IBM Creating Enterprise Gen AI Smart Data Platform
In a bid to strengthen its hybrid cloud and AI strategy, IBM will acquire Confluent for $11B to power a smart data platform that helps enterprises connect and clean data in real time for generative and agentic AI workloads. With more than 6,500 customers and partnerships across major cloud and AI providers, Confluent is expected to enhance IBM’s ecosystem reach and support long‑term revenue growth once the deal closes, anticipated by mid‑2026.
Match Group Launching AI Dating App
As Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble turn to AI to fight swipe fatigue and subscriber declines, Hinge founder Justin McLeod is leaving to build Overtone, a standalone AI dating, while Hinge’s new CEO Jackie Jantos pushes ahead with AI tools that are already boosting matches among Gen Z.
Menlo Ventures State of Generative AI in Enterprise
The report shows that AI is no longer a science project: enterprises spent 37 billion dollars on generative AI in 2025, with more than half flowing to off‑the‑shelf apps that deliver immediate productivity gains. Buyers are favoring PLG tools and ready‑made copilots, pushing 76 percent of use cases toward purchased solutions, driving 47 percent POC‑to‑production conversion, and allowing AI‑native startups to outgrow incumbents across coding, sales, and finance workflows.
Europe Feeling Pressure From Washington
Europe’s digital crackdown is hitting the brakes: under intense US diplomatic and corporate pressure, Brussels is considering delaying AI Act penalties, softening telecom and space rules, and struggling to enforce the DSA/DMA, signaling that the “Brussels effect” on global tech might be giving way to Washington’s.
Executive Order for AI National Policy Framework
The White House has issued an AI executive order designed to protect AI companies from what it calls a patchwork of burdensome state regulations that could “stymie innovation” and force models to alter truthful outputs.
OpenAI Bolsters Leadership Team
Denise Dresser, who led Slack through its Salesforce integration after a decade building large‑scale sales organizations, is joining OpenAI as Chief Revenue Officer. Her mandate is to help the more than one million companies already using OpenAI’s platform deepen adoption of products like ChatGPT for Work and the API as AI becomes a standard part of daily work.
Instacart Has Been Secretly Running Price Experiments
A new Consumer Reports investigation shows Instacart turning grocery shoppers into unwitting test subjects, using AI tools to vary prices on everyday items across customers by as much as 23% per item and roughly $10 per basket, raising fears that experimental “smart rounding” and similar tactics are inflating bills at a time of high food inflation.
Is Paper Mill Waste the Unlock for Cheaper Clean Energy?
A team of Scientists took a low-value byproduct from the paper industry and transformed it into a high-value clean-energy material, creating a lignin-based catalyst that helps produce hydrogen without relying on expensive precious metals.
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