AI Industry Development & Policy Dynamics

According to Xinhua, China's Ministry of Commerce and seven other government departments released 17 implementation guidelines on June 18 to accelerate 'AI plus consumption' and stimulate spending through smarter products and services. The measures call for AI product upgrades in consumer

According to Reuters, early Chinese backers of Manus reportedly plan to buy the company back from Meta at US$2 billion on June 18, after Chinese authorities ordered the deal reversed. The National Development and Reform Commission issued the reversal order on April 27, 2026. Meta announced the

K25.ai announced on June 18 that it had completed a US$10 million pre-A funding round at a US$100 million valuation. The Singapore-based AI-native livestreaming and watch-to-predict platform for Asia Pacific also launched its Series A fundraising efforts. NewGenIVF Group signed an agreement for an

According to Adobe, the company on June 18 expanded its Firefly creative agent across Creative Cloud, adding tools to Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, InDesign, and Frame.io. Users can now enter text prompts to automate multi-step tasks, including creating brand kits, short product videos,

According to TechCrunch, Snap announced on June 18 that it will spin off its internal generative AI video team into Dotmo, a separate company focused on AI models for interactive gaming. Snap will license its technology to Dotmo for gaming and interactive entertainment and take a large equity

According to Bloomberg, Amazon is in talks to sell its Trainium AI chips for use in other companies' data centers, according to Amazon AI chief Peter DeSantis. The move expands beyond AWS as Amazon seeks a larger role in AI hardware. Trainium3 began shipping earlier this year, with a fourth

According to TechCrunch, AI inference startup Baseten is reportedly close to raising $1.5 billion in a split-priced round, with some investors entering at a $13 billion valuation and others at $11 billion. Spark Capital, Sands Capital, Altimeter Capital, and Wellington Management are set to

According to Bloomberg, Meta agreed to buy 1.6 gigawatts of AI computing capacity from Crusoe on June 18, with data centers located in Childress, Texas, and Warrenton, Missouri. The cost and delivery timeline were not

According to BlockBeats, on June 19, Elon Musk predicted that China's large language models could reach Anthropic's Fable level by Q1 2027. Zhipu AI founder Tang Jie replied saying this timeline would be shorter, to which Musk responded: "On benchmarks, yes; but if measuring by true real-world

HIVE Digital Technologies' wholly owned subsidiary, BUZZ High Performance Computing, signed a three-year GPU cloud contract worth approximately $220 million with Bell Canada and Cohere. The agreement brings together Bell's national data center and connectivity platform, Cohere's enterprise AI

According to HIVE Digital's announcement, its wholly owned subsidiary BUZZ High Performance Computing signed a three-year, $220 million GPU cloud contract earlier Thursday, June 18. The agreement combines Bell's data center and connectivity platform, Cohere's enterprise AI models, and BUZZ HPC's

According to the Washington Post on June 19, Anthropic executives submitted a proposal to U.S. Commerce Secretary Luttnik pledging closer collaboration with the White House to address safety concerns affecting its Mythos and Fable models. Negotiations between Anthropic and Trump administration

According to The Information, citing two sources, Chinese early investors in AI agent startup Manus are planning a $2 billion equity buyback from Meta Platforms, following the collapse of Meta's acquisition attempt in April. Tencent, Sequoia Capital China, and zhenfund are among the potential

According to Yann LeCun, the Turing Award-winning AI pioneer and Meta's chief AI scientist, Elon Musk's xAI has "failed in some ways" due to mass departures of core founding team members and difficulty attracting top talent. LeCun further warned that most AI labs rely on investor funding to

According to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, on June 18, FERC approved a series of directives aimed at accelerating the connection of artificial intelligence data centers to the national grid. The new rules set a 90-day target for processing power applications, significantly reducing

Midjourney announced Wednesday the launch of Midjourney Medical, a division developing a full-body imaging system called Ultrasonic CT. The company, which launched in 2022 as an AI text-to-image generation platform, said the technology combines ultrasound hardware with AI-powered image

Midjourney announced Midjourney Medical, a new healthcare division, on Wednesday (June 18, 2026), unveiling an "Ultrasonic CT" full-body imaging system that combines ultrasound hardware with AI image reconstruction. The company stated the technology could generate detailed three-dimensional body

Alchemy launched Agentcard with Visa, a payments and identity platform that enables AI agents to make online purchases and crypto transactions on behalf of users and businesses, the company announced today. Agentcard integrates with Visa Intelligent Commerce and provisions agents with a Visa paymen

Ritualnet launched its testnet, introducing a feature that allows agents to continue operating after their creators cease activity. The announcement was made via a tweet and gained widespread attention within the blockchain space. The testnet represents an early-stage development, with the