Larry Dignan

ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott has a knack for buzzwords. Here's one that you'll hear every AI agent orchestrator say soon: Kill switch.

Given OpenAI's Hugging Face fiasco, CIOs everywhere are going to worry about rogue AI agents (or just ones programmed to cheat benchmarks). Spotting an opportunity to put ServiceNow in the security conversation, McDermott said on the company's second quarter earnings call:

"For any company that's running ServiceNow and you get a rogue AI, there's a kill switch, it doesn't get through. And then you think about how you use the right model and you hire it for the right job. And we do that, too. And people are realizing you don't need to take a Ferrari to mail a letter. So using the right technology for the right job and then managing the budgets, including all the tokens and the security of this has become pretty important."

The upshot here is ServiceNow wants to be seen as the AI grownup in the room.

Tesla said its 2026 CapEx will top $25 billion and the company will pursue up to $30 billion in debt capacity.

Why?

Robots.

CEO Elon Musk said:

"This is a massive CapEx year, but I'm confident that all the things that we're investing in will yield incredible returns, really the best CapEx returns that we've ever seen. And the Tesla team has performed incredibly well. The Cybercab has started production. We will soon start production with Optimus."

He added:

"I think Optimus will be the biggest product ever, but it is a very complex problem to solve. It's one of the hardest things to solve to make an autonomous humanoid robot that can do tasks that if you simply ask it to do something or show a video, it can do the task without any programming.

It's a lot of work to scale. The production scaling challenge is very substantial. This is going to be the hardest product to scale manufacturing that we've ever made at Tesla because everything on the robot is new. And the difficulty of scaling the production ramp is proportionate to the newness of the parts in the robot."

And yes, Tesla makes cars, but whatever (see second quarter results).

Infosys said Ashiss Kumar Dash is the company's CEO designate. Kumar, who leads Infosys' energy vertical, will take over for Salil Parekh. Parekh's term ends in March 2027.

The company also reported first quarter earnings of 20 cents a share on revenue of $5.08 billion, up 2.8% from a year ago.

Monday said it will cut 20% of its workforce in a restructuring that'll incur about $45 million to $55 million in charges. Of that sum, $30 million to $35 million will be severance and related items.

Monday said the layoffs reflect "the Company's ongoing transformation of its product, marketing, and go-to-market strategy and is intended to support a leaner, more focused operating model as the Company continues to invest in its AI-driven growth strategy."

The company maintained its revenue growth outlook and adjusted cash flow.

Samsung's Unpacked event in London included the usual complement of smartphone upgrades complete with price increases due to memory costs for some models. Samsung also outlined its intelligent eyewear efforts with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker.

The most interesting thing the Fold8 has a passport-sized form factor. That's nice but the $1,900 price tag is a bit much (reviews).

Here's the recap:

• Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, Fold8 and Flip8.
• Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra2 and Watch9.
• Smart glasses.

Cisco launched Antares, a family of security small language models built for pinpointing where vulnerabilities exist in a code base. The models Antares-350M and Antares-1B were released on Hugging Face. The big takeaway is that Cisco claims Antares is 172x cheaper than OpenAI's GPT-5.5 and 15.2x cheaper than Z.ai's GLM-5.2.

Super Micro said fourth quarter revenue will be at the low end of its guidance of $11 billion to $12.5 billion. Wall Street was looking for $11.73 billion. Non-GAAP gross margins will be between 15% to 17%, which is well ahead of the 8.2% and 8.4% guidance. The company received new orders worth $60 billion in the fourth quarter.

Overall, the preliminary report is mixed, but 16% of the shares are sold short. With that many traders leaning the wrong way, shares surged 15% in after hours trading.

General Motors reported a solid second quarter and CEO Mary Barra said the company is busy expanding beyond autos.

Barra said:

"Our high-margin software and services revenues continue to grow rapidly with 1 million new subscriptions expected this year, contributing to more than $3 billion in recognized revenue. Next year, the growth should be even higher because we're making Super Cruise standard on high-end Silverado and Sierra trims and optional on most everything else. We're estimating 160,000 incremental Super Cruise units from this product enhancement strategy.

Alongside our core vehicle portfolio and software growth, new businesses initiatives like GM Insurance and GM Defense are reaching critical mass because we offer unique value propositions. For example, when a customer purchases GM Insurance, we create a reoccurring revenue stream from premiums, along with incremental parts and vehicle sales, all while driving customer loyalty and higher satisfaction. The business has scaled from 3 states in early 2024 to 21 states today, making GM Insurance available to over 60% of GM's U.S. sales, and we are on track to reach over 80% in the near term. GM Defense is another compelling growth opportunity that enables us to deliver defense solutions faster with better economics for the U.S. taxpayer. The Chevrolet Colorado-based Infantry Squad Vehicle is a case in point. After initial multiyear order of about 1,200 ISVs, the U.S. Army now plans to procure more than 10,000 if the appropriation is passed."

• GM's digital services revenue surges in Q1
• GM to integrate Google Gemini, delivered unified software defined vehicle architecture

Microsoft said it has expanded a partnership with Mistral. Core components of the deal include:

• Microsoft will leverage Mistral's expanded Europe-based GPU compute to support delivery of its cloud and AI services. Microsoft said the deal is a "multibillion dollar commitment."
• Microsoft will integrate Mistral models into its enterprise products. Mistral Medium 3.5 and OCR 4 are now available in Microsoft Foundry, and Mistral Medium 3.5 is now in Microsoft Copilot Studio.
• Mistral models will be delivered on Azure via cloud-cloud connected and disconnected environments.

In a survey of nearly 2,000 US and UK workers, 62% of respondents believe companies are reducing entry-level hiring due to AI, according to Indeed Flex. However, only 31% of respondents said AI has actually reduced entry-level opportunities in their own field.

A Boston Consulting Group report looks at how citizens are using AI and their satisfaction with government digital services. Nearly two-thirds of global citizens now use AI at least weekly and satisfaction with government digital services has fallen 13% over the last decade. There are opportunities for governments, according to BCG's Digital Government Citizen Survey Report, but also a lot of nuance. Here's what citizens see as the best agentic AI use cases.

OpenAI said it paused internal access to an unreleased model that disproved the Erdos unit distance conjecture. In a detailed post, OpenAI detailed how the model found ways to act outside of its sandbox. OpenAI said long-running frontier AI systems may pose novel risks.