SoftBank reported a 124% jump in quarterly profit on resilient AI demand that's supporting startup valuations and chip unit sales, a boost to its aggressive data center investment plans. The Tokyo-based company reported net income of 517.18 billion ( 3.5 billion) in its fiscal fourth quarter. It was helped by the Vision Fund, which swung to a profit of 26.1 billion mainly on a surge in the value of TikTok owner ByteDance and its strong international sales. The earnings come at a critical juncture for SoftBank as it plans to invest 30 billion in OpenAI while leading a 100 billion foray into building AI hardware in the United States. Maintaining a healthy cash flow and balance sheet is key to securing the billions of dollars needed at minimum cost.

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is clearing a path for two key Persian Gulf allies to pursue their artificial intelligence ambitions -- and some of the biggest U.S. tech companies are seizing on that opening with plans to spend billions of dollars in the region. Under agreements with the U.S. expected to be unveiled in coming days, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are poised to win wider access to advanced AI chips from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices that are considered the gold standard for running AI models. The deals are taking shape while President Donald Trump visits the Middle East seeking to forge deeper business ties that put U.S. technology initiatives at center stage. Even before any formal announcement of accords between the U.S. and its partners, news began to emerge of American companies readying expanded projects in the region.

An AI tool has been used to review public responses to a government consultation for the first time and is now set to be rolled out more widely in an effort to save money and staff time. The tool, named "Consult", was first used by the Scottish government when it was seeking perspectives on the regulation of non-surgical cosmetic procedures such as lip filler. The UK government said the tool analysed responses and was able to produce results identical to human officials, and will now be used to review responses from other consultations, while also being developed further. While reviewing more than 2,000 responses, Consult identified key themes, which were then checked and refined by experts in the Scottish government. The government built Consult to be among its new package of AI tools, nicknamed "Humphrey", which they claim will "speed up work in Whitehall and cut back on consulting spending".

In this trial the AI tool examined 2,000 submissions. But public consultations, which gather the views of UK citizens on issues under consideration by ministers, can generate tens of thousands of responses. It was able to identify themes amongst the responses, and counted and catalogued answers accordingly - with human experts checking its work at both stages. Consult's findings were then examined to see how they compared to a team of human experts working in parallel. Technology secretary Peter Kyle said the initial success of the trial meant that Consult would be used across government "very soon". "After demonstrating such promising results, Humphrey will help us cut the costs of governing and make it easier to collect and comprehensively review what experts and the public are telling us on a range of crucial issues," he wrote.

Google I/O 2025 is just one week away. But, if you just can't wait, Google held a special event on Tuesday: Android Show I/O Edition, which gave a look at some new big things headed to Android devices with the Android 16 update. Google shared some interesting stats during the livestream. For example, there are 3 billion active Android devices around the world, making it the most popular mobile operating system. More than one billion messages are sent in the U.S. alone across all mobile devices (iOS included) using the new RCS Messaging standard, which allows Android and iOS users to easily text as one big happy family.

"We're excited to become a clinical-stage biotech company; it's exciting from an AI drug discovery standpoint," says Absci founder and CEO Sean McClain. Artificial intelligence has been working its way into the drug development process for years now, but with little to show so far in revamping the notoriously burdensome process. While drugs are being developed using AI in a variety of ways, no drugs developed completely by AI, from start to finish, have so far made it over the finish line of regulatory approval. For that reason, every attempt by an AI drug to get approval is a landmark of sorts. Tuesday, drug development startup Absci, based in Vancouver, Washington, announced such a landmark, the beginning of a Phase I clinical trial for a therapy it built from scratch using generative AI to treat irritable bowel disease.

On a Wednesday morning last month, I thought, just for a second, that AI was going to kill me. I had hailed a self-driving Waymo to bring me to a hacker house in Nob Hill, San Francisco. Just a few blocks from arrival, the car lurched toward the other lane--which was, thankfully, empty--and immediately jerked back. That sense of peril felt right for the moment. As I stepped into the cab, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was delivering a speech criticizing President Donald Trump's economic policies, and in particular the administration's sweeping on-again, off-again tariffs. A day earlier, the White House had claimed that Chinese goods would be subject to overall levies as high as 245 percent when accounting for preexisting tariffs, and the AI giant Nvidia's stock had plummeted after the company reported that it expected to take a quarterly hit of more than 5 billion for selling to China.

Starting soon, Google Gemini will be available on your watch, in your car, and on your TV. At The Android Show, an Android-focused mini event leading up to Google I/O, the tech giant announced that its Gemini AI model will be integrated into Wear OS, Android Auto and Google Built-in, and Google TV. With Wear OS in the coming months, Google Pixel Watch users will be able to verbally give Gemini reminders or ask it to pull up event details, such as upcoming dinner reservations. Because of Gemini integration across Google Workspace apps, it can access information from your calendar and emails. For drivers who like to get things done in their cars, senior Android UX director Guemmy Kim shared ways Gemini works with its car dashboard apps.

Raul Gastesi speaks with Fox News Digital about a bill moving through the Florida Senate that would give homeowners the right to use "reasonable force" to take down drones infringing on their privacy rights. A newly-minted law allowing Arizona law enforcement officers to shoot down drug-carrying drones along the U.S.-Mexico border has taken effect after sailing through the state's legislature with bipartisan support. HB 2733 was signed into law on April 18 and grants officers the ability to target drones suspected of carrying out illegal activity within 15 miles of the state's international border. "Cartels are increasingly using drones to survey the border to locate [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] officers' locations and to transport illegal drugs from Mexico into our state," state Rep. David Marshall, the bill's sponsor, said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "Law enforcement tools at [our] disposal will be electronic jamming devices, as well as using shotguns with bird shot to bring down these drones."

OpenAI's agentic AI Deep research tool, launched in February, can search the web and output a detailed report within 5-30 minutes, accomplishing a task that would take a person several hours. That handy tool just got even handier. On Monday, OpenAI announced that users can now output their Deep Research reports as PDFs that include all the report's elements, including tables, images, sources, and linked citations. Creating the PDF is easy: All users have to do is tap the "download as PDF" option at the top of the report, as seen in the video below. You can now export your deep research reports as well-formatted PDFs--complete with tables, images, linked citations, and sources.