Training an army of agents

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Tech Across the Globe

Apple cuts: The iPhone maker has eliminated dozens of positions across its sales organization, a rare broad job cut for the company.

Inventory buildup: Lenovo, the world’s biggest PC maker, said it’s stockpiling memory and other critical components to navigate a supply crunch generated by the boom in artificial intelligence.

Anthropic update: The AI startup released a new version of its most powerful Claude model, which is designed to perform better at software coding and office tasks.

Revalued

Accounting software startup Pennylane is in talks to raise funds at a $4.25 billion valuation — almost double what the French company was valued at in April. Pennylane, which is backed by Sequoia Capital and CapitalG, is discussing a $200 million round that would be led by California-based fund TCV.

Must Read

China’s AI ambitions have focused in recent times on one particular area of development: agents. Everyone from Alibaba to Baidu, ByteDance and Tencent is talking up the prospects of their AI offering not just tools but active help for users, with phone makers like Honor also endeavoring to build that into their devices, writes Vlad Savov. He reviews the current state of development and the prospects for new breakthroughs in today’s Tech In Depth essay.

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This Week in Power On

Apple’s next major software update — iOS 27 — will focus on two major elements: quality improvements and AI features, Mark Gurman reports in this week’s Power On. After sweeping changes in iOS 26, Apple is focused on making the software more efficient and preparing for more AI tools, Gurman writes. 

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