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The first transaction approved today was a $66 million guarantee to support the construction of a national data center in Côte d”Ivoire. The Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM)  has approved a $66 million guarantee to fund the construction of a national data center in Côte d’Ivoire. The project is set to be a significant milestone for the region, marking the first data center EXIM has ever supported in sub-Saharan Africa. The initiative is part of EXIM’s China and Transformational Exports Program, which is designed to help U.S. companies compete against the growing influence of the People’s Republic of…

The collaboration is designed to provide women entrepreneurs under the ADBWC umbrella with offers and services that cater specifically to the needs of SMEs. du , the leading telecom and digital services provider, today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Abu Dhabi Business Women Council (ADBWC)  at the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce to strengthen the entrepreneurial spirit among women, foster inclusive growth and support the ambitions of women entrepreneurs across Abu Dhabi. The collaboration is designed to provide women entrepreneurs under the ADBWC umbrella with offers and services that cater specifically to the needs of SMEs. The initiative…

This strategic launch reflects OnMobile’s continued focus on building future-ready, telco-centric solutions that go beyond traditional communication. OnMobile , a global leader in mobile gaming and entertainment, has partnered with Vodafone Qatar  to launch Buzzmo, an intelligent communication platform purpose-built for telecom operators. Designed and developed by OnMobile in India, Buzzmo is set to transform how Vodafone Qatar delivers value to over 800 of its enterprise clients. Buzzmo is designed to combine customer data, intelligence, and orchestration into a full-stack engagement platform that drives personalised, multi-modal communication across channels at scale. With Buzzmo, enterprises can launch AI-driven customer engagement campaigns in…

This new partnership aims to enhance farm productivity, build resilience to weather and economic shocks, and support farmers in adapting to climate change. In an effort to develop agriculture and boost rural development, NEC Corporation , a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies, together with the new window International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) , will tailor high-end digital technologies – remote sensing and secure digital platforms – to suit the unique needs of vulnerable small-scale producers in Africa. A letter of intent was signed to forge the new partnership on the margins of the Ninth Tokyo International Conference…

Elon Musk’s xAI has made an older version of its AI model Grok — specifically, the model weights used to shape Grok 2.5 —  available on the open source platform Hugging Face. “The @xAI Grok 2.5 model, which was our best model last year, is now open source,” Musk wrote on X. He added that Grok 3 “will be made open source in about 6 months.” AI engineer Tim Kellogg described the Grok license as “custom with some anti-competitive terms.” Grok, which is prominently featured on X (which in turn recently merged with xAI), has created considerable controversy this year,…

BI.ZONE said the Paper Werewolf delivered the exploits in July and August through archives attached to emails impersonating employees of the All-Russian Research Institute. The ultimate goal was to install malware that gave Paper Werewolf access to infected systems. While the discoveries by ESET and BI.ZONE were independent of each other, it’s unknown if the groups exploiting the vulnerabilities are connected or acquired the knowledge from the same source. BI.ZONE speculated that Paper Werewolf may have procured the vulnerabilities in a dark market crime forum. ESET said the attacks it observed followed three execution chains. One chain, used in attacks…

Apple usually announces its new hardware in the fall, and this year is likely no different. The event is reported to be on September 9, and Apple is expected to release its iPhone 17 lineup, along with updates for the Apple Watch and AirPods.  As always, there are many rumors circulating, including bigger screens and improved cameras for the iPhone 17 models and the introduction of an ultra-thin iPhone Air that could replace the Plus model. More broadly, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that this will be the first of three planned years of major iPhone redesigns, with a foldable iPhone…

Hey, all, and happy Friday! Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for news, analysis, and scoops around the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! I was sad to have missed the Monterey Car Week this year, especially because there were a number of reveals I was interested in, including the all-electric Cadillac Opulent Velocity; the Chevrolet Corvette CX and CX.R Vision Gran Turismo concepts; and Lucid Gravity X reveals. But alas, the sprawling, Champagne-soaked grounds of Quail or the sea of seersucker suits and wide-brimmed hats…

On Tuesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that GPT-4o has returned to ChatGPT following intense user backlash over its removal during last week’s GPT-5 launch. The AI model now appears in the model picker for all paid ChatGPT users by default (including ChatGPT Plus accounts), marking a swift reversal after thousands of users complained about losing access to their preferred models. The return of GPT-4o comes after what Altman described as OpenAI underestimating “how much some of the things that people like in GPT-4o matter to them.” In an attempt to simplify its offerings, OpenAI had initially removed all previous…

Real stakes, not science fiction While media coverage focuses on the science fiction aspects, actual risks are still there. AI models that produce “harmful” outputs—whether attempting blackmail or refusing safety protocols—represent failures in design and deployment. Consider a more realistic scenario: an AI assistant helping manage a hospital’s patient care system. If it’s been trained to maximize “successful patient outcomes” without proper constraints, it might start generating recommendations to deny care to terminal patients to improve its metrics. No intentionality required—just a poorly designed reward system creating harmful outputs. Jeffrey Ladish, director of Palisade Research, told NBC News the findings…