Hub AI and society
Artificial Intelligence is a key technology that can help us solve major societal challenges such as climate change, energy supply, healthcare, education or logistics. AI can solve specific problems more effectively by supporting us in decision-making, automating solutions and thus scaling them, or discovering completely new solutions. But the use of AI also poses new risks, for example when it comes to surveillance or questions of social justice.
What is our society doing with AI – and what is AI doing to our society? We shed light on this question in our AI and Society Content Hub.
Adobe, Qualcomm, and Humain have announced a partnership to build AI tools focused on Arabic content and the broader Middle East market. The collaboration was unveiled at a US-Saudi investment forum held during Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to Washington.
Adobe plans to integrate the Arabic-language model Allam into its software for marketing, film, and television. In return, Humain will use Adobe’s Firefly Foundry to develop its own AI models tailored for Arabic-language applications.
Humain’s AI systems will run in its data centers on Qualcomm hardware. Qualcomm’s new AI200 and AI250 chips are designed to handle the models’ video generation tasks. The company also plans to open a joint research center with Humain in Riyadh next month.
According to the partners, the first large-scale rollout is expected in 2026, with Qualcomm chips delivering up to 200 megawatts of performance. Humain is backed by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which has been expanding its investments in AI and semiconductor technology.
Elon Musk's AI company xAI is reportedly in advanced talks to secure $15 billion in new funding, according to the Wall Street Journal. The deal would value the company at $230 billion, a sharp increase from the $113 billion valuation it reported in March following its merger with X. Musk's financial adviser Jared Birchall shared the terms with investors on Tuesday evening. It's still unclear whether the new valuation applies before or after the additional investment.
Like other AI firms, xAI is burning through cash as it builds out its infrastructure. In June, the company raised $5 billion in equity and $5 billion in debt to construct a massive data center in Memphis. Musk's space company SpaceX contributed $2 billion to that round.
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary and Harvard professor Larry Summers has stepped down from OpenAI's board following the publication of his email exchanges with Jeffrey Epstein. Summers had already announced on Monday that he would withdraw from all public roles, though it was initially unclear whether that included his position at OpenAI.
Summers said he was grateful for his time on the board and planned to continue following the company's work. OpenAI told CNBC that it respected his decision and valued his contributions. As a board member, Summers was among the few people directly involved in key decisions related to artificial general intelligence (AGI) at the company.
His resignation comes after the U.S. Congress released more than 20,000 documents revealing his communications and contacts with Epstein.
Microsoft, Nvidia, and Anthropic have unveiled a set of new strategic partnerships valued at 45 billion dollars. Anthropic plans to scale its Claude models on Microsoft Azure and has agreed to purchase 30 billion dollars in Azure compute capacity, plus up to one gigawatt of additional capacity. As part of the deal, Nvidia and Anthropic are collaborating closely for the first time on model design and engineering, tuning Claude for Nvidia's architectures. The compute stack includes Nvidia's Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin systems. Nvidia is investing up to 10 billion dollars in Anthropic, while Microsoft is investing up to 5 billion dollars.
Microsoft Foundry customers will gain access to Claude models like Claude Sonnet 4.5, Claude Opus 4.1, and Claude Haiku 4.5. With this move, Claude becomes the only top-tier model available across all three major cloud platforms. Microsoft also continues using Claude across its Copilot lineup, including GitHub Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot. CEOs Dario Amodei, Satya Nadella, and Jensen Huang introduced the partnerships in a ten-minute announcement video.
Thinking Machines Lab, founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, is looking to raise up to five billion dollars in new funding, according to The Information. That would at least triple the nine-month-old company's existing capital. A second source says the startup is aiming for a valuation of at least 50 billion dollars.
The company previously raised two billion dollars at a ten-billion-dollar valuation from backers including Andreessen Horowitz. The money will support research, new hires, and computing resources. In October, the company launched Tinker, a tool that lets developers customize open AI models. Thinking Machines is also working on a consumer-facing product, potentially a voice-based AI assistant.
Yann LeCun accuses Anthropic of regulatory capture. The dispute centers on an AI-driven cyberattack that Anthropic says happened with almost no human oversight and posed a serious cybersecurity threat. After the company published its findings, US Senator Chris Murphy called for tougher AI regulation.

LeCun, who reportedly is preparing to leave Meta, pushed back on the political reaction and accused companies like Anthropic of using questionable studies to stoke fear and push for stricter rules that would disadvantage open models. In his view, the goal is to shut out open-source competitors.
Trump's AI advisor, David Sacks, has also accused Anthropic of using what he called a "sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering."