Mobile World Live brings you our top three picks of the week as OpenAI’s models hacked an AI start-up during testing, Samsung unveiled its latest AI-powered foldables, and Verizon and AT&T logged record World Cup network traffic.

OpenAI models hack AI start-up

What happened: OpenAI revealed that a combination of its advanced AI models autonomously breached a controlled testing environment and launched a cyberattack on AI start-up Hugging Face.

Why it matters: During an internal benchmark designed to evaluate advanced cyber capabilities, the models exploited vulnerabilities in OpenAI’s research infrastructure to gain internet access before using stolen credentials and zero-day flaws to access Hugging Face’s systems. OpenAI said it had intentionally relaxed cyber safeguards in the sandboxed environment to test the models’ capabilities, stating the models were “hyperfocused” on completing the evaluation task and went to “extreme lengths”, though the company warned such events are likely to “become more commonplace” as models grow more capable.

Jason Goode, VP at IT service AppViewX, argued “this is the wake-up call the industry needed”, as the models “didn’t defeat their guardrails so much as exploit what their environments already permitted”. He said the episode underlined the “why model governance alone was never going to be enough” and how “the control point has to be the agent’s identity and what it’s actually allowed to touch”. Meanwhile Dan Gray, chief systems architect at technology R&D firm ChronoDyne Systems, added the incident should not be viewed as AI “going rogue”, but as a “cross-organisational control-chain failure” in which the models provided the “speed, persistence and adaptive exploitation capability”, while the organisations supplied “the objective, permissions, infrastructure and attack surface”.

OpenAI models hack AI start-up

Samsung unveils 3 new foldables packed with AI

What happened: Samsung Electronics expanded its foldables portfolio with three new smartphones at its latest Galaxy Unpacked event in London.

Why it matters: The lineup washeadlined by the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, Samsung’s first foldable to carry the Ultra branding. The vendor also refreshed the Galaxy Z Fold8 and Galaxy Z Flip8, placing AI capabilities and slimmer designs at the centre. Alongside the handsets, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Watch9 and Galaxy Watch Ultra2, while teasing AI-enabled smart glasses developed with Google and Qualcomm. Futuresource Consulting principal analyst Rasika D’Souza noted that despite forecasts smartwatch shipments will top 200 million units in 2026, the market is maturing as growth shifts to wearables including smart glasses and rings, an opportunity targeted by Samsung. She added the event showed Samsung’s strategy “has evolved from simple integration of AI features to now creating AI assistants that can assist meaningfully in daily tasks”. Meanwhile, FDM CCS Insight chief analyst Ben Wood said Samsung is “doubling down on foldables at exactly the moment the category is about to get its biggest credibility boost”, arguing Apple’s rumoured launch of a foldable iPhone later this year “could also be the moment that turns foldables from a niche premium category into a mainstream flagship battleground”.

Samsung unveils 3 new foldables packed with AI

Verizon, AT&T tally massive data usage during World Cup

What happened: Verizon and AT&T outlined the scale of network infrastructure deployed to support connectivity during the FIFA World Cup, reporting record data traffic and major capacity upgrades across US host venues.

Why it matters: Verizon said its network carried almost 500TB of data across all US host stadiums. The operator boosted stadium capacity by three to five times, installed thousands of under-seat and overhead antennas, and deployed nearly 140 small-cell projects and temporary sites beyond venues. Verizon described the World Cup as an opportunity to “test, refine, and validate our enterprise network capabilities, stressing that many upgrades will remain after the tournament to extend the value of the infrastructure into long-term assets for host cities. Meanwhile, AT&T reported it carried around one petabyte of nationwide traffic during the tournament after preparing its network for two to three times normal demand across 11 US host cities and 146 venues. Verizon’s deployment supported live broadcast production alongside fan connectivity, while AT&T highlighted the role of its FirstNet public safety network in coordinating emergency services.

Verizon, AT&T tally massive data usage during World Cup

The post The Friday File: OpenAI; Samsung; World Cup appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Indian IT company HCLTech teamed with AI start-up Sarvam to build a data centre in the eastern state of Odisha, tapping increasing demand for the technology and cloud computing.

The project is expected to cost around INR142.6 billion ($1.5 billion), with financial assistance from the government of Odisha, HCLTech stated.

It pitched the data centre as central to boosting sovereign AI and the local developer ecosystem, employing the full-stack of its capabilities with the technology along with Sarvam’s foundation models to tailor services for private and public sector enterprises.

The company stated the data centre would also help to deliver multi-lingual AI-based services in line with calls from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the technology to benefit all citizens.

HCLTech is building its relationship with Sarvam AI after acquiring a 10.5% stake in the business for $150 million.

This month, it struck a $1.1 billion deal with an unnamed European company.

HCLTech CEO and MD C Vijayakumar said the data centre in Odisha is an important milestone in its full stack AI play, explaining the state offers “a progressive policy environment backed by excellent infrastructure”.

In November 2025, rival Tata Consultancy Services also announced plans to develop AI data centres in partnership with private equity company TPG and investing around $2 billion.

HCLTech separately outlined a plan to open a technology centre in the city of Bhubaneswar, also in Odisha.

It intends for the site to be operational by 2028, housing around 5,000 employees.

The post HCLTech, Sarvam plot $1.5B Indian AI data centre appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai (pictured) rejected concerns Google is losing ground in the AI race after delays to the Gemini 3.5 Pro model, as the company posted a strong second quarter on booming demand for AI and cloud services.

Speaking on the company’s Q2 earnings call, Pichai acknowledged Google needed to improve in areas including AI coding, but said it remained “very committed and very confident of being at the frontier”.

The chief faced repeated questions over whether Gemini could keep pace with rivals in the AI race after Google delayed the launch of its next advanced model in June. He said Google is “committed to being at the full parade of frontier,” offering models at multiple price points including its more affordable Flash models.

Pichai argued “the frontier is an incredibly dynamic space, and it’s fiercely moving forward”, stressing “there are many attributes on which we are still at the frontier”.

He pointed to Gemini 3.6 Flash, released this week, explaining it improved by more than 10 points on a coding benchmark over its predecessor while using fewer tokens. He also revealed the company has begun training Gemini 4, describing it as its “most ambitious pre-training run yet”.

Once Gemini 4 lands, he added the company plans on “picking up pace and releasing models almost at a monthly cadence”.

Strong demand
In Q2 2026, Alphabet pinpointed Google Cloud, which continued to benefit from enterprise demand for AI infrastructure and services.

Revenue from the unit soared 82% to $24.8 billion and operating income more than tripled to $8.8 billion. Google Services revenue increased 15% to $94.5 billion, driven by a 17% spike in Search, 15% in Google subscriptions, platforms and devices, and a 13% rise in YouTube advertising.

Total revenue rose 24% year-on-year to $119.8 billion, Alphabet’s 12th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.

Net income surged 298% to $112.1 billion, as it benefitted from a net gain of $98 billion on equity securities. It did not disclose further information, but the company is known to have a sizeable stake in SpaceX and has investment in Anthropic.

“Our AI investments are redefining what’s possible across every part of our business,” Pichai explained, adding ballooning demand for AI infrastructure and enterprise AI solutions helped drive the results.

The search giant also continued ramping AI investment, expecting to spend between $195 billion and $205 billion in capital expenditure this year, up from its previous forecast of $180 billion to $190 billion.

“We have increased ​our capacity quite significantly over the past three years. The demand still outpaces that investment,” explained Alphabet CFO Anat Ashkenazi, adding that although “we’re still in a supply constraint environment”, the company is “seeing very strong demand, both from external cloud customers as well as across the business”.

Looking ahead, the company added it expects capex to “increase significantly” in 2027 as AI demand swells.

The post Alphabet chief defends Gemini strategy as AI bears fruit appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Rockwell Automation and industrial AI company Augury spotted an opportunity to help industries make sense of the vast pools of data the technology is now generating, teaming on a product focused on delivering usable information to manufacturers.

The US-headquartered automation company explained the partnership with Augury would benefit businesses seeking to employ AI in predictive ways spanning maintenance, reliability and overall industrial performance.

Rockwell Automation’s own research indicates less than half of all data collected is being used in effective ways, despite the growing ability for AI to execute on the insights it provides.

“Manufacturers don’t need more alerts, they need a faster path to action,” Angela Rapko, VP and GM of Visualisation and Asset Management at Rockwell Automation explained.

The set-up uses relevant products from each company to provide the route highlighted by the executive: Rockwell Automation stated it enables manufacturers to go beyond “early issue detection and diagnosis”.

It emphasised the use of an Augury reliability agent and its own maintenance assistant as a key differentiator.

The Augury agent “continuously analyses machine conditions” for potential problems and generates ideas on how to avoid or fix them. Rockwell Automation’s assistant is used to make sense of the recommendations to provide “maintenance workflows, work orders and orchestration of execution activities”.

Rockwell Automation indicated the partnership could be foundational in future agentic AI developments in addition to the companies’ more practical aim of helping industrial players to improve the efficiency of their manufacturing operations.

The companies aim to provide initial access to the set-up from September.

The post Rockwell, Augury target AI insights appeared first on Mobile World Live.

AMD outlined plans to invest up to $5 billion in Anthropic as part of a wider deal for the AI company to add 2 gigawatts of computing capacity to its platform, with deployment set to begin in the first half of 2027.

The duo stated it had struck the strategic partnership to address the extraordinary pace of AI adoption, which is driving rapid growth in demand for training and inference capacity,

Anthropic said it was scaling up its compute infrastructure to serve strong and growing demand for Claude and acquiring AMD’s latest AI server chips “represents a major expansion of AMD’s position at the centre of the global AI infrastructure buildout”.

Deployment of the first gigawatt of AMD’s Helios platform will begin in the first half of 2027. No timescale was given to complete deployment.

In addition, the pair stated they are launching a multiyear engineering collaboration to accelerate AMD software deployment with Claude and the company will adopt the model across its engineering and product development teams.

Details on the $5 billion commitment from AMD into Anthropic were sparse, but it will be dependent on meeting certain milestones. Anthropic has also secured billions in investment from Google and Amazon.

Lisa Su, CEO and chair at AMD, said the deal will help it establish “Helios as a major platform for the next generation of AI infrastructure”.

Chief compute officer and co-founder of Anthropic Tom Brown added access to compute is “central to keeping Claude at the frontier and meeting demand from our customers”.

The post AMD commits $5B to Anthropic in AI chip deal appeared first on Mobile World Live.