Amazon and Anthropic are strengthening their ties once again, with steep financial commitments made on both sides. Today, Amazon announced that it will invest $5 billion in the AI company, along with as much as $20 billion in additional payments if certain milestones are met. This news follows the initial $4 billion investment Amazon made in Anthropic in 2023 and a second $4 billion round from 2024.

On Anthropic’s side, it has committed to continued use of Amazon’s custom Trainium silicon for its AI models. The latest agreement will see Anthropic promising to spend more than $100 billion on AWS technologies over the coming decade. It will secure up to 5 gigawatts of current and future chip capacity for training and powering its models. Their partnership is also bringing Anthropic’s Claude platform to Amazon Web Services customers within the AWS portal, removing the need for additional credentials.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/amazon-will-invest-up-to-25-billion-in-anthropic-in-a-broad-deal-225239302.html?src=rss …read more

After debuting in the US, Gemini in Chrome is making its way to more markets. Starting today, Google is rolling out Chrome’s built-in chatbot to users in Asia and the Pacific, including Australia, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and Vietnam. The expansion comes after Google earlier this year made Gemini in Chrome available to people in Canada, India and New Zealand. 

With the exception of Japan, where Google isn’t making the new suite available on iOS just yet, everyone else in the countries mentioned above can access Gemini in Chrome through Chrome’s desktop browser, and the app on their iPhone or iPad. To get started, just tap the “Ask Gemini” icon at the top right of the screen. It will open a new sidebar Google introduced at the start of the year where you can chat with Gemini across every open tab. From there, you can also access Google’s in-house image generator, Nano Banana 2. As you would expect, the suite offers integrations with Google’s other apps, allowing you, for instance, to add events to Calendar without leaving the interface. 

If you don’t want to use Gemini, you can right click on …read more

Apple CEO Tim Cook is officially stepping down from his role on September 1, the company announced today, while current SVP of hardware engineering John Ternus will take over as the new CEO. Cook will transition to a new role as executive chairman of Apple’s Board of Directors. The company says the move was “approved unanimously” by Apple’s Board, and that Cook will work on transitioning his duties over the summer.

“It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be the CEO of Apple and to have been trusted to lead such an extraordinary company,” Cook said in a statement. “I love Apple with all of my being, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with a team of such ingenious, innovative, creative, and deeply caring people who have been unwavering in their dedication to enriching the lives of our customers and creating the best products and services in the world.”

Cook became CEO of Apple in 2011 following the death of co-founder Steve Jobs, and he led the charge for Apple’s post-iPhone and iPad era by launching the AirPods, Apple Watch and Vision Pro. He also pushed the company …read more

Mastodon seems to be recovering after a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack that took down its primary mastodon.social instance. As TechCrunch notes, the platform began reporting issues early Monday morning as much of the Mastodon-operated server became inaccessible. 

It’s not clear who might be behind the attack, but Mastodon’s head of communications Andy Piper described it as a “major” incident. A couple hours later, Mastodon shared on a status page that it had implemented countermeasures and that users should be able to access mastodon.social once again. Piper said that “some ongoing instability is a possibility” as the site recovered. It’s unclear if any other instances of the service were also targeted; mastodon.social is run directly by the nonprofit and is the largest server on the federated platform. 

Mastodon is the second decentralized platform to be targeted with a DDoS in recent days. Last week, Bluesky also dealt with a significant DDoS incident that took parts of the service offline for several hours. The company posted what it said was its final update Monday morning, saying that its service had “remained stable” and that there was …read more

Sony is adopting new age verification policies for PlayStation users in the UK and Ireland. The company isn’t making this a blanket requirement, but steps to confirm age will be needed to access “communication, broadcasting, and certain in-game features” beginning in June 2026. That includes essentials for online and social gamers, such as joining a party, voice chatting, text messaging or using third-party chat programs such as Discord. Some in-game communication tools, like chats or sharing user-generated content, will also only be available after an age check is completed. Although the new requirements will not be enforced until summer, users are already being prompted to get the verification process squared away.

Several states and countries began adopting this type of legislation in 2025, pushing restrictions as a way to protect children and teens from inappropriate content. It seems the trend will be continuing into this year, despite the concerns about privacy risks and new questions about whether these restrictive laws are even effective at their stated goals, but companies have still been moving to comply. Discord was one of the more notable gaming-centric services to …read more