Hugging Face has launched an Open TTS Leaderboard that evaluates speech models with objective measures for intelligibility, voice identity and streaming response, aiming to compare open models faster than voting arenas

Metaview raised $60 million to expand AI recruiting agents, launch its fillmore outreach tool and grow its team from about 80 people to more than 250 by next year.

WhatsApp is rolling out parent-set controls for teen accounts, groups, channels, status updates and Meta AI, offering a lighter alternative as age-verification laws raise privacy and accuracy concerns.

AMD agreed to acquire World Labs in an all-stock transaction valued at about $8.2 billion, bringing Fei-Fei Li’s spatial-intelligence research team into its AI hardware, software and systems roadmap.

Meta is extending Instagram’s School Partnership Program with a hub for verified school accounts, adding administrator channels, stories, notes, priority review and safety resources after nearly 17,000 schools joined

The European Commission is adding 500m to Horizon Europe for 2026 and 2027, with new calls covering research-to-market projects and nature-positive economic models.

Samsung is committing $1 billion to Helix Digital Infrastructure, with Samsung Electronics providing $500 million and founding investors already pledging more than $10 billion.

Ofcom blocked a targeted Openreach full-fibre promotion for the first time, finding that £35 upfront and £9.50 monthly rebates could leave rival networks with too little margin.

King Mohammed VI appointed Fatima Zahra Mansouri to form Morocco’s next government after PAM led the election results, setting up coalition talks and a policy agenda tied to jobs, wages, inflation and 2030 World Cup

Hertha Metals plans a 10,000-ton U.S. plant for high-purity iron and steel after raising $133.65 million, including $65 million in federal backing for rare-earth magnet feedstock.

Saudi developers are moving major projects from construction into live operations, putting pressure on service staffing, facility management and contractor capacity.

The official MCP Python SDK has fixed a flaw that could let a malicious server redirect OAuth secrets, authorization codes and PKCE proof keys during AI tool sign-ins.

Import AI’s latest edition details Google’s Project Suncatcher orbital-computing tests and Zhipu AI’s use of GLM-5.3 to speed infrastructure work for GLM-5.3 Flash.

Light Reading reports that SpaceX sent Starship to orbit and deployed 26 V3 Starlink satellites after an ascent engine loss briefly put the mission’s orbital burn in doubt.

Horowitz Andreessen Academy's plan covers a tuition-free San Francisco program for about 50 students in 2027, with AI coursework, company co-ops, compute credits and no current accreditation.

Instinct’s new $1 billion Series C values the early-access personal AI assistant startup at $10 billion, four times its valuation after a $250 million round one month earlier.

Nigeria’s solar mini-grid market has proven deployments across 23 states, but currency pressure, bank-loan constraints and a new $300 million fund will decide whether the model can scale.

Kaspersky researchers found a new MacSync variant using a fake crypto wallet app, executable payloads and an iCloud calendar handoff to steal Mac credentials, wallet data and files.

Asia Pacific companies are investing faster in AI than peers elsewhere, but survey data shows CEOs, finance leaders and IT teams still measure returns differently.

Microsoft is reviving the Surface Mouse with an October 13 launch, haptic feedback, a customizable button, rechargeable battery and three-device Bluetooth support.

Import AI highlighted a RAND strategy document urging the United States to spend now on AI safety, security architecture, institutional capacity and response plans so it can keep multiple superintelligence policy

AMD’s forthcoming EPYC 9006 Venice family adds Zen 6 cores, higher memory bandwidth, PCIe 6, CXL 3.1 and cache-coherent CPU-GPU links for AI-oriented servers.

Sen. Ed Markey’s bill would create a Cybersecurity and AI Board of Investigations for AI agent-led hacks, with subpoena authority and a mandate covering federal systems and critical infrastructure.

Apple’s new Mac mini and Mac Studio desktops are now available, with M6, M5 Pro, M5 Max and M5 Ultra configurations spanning compact AI workflows and high-memory professional workloads.

Researchers proposed a Zcash-style private payment layer for Bitcoin, but the design still leaves deposits, withdrawals, fee visibility and verification outside Bitcoin’s base rules.

OG.com Markets filed with the CFTC to list cash-settled perpetual futures on individual US stocks, joining Coinbase, Kalshi and Kraken parent Payward in seeking approval.

Meta announced that Muse will come to AI glasses as it added VR glasses, Ray-Ban updates, hearing enhancement and broader display-glasses availability.

PYMNTS data show 63% of eCommerce merchants plan more fraud-technology spending while 51% expect fraud-staffing budgets to stay flat or decline.

AWS introduced an enhanced Amazon EventBridge custom event bus that supports organization-wide sharing, ordered delivery, a Subscriber resource, content-based deduplication and a new ingress-egress pricing model.

A regional AI adoption wave is moving from experiments into scaled deployment, but uneven EBIT impact, agent production gaps, data quality and talent shortages are reshaping spending decisions.

Seven U.K. banks used tokenized sterling deposits in live customer transactions, while The Clearing House plans a U.S. network with Quant for cross-bank clearing and settlement in 2027.

Meta’s Muse and Instinct show how OpenClaw’s agent design is moving into mainstream apps, where easier access now has to answer data, malware and hijacking risks.

Lockton has launched a Builders Risk and Property Program for data centre projects, targeting coverage gaps as phased sites move from construction into operations.

StarkWare contest data lowered the estimated GPU cost of preparing a quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction from about $320 to $66, though the result remains a computation estimate rather than a second mined transaction.

NVIDIA is starting DSX Ready with qualified battery and cooling hardware, giving AI factory customers a vetted supplier list for rack-scale deployments.

Workera research cited by ZDNET finds AI tool use rising sharply in large companies, but most workers still lack dedicated work time for upskilling.

PYMNTS reported that SoFi Bank and Mastercard are moving SoFi’s $25 billion card program onto stablecoin settlement, testing whether tokenized dollars can improve card and treasury infrastructure without changing

AISI is using EvalEval’s Every Eval Ever schema and Evaluation Cards platform to share benchmark methods, context and results for frontier-model evaluations.

AI News detailed Toyota’s estimate that wider factory automation could require about 400,000 robots and annual spending of 1 trillion yen from 2028, with current plant deployments showing both progress and unresolved

SiliconANGLE reported that Singapore startup Nexstrom raised $12 million to commercialize a 2D semiconductor wafer platform designed for 12-inch production and existing foundry workflows.

Rest of World essayists Rumman Chowdhury and Konstantinos Komaitis argued that U.S. AI policy is focusing too narrowly on model performance while public trust, consumer protection and infrastructure resistance become

Singapore’s new Online Safety Commission received more than 500 reports in its first two months, with doxxing and harassment dominating eligible online-harm complaints.

Alibaba used its Apsara Conference to pair a Qwen model road map with the Zhenwu V900 AI chip, larger cloud capacity plans and a T-Head processor schedule running into 2028.

Apple’s Siri AI settlement creates a claims process for certain iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 buyers, with possible payments ranging from $25 to $95 per eligible device.

The Wearables Studio UAE programme will train students, developers and startups on AI applications for Meta smart-glasses platforms, with cybersecurity and privacy built into the process.

Indian spacetech startups have raised $253 million this year, nearly double last year’s total, but Inc42’s briefing points to valuation, revenue and hardware risks still shaping the sector.

UN System Data Commons, built on Data Commons by Google, brings official global statistics into a searchable AI-ready knowledge graph with natural-language search and assistant workflows.

iTNews Asia’s interview with 0G Labs CEO Michael Heinrich framed bank AI agent adoption as a control problem built around audit trails, identity, memory and inline governance.

India’s new MDR framework will charge select higher-value UPI merchant payments from October 15, creating a revenue pool for banks and payment firms while testing merchant acceptance.

Sublime Security tracked sharp month-over-month growth in ICS phishing, where malicious calendar invitations exploit default settings in Outlook, Gmail and Apple Mail.