Apple Commits $600 Billion to Advance U.S. Technology and Manufacturing

Apple has announced a significant increase in its investment commitment to the United States, raising its total planned spending to $600 billion over the next four years. This announcement, made in collaboration with President Donald Trump, highlights Apple’s dedication to strengthening its American manufacturing and innovation footprint. Originally, Apple had pledged $500 billion earlier this year, but with the new $100 billion boost, the company aims to expand its advanced manufacturing capabilities and supply chain within the US.

A major part of this investment is focused on advanced manufacturing and emerging technologies. Apple plans to open a new state-of-the-art factory in Houston, Texas, dedicated to producing AI servers that power its cutting-edge Apple Intelligence system. The company is also doubling its U.S. Advanced Manufacturing Fund from $5 billion to $10 billion to support skilled manufacturing jobs and innovation. Additionally, Apple is collaborating with key American companies such as Corning, Texas Instruments, and Broadcom to expand domestic production of critical components like glass for iPhones and lasers for facial recognition technology.

This investment also aligns with governmental policies aimed at encouraging domestic manufacturing, particularly in response to potential tariffs on imported semiconductors and other components. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook noted that many parts of their products, including semiconductors and glass, are already made in the US, and the company’s goal is to increase this further. An expansion of research and development activities is included, focusing on silicon engineering and AI.

Apple’s increased commitment is expected to create thousands of high-tech jobs across the country, foster innovation, and solidify its position as one of the largest contributors to U.S. economic growth in the technology sector. The move has been positively received by investors and industry watchers as a strategic step towards reinforcing Apple’s manufacturing base domestically while reinforcing American technological leadership.

Read more: Reuters, Apple

GPT-5 Imminent Release: What to Expect from OpenAI’s Next-Gen AI Model

The AI world is buzzing with excitement as OpenAI gears up for the imminent release of GPT-5, its most advanced language model yet. After months of speculation, OpenAI has confirmed via social media and a scheduled livestream event on August 7, 2025, that GPT-5 is right around the corner.

What makes GPT-5 stand out? For starters, it’s expected to be a massive leap forward in reasoning, coding, and multimodal capabilities. Unlike previous models, GPT-5 will combine text, image, audio, and soon even video inputs, creating a seamless and more natural user experience. Developers can look forward to a model that can manage far larger contexts—a context window that could handle up to one million tokens—which means it can understand and work with entire books, lengthy research, or massive codebases without losing track.

CEO Sam Altman himself teased that GPT-5’s intelligence is impressive, even surpassing some human problem-solving abilities, describing a moment where GPT-5 answered a tricky question he couldn’t solve. This highlights the model’s advanced multi-step reasoning skills and potential for autonomous task execution.

Alongside enhanced natural language processing, GPT-5 aims to better automate workflows, from debugging code to creating documentation, making it a powerful tool for developers and businesses alike. OpenAI is also releasing lighter versions, such as GPT-5 mini and nano, to cater to different computational needs.

While OpenAI has not officially announced the rollout details beyond the live event, expectations are high for GPT-5 to redefine AI interaction, boosting efficiency, creativity, and problem-solving across diverse sectors.

Read more: Techradar, The Verge

AMD Reports Mixed Q2 Results, Projects Strong AI-Driven Growth in Q3

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) declared mixed financial results for the second quarter of 2025. The company posted a record $7.7 billion in revenue, marking a 32% increase compared to last year and surpassing analyst expectations. However, adjusted earnings per share came in at $0.48, slightly below forecasts, with margins affected by an $800 million inventory write-down related to U.S. export restrictions on AI chips destined for China. Looking ahead, AMD remains optimistic, forecasting third-quarter revenues between $8.4 billion and $9 billion. This positive outlook is driven by increasing demand for AMD’s AI-focused processors, signaling robust growth in its data center and AI business despite current market challenges.

Read more: Yahoo Finance

Genie 3: Google DeepMind Unveils Real-Time 3D Worlds from Text and Images

Google DeepMind has introduced Genie 3, an advanced AI model built to create real-time, interactive 3D environments from just a single text or image prompt. Unveiled as a major step in world modeling, Genie 3 allows users to instantly generate immersive worlds, enabling several minutes of continuous exploration at 720p and 24 frames per second. The model features dynamic memory—objects and changes within the environment remain consistent as users interact, a key improvement over earlier versions. Genie 3 has applications spanning gaming, education, research, and AI agent training, marking a significant advance toward more realistic, customizable AI-driven simulations

Read more: Google Deepmind

OpenAI Releases GPT-OSS 20B: Expanding the Reach of Open-Weight AI

OpenAI announced the release of GPT-OSS 20B, an open-weight language model featuring 21 billion parameters, on August 5, 2025. This release is described as one of the largest and most accessible open-source language models available to the public. The model is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license, allowing researchers, developers, and businesses unrestricted usage, modification, and deployment, including for commercial applications.

GPT-OSS 20B leverages a Mixture-of-Experts architecture, meaning that only 3.6 billion parameters are active during each inference. This design offers improved computational efficiency, making it possible to deploy the model on consumer hardware with as little as 16GB of RAM. Weights and code are available through platforms like Hugging Face and GitHub, enabling broad accessibility.

OpenAI stated that the release of GPT-OSS 20B aims to encourage innovation across research, enterprise, and individual communities. By providing full transparency over the model weights and internals, the company highlights benefits for users working in environments with strict privacy or regulatory needs. Organizations are able to fine-tune, audit, or adapt the model to their specific requirements without data ever leaving their premises.

The model introduces advanced features previously exclusive to proprietary offerings, such as agentic task support, chain-of-thought reasoning, dynamic tool integration (including browsing and external code execution), and structured outputs. These capabilities are intended to bring competitive large-language-model performance to the open-source ecosystem.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman explained in recent interviews that the company views individual empowerment and community-driven innovation as key drivers for making advanced AI accessible. The release of GPT-OSS 20B reflects this philosophy, offering tools for anyone wishing to experiment, build, or deploy language models without API restrictions or usage fees.

The open distribution of GPT-OSS 20B is seen by analysts as a significant shift toward the democratization of artificial intelligence technologies. Industry observers note that open-weight releases could accelerate the adoption of AI across industries and support new research and product development initiatives.

Sources: Openai, Hugging Face

xAI Launches Grok Imagine for Fast AI Video and Image Generation: How to Try It

TurboHire, an India-based recruitment automation platform, has secured $6million in Series A funding led by IvyCap Ventures. With its AI-powered solutions for large enterprises, TurboHire aims to streamline hiring processes and make talent discovery more efficient. The fresh capital will fuel product development and market expansion, responding to accelerated demand for digital hiring in South Asia and beyond.

Read more: Mashable

TurboHire Raises $6M Series A to Expand Automated Recruitment Tech

TurboHire, an India-based recruitment automation platform, has secured $6million in Series A funding led by IvyCap Ventures. With its AI-powered solutions for large enterprises, TurboHire aims to streamline hiring processes and make talent discovery more efficient. The fresh capital will fuel product development and market expansion, responding to accelerated demand for digital hiring in South Asia and beyond.

Read more: YourStory

AI-Powered Fintech Alaan Raises $48M in MENA Series A

Dubai-based fintech Alaan has closed a $48million Series A round, one of the largest in the Middle East and North Africa. Focused on leveraging AI for smarter corporate expense management, Alaan plans to use the funds on product innovation and regional expansion. This robust investment highlights sustained appetite for AI-powered fintech solutions and the growing significance of the MENA market in the global tech scene.

Read more: TechCrunch

US Approves OpenAI, Google, Anthropic for AI Developer Contracts

The U.S. government has added OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic to its list of approved AI vendors. Through a revamped Multiple Awards Schedule, federal agencies can now access these leading AI platforms using pre-negotiated contracts, easing procurement and accelerating digital transformation. This move signals a major shift in how governments work with cutting-edge AI tools and the growing recognition of generative AI’s transformative potential across public services.

Read more: TechCrunch

Meta Found to Violate Privacy Laws Via Flo App Data Collection

Meta has been found by a jury to have violated California privacy laws by discreetly collecting sensitive menstrual health data from users of the Flo period tracking app, allegedly without user consent. The class-action lawsuit revealed that Meta used this data for ad-tracking purposes, raising concerns about the handling of personal medical information. The outcome spotlights the increasing scrutiny on tech giants’ privacy practices as regulatory and user expectations evolve.

Read more: TechCrunch