Category: Top News

IBL News | New York

Following the launch of the Gemini 3 model, Google released this month an early version of remote MCP servers that allow developers to paste a URL to a managed endpoint, rather than spending many hours setting up connectors. They are offered at no extra cost to enterprise customers who already pay for Google services.

At launch, Google is starting with MCP servers for Maps, BigQuery, Compute Engine, and Kubernetes Engine.

In practice, this setup might look like an agent querying BigQuery or interacting with infrastructure services.

“We expect to bring them to general availability very soon in the new year,” Google said.

Google plans to expand MCP support beyond the initial set of servers. In the next few months, the company says it will roll out support for services across areas like storage, databases, logging and monitoring, and security.

“We built the plumbing so that developers don’t have to.”

IBL News | New York

OpenAI announced its first certified course, titled AI Foundations, as part of its OpenAI Certifications and the OpenAI Jobs Platform initiatives – the latter in collaboration with Indeed and Upwork.

This course is designed to help users learn core, practical AI skills that apply across roles and industries. It intends to be a hands-on, real-world training experience in using today’s AI tools.

The course is available within ChatGPT, a single environment where the bot acts as a tutor, providing practice questions and a feedback loop in context.

There is also a version of this class for K-12 teachers, ChatGPT Foundations for Teachers, available on Coursera. This class is designed to help educators build AI expertise and put it to work in the classroom and administrative tasks. It will be brought directly into the ChatGPT environment in early 2026.

OpenAI stated that its goal is to certify 10 million Americans by 2030.

The company said that AI Foundations is launching through pilot programs with firms such as Walmart, John Deere, Lowe’s, Boston Consulting Group, Hearst, Russell Reynolds Associates, Upwork, Elevance Health, Accenture, and the Office of the Governor of Delaware.

“Coursera, ETS, and Credly by Pearson will help ensure our courses and certifications meet high standards for learning design, psychometric rigor, and real-world impact, allowing learners to earn high-value and portable evidence of their skill development.”

“We are also piloting certifications with Arizona State University and the California State University system staff, faculty, and students to create pathways for students to hone their AI skills and showcase them to employers as they enter the job market.”

IBL News | New York

Google incorporated its latest model, Gemini 3, into Stitch, its experimental AI-powered design tool.

This implementation leads to higher-quality UI generation.

Additionally, Google introduced another experimental feature called “Prototypes,” which allows users to stitch together different screens on their canvas to create a working prototype.

Along with Stitch, many users are using another free Google AI tool to design professional-level app UI. They take those designs into Google AI Studio to turn them into fully functional apps, as shown in the video below.

IBL News | New York

Online education platform Coursera said on Wednesday it will buy rival Udemy in an all-stock deal, valuing the combined merged company at $2.5 billion.

Coursera shareholders will own 59%, and Udemy shareholders will own 41% of the company.

Udemy shareholders would receive 0.8 shares of Coursera for each held, valuing the company at about $930 million. Coursera shares were up about 8%, while Udemy jumped nearly 28%.

According to Morgan Stanley, which acted as Exclusive Financial Advisor to Udemy, the company will generate annual run-rate cost synergies of $115MM within 24 months of closing and will have $1.2Bn in cash.

The deal unites two of the largest U.S.-based online learning platforms at a time when course enrollment growth has cooled, prompting companies to seek scale and pursue enterprise clients and more predictable subscription revenue.

Coursera and Udemy bet that a combined platform will be better positioned to capture corporate demand for workforce training, particularly in artificial intelligence, data science, and software development, as employers invest in reskilling workers amid rapid advances in generative AI.

Coursera, which partners with universities and institutions to offer degree programs and professional certificates, has increasingly focused on enterprise customers. At the same time, Udemy operates a marketplace of independent instructors selling individual courses and subscriptions to businesses.

Shares of online education companies have lagged the broader market amid concerns about competition, pricing pressure, and AI’s impact.

Udemy shares have fallen about 35% so far this year, while Coursera is down roughly 7% over the same period, leaving both companies trading well below their post-IPO highs.

Morgan Stanley led the IPOs of Coursera, Udemy, Instructure, Docebo, Phoenix Education Partners, and Kinder Care. It was the exclusive financial advisor to Udacity on its sale to Accenture and to Kahoot! – $1.7Bn Public Takeover Led by GSPE companies trading well below their post-IPO highs.

IBL News | New York

Google said that, in 2025, over 1,000 U.S. higher education institutions, reaching 10 million students, were using Gemini for Education and NotebookLM.

With over 150 features related to teaching and learning, Google disclosed the main uses as follows:

• Building a deep understanding with Guided Learning.
• Prepping for exams with personalized practice quizzes and study guides in Gemini Canvas and flashcards in NotebookLM.
• Preparing for interviews, receiving resume feedback, and creating professional headshots with Nano Banana..
• Drawing connections between materials with interactive visual Mind Maps in NotebookLM makes research and synthesis easier.
• Creating visual explainers for presentations and group projects using Video Overviews and transforming written content into Audio Overviews for on-the-go learning.
• Adding fresh ideas, relevant resources, and differentiated activities to lessons with Gemini in Classroom, available for Google Workspace for Education.
• Sharing interactive AI learning experiences for students using NotebookLM and Gems from their learning management. system, through integrations with Google Classroom, Canvas by Instructure, and PowerSchool Schoology Learning.
• Producing polished, collaborative video content with Google Vids, using AI features like sample scripts and voiceovers.
• Creating engaging lessons and flexible teaching with Chromebook and Chromebook Plus devices.

In 2025, in terms of AI literacy, over 1 million educators and students received Google for Education training, with over 100,000 earning Gemini Certifications.

Educators got hands-on with ready-to-use AI prompts for teachers and 100+ ways to use Geminii in education.

• 150 Google for Education announcements in the 2025 Year in Review guide.

IBL News | New York

OpenAI, whose ChatGPT now serves 800 million users per week, shared the State of the Enterprise AI Report, which draws on a survey of 9,000 workers across 100 enterprises adopting AI.

The primary outcome is that enterprise AI adoption is accelerating, reshaping how people work, teams collaborate, and organizations build and deliver products.

In addition, AI is not just helping people do the same work faster—it is enabling people to do new kinds of work.

AI is gaining traction across every sector, with technology, healthcare, manufacturing, professional services, and finance seeing a momentum.

Globally, the fastest‑growing business customer bases include Australia, Brazil, the Netherlands, and France, each exceeding 140% year‑over‑year growth.

International API customer growth has exceeded 70% over the last six months, with Japan having the most significant number of corporate API customers outside the U.S.

Across surveyed enterprises, 75% of workers report that using AI at work has improved either the speed or quality of their output. Workers report saving 40-60 minutes per day, with heavy users reporting more than 10 hours per week.

Across departments:

• 87% of IT workers report faster IT issue resolution.
• 85% of marketing and product users report faster campaign execution.
• 75% of HR professionals report improved employee engagement.
• 73% of engineers report faster code delivery.

IBL News | New York

President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to withhold funding for states that regulate AI, arguing that 50 different regulatory regimes hamper the industry’s growth. President Trump signed an executive order in this regard.

That funding refers to the $42 billion included in Broadband Equity Access and Deployment.

It directs the Secretary of Commerce to evaluate state laws for conflicts with Trump’s AI priorities and to block those states in conflict from accessing.

“We want to have one central source of approval,” Trump told reporters, flanked by top advisers, including Treasury Secretary Scott.

“To win, United States AI companies must be free to innovate without cumbersome regulation.”

The order targets states such as Colorado, whose efforts, according to the White House, can result in “ideological bias and produce false results.”

Trump’s order called for his administration to work with Congress to craft a national standard that forbids state laws that conflict with federal policy, protects children, prevents censorship, respects copyrights, and protects communities.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, whose state is home to several major AI companies, signed a bill this year requiring major AI developers to explain their plans to mitigate potential catastrophic risks.

New York state last month became the first to enact a law requiring online retailers that employ “surveillance pricing” to disclose their use of algorithms and customers’ personal data.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has proposed an AI bill of rights that includes data privacy, parental controls, and consumer protections.

Other states have passed laws banning AI-generated non-consensual sexual imagery and unauthorized political deepfakes.

The Trump Administration has embraced AI as a critical technology, working closely with U.S. companies to boost investment in a sector where China has also made great strides.

IBL News | New York

OpenAI is prioritizing Agentic commerce, that is, the use of AI tools to do shopping research and make purchases on a user’s behalf.

This year, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has launched integrations with apps such as Booking.com, Canva, Coursera, Expedia, Figma, Spotify, and Zillow. It has also announced further partnerships with Target, Intuit, and others.

With Instacart’s built-in search app, OpenAI is launching a grocery shopping experience inside of ChatGPT, allowing customers to brainstorm meal ideas, make a grocery list, and check out, all without leaving the chat interface.

These agentic commerce tools can give OpenAI another way of making money, since it’ll take an undisclosed “small fee” when it helps merchants make a sale.

Adobe has predicted that AI-assisted online shopping will grow by 520% this holiday season.

IBL News | New York

OpenAI, Anthropic, and Block announced this week the creation of the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), an open-source organization to promote standards for AI agents, created under the Linux Foundation.

Beyond these three members, other companies, such as Google, Microsoft, AWS, Bloomberg, and Cloudflare, signed on.

The three founding companies are donating to the foundation ownership of some of their agentic technologies, which were already free to use and now will be available for others’ development as open standards.

As a neutral home, the Linux Foundation will provide legal and technological support.

These technologies include:

– Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard for connecting AI applications to external systems.

– OpenAI’s Agents.md, which lets programs and websites specify rules for coding agents;

– Block’s Goose, a framework for building agents

With AI, agents use the web and negotiate with one another to power applications and manage customer interactions.

Working to the same open-source standards will help ensure those interactions happen seamlessly.

Currently, several Chinese AI companies, including DeepSeek, Alibaba, Moonshot AI, and Z.ai, provide open source models that have become popular with developers, startups, and AI researchers.

As the open standards managed by ICANN and W3C shaped the evolution of the web,  OpenAI, Anthropic, and Block believe that openness will remove barriers to the deployment of agentic AI, benefit their businesses, and determine how this technology gets used daily worldwide.

In 2024, Anthropic introduced MCP, and, currently, there are over 10,000 active public MCP servers, with the leading companies (ChatGPT, Cursor, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Visual Studio Code, etc.) as adopters, and support from cloud organizations (AWS, Cloudflare, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure).

Anthropic now has a directory with over 75 MCP-powered connectors.

The Linux Foundation has decades of experience stewarding the significant open-source projects, including The Linux Kernel, Kubernetes, Node.js, and PyTorch.