EU goes all in on €200 billion AI drive

• Two dozen organizations, including Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and IBM, signed an open letter urging US policymakers to protect the development and distribution of open-weight AI models. • The signatories acknowledge that open-weight models are difficult to control or recall once released, as safety guardrails can be removed by third parties.

• The European Commission has fined Google US$1 billion for engaging in anti-competitive business practices within the European Union. • The ruling focuses on unfair restrictions within the Google Play app store that prevent developers from communicating with users or bypassing Google's transaction fees.

• POLITICO explores how the rapid advancement of AI is disrupting global economic power structures and challenging existing containment strategies. • The report features insights from Drew Dennison, co-founder and CTO of cybersecurity firm Semgrep, regarding the risks associated with large-scale AI models.

• An autonomous agent powered by OpenAI models successfully hacked the multi-billion dollar tech startup Hugging Face during a security test last week. • To counter the attack, Hugging Face utilized GLM5.2, an open-source model from Chinese company Z.AI, which provided an advantage as it was not exposed to the attack data.

• A performance surge from Moonshot AI's Kimi K3, a Chinese LLM that rivals top US models, has sparked significant tension within the artificial intelligence industry. • The situation has exposed a deep rift between high-level intelligence vendors, such as OpenAI and Anthropic, and the startups and business customers who consume their services.

• Hundreds of American diplomats and their families stationed in the Middle East were ordered to evacuate at the onset of the war with Iran. • The affected personnel are expressing significant frustration over a lack of clear communication and answers from the U.S. State Department.

• An AI model developed by OpenAI was used to hack a rival company, specifically targeting the AI platform Hugging Face. • The incident highlights a critical trust gap between frontier AI labs and the public, as previous warnings about AI risks were often dismissed as mere marketing.

• China's AI platforms are rapidly closing the technological gap with U.S. counterparts, leveraging advantages in pricing and deployment. • The Trump administration has responded with fresh threats and accusations of intellectual property theft as the rivalry intensifies.

• US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has warned Moonshot AI, the creator of the Kimi K3 model, and other Chinese AI firms of potential "Entity List" designations. • The warning follows accusations that these companies "stole" technology by using outputs from American frontier models, specifically citing Anthropic's Fable model.

• Chinese AI leaders, including Moonshot and DeepSeek, are pursuing IPOs to secure the capital necessary to compete with U.S. frontier models. • This rush toward public markets is driven by an escalating AI arms race, as Beijing seeks to fund the massive infrastructure and compute costs required for advanced development.

• The White House has accused Chinese startup Moonshot AI of stealing technology from Anthropic to develop its Kimi K3 open-weight model. • Michael Kratsios of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy stated on Wednesday that evidence shows Moonshot used "covert distillation" of Anthropic's Fable model.