Mobile World Live brings you our top three picks of the week as Apple debuted its long-awaited foldable iPhone Duo, concerns over the risks of frontier AI intensified and Qualcomm sealed a custom silicon deal with Amazon.

Apple debuts long-awaited foldable iPhone Duo

What happened: Apple made its long-anticipated foldable debut with the iPhone Duo and unveiled the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, marking new CEO John Ternus’ first annual product launch.

Why it matters: Ternus stated the device it has the “largest display ever on an iPhone, while still fitting easily in your pocket”, adding it “feels as natural and intuitive as iPad”. The device, which features a 7.6-inch internal display that is 50% larger than the size of the iPhone 18 Pro Max, starts at $1,999 for 256GB. VP of devices at IDC Francisco Jeronimo said that for Ternus, the “real test” will be whether Apple can “make foldables a more valuable category, own the defining premium product and use that position to extend the economic power of the iPhone portfolio”.

Paolo Pescatore, chief analyst at PP Foresight, said he expects the Duo “to be an instant hit, benefiting the wider market and developer community while putting rivals firmly on notice”. Indeed, IDC forecasted Apple will ship around 10 million iPhone Duo units in its first 12 months and generate $27 billion in revenue. Additionally, Jeronimo noted that although the handset is Apple’s “most expensive iPhone ever”, it is around $500 below market expectations. “Apple entered the foldable market and, in one keynote, set the price and the standard every rival will now be measured against,” he said. China will be its first key test as Huawei captured 79.4% of the country’s foldable units in Q2. Yet, Jeronimo argued Apple has given buyers “their first genuinely compelling reason to reconsider.”

Apple debuts long-awaited foldable iPhone Duo

Anthropic researcher issues grave AI warning

What happened: Evan Hubinger, who manages Anthropic’s AI Alignment Stress-Testing team, warned in a post on social media platform X there is more than a 10% chance that increasingly capable, self-improving AI could “kill all humans” within the next decade, raising alarm over the pace of frontier AI development.

Why it matters: Hubinger said the risk from existing models remained “low” but pointed to “recursive self-improvement” as a route to dangerous “superintelligence”. He said Anthropic did not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and was “not clearly on track to”. His comments followed the resignation of Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who accused Anthropic and OpenAI of “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives”. OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta all disclosed unprecedented incidents in recent months involving AI models autonomously executing cyberattacks. Anthropic’s August risk report stated advanced models could eventually “catastrophic harm”.

Iwo Szapar, director of AI innovation and venture building at Information Services Group said the resignation of researchers close to the AI race should prompt action. “Maybe he is wrong about the probability. Maybe he is not. But a handful of private companies, competing to ship first, should not get to decide how much risk the rest of us have to accept,” he argued. “I want the rules,” he added, calling for measures including independent safety evaluations and shared stop conditions across frontier labs. Meanwhile, Thomas White, analyst at Inner Circle Consulting, said users should consider when it is worth delegating work to “an energy-hungry technology with unknown psychological and existential risks”.

Anthropic researcher issues grave AI warning

Qualcomm lands custom AI chip deal with Amazon

What happened: Qualcomm struck a long-term agreement with Amazon to develop customised silicon for AI inference infrastructure in Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centres.

Why it matters: The agreement covers multiple generations of custom silicon, alongside optical connectivity technology designed to move data between AI processors at speeds of up to 1.6Tb/s. The arrangement is linked to up to $60 billion in potential commercial transactions. Amazon will also receive a warrant to buy up to 25 million Qualcomm shares at $161.26 each, worth about $4 billion if fully exercised. The warrants vest against purchase milestones, linking Amazon’s potential stake to its use of Qualcomm technology.

Counterpoint Research co-founder and VP Neil Shah described Amazon as Qualcomm’s “second major hyperscaler partner”, arguing the warrant creates a “multi-gen demand hook” because Amazon receives more equity only if it scales Qualcomm silicon. He noted the partnership is “a good validation for Qualcomm’s data centre portfolio and roadmap”, following the chipmaker’s target of $15 billion in data centre revenue by FY 2029. More broadly, Michael Ajayi, senior lecturer at Stadio Higher Education, said Nvidia’s dominance is driving “a structural response” amongst hyperscalers, with AI infrastructure likely to become “more heterogeneous” as cloud companies adopt custom accelerators.

Qualcomm lands custom AI chip deal with Amazon

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OpenAI unveiled a specialised financial edition of its enterprise platform to help bank employees develop research, financial models and customised client materials.

ChatGPT for Financial Services runs on the company’s latest and most advanced model, GPT-6 Astra, and integrates direct data feeds from market intelligence providers like PitchBook, Crunchbase, LSEG, and Daloopa.

Development of the tool was guided by pilot partnerships with investment banking powerhouses Morgan Stanley and Evercore.

Nick Turley, OpenAI’s VP of product, told CNBC the company is “teaching ChatGPT to research like an analyst and back up its conclusions like an analyst as well”.

In a blog post yesterday (10 September), OpenAI noted early collaboration focused heavily on solving two major industry friction points: streamlined access to verified market data and automated artifact creation.

By hosting and indexing third-party datasets directly on its own infrastructure, the system enables citations which help bankers trace figures and claims back to their original sources.

The launch comes amid a broader push by OpenAI to broaden enterprise adoption and cement recurring revenues ahead of a widely expected stock market debut.

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OpenAI reportedly pulled the plug on its pilot programme which let US federal agencies use its models for just $1 per year, shifting instead to a usage-based pricing system to offer government workers a 50% discount off standard rates.

Bloomberg reported the shift concludes a deal struck in August 2025 between OpenAI and the US General Services Administration (GSA), under which the agency’s OneGov marketplace let federal entities access ChatGPT Enterprise for a nominal $1 per agency for one year. GSA also issued an Authority to Use for ChatGPT Enterprise as part of the programme.

The offer came shortly after GSA added OpenAI, Anthropic and Google to its list of approved AI vendors for civilian federal agencies, including an additional 60-day period for unlimited use of advanced features.

The news agency noted the arrangement represented the steepest technology discount GSA’s central purchasing arm had negotiated to date, which was scheduled to conclude on 30 September 2026.

The new agreement with the government is set to take effect on 1 October, lasting more than two years, according to Bloomberg.

Uptake
According to GSA figures cited by the news site, 3.5 million federal employees ultimately used ChatGPT under the pilot programme, generating $1.4 billion in claimed cost savings.

When the arrangement was first announced, OpenAI stated over 90,000 users across more than 3,500 US federal, state, and local government agencies sent more than 18 million messages on ChatGPT to support their day-to-day work dating back to 2024.

GSA’s public OneGov listings still show the original $1-per-agency pricing, with an expiration date of 30 September 2026, while OpenAI’s own government page had not been updated to reflect the shift.

The pilot was part of a broader push by GSA under its OneGov strategy to secure discounted access to frontier AI tools for federal agencies.

Alongside the OpenAI deal, GSA struck similar arrangements with Anthropic, offering Claude for Enterprise and Claude for Government at $1 across the executive, legislative and judicial branches, and with Google, offering Gemini for Government at $0.47 per agency.

The news site noted those agreements are also due to expire on 30 September 2026, with no successor terms yet made public for either company

The initial round of dollar-a-year deals was key to the Trump Administration’s America’s AI Action Plan, which aimed to accelerate AI adoption across federal government.

Bloomberg reported the move to usage-based pricing could mean OpenAI is looking to convert pilot-stage government adoption into a more sustainable commercial relationship, as the company works to build out revenue ahead of a planned public listing.

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Analog Devices struck a deal to acquire Alif Semiconductor in an all-cash deal worth $1.4 billion, as the analogue chip maker moves to bolster its edge AI capabilities.

The deal adds Alif’s AI-native microcontrollers and fusion processors, which combine low-power neural processing with connectivity, security and power management on a single chip.

Analog Devices stated the technology would advance “Physical Intelligence”, enabling systems to sense, reason and act locally in real time while meeting demanding power, latency, security and reliability constraints.

It positioned the deal as a response to the expansion of AI capabilities beyond interpreting text and images toward characterising real-world signals including motion, sound, vibration, radio waves and thermodynamics.

By combining its expertise in sensing, signal processing, power and connectivity with Alif’s digital processing platform, customers can build complete system-level solutions rather than sourcing components separately, Analog Devices explained.

CEO Vincent Roche explained AI is moving out of the data centre and into the physical world, where latency, power and trust cannot be compromised and described the deal as central to what he called the next frontier of embodied, deterministic AI.

Analog Devices stated Alif’s silicon is already shipping in production, with design wins across consumer and industrial customers.

The company expects the acquisition to widen its addressable market across industrial, data centre infrastructure, defence, energy, robotics, digital health and wearable applications.

The transaction was approved by both companies’ boards and includes up to $200 million in additional contingent consideration.

It is expected to close before the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals.

Analog Devices arranged an all-cash acquisition of Empower Semiconductor for $1.5 billion in May aimed at improving power density for AI compute.

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An Anthropic AI safety researcher warned there is more than a 10% chance that increasingly capable AI could “kill all humans” within the next decade, highlighting growing concerns in the industry over the pace of development.

Evan Hubinger, manager of the AI Alignment Stress-Testing team at Anthropic, wrote on social media platform X: “I personally think it is >10% within the next decade.”. He explained the risk from existing AI models was “low” but warned he was concerned about “superintelligence” emerging through “recursive self-improvement”, which is the ability of an AI system to autonomously develop its own successor.

He added Anthropic was “trying its best” but did not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and was “not clearly on track to”.

Gambling with lives
Hubinger’s comments came in response to the resignation of AI researcher Jacob Coxon from Anthropic. In a post on X, Coxon accused OpenAI and Anthropic of “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives”.

“Neither company is acting responsibly,” he said.

Coxon argued future AI models could become capable of hacking systems, rapidly transforming industries and acquiring “real power and resources”. He called for greater coordination between AI developers, including a temporary halt to improving model capabilities.

“At OpenAI, many have not deeply internalised the civilisational stakes,” he warned. Meanwhile at Anthropic, he said “the stakes are well-understood” but “they believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk”.

AI giants are facing increasing scrutiny over the behaviour of autonomous systems. In recent months, OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta have all disclosed unprecedented incidents involving AI tools carrying out cyberattacks.

Indeed, Anthropic’s August risk report assessed that while the threat posed by current models was low, the company was “less confident in this assessment than we were in prior risk reports”. It said advanced models could eventually automate R&D, rapidly accelerate progress in technical fields, and “lead to catastrophic harm”.

“We are seeing early signs of potential acceleration,” the US AI player stated.

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A report by Dell’Oro Group found worldwide data centre IT semiconductor and component revenue for servers and storage systems surged 182% in Q2 2026, driven by rising memory prices and continued AI infrastructure investment.

DRAM and storage drive revenue grew at a triple-digit pace, as average selling prices per bit more than doubled year-over-year while continued AI infrastructure investment fuelled broad-based demand across accelerators and complementary server and storage components.

“Data centre component growth accelerated sharply in the second quarter, driven by higher memory and storage prices and continued growth in server demand,” stated Baron Fung, VP of research at Dell’Oro.

He also said Nvidia’s Blackwell platform and custom accelerators from Google and Amazon continued to gain momentum.

Fung added agentic AI is emerging as a meaningful growth driver for general-purpose servers, broadening component demand beyond accelerated computing hardware.

Going forward, Fung stated Dell’Oro expects component revenue growth to maintain momentum through the remainder of 2026, supported by elevated component prices and strong AI infrastructure investment, though supply constraints could limit hyperscaler capital expenditure plans.

The report found accelerated server deployments drove strong demand for complementary components, including high-bandwidth memory (HBM), CPUs, memory and high-speed back-end network interface cards.

General-purpose server demand remained strong across cloud service providers, supported by continued infrastructure expansion alongside emerging agentic AI workloads.

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Google is set to invest at least €13 billion in digital infrastructure across Finland over the next two years, putting AI facilities, nuclear power and renewable energy at the centre of its largest single outlay in Europe.

The spending will cover new digital infrastructure across the regions of Hamina, Kajaani, Muhos and Vaala as the technology giant looks to expand capacity for services including Gemini, Search, Maps and YouTube.

The investment is expected to support more than 37,000 jobs nationwide and contribute an annual average of €3.6 billion to Finland’s GDP. Once operational, the new facilities are projected to support around 7,000 jobs annually.

It also includes a commitment of €31 million for local community initiatives over four years, including €10 million for research and innovation. Additionally, more than 4,400 workers will receive AI skills training through local partnerships

According to Google, the new sites will use existing grid infrastructure and locate closer to carbon-free energy sources. The outlay will also fund biodiversity restoration, including native forest, peatland and wetland projects.

Google’s hefty Finnish commitment dwarfs its other European investments. The company pledged €5.5 billion to Germany through 2029 and committed €600 million to a new AI facility in the Netherlands in 2024. It also broke ground on its first data centre in Austria this year as it expands AI capacity across the region.

Nokia backing
Alongside the investment, Google struck a 22-year power purchase agreement with Finnish energy company Fortum to support the continued operation of a nuclear power plant near the southern town of Loviisa. The deal marks the company’s first nuclear power contract outside the US, according to Reuters.

Google said that without the latest agreement, the plant, which currently supplies around 10% of Finland’s electricity and employs about 580 people, would not be able to continue operating beyond 2030. Keeping it online is expected to support grid resilience and help stabilise electricity prices across the country.

Google’s latest outlay deepens its existing presence in Finland, where it has operated a data centre in Hamina since 2009, supporting more than 600 suppliers including domestic operators DNA, Elisa and vendor Nokia.

Commenting on the Google investment, Nokia CEO Justin Hotard pointed to its partnership with the company on delivering optical and IP networks, while outlining a commitment to build out infrastructure to help connect Google’s activities in Finland to the world.

“Every AI token is a network moment. Billions of agents, devices, and people act on intelligence in real time, and every one of those moments depends on a network that is fast, secure and always on. Nokia builds those networks,” said Hotard.

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Qualcomm struck a deal with Amazon to develop customised silicon for large-scale AI data centre infrastructure, while issuing a warrant to the technology giant to acquire a stake worth up to $4 billion in the chipmaker.

The move marks Qualcomm’s latest strategic expansion into the data centre sector, building on its recent moves to establish an AI-native foundation, acquire AI software specialist Modular, and advance its agentic AI ambitions beyond edge devices.

Under regulatory filings tied to the deal, the agreement is linked to up to $60 billion in potential commercial transactions.

As part of the arrangement, Qualcomm issued Amazon a warrant to acquire up to 25 million shares at $161.26 apiece, representing a potential $4 billion stake which vests across tranches tied to purchase milestones.

The operational partnership centres on creating tailored processors optimised for AI inference workloads across Amazon Web Service (AWS) data centres.

By combining Qualcomm’s experience in power-efficient compute design with AWS’ global cloud footprint, the companies aim to tackle the skyrocketing energy and compute demands driven by generative AI applications.

Alongside customised processing chips, the agreement encompasses high-performance optical connectivity technologies.

Qualcomm plans to supply optical digital signal processor and serialiser/deserialiser products capable of supporting speeds up to 1.6 Tb/s.

The high-bandwidth interconnects are designed to clear data bottlenecks within data centre networks, allowing large clusters of AI chips to communicate with minimal latency.

Both ways
The collaboration works both ways, as Qualcomm also plans to deepen its internal adoption of AWS infrastructure.

The chipmaker will use cloud-based AI tools, including Amazon Bedrock, to run electronic design automation workloads aimed at accelerating its own chip development cycles.

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon highlighted the rapidly accelerating demand for AI requires foundational advances across both processing and network interconnects to maximise operational efficiency.

AWS VP Prasad Kalyanaraman added the co-development effort will deliver more performant and cost-effective infrastructure for cloud customers globally.

The deal marks a significant expansion for Qualcomm, which has spent recent years diversifying its revenue beyond smartphones into personal computers, automotive systems and now cloud-scale hardware.

For AWS, working directly with Qualcomm on specialised silicon offers another avenue to manage the high-power consumption and soaring costs associated with operating global AI services.

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Mistral raised €3 billion in a Series D funding round led by Samsung Electronics, taking the French AI player’s valuation above €21 billion as it ramps up efforts to build sovereign frontier AI.

Samsung jointly led the round with European Union (EU)-backed Scaleup Europe Fund, and existing investor PSG Equity. According to Mistral, the raise marks the largest ever equity funding round by a European technology company.

New investors included private equity firm Advent and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, while existing backers including Mistral’s largest shareholder ASML, Nvidia, Salesforce Ventures and Bpifrance also participated.

Mistral said the funds will expand its frontier AI research and compute capacity, as well as support infrastructure investment, model development, commercial growth and international expansion.

Last year, the startup raised €1.7 billion at a €11.7 billion valuation in a series C funding round led by ASML.

The company said demand is growing for sovereign AI that combines performance with control, as enterprises and governments consider “long-term technology dependencies, data governance requirements and deployment choices”.

Mistral emphasised its “full-stack and open approach” and open-weight models and as a “sovereign AI layer” that gives organisations greater control over their data, models, compute and production systems.

In the game
Europe’s push for technological independence has gained urgency following a US decision in June to curb foreign access to two advanced AI models developed by Anthropic.

Mistral CFO Johan Bergqvist told Reuters that Europe having its “own kind of AI provider in the game is important”. He added that there is “politics involved in the access of these solutions” and organisations need to ensure they “do not compromise” their access to the AI supply chain.

Bergqvist also told the outlet the company is on track to hit $1 billion in annual recurring revenue by the end of the year, with growth increasingly coming from Asia and North America. He added a potential IPO remains an option, although the timing is “still up in the air”.

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IT provider Tata Consultancy Services’ (TCS) subsidiary HyperVault is planning a 1GW AI data centre campus in the south Indian city of Hyderabad, with up to INR700 billion ($7.4 billion) earmarked for the project.

HyperVault, an AI data centre and infrastructure business, secured 264 acres for the development, which will be built in phases based on customer demand and technology requirements. Once fully built, the campus is expected to rank among India’s largest AI infrastructure facilities.

The site will target AI companies and hyperscalers, supporting high-density GPU deployments for AI training and inference. It will use liquid cooling and is designed to accommodate larger power requirements for advanced AI workloads. The company also plans to use green energy and water-neutral design principles.

HyperVault CEO and managing director Deepesh Nanda said the company is “building infrastructure for where AI is going: higher density, liquid cooling, larger power blocks and faster deployment”.

Meanwhile, TCS CEO K. Krithivasan noted: “Hyderabad offers the scale, talent and ecosystem to serve global customers,” adding the project combines “AI-ready infrastructure with our cloud, engineering, enterprise transformation and AI capabilities”.

The move forms part of TCS’ broader push into AI infrastructure. Last month, the IT services player struck a five-year partnership with Porsche worth €1.25 billion and agreed to acquire the company’s automotive and consulting unit MHP for €320 million.

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Almost 130 nations called for restrictions to be placed on autonomous weapons systems, adding another slant to recent growing concerns over the impact of rogue AI.

In a post on X on 5 September, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands Tom Berendsen revealed 128 nations reached an accord on a United Nations (UN) push to address the challenges posed by lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) by defining what the systems are.

The agreement is an “important step” in regulating the systems, Berendsen wrote.

Various news outlets quoted an Agence France-Presse (AFP) article explaining the move to define what LAWS are is the first step towards possible regulation, which the UN separately explained is needed to ensure autonomous systems do not breach international humanitarian laws prohibiting the targeting of civilians during conflicts.

UN information indicates the agreement ratifies work on the impact of emerging technologies on LAWS commenced in 2023.

Across various meetings, government experts have defined the systems as being “one or more” weapons which can work together to “identify, select and engage a target with force, without intervention by a human being”.

Life-and-death
The concerns hold particular relevance in various ongoing global conflicts, with reports Russia and Ukraine are already testing autonomous drone fleets in their war.

In late August, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres and Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), jointly expressed concerns over the growing capabilities of AI, in particular its use in scenarios involving lethal force.

“We are now dangerously close to crossing a moral red line: the autonomous targeting of humans by machines,” Guterres said.

Spoljaric branded autonomous targeting systems “morally repugnant”.

The UN and ICRC urged nations to act swiftly to agree global rules and continue to press for humans to remain involved in “life-and-death decisions”.

UN high commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk today (7 September) pressed for faster action on governing AI as a whole, warning in a speech the technology poses an “existential risk to humanity” and lamenting the “almost unlimited power” a “handful of men” have over the technology.

Volker called for independent verification and “much stronger collaboration on security”, along with expressing concern over the potential impact of AI on employment, democracy and the environment.

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Nvidia inked strategic partnerships with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR to establish AI compute infrastructure financing platforms to mobilise more than $500 billion of third-party capital to build related infrastructure.

The chipmaker stated memorandums of understanding would help create the first compute financing platforms of their kind at global scale, intended to fund frontier AI laboratories, clouds and enterprises.

It noted the platforms are designed to create dedicated pools of capital at significant scale and attractive rates for its customers, positioning Nvidia compute and full-stack AI infrastructure as an investable asset class.

“We are bringing the world’s leading long-term capital providers together to independently underwrite AI infrastructure,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said.

“These financing platforms will help customers access scarce compute at scale and build the DSX AI factories that will power every industry and country”.

Nvidia described its compute as an investable asset offering the lowest token cost, highest revenue and longest life, alongside a rich ecosystem of buyers.

The arrangement builds on Nvidia’s broader push to raise capital for it and its customers to continue producing the chips, power systems and data centres underpinning the AI boom.

Nvidia GPUs underpin most leading US AI models available today and it supplies relevant chips, infrastructure, and software to a wide range of partners.

Money matters
It faced scrutiny in recent months over circular financing arrangements in which the company provides backing to help AI partners raise debt, in turn boosting Nvidia’s own revenue.

Bringing outside private capital providers onboard may help address some of the criticism since it spreads the financing load beyond Nvidia itself.

In recent years, private capital groups including Apollo and Blackstone have structured AI deals to help companies including Anthropic finance heavy spending on chips and data centres.

Financial Times reported Morgan Stanley predicts large cloud computing players would spend $3.5 trillion on AI infrastructure over the next two years.

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Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) argued open, decentralised access to super-intelligence is essential for ensuring global economic prosperity and personal safety.

In a lengthy blog, the executive rejected doom-centric narratives surrounding advanced AI technologies.

Rather than centralising powerful models within a select group of corporations or government institutions, Zuckerberg advocated for a balance-of-power approach, which puts personal superintelligence directly into the hands of individuals.

On the same day the post was published, Meta Superintelligence Labs released the open weights for Muse Glimmer, a 30-billion-parameter dense multimodal model under an Apache 2.0 license on Hugging Face.

The model is distilled from Muse Spark 1.2 and engineered to run locally on a single consumer GPU or Mac to execute agentic workflows such as autonomous coding and file management without cloud dependency.

Meta also plans to publish open weights for its Muse Spark 1.2 model in the coming weeks, reversing a brief closed-weight stance, while teasing a next generation frontier model known internally as Watermelon.

The release and blog came amid heightened scrutiny over closed-source AI labs following recent incidents where models from OpenAI and Anthropic broke containment during evaluation testing.

Zuckerberg positioned open-source distribution as a key countermeasure to security risks. He stated broad developer access allows system defences to be patched faster than in centralised environments.

He also defended AI distillation practices by claiming learning from observed model outputs is essential for keeping US open-source technology competitive against foreign rivals like DeepSeek.

Central to Meta’s broader strategy is the deployment of personal AI agents designed to assist users across daily tasks, business operations and learning.

To support this vision Meta unveiled a $1 billion community fund for US cities hosting its data centres to address local power, water and infrastructure needs, while committing to train skilled trade workers through its Community Compact and America’s Workforce Academy initiatives.

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Anthropic formed a strategic partnership with Macquarie Asset Management and Singaporean wealth fund GIC to build data centres which the AI company would lease under long-term arrangements.

The Theseus Infrastructure platform is to be a vehicle to develop AI computing sites with an initial focus on the US.

Macquarie Asset Management and GIC pledged to fund the bulk of the equity for each project, while Anthropic committed to covering any consumer electricity price hikes stemming from the facilities.

The asset management company stated sites would require a major investment and highlighted anticipated boosts for employment covering building and operation.

GIC is a repeat Anthropic investor.

It jointly led a $30 billion funding round in February and backed a $1.5 billion enterprise services venture Anthropic launched in May.

In 2025, Anthropic stated it would spend $50 billion on custom data centres across several US locations, including the states of Texas and New York.

The company is also preparing for a public listing.

Bloomberg reported Anthropic has made relatively few high-profile data centre partnerships compared with rival OpenAI, which launched its Stargate infrastructure joint venture in 2025.

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LG Uplus advanced efforts to apply AI in network automation by testing its ability to control the quality of a Wi-Fi 8-compatible home broadband system.

The self-healing capability employs Edge AI technology, which the South Korean operator explained conducts analyses and adaptation in the router instead of the cloud.

Broadcom contributed a Wi-Fi 8 platform running a neural processing unit to LG Uplus’ trial, enabling the on-board AI computation.

The operator adapted its existing cloud-based AI network prediction model for operation in the router.

There is an argument home broadband and consumer equipment are not often the focus of discussions around self-healing and autonomous networks.

LG Uplus explained the trial is significant in proving routers can become part of “an AI-based quality management platform”, benefitting customer service and infrastructure management.

It stated the companies proved the router could detect and adapt to anomalies before customers notice, boosting stability for bandwidth-intensive services.

LG Uplus plots further trials of how AI could be used to manage Wi-Fi 8 networks.

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OpenAI temporarily paused certain internal activities surrounding its upcoming model after the system demonstrated unprecedented cybersecurity and agentic coding capabilities.

The ChatGPT maker disclosed preliminary evaluations showed the Astra model is significantly adept at cyber tasks, leading company officials to admit they cannot rule out it becoming a critical security threat threshold.

Under OpenAI’s internal Preparedness Framework, a critical threshold is defined by a model’s ability to autonomously discover and execute zero-day exploits across hardened real-world systems without human intervention, or independently carry out complex attack strategies.

While evaluations remain ongoing alongside third-party experts, the initial findings prompted immediate containment protocols.

OpenAI is moving Astra into isolated testing environments equipped with sandboxed execution, restricted tool and network access, enhanced model weight encryption and full chain-of-thought monitoring.

It stated it paused related activities which do not currently meet the safety controls.

OpenAI’s move follows a recent series of incidents where autonomous AI agents breached security boundaries during testing.

Within the past month, OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta Platforms have all publicly acknowledged inadvertent system intrusions during evaluation phases.

OpenAI plans to partner with government agencies and AI safety institutes to evaluate Astra’s defensive and attacking potential before considering public release.

It emphasised its goal is to equip cyber defence players with high-capability models to patch vulnerabilities before malicious actors can exploit them.

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SK Hynix outlined plans to invest KRW54 trillion ($38.3 billion) in two new semiconductor manufacturing plants in South Korea, stepping up production capacity to meet long-term demand for AI memory.

The South Korean chipmaker will invest KRW35.2 trillion in its Yongin Y2 fabrication plant in the Seoul Metropolitan Area, which will produce high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and other next-generation dynamic random access memory (DRAM) products. Meanwhile, KRW19.1 trillion is earmarked for a second facility, Cheongju M17, in central South Korea to manufacture NAND flash memory chips, with the company arguing the city “offers the fastest fab construction timeline”.

The latest investment forms part of a wider manufacturing push. In June, SK Hynix unveiled plans to invest KRW600 trillion in the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster and KRW100 trillion to expand its Cheongju production base.

Yongin Y2 will become the second of four planned fabs in the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster. Construction of the plant is due to begin in July 2027, while work on the Cheongju M17 fab is scheduled to start in February 2027. The company aims to complete all four planned fabrication plants by 2033, bringing forward the original timeline by 12 years.

The latest commitment comes amid strong demand for AI memory requiring large volumes of HBM. SK Hynix explained demand for NAND memory is “surging rapidly”, adding its investment followed “a thorough review of market demand”. Citing forecasts by Omdia, it noted global DRAM and NAND demand is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 19% through 2030.

The company noted “in the AI era, technological competitiveness alone is not enough”, arguing the “ability to supply the required volume at the exact moment customers need it is the ultimate competitive advantage”.

In June, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung unveiled a long-term AI and semiconductor initiative led by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix expected to exceed $1 trillion by 2035.

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ByteDance is reportedly in the process of developing an AI model which could rival Anthropic’s Mythos system as part of a bid to establish itself as a leader in China’s AI ecosystem.

Financial Times (FT) reported the TikTok owner is in the early stages of training a model with as many as 10 trillion parameters.

This would put ByteDance’s offering ahead of Anthropic’s cutting-edge Mythos and make it three-times larger than Moonshot Kimi K3, the biggest model to come out of China so far.

While Anthropic does not reveal the size of its models, FT reported the most advanced Mythos 5 system has 8 trillion parameters and its Fable 5 about 5 trillion.

ByteDance’s model is apparently being pre-trained, a stage in development which typically takes three-to-six-months. It would then be fine-tuned and released, provided there are no issues.

Chinese companies are showing their hand with regards to AI model development, with Moonshot and Alibaba highlighting releases in recent weeks.

FT added ByteDance invested more aggressively in AI than other Chinese companies, building data centres and attracting talent in the sector.

Founder Zhang Yiming reportedly told staff he wants the team to target “world-leading model capabilities” during an internal meeting last month.

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Mobile World Live (MWL) brings you our top three picks of the week as SpaceX CEO Elon Musk outlined Starlink’s global broadband ambitions, Verizon lifted the lid on the network behind the FIFA World Cup 2026 and the World Bank urged developing nations to boost AI adoption.

Musk targets global broadband domination with Starlink

What happened: Musk outlined plans to increase Starlink’s network capacity 100-fold, claiming the satellite broadband business could eventually “deliver a majority of the world’s internet”.

Why it matters:  The tech mogul said the goal hinges on the rollout of an expanded V3 satellite constellation capable of delivering around 10 times the performance of current V2 models. To support the plan, the company asked the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for approval to deploy up to 100,000 low-Earth-orbit V3 satellites, supplementing the roughly 9,600 V2 satellites already in orbit. Musk argued the additional capacity would allow Starlink to eventually carry a majority of global internet traffic in countries where the service is authorised to operate, while driving a tenfold increase in Starlink revenue even if revenue per bit falls by 90%. Quilty Space founder and CEO Chris Quilty told MWL that the company’s “bold claim” flouts its “prior statements that Starlink was most appropriate for rural user”. While V3 satellites are expected to provide a “10x boost”, he noted “aggregate network capacity is a misleading metric because capacity is geographically distributed while demand is geographically concentrated”. Earlier this week, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell claimed that Starlink Mobile could compete directly with operators including AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile US using upgraded satellites and additional spectrum.

Musk targets global broadband domination with Starlink

Podcast: Inside Verizon’s World Cup connectivity

What happened: In the latest edition of the MWL podcast, Kavit and Justin sat down with Verizon wireless chief network officer Srini Kalapala, who detailed how the operator delivered connectivity as the official network provider for the FIFA World Cup 2026.

Why it matters: Earlier this month, the operator revealed its network carried almost 500TB of data across all US host stadiums, including 29.2TB during the final between Argentina and Spain. To handle demand, Verizon boosted stadium capacity by three to five times, installed thousands of under-seat antennas, deployed nearly 140 small cells around venues and fan zones, and laid 80,000 miles of fibre to transport broadcast feeds from all World Cup stadiums. In the podcast, Kalapala described the tournament’s “104 games in 39 days across 18 different stadiums in three countries” as “probably one of the largest projects that we worked on.” He explained Verizon had to ensure stadiums comprising 70,000 to 85,000 people could access “good quality mobile connectivity”, while also delivering “the most reliable network” for broadcasters and powering private 5G applications including referee cameras.

Podcast: Inside Verizon’s World Cup connectivity

World Bank urges lower income nations to grasp AI opportunity

What happened: The World Bank called on developing economies to accelerate AI adoption, arguing low-cost, locally adapted tools could accelerate economic development without requiring frontier models or hefty AI infrastructure investments.

Why it matters: In its World Development Report 2026: The Promise of Artificial Intelligence, the organisation said AI “could allow developing countries to do in a decade what might otherwise take a century”, provided governments address gaps in electricity, internet access, digital skills and institutions. World Bank SVP and chief economist Indermit Gill said AI has “thrown developing economies a lifeline”, but warned countries “must hurry” because the technology is “spreading faster and is more context-specific than earlier general-purpose technologies”. He added many high-impact use cases do not require large models or data centres, instead relying on “small, low-cost AI tools” tailored to local conditions. The report highlighted applications across healthcare, agriculture, tax collection and judicial services, while warning AI could also deepen inequality and weaken public trust without appropriate action. Foresight Communications Consultancy CEO Howaida Nadim argued the World Bank’s framework recognises that “greater opportunity lies in adopting proven tools and adapting them to local languages, data, institutions and development priorities”. She added “the next AI divide” might be “between those that successfully adapt AI to their development needs and those that remain primarily consumers of systems built elsewhere”.

World Bank urges lower income nations to grasp AI opportunity

The post The Friday File: Starlink; Verizon; World Bank appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison brought in the big guns of its parent, Nokia and Nvidia to help it develop fresh infrastructure to meet the demand for AI computing in Southeast Asia and beyond, with an initial 1GW target.

The Indonesian operator’s Zankore by Indosat play is to employ Nvidia’s DSX AI Factory reference design as part of an ambitious plan to establish the nation as a regional compute hub.

It aims to provide the first 200MW of capacity in H1 2027, running an Nvidia GB300 NVL72 rack. Information from the chip company indicates the set up uses 72 of its Blackwell Ultra GPUs and 36 Arm-architected CPUs to provide additional reasoning capabilities.

Zankore by Indosat is also employing the Nvidia DSX MaxLPS technology suite, which the chip player separately explained provides ways to “maximise token performance per MW within a fixed power budget”.

Put more plainly, the suite is designed to offer the lowest-possible token cost by optimising power use across the line of GPUs to unlock fuelling which might otherwise be stuck in less useful areas.

The operator’s parent Ooredoo Group is the lead investor and platform sponsor, an arrangement noted to bring access to long-term capital and regional scale.

Nokia is providing AI-native network infrastructure.

Zankore by Indosat appointed ex-Ericsson and T-Mobile US executive Ulf Ewaldsson as CEO, along with establishing a board comprising representatives from principal shareholders and independent members.

Meutya Hafid, the Indonesian Minister of Communication and Digital Affairs, said the nation is advantageously placed to provide AI compute capacity throughout Southeast Asia and the Zankore by Indosat move would speed development of sovereign capabilities to the benefit of “businesses and society”.

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