for $300 billion in processing power over five years starting in 2027. Oracle has committed to 4.5 gigawatts of capacity. A typical nuclear plant caps at 1 gigawatt of output generated at any given instant. The deal involves risk for both companies. OpenAI’s annual revenue of about $10 billion is far short of the amount needed to cover this tab. Oracle’s exposure comes with depending on a small number of large customers for so much revenue and the expense of expanding infrastructure to fulfill the obligation. Continue reading OpenAI Signs $300 Billion Cloud Computing Deal with Oracle

Publishers have been weathering a monetization crisis as AI encroaches on their original content. Automated licensing has become something of a lifeline. Really Simple Licensing (RSL) is an open, decentralized protocol from nonprofit rights organization RSL Collective, which is making it available free to websites that can use it to set licensing, usage and compensation terms for AI crawlers and agents. Based on the scalable Really Simple Syndication (RSS) framework, it works for digital content from web pages to books and videos, helping to thwart unauthorized scraping. Reddit, People, Yahoo and Ziff Davis are among those who have signed up. Continue reading RSL Offers Publishers a Path to Compensation for AI Scraping

AI infrastructure company Nebius Group NV has entered into a $17.4 billion deal to provide dedicated compute power to Microsoft from a new data center in Vineland, New Jersey. The five-year agreement could be worth up to $19.4 billion with additional capacity and services. The news sent Nebius shares surging by 49 percent on the Nasdaq composite, underscoring how the rapidly growing demand for AI support can influence the fate of companies. The deal added $1 billion to the value of Nebius founder Arkady Volozh’s stake. The Russian expatriate founded that country’s equivalent of Google. Continue reading Microsoft Contracts with Nebius for $17.4 Billion in AI Capacity

Nvidia has designed a new class of GPU for massive-context inference, the Rubin CPX, due in late 2026. Purpose-built to speed the million-token applications used to generate video and create software, the Rubin CPX functions as a specialty accelerator, working in concert with Nvidia Vera CPUs and Rubin GPUs packaged inside the upcoming Vera Rubin NVL144 CPX rack platform. “The Vera Rubin platform will mark another leap in the frontier of AI computing,” revolutionizing massive-context AI just as RTX did graphics and physical AI, said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Continue reading Nvidia Says Rubin CPX Inference Accelerator Coming in 2026

Europe has entered the big leagues of supercomputing with Jupiter, which this month became the first European system to achieve the exascale threshold of more than one quintillion (a billion billion) operations per second. Jupiter is Europe’s most powerful compute platform and the fourth fastest worldwide. It is a hybrid platform that uses a combination of SiPearl and Nvidia chips, respectively supporting HPC tasks like simulations and data analysis as well as AI workloads, such as training large language models and providing access to the Jupiter AI Factory (JAIF), a managed interface for developers and academics. Continue reading Europe’s Most Powerful Supercomputer Designed to Foster AI

OpenAI is hoping an animated short film called “Critterz” that it got off the ground will have its feature-length debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2026. OpenAI is providing the AI technology to produce the film, which is being funded at $30 million by Paris-based Federation Studios, whose UK subsidiary Vertigo Films will produce in conjunction with Culver City’s Native Foreign, a firm known for blending AI with conventional techniques. OpenAI is providing use of its generative models, including the Sora video generator and DALL-E imager, to create what it hopes will be a test case. The idea is to complete in nine months what would normally take years at a fraction of the cost. Continue reading OpenAI Making Its Film Debut with $30M Animation ‘Critterz’