Today's AI Pulse
OpenAI unveils ChatGPT Images 2.0 with multilingual text and ‘Thinking’ mode
OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT Images 2.0, a next‑generation image model that adds multilingual typography, real‑time web research, and agentic reasoning. The new ‘Thinking’ mode lets paid users generate up to eight coherent images per prompt, including floor plans, maps and UI mock‑ups. The feature expands the model’s ability to work with uploaded content.
Also developing:
Where Investment Themes Intersect and Beat Markets
In this episode, Stephen Byrd reviews how Morgan Stanley's ten thematic predictions for 2026 are unfolding, highlighting the rapid acceleration of AI, its soaring compute demand, and its transformative impact on the labor market. He links AI's growth to a looming surge in global data‑center power needs, noting a potential 10‑20% U.S. power shortfall by 2028, and ties both trends to geopolitical shifts such as the Iran conflict and a broader push for national self‑sufficiency in energy and critical minerals. The convergence of AI, energy security, and geopolitics is driving outperformance of thematic investment categories, which have outpaced the S&P 500 by 27 points in 2025 and remain 12 points ahead in 2026. Byrd concludes that the intersections of these mega‑secular themes are the key to generating alpha in the coming years.
Google Is Building a Four-Partner Chip Supply Chain to Challenge Nvidia in AI Inference
Google is constructing the AI industry’s most diversified custom‑chip supply chain, enlisting Broadcom, MediaTek, Marvell and Intel to design and produce next‑generation TPUs. The current Ironwood inference chip, now shipping in the millions, offers 42.5 FP8 exaflops per super‑pod and powers...
Adobe Launches CX Enterprise, Uniting AI Agents and Global Agency Network
At Adobe Summit, the company rolled out CX Enterprise, an agentic AI platform that links over 20,000 brands with cloud providers and global agency networks. The move aims to eliminate fragmented AI tools, giving sales and marketing teams a single...
AEON360 Teams with Google Cloud to Launch AI‑Driven Shopping Ecosystem Across Southeast Asia
AEON360 announced a strategic partnership with Google Cloud to build an AI‑driven shopping ecosystem that will debut in Malaysia and later expand throughout Southeast Asia. The collaboration centers on a contextual intelligence engine, a new Innovation Foundry in Kuala Lumpur,...
NEXTDC Raises A$2.2 B to Accelerate AI‑Driven Data‑Centre Expansion
NEXTDC (ASX:NXT) unveiled a A$2.2 billion capital plan anchored by a fully underwritten A$1.5 billion equity entitlement offer and a A$700 million hybrid‑securities expansion. The raise, backed by Canada’s CDPQ, aims to fund the S4 Western Sydney campus as contracted utilisation jumps 60%...
Atlas Cloud Opens Seedance 2.0 API with Transparent Per‑Second Pricing
Atlas Cloud has made ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 AI video model available via an open API, charging $0.127 per second for the full‑power version and $0.101 for the fast variant. The move eliminates waitlists, regional restrictions and opaque token‑based fees, promising creators...
Balance Hero Appoints Debarya Dutta as Chief AI Officer and Launches AI Division
Balance Hero, the fintech behind the True Balance platform, announced the appointment of Debarya Dutta as its first Chief AI Officer and the formation of a dedicated AI division. The move is aimed at embedding artificial‑intelligence capabilities across its product...
Gartner Finds AI Leaders Spend Four Times More on Data Foundations, Boosting Consulting Demand
Gartner’s latest study shows AI‑focused enterprises allocate four‑fold higher budgets to data foundations than their peers, underscoring a growing market for management‑consulting services around data strategy, governance and AI implementation. The finding highlights a strategic shift as firms race to...
Suffolk Technologies Invests in Speckle to Power AI-Ready Design Intelligence
Suffolk Technologies announced a strategic investment in Speckle, the AEC design‑intelligence platform, to turn fragmented BIM data into AI‑ready assets. The move targets the 95.5% of project data that remains unused and could reduce the average $860,000 rework cost per...
Docufree Debuts Human‑in‑the‑Loop AI Platform for Records Management
Docufree announced a new Human‑in‑the‑Loop (HITL) AI platform that combines machine learning with professional review to automate records classification, metadata extraction and policy enforcement. The service aims to reduce compliance risk for regulated industries while preserving auditability.
Workday Positions AI Agents as ‘Human Talent’ in New HR Strategy
At a press briefing on April 14, 2026, Workday Japan’s executive Riki Furuchi announced a strategy that treats AI agents as “human talent.” The plan adds AI‑ready support, a new “Flex Credits” consumption model and tools like Agent Builder Pro,...
Aptean Unveils AppCentral AI Platform for Business Central On‑Premises Users
Aptean announced the preview of its AppCentral AI platform and a suite of ten AI agents for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central on‑premises deployments. The solution, showcased at Directions North America, promises partners a ready‑to‑sell, rapid‑deployment AI capability that keeps...
OpenAI Unveils Desktop‑Control Feature for Codex, Boosting AI Coding Agents
OpenAI released a Codex update on April 16 that enables the AI to open apps, move the cursor, click, and type on macOS, turning the tool into an autonomous desktop operator. The move follows Anthropic’s similar Claude Code rollout and comes as...
The Government Is Buying AI Faster than It Is Assigning Authority
The federal government is rapidly purchasing AI tools while neglecting clear authority to halt or modify them. Current AI governance emphasizes principles like fairness and transparency, but agencies lack explicit override rights, auditable decision trails, and contract terms that preserve...
NOVUS Appoints Olivier Pepin as First CTO to Drive AI, Data Engineering and Tech Strategy
NOVUS announced the hiring of Olivier Pepin as its first Chief Technology Officer. The veteran architect will head the agency’s technology, AI and data engineering practice, aiming to expand proprietary tools like DeCoder and FullSail. The move signals a strategic...
HR Leaders Warn AI Blame Shifts Undermine Workplace Accountability
Labor and employment partners Jason Stavely and Meghan O'Connor of Quarles & Brady warned that employees cannot escape responsibility by blaming AI tools. Their advisory stresses immediate governance, role‑based usage rules, and a clear human‑in‑the‑loop principle to protect firms from...
HockeyStack Raises Funding, Pushes Total Capital Past $50 Million for AI Revenue‑agent Platform
San Francisco‑based HockeyStack announced a new financing round that lifts its cumulative capital to over $50 million. The round, led by Bessemer Venture Partners, Y Combinator and Uncorrelated Ventures, will fund product development and broader rollout of its AI‑driven Revenue Agents....
Coinbase Opens Services Marketplace for Agentic Commerce
Coinbase has launched Agentic.Market, a services marketplace that lets developers and AI agents discover, compare, and integrate tools for autonomous commerce using the x402 protocol. The platform spans categories such as inference, data, media, search, social, infrastructure and trading, and...
Execs Fear Job Loss over AI Adoption Failures
A Writer survey of 2,400 knowledge workers reveals that 61% of C‑suite leaders fear losing their jobs if they fail to steer AI adoption, while three‑quarters anticipate AI use expanding across their firms in the next five years. Executives also...
AI M&A Surpasses $155 B in 2023, with Small Startups Driving Half of Q1 2024 Deals
AI‑focused mergers and acquisitions reached $155 billion in 2023, and almost half of the deals recorded in the first quarter of 2024 involved small or mid‑sized startups. Bankers at San Francisco‑based Axom Partners are fielding the bulk of inquiries from Big...
ViewsML Secures $4.9 Million to Help Scientists Virtually Analyze Tissue Samples
ViewsML, a Vancouver AI startup, closed a C$4.9 million seed round (approximately US$3.6 million) to commercialize its virtual biomarker platform. The technology uses artificial intelligence to extract quantitative biomarker data from pathology images without traditional chemical staining. By turning a lab‑bound process...
![How AI Search Is Rewiring B2B Software Buying [G2 Report]](/cdn-cgi/image/width=1200,quality=75,format=auto,fit=cover/https://foundationinc.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Foundation-Homepage-Sharing-Image.png)
How AI Search Is Rewiring B2B Software Buying [G2 Report]
G2’s new report, The Answer Economy, shows AI chatbots have become the primary research tool for B2B software buyers, replacing traditional search engines. Fifty‑one percent of respondents now start their vendor search with a chatbot, and 69% say the AI’s...
ChatGPT Outage Hits Thousands of Users Worldwide, OpenAI Investigates
OpenAI’s ChatGPT suffered a major outage on April 20, beginning at 10:35 a.m. ET, which also disabled the Codex coding assistant and the API Platform used by businesses. The disruption spread across the United States, Europe, India and the United Kingdom, prompting...
How to Compress Time to Revenue: 4 AI Workflows That Cut Months Off Your Timeline (2026)
Excellent AI Prompts outlines four AI‑driven workflows designed to slash the time between work initiation and payment. By leveraging Claude Skills, Claude Projects, and connector integrations with Gmail, Google Drive, Calendar, and Slack, the workflows target project completion, service codification,...
Traditional Creamery Thrives Using Targeted AI Playbook
A 100-year-old creamery doesn’t sound like the place you’d expect to find an “agentic enterprise.” #sponsored And yet. At Salesforce #TDX26 , I sat down with Daniel Peter , CTO of Petaluma Creamery, to chat about a traditional business that’s...
Claude's Code Quality Plummets; Enterprises Should Switch Models
For the enterprises using Claude, if you are using it for heavy enterprise type stuff - be extremely careful. It's introducing massive bugs, security issues, and code quality is way worse than Opus 4.5, substantially worse on both 4.6 and...
It’s Not Just One Thing — It’s Another Thing
A Barron’s analysis of AlphaSense’s document database reveals that the sentence pattern “not just X, it’s Y” has exploded in corporate communications, jumping from roughly 50 mentions in 2023 to more than 200 by 2025. The report cites examples from...
TikTok's AI Is Secretly Stealing Your Content
Since Oracle co‑founder Larry Ellison took a controlling stake in TikTok, the platform quietly launched an AI remix feature that automatically grants it rights to alter and repurpose user videos. At the same time, a wave of fake accounts has...
How to Do AI SEO (GEO) in 2026? Compare Popular AI Visibility Checker in UK
Onrec evaluated three AI visibility checkers—BuildSOM, Profound, and Semrush—to determine the best solution for UK brands navigating Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) in 2026. The test used a multi‑regional, multilingual brand scenario covering 75 AI prompts across ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Google AIO...
Lloyds Taps Chief Data and AI Officer
Lloyds Banking Group announced the appointment of Sameer Gupta as its chief data and AI officer, starting in June 2026. Gupta leaves DBS Bank after a 12‑year stint, including nine years as managing director and chief analytics officer where he...
AI Voice to Announce Names at University of New Hampshire Graduation
The University of New Hampshire will again use an AI‑generated voice to announce graduate names at its upcoming commencement. Officials say the technology guarantees correct pronunciation and removes human error from the ceremony. Some students have pushed back, arguing that...
Google AI Surge Revives Cloud, Spotlighted at Cloud Next
Google's rapid AI improvement has lifted its once-beleaguered cloud division, with startups and enterprises now clamoring to build on top of the newly competitive @GeminiApp. This week, @googlecloud will have its next big cloud moment in Las Vegas at Cloud...
Tracking Coding Agents' Tool Usage with 10k Queries
Most of our usage is now coming from agents so to monitor how they use and mention our tools, with @DAKlingbeil, we're now running regular 10k queries to all the most popular coding agents, share the traces on @huggingface and...
ModMed Acquires Bonsai Health to Accelerate Agentic AI in Specialty Medicine
ModMed, the specialty‑specific EHR provider backed by Clearlake Capital, has acquired Bonsai Health, an agentic AI patient‑engagement platform, though the purchase price was not disclosed. Bonsai’s technology goes beyond passive chatbots by automatically detecting clinical care gaps, matching them with...
AI Hits Inflection Point: Models Ready for Deep Research
The model inflection point is around the corner. Minimax, GLM, and Kimi are performing at Opus 4.5 golden-days levels. Tbh that's the point where i felt AI could really offload and help with in depth research and dev. Excited.
Know the Basics Before Speculating on AI
Seriously. If you don’t understand the below, you really shouldn’t speculate about AI. It’s absolutely fundamental.
Many Smartphones Don’t Detect Face Biometrics Spoofs or Properly Warn Consumers
Which? tested 208 Android smartphones and found 64% vulnerable to 2D printed photo spoofs. iPhones remain largely immune due to depth‑sensing Face ID, while some newer Pixel models also resisted flat images. Many Android manufacturers, including OnePlus and Motorola, fail...
Google AI Studio Now Supports Pro and Ultra Subscriptions
Google AI Studio users can now use their Google AI Pro and Ultra subscription https://t.co/nBUrDgb1sS
Reining in AI Agents with Identity, Context, Persistence, Platforms
Have we given agents too much ... agency? @addyosmani calls out four architectural bets to regain control. Agents need: 🔑 Identities, not shared credentials 📚 Universal context, not scraped windows 📆 To survive your laptop closing ☁️ Platforms https://t.co/V0nEqql07a https://t.co/3lGAgHm8Uq
3 Data Trends Shaping the Race to AI Across Industries in 2026
Snowflake’s Data Trends 2026 report identifies three cross‑industry AI imperatives: agentic AI is moving from pilot to production, the data foundation remains the chief bottleneck, and governance with semantic standards is emerging as a competitive moat. The report cites that...
AI Actors Prompt Hollywood to Rewrite Oscar Rules
Can an AI Performance Win an Oscar? Val Kilmer’s Digital Resurrection Is Forcing Hollywood to Create New Awards Rules https://t.co/NCU6Ho2zji via @variety
AI-Driven Crunchbase Turns Account Targeting From Guesswork
Building a target account list shouldn’t be guesswork. With Crunchbase, sales teams can discover, prioritize, and act on accounts using AI-powered search and our predictive intelligence, so you focus on what actually matters. 🎯 Watch how it works. 🎥: https://t.co/CyhkL4QC9L https://t.co/AO8TNbaFB3
MODEX 2026: All AI, All the Time
At MODEX 2026, AI topped the MHI Annual Industry Report as the most disruptive technology for supply‑chain and logistics, with 70% of surveyed professionals expecting major impact within the next decade. Companies such as Carvana and Disney highlighted AI‑driven analytics...
Just a Few Percent of Tasks Sustain High Wages Post‑AGI
You only need a couple of percent of tasks to be things we want humans for to result in high wages post-AGI.
AI Robotic Dogs Accelerate Disaster Response and Safety
#AI #Robotic Dogs Lead the Way in Fire and Disaster Response, Enhancing Safety and Speed by @IntEngineering #Robotics #Engineering #Innovation #Technology #TechForGood https://t.co/ZFuzKA31af
Data Poisoning: Yet Another AI Threat: Artificial Intelligence Trends
Data poisoning, once viewed solely as a security attack, is now being adopted by companies as a defensive tool to control how AI models ingest their content. By inserting subtle errors, honeytokens, adversarial perturbations, or structural noise, firms can create...
Anthropic's Philosopher Explores Claude's Personality and Consciousness
NEW: on the @NewcomerMedia podcast, Anthropic's philosopher queen @AmandaAskell. Meet the person charged with developing Claude's personality and ethical core. I ask whether Claude experiences consciousness. She's not ruling it out. https://t.co/hcgfnhhjBE
Companies Overestimate Consumer Comfort with AI Agents
Businesses are overestimating how customers are comfortable with using AI agents. (Blue bar / business is higher than grey bar /consumer on every question) #AdobeSummit #AI #cmo https://t.co/acbhpkA281
AI's First Use Turns Skeptical Radiologists Into Advocates
In healthcare, you only understand how game-changing AI is once you use it. What strikes me most is how reliably opinions flip. The skeptic radiologist goes from “I don’t need this” to “I can’t imagine working without it.” Not occasionally. Almost every time.
Gemini Launches MCP API for AI Trading Bots
Calling all robots 🤖. Check out @Gemini's new MCP API, designed specifically for AI agents to trade predictions, crypto, and more.