In Brief Meta is launching Meta Small Business, a new company-wide initiative focused on supporting entrepreneurship and driving AI adoption, Axios reported on Wednesday. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a memo to staff that small businesses have always been a big part of the company’s business model, and that tens of millions of entrepreneurs already use its platforms to grow and connect with customers. The company now plans to do more in the space. “In the AI era, it should be easier than ever for peopl ...

Meta is looking to leverage AI’s ability to inform and potentially influence shoppers to increase sales on the company’s social media platforms, like Facebook and Instagram. At the Shoptalk 2026 conference this week, the tech giant announced it will begin testing a new experience that allows consumers to see more product information and a summary of user reviews after they click on an ad or visit a website from Facebook or Instagram. The feature is similar to Amazon’s use of generative AI to enhance its pr ...

Sony Honda Mobility, the joint venture established by the two Japanese conglomerates, has decided to give up on the two “Afeela”-branded EVs that it has spent the last few years developing.The decision comes after Honda announced earlier this month that it was doing a major about-face and canceling three electric vehicles planned for the U.S. market — a decision that could cost the Japanese automaker nearly $16 billion. Honda blamed President Trump’s tariffs and rising competition from China as reasons for ...

In Brief Amazon has confirmed that it has acquired Fauna Robotics, a two-year-old startup founded by former Meta and Google engineers who are developing kid-size humanoid robots.The acquisition was first reported by Bloomberg. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. What we do know is that Fauna’s employees, including its two founders, will join Amazon in New York City. “We are excited about Fauna’s vision to build capable, safe, and fun robots for everyone,” an Amazon spokesperson wrote in an emailed stateme ...

A jury in Santa Fe on Tuesday ordered Meta to pay $375 million in civil penalties after finding the company misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and endangered children. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez’s office called the decision a “watershed moment for every parent concerned about what could happen to their kids when they go online,” according to a press release issued right after the ruling. The verdict, reached after a six-week trial, found Meta liable on both claims brought by t ...

In Brief Data center developer Crusoe is ramping up its energy storage capacity with battery buys from Form Energy and Redwood Energy.The company said it will buy 12 gigawatt-hours of Form Energy’s 100-hour batteries. It’s the second large sale made by Form, which last month said it would build a 30 gigawatt-hour battery for Google in Minnesota. That deal was worth about $1 billion, according to The Information.  Form, which didn’t disclose the value of the sale, will start delivering Crusoe’s batteries in ...

With an overflowing war chest from its $5 billion raise that closed last month (not to mention billions in revenue), Databricks is acquiring. The company, best known for its cloud data analytics platform, announced on Tuesday that it was launching a new security product called Lakewatch. Lakewatch takes Databricks’ ability to store massive amounts of data and performs classic Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tasks, like detecting and investigating threats. Only it does so with the help of AI ...

Storied semiconductor and software company Arm Holdings is starting to make its own chips after nearly 36 years of licensing its designs to companies like Nvidia and Apple.At an event Tuesday in San Francisco, the company revealed the Arm AGI CPU, a production-ready chip built for running inference in an AI data center. The U.K.-based company developed the chip using its Arm Neoverse family of CPU IP cores and through a partnership with Meta. Meta is also the chip’s first customer of the Arm AGI CPU, which ...

OpenAI said Tuesday it is releasing a set of prompts that developers can use to make their apps safer for teens. The AI lab said the set of teen safety policies can be used with its open-weight safety model known as gpt-oss-safeguard.Rather than working from scratch to figure out how to make AI safer for teens, developers can use these prompts to fortify what they build. They address issues like graphic violence and sexual content, harmful body ideals and behaviors, dangerous activities and challenges, roma ...

Apple Music announced on Tuesday that it’s partnering with Ticketmaster to power its concert discovery feature. This integration aims to improve how users discover live music events based on their listening habits.Ticketmaster is the first ticketing service to integrate with Apple Music, allowing listeners to find nearby concerts and events tailored to their individual music preferences. Every event listing on the music streaming app now includes a direct link to Ticketmaster for easy ticket purchasing. Wi ...