Malaysia declared it'll build a first-of-its-kind AI system powered by Huawei Technologies chips, only to distance itself from that statement a day later, underscoring the Asian nation's delicate position in the U.S.-Chinese AI race. Deputy Minister of Communications Teo Nie Ching said in a speech Monday her country would be the first to activate an unspecified class of Huawei "Ascend GPU-powered AI servers at national scale." Malaysia would deploy 3,000 units of Huawei's primary AI offering by 2026, she said in prepared remarks reviewed by Bloomberg News. Chinese startup DeepSeek would also make one of its AI models available to the Southeast Asian country, the official added.

Huawei Technologies debuted its first in-house operating system for personal computers, offering an alternative to Microsoft's Windows as China pushes to replace American technologies amid rising geopolitical tensions. The company's HarmonyOS is now ready to run on the MateBook Fold, its new foldable laptop, said the head of its consumer business, Richard Yu, on Monday. Huawei is working to make its operating system compatible with more than 2,000 apps, including the popular WeChat and QQ messaging platforms, he said. The laptop features an 18-inch organic light-emitting diode screen when opened flat. Along with the Huawei MateBook Pro and MateBook Fold Ultimate Design laptops, it will be available from June 6.

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and mobile carrier SoftBank will collaborate in the field of digital payment services, it was learned Wednesday. Under the partnership, the PayPay smartphone payment service operated by a SoftBank affiliate will be made available via the Olive general financial app, provided by Sumitomo Mitsui Banking, the core unit of the financial group. Sumitomo Mitsui, through its Sumitomo Mitsui Card unit, will form a comprehensive partnership with SoftBank and PayPay that will be announced soon. The two sides will allow points in their respective reward programs to be exchanged. They will also collaborate on the use of data and generative artificial intelligence.

Ahead of next week's Google I/O developer conference, where AI is expected to be the star of the show, Google on Tuesday unveiled a massive Gemini update, further expanding the AI assistant's availability across the Google ecosystem of devices. For starters, Google announced that Gemini will be coming to WearOS smartwatches later this year. This will allow users to take advantage of Gemini's conversational capabilities and talk to their watches naturally. The biggest advantage is that users can take advantage of hands-free assistance without the help of their phones. Some examples Google offers include setting reminders, getting assistance when your hands are covered in flour while cooking, or in the middle of a workout.

You have my attention, Motorola. The company today is unveiling not one, not two, but three Razr flip phones, including a first-ever'Ultra' model that's feature-packed, fashionably styled, and unsurprisingly expensive at 1,299. I spent an intimate afternoon with all three models ahead of their launch, and, barring the price tag that makes me question the state of the economy, my first impressions were mostly positive. In fact, the Razr Ultra, which I tested the most, left me feeling a little less excited about what's on the docket from Samsung later this summer. The base Motorola Razr model (left) and Razr Ultra (right).

But at the company's closed-door launch event on Wednesday in New York City, much of the spotlight was on Moto AI, artificial intelligence features powered by in-house and third-party large language models, like Meta's Llama. Google's Gemini is naturally available on the Razr phones, but for the first time, the AI search engine Perplexity AI will be preinstalled on the devices. The CEO of Perplexity, Aravind Srinivas, took the stage to talk about the optimizations made to take advantage of the Razr's unique design. Motorola even says Microsoft's Copilot will also be available in the coming months. The 2025 Razr lineup starts at 700 for the base Razr, 1,000 for the Razr, and 1,300 for the Razr Ultra; the midrange Razr is almost the same device as the Razr from 2024, with a few enhancements to durability.

Google rolled out live video and screen sharing abilities for Gemini Live in March, and now all Android users can play with the tools for free. Announced during Mobile World Congress (MWC) last month, Google's ChatGPT Voice Mode competitor now has the ability to "see" -- meaning you can use your smartphone camera or share your screen to ask Gemini Live real-time questions about your immediate surrounds or current website during your chats. At launch in March, the continuous conversational AI's new tool was only available to paying Gemini Advanced subscribers on Pixel 9 and Samsung Galaxy S25 devices. But on Wednesday, Google announced it's now free to all Android users with the Gemini app installed. "We've been hearing great feedback on Gemini Live with camera and screen share, so we decided to bring it to more people," the official Google Gemini App account posted on X. "Starting today and over the coming weeks, we're rolling it out to all Android users with the Gemini app."

Archetypal analysis (AA) was originally proposed in 1994 by Adele Cutler and Leo Breiman as a computational procedure to extract the distinct aspects called archetypes in observations with each observational record approximated as a mixture (i.e., convex combination) of these archetypes. AA thereby provides straightforward, interpretable, and explainable representations for feature extraction and dimensionality reduction, facilitating the understanding of the structure of high-dimensional data with wide applications throughout the sciences. However, AA also faces challenges, particularly as the associated optimization problem is non-convex. This survey provides researchers and data mining practitioners an overview of methodologies and opportunities that AA has to offer surveying the many applications of AA across disparate fields of science, as well as best practices for modeling data using AA and limitations. The survey concludes by explaining important future research directions concerning AA.

Later than expected, Google has begun rolling a pair of new Gemini Live features to Pixel 9 and Samsung Galaxy S25 devices. The company first previewed Gemini live video and screensharing during Mobile World Congress in March. As you might have guessed from their names, the two features allow you to take advantage of Gemini's multi-modal capabilities to ask Google's chatbot questions about what you see in front of your or on your phone's screen. It's here: ask Gemini about anything you see. If you don't own a Pixel 9 or Galaxy S25, Google says you can still access the new features through the Gemini app on Android.

OpenAI on Monday said it raised 40 billion in a new funding round that valued the ChatGPT maker at 300 billion, the biggest capital-raising session ever for a startup. The infusion of cash comes in a partnership with Japanese investment giant SoftBank Group and "enables us to push the frontiers of AI research even further," the San Francisco-based company said in a post on its website. "Their support will help us continue building AI systems that drive scientific discovery, enable personalized education, enhance human creativity, and pave the way toward AGI (artificial general intelligence) that benefits all of humanity," the company said.