The company announced the changes on Monday, making AI Plus the lowest-priced paid AI subscription offered by a provider in the US market.

Vikas Kansal, product lead for Gemini AI subscriptions, said on X that the storage upgrade would reach users over the next few days.

Google AI Plus was introduced in January as an entry-level paid plan aimed at individual users and students. The service includes access to Gemini with higher usage limits, Omni Flash video generation, Google Flow creative tools, NotebookLM and AI-powered features in Gmail.

In Nigeria, alongside AI Plus at N7,700, Google still offers higher-priced plans. Google AI Pro costs N28,500 per month and includes 5TB of storage, expanded Gemini access and the company’s Pro model.

Google AI Ultra starts at N89,000 per month, offers at least 20TB of storage and provides significantly higher usage limits, as well as early access to new features.

The current price reduction follows a series of changes to Google’s AI subscription business this year. In April, the company increased storage on its AI Pro plan to 5TB without raising prices. A month later, it launched a new AI Ultra package and reduced the cost of its top-tier subscription from $250 to $200 per month.

With competition increasing among AI providers over subscription pricing, and premium plans taking over the market, companies have now started introducing cheaper options to attract more users.

This first became visible in India, one of the world’s fastest-growing AI markets. OpenAI launched ChatGPT Go there in August 2025 at about $4.60 per month, well below the price of its standard ChatGPT Plus subscription. Google followed with its own sub-$5 AI Plus offering in India later that year.

Google’s latest decision brings that pricing strategy to the United States, where subscription costs have so far played a smaller role in competition between major AI companies.

The development could increase pressure on competitors, particularly Anthropic, which has not introduced a lower-cost subscription tier or localised pricing in key international markets.

OpenAI and Anthropic are both preparing for public listings after filing confidential IPO paperwork, and growing price competition could become an important issue for investors assessing the long-term profitability of AI businesses.

Following the long-awaited overhaul, the company says the system will bring deeper intelligence across its devices, but it will not launch everywhere at the same time.

The update focuses on a more conversational assistant that can understand context across apps and screens. It also allows users to interact with Siri in a more continuous way, including through a dedicated interface that stores recent interactions privately.

Apple says Siri AI can now search across Messages, Mail, Photos and Calendar to surface personal information when needed. It also reads what is on a device screen and responds based on that content. The assistant is also designed to work across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, AirPods and Vision Pro.

A camera-linked feature adds another layer, where users can point their device at objects and ask Siri to interpret them. Apple says this can include tasks such as analysing food items or helping split shared bills.

At the core of the system is what Apple calls “Apple Intelligence”, built on its own Foundation Models. The company says some tasks will run on-device, while more complex requests will use Private Cloud Compute.

Apple stated that “Privacy at Every Step,” is still very much central to the design, explaining that external support from Google’s Gemini model helps with some cloud-based functions. However, the company maintains that user data is not stored in a way that links back to individuals.

Despite the rollout, access will be restricted in key markets at launch. Users in the European Union will not receive Siri AI on iPhone or iPad when iOS 27 and related updates arrive later this year. China will also miss the initial rollout.

Apple links the European restriction to regulatory demands under the Digital Markets Act. The company argues that it cannot safely integrate the system under current conditions.

In its statement, it said regulators require “direct access to users’ private data – and the ability to directly control other installed applications – as soon as Siri AI is made available in the EU without the necessary safeguards to ensure user and data safety”.

The company also referenced its earlier proposal to regulators, describing a “Trusted System Agent” approach, which it says was not accepted. Apple maintains that the rejected model would have allowed safer integration with competing assistants.

Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, said EU users will not get Siri AI on iPhone or iPad with the new operating system releases this year. He confirmed the restriction during the announcement window.

The company also stated that “extreme interpretation of the DMA” influenced its decision to hold back the feature. It added that it sees “clear dangers to EU users” under the current framework.

Even so, Apple confirmed that EU users will still access Siri AI on Mac computers and Vision Pro headsets. Those platforms will run macOS 27 and visionOS 27 with the feature included.

In China, Apple says approvals are still in progress, and no timeline has been confirmed for a full rollout. The company has not announced Siri AI availability for mainland China at launch.

It added that Hong Kong may receive earlier access, depending on language support and regulatory clearance. English-language beta testing is expected to begin in select regions later.

Apple’s strategy places Siri AI at the centre of its software ecosystem. The assistant will be integrated across iOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, visionOS 27 and tvOS 27. The company is positioning this as a shift towards a more AI-led operating system design.

Developer access is already open through beta releases, with public testing expected around July 2026. A full release is expected later in the year, likely alongside the next iPhone cycle.

The company announced on Monday that it had submitted a confidential S-1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), but said it had not yet decided when to go public.

In a statement, OpenAI said: “We recently submitted a confidential S-1. We expect it to leak so we’re just announcing it. We have not decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company. But it’s a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best.”

The filing places OpenAI alongside competing AI developers Anthropic and Perplexity, which also submitted confidential IPO documents last week and this week.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is preparing for its own stock market debut, setting up what could become one of the biggest waves of technology listings in recent years.

Although OpenAI did not disclose the size of the proposed offering or a timeline for the listing, this development will boost the company’s growth since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022.

OpenAI has grown into one of the world’s most valuable private firms, with latest valuation standing at about $852 billion, while Anthropic was recently valued at nearly $965 billion following a new funding round.

According to reports, OpenAI has been working with investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on the IPO process.

The company is also expected to organise a tender offer that would allow employees to sell some of their shares, providing liquidity ahead of any public listing.

OpenAI, however, is still facing challenges to justify its valuation as it spends heavily on computing power and infrastructure needed to train and operate more advanced AI models.

The company has reportedly raised more than $180 billion from investors but is still in a phase of significant spending.

Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman said in a recent blog post that the company is entering what he described as its “third phase”.

According to Altman, OpenAI first focused on research into artificial general intelligence before becoming a product company through services such as ChatGPT.

“Now we are entering the third phase,” Altman wrote. “The economy is beginning to reshape around AI. The central question now is how to make advanced AI abundant, affordable, safe, useful, and easy enough for every person and organization to benefit from it.”

The planned IPO arrives shortly after a case involving OpenAI and Musk. An advisory jury recently ruled against claims brought by Musk, who had accused OpenAI and Altman of abandoning commitments related to the company’s original non-profit mission. A federal judge subsequently adopted the jury’s verdict.

The number of AI companies preparing for public listings is also drawing attention across the wider industry.

AI search startup Aravind Srinivas said Perplexity still intends to pursue an IPO in 2028 regardless of how the listings of OpenAI and Anthropic perform.

“Agnostic of these two companies, we were planning for something in 2028, so that still remains the case,” Srinivas told CNBC.

He acknowledged that investor reaction to upcoming AI listings could influence market sentiment, particularly the reception to SpaceX’s offering.

“I certainly think there will be ripple effects if they don’t go well, like there is no sugar coating on that. The SpaceX IPO this week will definitely be a leading indicator of how Anthropic or OpenAI will go out,” he said.

Srinivas added that strong public market performances would benefit the AI sector.

“I think it’s important for the AI industry that these IPOs go well, and I actually think they will go well, because they’re doing well.”

The company revealed that over one million businesses already use early versions of the agent which was built inside Meta’s messaging platforms, where over a billion conversations happen daily between people and businesses.

The Business Agent, which works in local languages, responds to customer questions without delay and also makes product suggestions from a company’s catalogue. It can book appointments, qualify incoming leads and complete sales.

Businesses can set the tone, and the agent adjusts its language to match.

At the event in London, demonstrations showed how quickly the agent replies to customer messages, with one test illustrating a full product enquiry handled from start to checkout without human input.

Meta also built in a morning briefing feature that sends business owners a summary of missed messages and highlights from customer chats. It is aimed at teams that cannot stay online all day.

The company is also expanding access with new businesses being able to set up the agent in minutes. The entry option is free, but Meta plans to introduce paid tiers later for different business sizes.

Discovery is also changing, letting customers search for businesses directly on WhatsApp soon. They can also share contact cards in chats as well as trigger direct conversations with companies and Meta says this will make response times faster once customers reach out.

Behind the tool is a larger system called the Meta Business Agent Platform. It allows companies to build and customise their own agents and also connects with external services such as Shopify, Zendesk and Shopee. This gives the agent the ability to act on behalf of a business across different systems.

Larger companies get added features including guardrails, measurement tools and options to set policies around customer interactions. Meta says this is aimed at ensuring consistency and oversight at scale.

The company is expanding support across WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. It says businesses will eventually be able to use the system for more than customer service. Future plans include market research, product insights, calendar management and competitive tracking.

Meta is also investing heavily in artificial intelligence infrastructure, with spending expected to reach $145 billion. The Business Agent aims to turn messaging platforms into full business tools.

OpenAI, Anthropic and Google are all building similar AI systems for enterprise use. Meta’s focus is strongly on integrating these tools directly into its social and messaging apps, where businesses already operate.

A report by the Wall Street Journal said Meta had repeatedly delayed plans to make the API available to developers and, as of Tuesday, had not set a launch date. The report cited people familiar with the matter.

However, Meta disputed suggestions that the project had stalled. A company spokesperson said on Wednesday that testing is already underway with a group of early partners and that the company still expects to release the API later this month.

“The muse spark API will be coming soon,” Meta AI Chief Alexandr Wang announced in a post on X in April.

Meta AI Unveils Spark to Power Next-Gen AI across Platforms

The API would allow developers to integrate Muse Spark into their own software and services. An API, or Application Programming Interface, is a software bridge that enables different systems to communicate and work together.

Meta introduced Muse Spark in April as the first model developed under its Superintelligence Labs initiative, which was created to strengthen the company’s position in the competitive AI market.

The model is designed to narrow the gap between Meta and competitors including OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.

While Muse Spark is already available to consumers through Meta’s applications, users can currently access it only through built-in modes such as Instant, Thinking and Contemplating. Developers still do not have access to a public API, and Meta has yet to release documentation, pricing details, rate limits or eligibility requirements.

The lack of information has created apprehension among developers hoping to build products around the model. Without a public timeline, waitlist or technical documentation, companies interested in integrating Muse Spark are unable to plan deployments or assess costs.

The delays also come at a sensitive time for Meta. Investors have been monitoring the company’s AI strategy as it spends heavily on infrastructure, talent and product development.

Questions about execution have grown following reports of an Instagram security incident involving Meta’s AI-powered support system, which exposed weaknesses in automated account management processes.

Earlier on Wednesday, Meta unveiled a new AI agent designed to help businesses handle day-to-day tasks, showing that the company is going beyond consumer chatbots and into enterprise services.

The launch highlights Meta’s goal to compete more directly with OpenAI, Anthropic and Google across multiple areas of the AI market.

Muse Spark is expected to bolster that strategy. It is the first in what Meta has described as a new generation of advanced models from its Superintelligence Labs unit.

However, the repeated postponements have left analysts, developers and investors waiting for evidence that the company can translate its AI investments into products that are ready for global use.

Access is still currently limited to a small group of testing partners, while the developer community is waiting for Meta to open the platform to the public.

The attack involved manipulating Meta’s AI support tool into resetting account credentials without properly verifying identity.

In some cases, attackers were able to take over accounts linked to the Obama-era White House Instagram page, beauty retailer Sephora, and a senior U.S. Space Force official.

The accounts were not breached through Meta’s core systems. Instead, hackers targeted the chatbot’s decision-making process, using what cybersecurity experts describe as prompt injection techniques, combined with VPN tools to mimic the location of the account holder.

Once inside the recovery flow, attackers reportedly asked the AI to link new email addresses to targeted accounts. The chatbot then sent verification codes to those emails. After that step, password resets followed.

A security researcher familiar with the incident described how quickly access could be lost and regained. Jane Manchun Wong, a former Meta employee whose account was affected, said in a post on X: “Quite concerning,”.

She also reported repeated password reset attempts and a brief lockout before regaining access.

Posts on social media showed users discussing similar takeovers. Some said they were locked out without warning, while others complained about the lack of human support during recovery.

Meta confirmed the issue had been addressed. Andy Stone, a spokesperson for the company, said: “This issue has been resolved and we are securing impacted accounts,”. In a separate response, he said claims that world leaders’ accounts were compromised were “totally false”.

One of the affected accounts linked to the Obama-era White House page briefly posted content before being recovered, according to reports by 404 Media. The page has been inactive since 2017.

Meta introduced the Instagram AI support chatbot in March 2026. It was designed to handle account recovery and reduce reliance on human support, an area where users have long complained about delays and limited access.

However, the incident has drawn attention to the risks of giving automated systems control over sensitive actions. Security specialists say the problem lies in how these tools are authorised.

Brian Westnedge, vice president for alliances and partnerships at cybersecurity firm Red Sift, said: “This is a foundational architecture failure. The model was given privileged actions without privileged access controls.”

He added that the situation reveals the pressure on Meta, which has cut staff while investing heavily in artificial intelligence systems.

Cybersecurity experts have also warned that the issue is not limited to one company. Prompt injection attacks have appeared in other systems since the rise of AI chatbots after 2022.

Cliff Steinhauer, director of information security and engagement at the National Cybersecurity Alliance, said: “The concern isn’t necessarily AI itself, but whether adequate safeguards exist around what the AI is authorised to do.”

Engin Kirda, a professor at Northeastern University, said attackers are now targeting systems rather than individuals. He noted: “In the past, people were targeted by scams. Now, we are seeing agents being targeted by scams.”

Meta shares fell by more than 5% after reports of the breach, as investors are concerned about the company’s AI spending plans, which are expected to reach up to $145 billion.

The company says it has secured affected accounts and patched the vulnerability. It has not provided further technical details on how the exploit was carried out.

RTX Spark, unveiled on Monday by Jensen Huang, chief executive during a keynote in Taipei ahead of the Computex technology conference, brings about a shift in how computers are used, moving away from traditional software-based workflows towards systems that can carry out tasks through AI agents.

“The PC is being reinvented,” Huang said. “For forty years, you launched apps. Click. Type. With RTX Spark and Microsoft Windows, you ask, and the PC does the work.”

RTX Spark is designed as a superchip built for what Nvidia describes as the “era of personal AI agents”. It combines a Blackwell-based GPU with a Grace CPU, delivering up to 1 petaflop of AI performance and 128GB of unified memory. 

Nvidia says this setup is intended to support complex AI tasks running directly on the device rather than in the cloud.

The company explained that the chip will allow users to run large language models locally, including systems with up to 120 billion parameters, while also handling demanding creative and gaming workloads. These include editing high-resolution video, generating AI video content, and running advanced 3D rendering tools.

Nvidia said RTX Spark systems will support Windows PCs built for what it calls “personal agents”, software that can carry out tasks across applications. The company is working with Microsoft to integrate the technology into Windows, including new security features designed to control how AI agents operate on a device.

Microsoft chairman and chief executive Satya Nadella said the collaboration aims to expand access to advanced computing tools. “Our goal is to deliver unmetered intelligence to every home and every desk with Windows,” he said.

The companies noted that the new Windows platform will include tools that allow users to manage what AI agents can access, how data is handled, and when information is processed locally instead of being sent to the cloud.

RTX Spark also targets creators and developers as Nvidia said the chip can support 90GB 3D scene rendering, 12K video editing, and AI-assisted design work. Users will be able to run high-end gaming titles at 1440p resolution with frame rates above 100 frames per second.

Adobe is among the companies adapting its software for the new system. It is reworking Photoshop and Premiere to take advantage of the hardware, with expected performance gains in AI tools such as generative editing and video expansion features.

Shantanu Narayen, Adobe’s chair and chief executive, said the changes would speed up creative work. “The best creative work in the world happens in Adobe tools from Adobe Firefly to Photoshop and Premiere, and the expansion of our partnership with NVIDIA and Microsoft will make those experiences faster and more powerful than ever,” he said.

Other software and gaming companies are also involved, including Blackmagic Design, Blender, ComfyUI, OTOY, and Xbox, all of which said they are preparing support for the new platform.

Hardware makers are preparing devices around the chip. Nvidia said laptops and compact desktops will be produced by companies including ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft Surface and MSI, with Acer and GIGABYTE also expected to join later. The first devices are scheduled for release in the autumn.

RTX Spark systems are expected to come in slim laptop designs and compact desktops aimed at both professionals and consumers. Nvidia said laptops will feature lightweight builds, OLED displays and all-day battery life.

With the launch, Nvidia is going beyond its traditional graphics chip business into full PC system design. Analysts say the move places the company in closer competition with Intel, AMD and Apple in the personal computing market.

With this, Dell could add more than $80 billion to its market value.

The company reported first-quarter revenue of $43.8 billion for its 2027 fiscal year, far ahead of analyst expectations of about $35 billion.

Earnings also came in stronger than expected, with adjusted earnings per share reaching $4.86 compared with forecasts of roughly $2.94. Net income climbed 256% year-on-year to $3.44 billion.

The strongest growth came from Dell’s Infrastructure Solutions Group, the division responsible for servers and data-centre systems. Revenue in that business jumped 181% to $29 billion as companies continued spending heavily on AI infrastructure.

Dell noted that AI server sales alone reached $16.1 billion during the quarter, up 757% from a year earlier.

The company also booked $24.4 billion in new AI server orders, pushing its backlog to $51.3 billion. That means Dell still has tens of billions of dollars’ worth of systems waiting to be delivered over the coming quarters.

Investors focused heavily on the growing backlog because it gives Dell unusual visibility into future demand at a time when many technology companies still find it difficult to predict how long the AI spending wave will last.

Following the results, Dell raised its full-year revenue forecast to between $165 billion and $169 billion, up from earlier guidance of $138 billion to $142 billion.

The company now expects AI server revenue to hit roughly $60 billion this year, compared with its previous estimate of $50 billion.

Adjusted earnings per share guidance also increased to $17.90 from $12.90.

Dell’s recent growth has been tied to Nvidia, whose graphics processors power most of the company’s AI systems. The results came only days after Nvidia itself reported record data-centre revenue of $75.2 billion, up 92% from a year earlier.

Together, the numbers from both companies point to aggressive spending on AI infrastructure by major technology firms and cloud providers.

Dell has benefited from orders linked to companies including Alphabet, Amazon and CoreWeave, as well as large AI data-centre projects in Europe.

The company has also expanded its partnership with Nvidia through Project Helix, an initiative designed to help businesses build and deploy AI systems more quickly.

The latest earnings added to signs that demand for enterprise AI infrastructure remains strong across the industry. Lenovo recently reported strong AI server growth, while Super Micro Computer continues expanding manufacturing for GPU-based servers.

Technology companies are expected to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on AI data centres this year as competition around AI services intensifies.

Before the recent shares surge, Dell spent years being seen mainly as a PC and storage company. Now, investors view it as one of the major suppliers benefiting from the global vision to build AI infrastructure.

This places the artificial intelligence firm among the world’s most valuable private technology companies ahead of a possible stock market debut.

The Series H round drew backing from investment firms including Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, Sequoia Capital, Capital Group, Coatue and D1 Capital Partners.

Investors such as Baillie Gifford, Blackstone, Brookfield, DST Global and Fidelity Management & Research also joined the round.

The funding package also includes $15 billion in previously committed investments from large cloud companies, including $5 billion from Amazon announced earlier this year.

Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron joined the round as strategic infrastructure partners.

With the funding, Anthropic plans to expand computing capacity, grow its Claude products and continue research into safety and interpretability.

The company announced the funding on the same day it released Claude Opus 4.8, its latest model focused on coding, advanced reasoning and what it described as stronger honesty and self-correction abilities.

Anthropic has expanded rapidly since its last fundraising round in February, helped by rising demand from business customers using Claude Code and other enterprise tools. The company said its annualised revenue run rate passed $47 billion earlier this month.

“Claude is increasingly indispensable to our growing global community of customers, and we work tirelessly to make tools like Claude Code and Cowork more helpful, more powerful, and more adaptable to their needs,” said Krishna Rao, chief financial officer of Anthropic.

“This funding will help us serve the historic demand we are experiencing, stay at the research frontier, and bring Claude to more of the places where work happens.”

The company also said it recently signed new agreements with Amazon, Google, Broadcom and SpaceX to secure more computing power as demand for Claude grows.

Under those agreements, Amazon will provide up to five gigawatts of additional capacity, while Google and Broadcom will supply next-generation TPU infrastructure. SpaceX will also provide access to GPU capacity through its Colossus systems.

Anthropic revealed that Claude is now available across Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, with AWS remaining its main cloud and training partner.

“Claude’s latest advancements have driven large-scale adoption among the world’s most demanding organisations. This momentum positions Anthropic to lead the next phase of AI innovation and capture the enormous opportunity ahead,” said Brad Gerstner, founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital.

Marc Stad, managing partner at Dragoneer, said, “The technological progress we are seeing right now is breathtaking. And we believe that we are still in the earliest days of both the development and commercialisation of this technology.”

Neil Mehta, founder and managing partner at Greenoaks, added, “Rarely has a company’s culture, mission, and commercial momentum reinforced each other so completely. We are honoured to deepen our partnership.”

With competition increasing among leading artificial intelligence companies seeking more users, stronger computing infrastructure and fresh investment before entering public markets, Anthropic’s latest raise will strengthen its place.

Earlier this year, OpenAI secured a funding round valued at $852 billion after investment, while Elon Musk’s xAI, now merged with SpaceX, has reportedly targeted a $2 trillion valuation ahead of a future public offering.

The decision comes after months of questions about how the document was prepared and checked before publication.

Cabinet approved the draft policy in March 2026, and government published it in April for public comment.

Questions emerged soon after, when media reports found that several citations did not exist or pointed to journals that never published the work. The findings forced a formal withdrawal of the document on 26 April 2026.

Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies Solly Malatsi told Parliament that the department missed the problems before they became public.

He said, “The department had not picked up that there were issues with the references in the draft policy document before the events were exposed in news reports,”

Two officials involved in drafting and checking the document have since been suspended. The department also admitted gaps in its internal review process, especially around how sources were verified before publication.

Malatsi said the government moved to contain the damage after the issue became public. He stated, “It was then that we got the responses to protect the integrity of the policy development process and, obviously, the stain that it has caused not just on the department but also on the government’s overall process of formulating and finalising policy,”

On 14 May 2026, the government appointed an independent panel to rebuild the policy framework. The group is chaired by Professor Benjamin Rosman of the Machine Intelligence and Neural Discovery Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand.

It includes Professor Vukosi Marivate, Professor Alison Gillwald, Heather Irvine, Dr Tshepo Feela, cybersecurity specialist Jabu Mtsweni, and cyber lawyer Lufuno Tshikalange.

Officials expect the revised framework to go back for public comment in January 2027. Until then, South Africa will remain without a formal national AI policy, even as both government and private firms continue to deploy AI systems in daily operations.

The episode has led to queries about oversight in policy development and the growing use of generative AI in official work.

It also places South Africa in a tighter race with countries such as Kenya and Nigeria, which are advancing their own national AI strategies.

Attention has currently shifted to whether the new panel can restore confidence and produce a framework that holds up to standards, both locally and across the continent.