Home buyers can now pledge bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies when making a down payment on a house. Don't worry, Fannie Mae says it's fine.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Fannie Mae's crypto move means you'll be able to pledge your crypto without selling. Coinbase and mortgage company Better Home & Finance are backing the new mortgage product.

This sounds swell until your crypto goes the wrong direction. This crypto-backed mortgage plan is similar to pledging stock for a down payment. It works. Until it doesn't.

Bain & Co. and Palantir said they have expanded their partnership to combine consultants with forward deployed engineers. Under expanded partnership, Bain's consultants will be able to lay the groundwork for AI and data transformation with Palantir FDEs responsible for the end-to-end delivery. The partnership is aimed at taking AI use cases "from strategic plans through to operationalization."

Also see: Forward deployed engineers: The promise, peril in AI deployments

Genesys said fiscal 2026 revenue was nearly $3 billion, up 13% from a year ago, with Genesys Cloud platform annual recurring revenue approaching $2.6 billion in the fourth quarter, up 35%. The CX company said 70% of Genesys Cloud customers were also using Genesys Cloud AI.

In the fourth quarter, Genesys said it closed more than 50 seven-figure annual contract value deals.

IBM said its quantum computer can simulate magnetic materials. The company said that the breakthrough can lead to new materials. The simulaton, outlined in a paper, was conducted by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy-funded Quantum Science Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Purdue University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of Tennessee and IBM.

Infosys has acquired two companies. Infosys said it acquired Stratus, a technology services provider for the property & casualty insurance industry. Stratus is a leading Guidewire Software partner. In a separate announcement, Infosys said it has acquired Optimum Healthcare IT, which is a partner for ServiceNow, AWS, Workday and Microsoft Azure.

HP launched HP IQ, a local AI layer, which will be built into HP AI PCs and workplace devices. HP IQ will be able to connect with other HP devices to collaborate.

HP IQ will initially debut on the next-gen HP EliteBook X G2 PCs. The system will include Ask IQ, which will respond to text and voice inputs, Analyze, which will produce insights and summaries from personal files locally, Notes & Knowledge, a tool that keeps a running record of interactions, and Meeting Agent, which captures ideas and records notes during a meeting.

In addition, HP IQ will include HP NearSense, a system that will share files between HP PCs and other devices such as the HP Poly video conferencing system and print devices.

HP IQ early access will be available in the Spring with expansion to other HP devices throughout the year.

Arm is best-known as a chip designer, but the company recently announced plans for its own AI chip for inference. Arm said it landed OpenAI and Meta as customers for its AGI CPU.

The AGI CPU is built on Arm's Neoverse architecture , which is already used in AWS Graviton, Google Axion, Microsoft Cobalt and Nvidia Vera. Arm's AGI CPU already has a bevy of launch partners.

OpenAI said it is updating ChatGPT's shopping engine with better product discovery. In a blog post, OpenAI said:

"Instead of scrolling through pages of results, ChatGPT can help you find what you’re looking for based on your budget, preferences, and constraints—and surface products that fit. You can browse visually, upload images as inspiration for similar items, and refine results conversationally until you land on the right option."

The upshot here is that OpenAI is going to have to step up its shopping experience if it's going to compete with Google and Amazon at some point for product discovery.

Miro said it will acquire Reforge, which is an AI platform for product teams, in that aims to bridge product development and frameworks with AI-driven collaborative workflows.

Andrey Khusid, CEO of Miro, said in a statement that the deal is aimed at helping customers innovate faster by focusing on what to build as well as the how.

Reforge Learning will continue operate separately at Reforge.com and the combined company will continue to invest in new courses. Brian Balfour, Reforge CEO, will become Miro's Chief Growth Officer. Tom Willerer, Reforge's current COO, will join Miro as Chief Strategy Officer.

• Miro aims to smooth out AI, human collaboration
• Constellation ShortList™ Digital Canvas Workboards
• Constellation ShortList™ Collaborative Product Development Solutions

Claude Cowork and Claude Code now have computer use to complete task on the Mac OS. The feature is available in research preview for Claude Pro and Max subscribers.

Apple said its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) will be online from June 8-12. Apple will hold an in-person event during the keynote and state of the platform address June 8.

Time flies in the cloud as AWS just turned 20 years old. The company posted a blog post on the milestone and a bit of history about S3, which started the AWS push. Geekwire posted a good retrospective too.

For giggles, I'll celebrate the AWS 20th by quoting me far too long ago way back in 2008. I said:

Amazon announced persistent storage for its EC2 service and what's notable is how quickly the e-tailer is running ahead of the competition. In fact, Amazon's real business down the line will be its cloud services. Amazon will be like a book store that sells cocaine out the back door. Books will be just a front to sell storage and cloud computing.