Edition, Sat, 25 Jul 2026.

OpenAI and Oracle Double Down on Stargate With Five New AI Data Centers

OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank announced five additional Stargate data center sites, accelerating the $500 billion infrastructure buildout toward 10 gigawatts of capacity.

OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank announced five additional Stargate data center sites, accelerating the $500 billion infrastructure buildout toward 10 gigawatts of capacity.

The expansion brings total Stargate development to over 5 gigawatts, running more than 2 million AI chips. The Abilene, Texas campus is already live, and the new sites push the project ahead of its original schedule. The 4.5-gigawatt Oracle partnership alone represents a $300 billion, five-year cloud computing deal, making it one of the largest single contracts in tech history. The move cements Oracle's pivot from traditional enterprise infrastructure into the AI compute race, while giving OpenAI the physical capacity to scale its frontier models without hardware bottlenecks.

EU Forces Google to Open Android to Rival AI Assistants

The European Commission issued legally binding orders on July 16, 2026, requiring Google to allow competing AI assistants full access to Android features and to share anonymized search data with rivals under the Digital Markets Act.

The European Commission issued legally binding orders on July 16, 2026, requiring Google to allow competing AI assistants full access to Android features and to share anonymized search data with rivals under the Digital Markets Act.

The order targets two of Google's core competitive moats: default assistant placement and proprietary search behavior data. Google must enable 11 Android feature groups for third-party AI services, and it must provide anonymized query, click, and ranking data on fair terms. Search data sharing begins in January 2027, with full Android interoperability required by July 2027. Google President Kent Walker argued the ruling risks user privacy and security, but the Commission maintains that opening the platform will give European consumers a wider choice of AI services.

Moonshot AI's Kimi K3: A 2.8 Trillion Parameter Open Model Shakes Silicon Valley

China's Moonshot AI released Kimi K3 on July 16, 2026, a massive open-weights Mixture-of-Experts model that topped leading coding benchmarks and challenges the dominance of closed models from OpenAI and Anthropic.

China's Moonshot AI released Kimi K3 on July 16, 2026, a massive open-weights Mixture-of-Experts model that topped leading coding benchmarks and challenges the dominance of closed models from OpenAI and Anthropic.

The 2.8 trillion parameter model ranked at the top of major coding leaderboards, beating proprietary alternatives including Claude and GPT-5.6. Full weights are scheduled for public release on July 27, 2026, making Kimi K3 the largest open-source model to date. The release directly challenges the U.S. lab argument that open-weight models trail on quality, turning what was once a research debate into a real-world procurement story. The model also became the first open-weight model integrated into GitHub Copilot, giving it immediate visibility among millions of developers.

EU Orders Google to Open Android to Rival AI Assistants

The European Commission issued legally binding orders on July 16, 2026, requiring Google to allow competing AI assistants full access to Android features and to share anonymized search data with rivals under the Digital Markets Act.

The European Commission issued legally binding orders on July 16, 2026, requiring Google to allow competing AI assistants full access to Android features and to share anonymized search data with rivals under the Digital Markets Act.

The order targets two of Google's core competitive moats: default assistant placement and proprietary search behavior data. Google must enable 11 Android feature groups for third-party AI services, and it must provide anonymized query, click, and ranking data on fair terms. Search data sharing begins in January 2027, with full Android interoperability required by July 2027. Google President Kent Walker argued the ruling risks user privacy and security, but the Commission maintains that opening the platform will give European consumers a wider choice of AI services.

ServiceNow Q2 2026 earnings beat expectations, AI revenue crosses $1B, and guidance rises

The company reported $3.88B in subscription revenue (+24.5% YoY), with AI net new ACV growth outpacing expectations, solidifying its shift from software vendor to enterprise AI control layer.

The company reported $3.88B in subscription revenue (+24.5% YoY), with AI net new ACV growth outpacing expectations, solidifying its shift from software vendor to enterprise AI control layer.

ServiceNow announced its second quarter fiscal 2026 results on July 22, 2026, beating the high end of guidance across all topline and profitability metrics. Subscription revenues reached $3,877 million (+24.5% year-over-year), while total revenues hit $3,987 million (+24% YoY). A major milestone was reached as ServiceNow AI crossed $1 billion in annual contract value (ACV). The company also raised its full-year 2026 subscription revenue guidance, reflecting strong net new ACV growth. CEO Bill McDermott noted that agentic AI deployments increased ninefold in nine months, and the AI Control Tower is becoming the market standard for governing AI systems.

The financial performance underscores ServiceNow's expanding role as the operational control layer for enterprise AI, cybersecurity, and workflow execution. With over 100 billion workflows running annually on the platform, the company is demonstrating how AI is moving from pilot projects to production-scale governance, delivering measurable business outcomes for its 8,800+ enterprise customers.

ServiceNow ranked No. 1 across all use cases in Gartner’s 2026 Critical Capabilities report for Analytics and BI

The recognition highlights ServiceNow’s unique position of embedding analytics natively into workflows, enabling AI agents to surface insights and act immediately without tool switching.

The recognition highlights ServiceNow’s unique position of embedding analytics natively into workflows, enabling AI agents to surface insights and act immediately without tool switching.

In the 2026 Gartner Critical Capabilities report for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms, ServiceNow achieved the No. 1 ranking across all use cases, including perceptive analytics, composable analytics, data storytelling, and governance. This follows its placement as furthest for Completeness of Vision in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant. The company’s architectural choice to embed analytics natively into workflows—rather than bolting them on externally—eliminates the gap between insights and action, allowing AI agents to generate analytics, govern data use, and execute decisions end-to-end within the same context.

The recognition comes after ServiceNow acquired Pyramid Analytics in March to enable this native embedding. Customer impact metrics are significant: the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs supports 60,000+ users with just two analytics administrators, while The Foschini Group cut a core reporting cycle from three and a half days to ten minutes. The platform’s Workflow Data Fabric connects and governs data across the enterprise without requiring data movement, prioritizing knowledge gravity over data gravity.

ServiceNow expands from ITSM to enterprise workflow orchestration, with ecosystem partners driving adoption across IT, HR, and customer experience

The platform now supports a broader range of enterprise workflows, with partners helping customers accelerate transformation and unlock value from AI.

The platform now supports a broader range of enterprise workflows, with partners helping customers accelerate transformation and unlock value from AI.

ServiceNow’s evolution from an IT service management platform to an enterprise workflow platform is reshaping its ecosystem. The company now supports workflows spanning technology operations, employee services, customer experiences, industry solutions, and AI-powered automation. This shift is increasing the importance of platform ecosystems, where partners, service providers, and software vendors help customers realize greater value from their investments. The market opportunity is estimated at more than USD 350 billion, with enterprises increasingly adopting the platform across multiple workflows and business functions.

Customers are looking beyond implementation support and seeking partners that can help accelerate transformation, drive adoption across workflows, deliver industry-specific expertise, and unlock value from AI. In response, ecosystem participants are expanding capabilities, building differentiated offerings, and strengthening their position within the broader ServiceNow landscape. This redefines how growth is created across the ecosystem and shapes the next phase of platform expansion.