TECHNOLOGY

• RISC-V pioneer SiFive raised $400 million in an oversubscribed Series G funding round led by Atreides Management with backing from Nvidia, valuing the company at $3.65 billion. • The funding enables SiFive to expand into AI data centre CPUs through Nvidia's NVLink Fusion ecosystem, positioning the company to compete in high-performance AI infrastructure. • The investment reflects growing demand for specialized processors tailored to AI workloads and data centre operations beyond traditional CPU architectures.

• Anduril Industries announced a $5 billion Series H funding round, doubling its valuation to $61 billion just one year after its previous multibillion-dollar raise. • The late-stage funding was jointly led by Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, demonstrating strong investor confidence in the defense and autonomous systems company. • The massive valuation increase reflects growing demand for advanced defense technology and autonomous systems in the current geopolitical environment.

• London-based startup Fractile raised $220 million in a Series funding round led by Accel, Factorial Funds, and Founders Fund to develop specialized AI chips for inference acceleration. • Founded in 2022 by Oxford researcher Walter Goodwin, Fractile is building hardware architectures designed to increase inference performance from 40 tokens per second to approximately 1,200 tokens per second. • The company claims its systems could compress workloads that currently take a month into a single day, addressing a critical bottleneck in AI deployment.

• Bucharest-based DesignVerse, an AI-driven startup modernizing aviation infrastructure software, secured €4.6 million ($5.5 million) in seed funding. • The funding follows a successful software upgrade project with EUROCONTROL, Europe's air traffic management organization, enhancing enterprise tools across the continent. • This investment highlights growing demand for AI innovations in aviation, positioning DesignVerse to expand its platform amid digital transformation in the sector.

• North Korean state-sponsored hackers are deploying AI tools to scan and exploit cybersecurity blind spots in target networks, according to a new Google cybersecurity report. • The report details how these actors use generative AI for reconnaissance, automating vulnerability discovery at scale beyond traditional manual methods. • This development underscores AI's dual role as both a defensive asset for cybersecurity firms and an offensive weapon for nation-state adversaries.

• Major tech companies are investing trillions of dollars in infrastructure to develop and run generative AI models, showing signs of a speculative bubble, warns a new Open Markets Institute report by fellow Matthew Sherer. • The report identifies hallmarks of dangerous financial bubbles in the AI boom and calls on policymakers to resist future bailout demands for failing firms. • With trillions at stake, the analysis emphasizes proactive policies to protect the economy from AI sector collapse without taxpayer-funded rescues.

• Shanghai unveiled an AI-powered aviation science fiction theme park in its Lingang New Area, opening to media on Monday, centered on China's Nantianmen Project for immersive aerospace experiences. • The park features interactive exhibits simulating moon landings, hypersonic flight, dual-mode propulsion, metamaterial stealth, directed-energy weapons, and AI decision-making, with a full-scale 'Baidi' sci-fi fighter jet model for pre-flight simulations. • General Manager Zhou Yixiao highlighted hidden games, storylines, and upcoming AI-driven interactive content to enhance visitor engagement.

• Many telecom operators and businesses in emerging markets remain vulnerable to persistent AI-enabled cyber attacks despite increased 5G era cybersecurity vigilance and standard defensive measures. • Recent high-profile incidents including CloudFlare breaches demonstrate that even major infrastructure providers struggle against the evolving threat landscape as AI enables cyber threats to mutate beyond established legacy defenses. • The convergence of limited cybersecurity maturity in emerging markets, critical infrastructure dependencies on digital networks, and rapidly advancing AI attack capabilities creates a compounding vulnerability exposure.

• London-based Recursive Superintelligence, founded in 2025 by former leaders from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta AI, and Uber AI, has raised $650 million at a $4.65 billion valuation in a round led by GV and Greycroft with participation from AMD Ventures and NVIDIA. • The startup's core technology approach focuses on automating the AI research process itself, developing systems capable of improving their own architecture, training methods, and evaluation processes without continuous human oversight. • The company currently operates from San Francisco and London offices with over 25 researchers and engineers, and plans to use fresh funding to secure large-scale compute infrastructure and run its first Level 1 autonomous training system.

• The International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a May 7, 2026 alert on growing dangers to global financial stability from artificial intelligence, warning that AI is simultaneously empowering both defensive and offensive cyber capabilities. • Advanced AI models now dramatically reduce the time and cost required to uncover and exploit system vulnerabilities, enabling faster and more widespread attacks that could cascade across interconnected financial markets and infrastructure. • Anthropic's Claude Mythos Preview model demonstrated breakthrough autonomous cyber abilities, identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities in major operating systems and browsers even when operated by non-specialists, signaling how rapidly AI is tilting advantage toward attackers.

• South Korea is preparing new measures to counter AI-powered cyberattacks after concerns raised by Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview, according to a May 13 cybersecurity roundup. • The reported policy response reflects rising fears that advanced AI tools could lower the barrier for phishing, malware development, and automated intrusion attempts. • The issue matters because South Korea is a highly digitized economy with major exposure across government, telecom, finance, and manufacturing networks.

• Uber’s India data-centre bet is being framed as part of a broader tech and cost strategy, with the company weighing infrastructure choices as AI-driven risk rises. • The coverage notes that about 90% of advanced AI users are trimming some form of business process outsourcing spend, underscoring how automation is reshaping enterprise budgets. • The development matters for India’s enterprise-tech ecosystem because it links cloud infrastructure demand with the rapid adoption of AI tools and changing outsourcing patterns.

• Tencent is reported to be joining a $4 billion funding round for Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, which would value the company at about $50 billion and mark its first external financing. • The report says the round would add fresh capital to one of China’s most watched AI model developers, with Tencent and other large investors among the backers. • The deal matters because DeepSeek has become a key rival in China’s fast-moving AI race, and a multibillion-dollar valuation would underline continued investor appetite for frontier-model startups.

• The Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand increased 1.4 percent in April 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with prices rising 6.0 percent over the 12-month period. • Final demand services advanced 1.2 percent while final demand goods increased 2.0 percent, showing divergence in price pressures across economic sectors. • The April PPI data signals persistent inflationary pressures in producer-level pricing, which often precedes consumer price increases and informs Federal Reserve monetary policy decisions.

• CME Group and Silicon Data announced a new derivatives market allowing investors to bet on cloud computing power prices for AI workloads, launching a tradeable contract based on GPU rental benchmarks. • The compute futures market enables investors to lock in pricing for graphics processing unit capacity, hedging against volatility in AI infrastructure costs as demand surges. • The launch reflects growing institutional interest in AI infrastructure as a tradeable asset class, addressing uncertainty in cloud computing expenses for enterprises scaling AI deployments.

• WISeKey expanded its HUMAN-AI-T initiative into a global movement following its Davos 2026 launch, advocating for ethical AI development and human-centered governance frameworks. • The initiative calls for responsible AI practices with human oversight at the core, addressing growing concerns about autonomous AI systems without adequate ethical safeguards. • WISeKey's movement reflects industry pressure to establish governance standards for AI as deployment accelerates across critical sectors including cybersecurity and finance.

• Google disclosed the first observed AI-assisted zero-day exploit, marking a significant escalation in concerns about artificial intelligence being weaponized for cybersecurity attacks. • The discovery raises concerns about AI-generated cyber models and the potential for malicious actors to leverage machine learning to develop previously unknown exploits faster than traditional methods. • Security experts warn this incident highlights emerging risks from advanced AI capabilities in adversarial contexts, prompting calls for enhanced AI safety protocols and threat monitoring.

• Agentic security operations startup Exaforce announced a $125 million Series B funding round at a reported $725 million valuation, marking one of the largest rounds in the emerging AI security operations center market. • The round was backed by HarbourVest Partners, Peak XV Partners, Mayfield Fund, Khosla Ventures, Seligman Ventures, and AICONIC; Exaforce has now raised $200 million total following a $75 million Series A just over a year ago. • The funding will scale Exaforce's AI-driven security operations platform and expand its real-time threat reasoning capabilities, reflecting growing enterprise demand for autonomous security solutions.