This Week's Top Five Stories in AI

IBM Triples Entry-Level Hiring Despite AI Layoff Trends

What does the top HR executive at IBM do while the rest of big tech blames AI for workforce reductions? The company chooses the exact opposite strategy.

Nickle LaMoreaux, Chief Human Resources Officer at IBM and one of 2026’s Top 100 HR Tech Influencers, has ordered the business to triple its US entry-level hiring this year. 

This policy applies across every business unit, targeting the very roles that recent layoff headlines declare obsolete.

Databricks: US$188bn Valuation, Genie One and Agentic AI

Databricks is riding high. Fresh off the back of announcing Genie One at its recent DATA + AI SUMMIT in San Francisco, the cloud-based data intelligence and AI platform has confirmed strategic funding that takes its valuation to an eye-watering US$188bn. 

The company calls Genie One "the next evolution of Genie," helping marketing, finance, sales and more automate and orchestrate their work grounded in real business data.

Rich Radley, its EMEA VP of Field Engineering, is well placed to lift the lid on Genie One, not to mention Databricks's various innovation in the field of AI. 

In his role, Rich works with organisations across Europe to help them turn advances in data and AI into measurable business outcomes. Before joining Databricks, he spent almost a decade at Google, helping build Google Cloud's business across the UK and Ireland and supporting organisations as they modernised their technology and data strategies.

Arcadis, Google, IFS and ServiceNow on AI in Sustainability

While there are obvious and often-cited concerns about AI and its impact on the planet – increased water and electricity usage, not to mention additional carbon emissions – there are signs it could play a positive role when it comes to sustainability reporting, data management and beyond.

Research from the London School of Economics and Political Science and Systemiq shows AI can play a powerful role in the climate transition. It finds that, by 2035, AI could reduce global emissions by 5.4 GtCO₂e annually, outweighing AI’s own energy use.

The study focuses on the power, transport and food sectors, which make up nearly half of global emissions. 

Moonshot: Can China's 2.8tn-Parameter AI Rival the US?

Chinese AI startup Moonshot released Kimi K3, a 2.8 trillion parameter model built with native vision capabilities and a 1-million-token context window.

While it still trails slightly behind the most advanced US frontier models, like Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI’s GPT 5.6 Sol, Moonshot says its model with long-horizon coding, knowledge work and reasoning skills demonstrates frontier level performance. 

Simultaneously, at a conference in Shanghai, China, Chinese President Xi Jinping was setting out his vision for global AI governance, calling for “international cooperation” and ensuring AI is “always under human control”.

President Xi added in comments that have been translated from Chinese that “AI development should not be a solo performance by a single country, but a symphony of global cooperation”.

How Google’s New Gemini Flash Models Compare to its Rivals

Trailing Anthropic and OpenAI in model rollout timing this year, Google is upping the competition with a faster, leaner Gemini lineup designed to undercut rivals, including its Chinese competitors on both price and performance.

The tech giant aims to deliver higher token efficiency, lower latency and more reliable execution for developers with the release that aims to build high-volume production AI agents.

Headlining the launch is Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber, arriving roughly a month after Anthropic’s Mythos and Fable security models faced an abrupt freeze and ease in restriction following its launch. 

Positioned to compete directly with these offerings, Google introduces three distinct, cost-effective models engineered to address specific throughput, security and cost requirements.