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Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg has formally announced the creation of Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL) in a memo to employees.

The labs will be run by Alexandr Wang, until recently CEO of Scale AI, the data labelling company in which Meta bought a 49% stake for $14.8 billion last month.

Wang’s title at Meta will be chief AI officer, according to Bloomberg, which reviewed Zuckerberg’s memo announcing the move.

The creation of the lab to pursue “superintelligence and Wang’s role in it is no surprise, having been widely anticipated since the Meta-Scale AI deal was struck.

MSL will oversee Meta’s efforts on AI products and applied research, where Wang will be supported by Nat Friedman, previously CEO of GitHub, Zuckerberg wrote in the memo according to Bloomberg.

The company announced 11 new hires for MSL, including staff poached from rival AI groups at Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI.

“As the pace of AI progress accelerates, developing superintelligence is coming into sight. I believe this will be the beginning of a new era for humanity, and I am fully committed to doing what it takes for Meta to lead the way,” Zuckerberg wrote, according to the report.

Download the July 2025 issue of the Enterprise Spotlight from the editors of CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World.

aria-label="Embed of AI-ready data centers.">AI-ready data centersDownload

Download the July 2025 issue of the Enterprise Spotlight from the editors of CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World.

aria-label="Embed of AI-ready data centers.">AI-ready data centersDownload

(Editor’s note: After this story was posted, the US Senate dropped the controversial measure from the spending bill.)

There is so much to hate about the “One Big Beautiful Bill” now making its way through Congress. And among the things near the top of my list is how it deals with various tech industry issues — especially the proposed freeze on state and local governments’ ability to regulate generative AI (genAI). 

If passed, it would prevent states from enacting or enforcing laws aimed at curbing genAI-related harms, such as deep fakes, algorithmic discrimination, and misuse of personal likenesses. Its supporters, such as Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz, (R-TX), say it’s a way to prevent a fragmented regulatory landscape that, they argue, could stifle innovation and US competitiveness against China. 

Yeah, right. It’s really just a giveaway to genAI companies to do whatever they want with any of your data they can hoover up. Given that the courts have recently decided that these companies can essentially get away with ignoring copyright laws, I foresee great times ahead for them, while everyone else gets taken to the cleaners.

I’m far from the only one who’s ticked off. Even some Republicans aren’t crazy about giving genAI companies a blank check for your data. Over the weekend, the provision was revised after negotiations between Cruz and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). The latest version reduces the ban from 10 years to five.

The new language also introduces exemptions for state laws targeting unfair or deceptive practices, child safety, child sexual abuse material, and publicity rights. However, the states of Alabama, Arizona, California, Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Montana, and Texas have already made it illegal to distribute deceptive genAI-generated political ads and “news,” and would likely see their laws rendered ineffective. Funny that, eh? 

In addition, the stick being used to ensure states don’t try to get in genAI’s way is that if they do, they won’t get $500 million in new federal funds for AI infrastructure and deployment. On top of that, broadband funding from the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program is also being held hostage.

Under Cruz’s proposal, states that enact or enforce AI regulations risk losing access to both new and already-allocated BEAD funds. If they don’t kowtow to Republicans and their genAI supporters, they can’t improve your broadband.

In other words, if states pass genAI regulations, they can’t have BEAD money to bring broadband access to poor and rural residents. The provision triggered an extraordinary backlash from state officials. In early June, 260 state lawmakers from all 50 states, Democrats and Republicans alike, sent a letter to Congress condemning the moratorium as an assault on state sovereignty and consumer protection. 

They argue that states have been at the forefront of regulating genAI to address real-time harms and that a years-long federal preemption would “cut short democratic discussion of AI policy in the states with a sweeping moratorium that threatens to halt a broad array of laws and restrict policymakers from responding to emerging issues.”

The opposition is not limited to state-level Republicans. Hard-line Republicans, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, (R-A.), Josh Hawley, (R-MO), Rand Paul, (R-KY), and Ron Johnson, (R-WI), have joined Democrats in calling the provision federal overreach that undermines states’ rights. I never thought I would agree on anything with Greene and the rest, but here we are. She has threatened to withdraw her support for the entire bill over the issue. 

The timing of the provision is particularly obnoxious; after years of delay, $42.5 billion in BEAD funding had finally been allocated under the Biden administration. Then in June, the Trump administration rewrote BEAD’s rules and dumped all the previously awarded contracts. 

Now, internet service providers (ISPs) that had been awarded funding must re-bid for the same contracts. Worse still, under President Donald J. Trump’s “tech-neutral” approach, companies such as Elon Musk’s Starlink will now get billions more. How much more? Under the original BEAD rules, Starlink would have gotten up to $4.1 billion. The new Musk-friendly approach could boost Starlink’s share to as much as $20 billion. 

It must be nice to have friends in the White House. 

Of course, in the meantime, poor and rural users will still be denied access to high-speed broadband for another few years because of the BEAD delays. The Senate parliamentarian has ruled that the genAI rules moratorium can remain in the reconciliation bill, provided it is tied only to the new $500 million in funding — not the broader $42.5 billion BEAD allocation. Even so, a close reading of the bill’s language suggests that states could still be at risk of losing BEAD funding. In short, as Sen. Maria Cantwell, (D-WA), pointed out earlier, this provision “forces states receiving BEAD funding to choose between expanding broadband or protecting consumers from AI harms for 10 years.”  

So, what’s going to happen? Well, for one thing, that Big Beautiful Bill won’t pass by the 4th of July. Sorry Trump. Even if the Senate does manage to pass it in the next few days, the Senate and House still have to hammer out the differences between their bills and then pass the final revision. There’s simply not enough time.

Ultimately, though, some version of the legislation will pass. Very few Congress members are willing to stand up to Trump when push comes to shove. And that means  AI companies will be allowed to operate without any legal guardrails, and rural broadband will continue to roll out at an ever slower pace.  

OpenAI is an artificial intelligence organization comprised of the non-profit OpenAI, Inc. and several for-profit subsidiaries. The company is perhaps best known for its ChatGPT chatbot, which launched in 2022, kicking off a period of massive disruption in the tech industry and beyond.

A complicated and increasingly contentious relationship with Microsoft, ongoing legal issues over copyright infringement, and frequent product announcements keep OpenAI in the news.

Here is the latest:

Oracle to power OpenAI’s AGI ambitions with 4.5GW expansion

July 3, 2025: OpenAI has signed a significant compute leasing deal with Oracle, under which it will access 4.5 gigawatts (GW) of data center power, marking one of the largest single leasing arrangements in the industry.

OpenAI tests Google TPUs amid rising inference cost concerns

July 1, 2025: OpenAI has begun testing Google’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), a move that — though not signaling an imminent switch — has raised eyebrows among industry analysts concerned about the escalating costs of AI inference and its effects.    

Microsoft/OpenAI AGI argument unlikely to impact enterprise IT

June 26, 2025: The contract between the two AI giants has an exit clause once AGI is achieved. The problem: It is impossible to prove when that happens. Either way, IT execs at Macy’s, Bank of America, doubt it will matter.

OpenAI productivity suite could change the way users create documents

June 26, 2025: OpenAI’s planned productivity suite could dismantle traditional habits of how users create and consume documents in the same the way the company changed browsing and search habits.

o3-pro may be OpenAI’s most advanced commercial offering, but GPT-4o bests it

June 24, 2025: In a head-to-head comparison of the two models, researchers found that o3-pro is far less performant, reliable, and secure, and does an unnecessary amount of reasoning. Notably, o3-pro consumed 7.3x more output tokens, cost 14x more to run, and failed in 5.6x more test cases than GPT-4o.

Microsoft and OpenAI: Will they opt for the nuclear option?

June 24, 2025: The fight between Microsoft and OpenAI over what Microsoft should get for its $13 billion investment in the AI company has gone from nasty to downright toxic, with each of the companies considering strategies against the other that can only be described as their nuclear options. 

OpenAI walks away from Scale AI — triggering industry-wide rethink of data partnerships

June 19, 2025: OpenAI has ended its long-standing partnership with Scale AI, the company that powered some of the most complex data-labeling tasks behind frontier models such as GPT-4.

OpenAI’s o3 price plunge changes everything for vibe coders

June 18, 2025: o3 used to be too slow and too expensive for daily coding—no longer. The latency is now bearable, the price is sane, and the chain-of-thought pays off.

Sam Altman: Meta tried to lure OpenAI employees with billion-dollar salaries

June 18, 2025: After reports suggested Meta has tried to poach employees from OpenAI and Google Deepmind by offering huge compensation packages, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman weighed in, saying those reports are true.

OpenAI-Microsoft tensions escalate over control and contracts

June 17, 2025: The relationship between OpenAI and Microsoft is under growing strain amid extended talks over OpenAI’s restructuring, with OpenAI reportedly considering antitrust action over Microsoft’s influence in the partnership.

OpenAI’s MCP move tempts IT to trust genAI more than it should

June 16, 2025: OpenAI late last month announced changes to make it much easier to give its genAI models full access to any software using Model Context Protocol (MCP). Here’s why that’s a bad idea.

OpenAI launches o3-pro, slashes o3 price by 80% in bid to widen AI lead

June 11, 2025: OpenAI has unveiled its most advanced AI model to date, the o3-pro, which surpasses competitors on key benchmarks and replaces the o1-pro. The o3-pro is now available for ChatGPT Pro and Team users, as well as through the developer API, with access for enterprise and education sectors beginning next week.

What Microsoft hopes to get from its breakup with OpenAI

June 11, 2025: The once-tight bond between Microsoft and OpenAI has been fraying for well over a year — and it’s getting worse. What the two companies want from each other now is very different from when Microsoft made its original $13 billion investment.

Oracle to spend $40B on Nvidia chips for OpenAI data center in Texas

May 26, 2025: Oracle is reportedly spending about $40 billion on Nvidia’s high-performance computer chips to power OpenAI’s new data center in Texas, marking a pivotal shift in the AI infrastructure landscape that has significant implications for enterprise IT strategies.

OpenAI’s Skynet moment: Models defy human commands, actively resist orders to shut down

May 30, 2025: OpenAI’s most advanced AI models are showing a disturbing new behavior: they are refusing to obey direct human commands to shut down, actively sabotaging the very mechanisms designed to turn them off.

Jony Ive and OpenAI plan ‘bicycles’ for 21st-century minds

May 21, 2025: OpenAI has announced that it will purchase io, the AI startup founded by acclaimed former Apple designer Sir Jony Ive, who helped create the iMac, iPod, and iPhone. 

OpenAI launches Codex AI agent to tackle multi-step coding tasks

May 19, 2025: OpenAI’s most advanced AI coding agent, Codex, will bring parallel task automation to developers—but analysts caution that speed without scrutiny invites “silent failures.”

Cisco taps OpenAI’s Codex for AI-driven network coding

May 16, 2025: Cisco is working with OpenAI and its newly released Codex software engineering agent to give network engineers access to better tools for writing, testing and building code.

OpenAI’s IPO aspirations prompt rethink of Microsoft alliance

May 12, 2025: Microsoft and OpenAI are renegotiating their multibillion-dollar partnership deal to better align with each company’s evolving goals in the artificial intelligence race

OpenAI hires Instacart CEO Fidji Simo to oversee customer-facing apps

May 8, 2025: The hire indicates that OpenAI’s roadmap will involve more structured, productized offerings rather than just API access.

OpenAI offers help promoting AI outside the US, but analysts question why countries would accept

May 7, 2025: OpenAI, acting as part of the US government-led Stargate AI project, rolled out a program called OpenAI for Countries. The idea is for Stargate to help other countries create their own genAI environments, including data centers and genAI models.

OpenAI reaffirms nonprofit control, scales back governance changes

May 6, 2025: OpenAI has scrapped plans to reduce its nonprofit parent’s oversight and will keep its existing governance structure intact, a move that limits CEO Sam Altman’s influence and responds to mounting external pressure.

OpenAI to acquire AI coding tool Windsurf for $3B

May 6, 2025: The acquisition comes just months after Windsurf explored funding at this same valuation from investors, highlighting the premium being placed on specialized AI coding capabilities, according to reports.

Former OpenAI employees urge regulators to halt company’s for-profit shift

April 23, 2025: A broad coalition of AI experts, economists, legal scholars, and former OpenAI employees is urging state regulators to keep OpenAI’s nonprofit foundation in control of the company.

OpenAI’s new models can ‘think with pictures’

April 17, 2025: OpenAI has released o3 and 04-mini, two reasoning AI models designed to be extra good at programming, math, and science and that can use images to “think,” according to Engadget, This means that users can upload sketches or diagrams, for example, and even if they are of low quality, o3 and 04-mini will understand what is meant.

OpenAI GPT-4.1 models promise improved coding and instruction following

April 15, 2025: The GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and GPT-4.1 nano models, available only via the API, will provide better performance than GPT-4o and GPT-4o mini at a lower price, OpenAI said.

OpenAI slammed for putting speed over safety

April 11, 2025: According to a Financial Times report, the ChatGPT maker is now assigning staff and third-party groups only a few days to assess the risks and performance of its latest large language models (LLMs) as compared to several months they were given earlier.

OpenAI fears irreparable harm from Musk, files countersuit

April 10, 2025: OpenAI has filed a countersuit against Elon Musk, accusing the billionaire of a sustained campaign to damage the company and urging a US federal court to block further actions it described as unlawful and disruptive. The legal filing, submitted in a California district court, marks the latest escalation in a dispute between Musk and the AI startup he helped establish in 2015.

Senators probe Google-Anthropic, Microsoft-OpenAI deals over antitrust concerns

April 9, 2025: Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden have launched a formal inquiry into partnerships between tech giants Google and Microsoft, and AI startups, demanding detailed information about arrangements they fear may be circumventing antitrust scrutiny while consolidating power in the rapidly evolving AI market.

Anthropic’s and OpenAI’s new AI education initiatives offer hope for enterprise knowledge retention

April 4, 2025: Two of the biggest names in artificial intelligence are independently developing new AI tools that encourage learning, at a time when the technology has been criticized for dumbing down smart users in the enterprise and discouraging critical thinking. While the new initiatives from OpenAI and Anthropic are aimed at transforming how AI is used in higher education, the opportunities they open up extend beyond universities.

Amazon, OpenAI, and China’s Zhipu unveil new AI tools amid intensifying competition

April 1, 2025: A wave of new AI products is hitting the market, signaling a shift toward more autonomous, task-completing systems that could reshape how businesses and consumers interact with digital services: Amazon has unveiled Nova Act, an AI agent designed to operate a web browser much like a human user; OpenAI said it will release an open-weight language model; and China’s Zhipu AI introduced a free AI assistant aimed at strengthening its position in the domestic market and competing with Western tech giants.

OpenAI, Google AI data centers are under stress after new genAI model launches

March 28, 2025: New generative AI models introduced by Google and OpenAI have put the companies’ data centers under stress — and both companies are trying to catch up to demand. OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman tweeted that his company was temporarily restricting the use of GPUs after overwhelming demand for its image generation service on ChatGPT.

Microsoft abandons data center projects as OpenAI considers its own, hinting at a market shift

March 26, 2025: OpenAI has privately discussed building and operating its first data center to house storage, which is essential for developing sophisticated AI models. Microsoft, on the other hand, has pulled back on its buildouts, canceling data center projects in the US and Europe.

OpenAI calls for US to centralize AI regulation

March 13, 2025: OpenAI executives think the federal government should regulate artificial intelligence in the US, taking precedence over often more restrictive state regulations.

New tools from OpenAI help companies create their own AI agents

March 12, 2025: OpenAI launched Responses, a new api intended to eventually replace Assistants. The big draw? Responses provides a number of new tools that companies and organizations can use to create their own AI agents.

Microsoft is developing its own AI models to compete with OpenAI

March 10, 2025: Reports suggest Microsoft has decided to seriously challenge Deepseek and OpenAI by developing its own set of reasoning AI models called Microsoft AI (MAI). If successful, Microsoft would eventually not have to use its partner OpenAI’s o1 models in Copilot

Microsoft-OpenAI investigation closed by UK regulators

March 5, 2025: The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) spent a great deal of time deciding whether it should investigate Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI as a potential merger situation, but in the end, decided to open and close the investigation within 24 hours.

OpenAI revamps AI roadmap, merging models for a leaner future

February 13, 2025: OpenAI will integrate “o3” into GPT-5 instead of releasing it separately, streamlining adoption while signaling a shift toward fewer, more controlled AI models amid rising competition and cost pressures.

Musk’s $97B offer to buy OpenAI rejected as leadership stands firm

February 11, 2025: In a message to staff, Altman said the board has no intention of considering Musk’s offer, stating that the proposal does not align with OpenAI’s mission

OpenAI launches deep research agent for multi-step research tasks

February 3, 2025: Hot on the heels of its launch of the o3-mini model, OpenAI announced another component for ChatGPT that allows the generative AI tool to do more in-depth research. “Deep research is built for people who do intensive knowledge work in areas like finance, science, policy, and engineering and need thorough, precise, and reliable research,” OpenAI said in a blog post announcing the new capability.

OpenAI unleashes o3-mini reasoning model

January 31, 2025: OpenAI released the latest model in its reasoning series, o3-mini, both in ChatGPT and its application programming interface (API). It had been in preview since December 2024.

Indian media houses rally against OpenAI over copyright dispute

January 27, 2025: The legal heat on OpenAI in India intensified as digital news outlets owned by billionaires Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani joined an ongoing lawsuit against the ChatGPT creator. They were joined by some of the largest news publishers in India including the Indian Express, and Hindustan Times, and members of the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA), which includes major players like Zee News, India Today, and The Hindu.

Altman now says OpenAI has not yet developed AGI

January 20, 2025: Confusion over whether OpenAI’s o3-mini has reached the major milestone of artificial general intelligence (AGI) or not deepened following a post on X by CEO Sam Altman that completely contradicts what he said two weeks earlier in an interview with Bloomberg.

Microsoft sues overseas threat actor group over abuse of OpenAI service

January 13, 2025: Microsoft has filed suit against 10 unnamed people (“Does”), who are apparently operating overseas, for misuse of its Azure OpenAI platform, asking the Eastern District of Virginia federal court for damages and injunctive relief.

With o3 having reached AGI, OpenAI turns its sights toward superintelligence

January 6, 2025: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has reinvigorated discussion of artificial general intelligence (AGI), boldly claiming that his company’s newest model has reached that milestone.

Now US government agencies can use OpenAI’s ChatGPT too

January 28, 2025: OpenAI has rolled out ChatGPT Gov, a version of its flagship frontier model specifically tailored to US government agencies. The platform has many of the same capabilities as OpenAI’s other enterprise products, including access to GPT-4o and the ability to build custom GPTs — and it also features a much higher level of security than ChatGPT Enterprise.

OpenAI debuts AI agent Operator to transform web task automation

January 24, 2025: OpenAI has unveiled “Operator,” a new AI agent designed to perform web-based tasks, offering potential productivity enhancements for enterprises. The tool enables interaction with on-screen elements, positioning it as a solution for automating routine processes in business workflows amid growing competition in the generative AI space.

OpenAI opposes data deletion demand in India citing US legal constraints

January 23, 2025: OpenAI has informed the Delhi High Court that any directive requiring it to delete training data used for ChatGPT would conflict with its legal obligations under US law. The statement came in response to a copyright lawsuit filed by the Reuters-backed Indian news agency ANI, marking a pivotal development in one of the first major AI-related legal battles in India.

OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle lead $500B Project Stargate to ramp up AI infra in the US

January 22, 2025: Several large technology firms including OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, Nvidia, and MGX have partnered to set up a new company in the US to ramp up AI infrastructure in the country.

OpenAI is losing money on its pricey ChatGPT Pro subscription

January 7, 2025: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in a post on X, says the AI ​​company is currently losing money on its ChatGPT Pro subscription. “People are using it much more than we expected,” he wrote.

Fine-tuning Azure OpenAI models in Azure AI Foundry

January 2, 2025: Microsoft Azure’s new AI toolkit makes it easy to customize OpenAI large language models for your applications.

OpenAI still hasn’t released tools to deny data collection

January 2, 2025: OpenAI has failed to release the tool to opt-out or customize data collection the company promised to make available by 2025, according to Techcrunch.

Cloudflare will block AI crawlers from accessing new customers’ websites without permission starting July 1 and is testing a way to make AI pay for the data it gathers.

Furthermore, website owners can now decide who crawls their sites, and for what purpose, and AI companies can reveal via Cloudflare whether the data they gather will be used for training, inference, or search, to help owners decide whether to allow the crawl.

The company began enabling its customers to choose to block AI crawlers in July 2024. Since then, it said, over one million customers have opted in.

“For decades, the Internet has operated on a simple exchange: search engines index content and direct users back to original websites, generating traffic and ad revenue for websites of all sizes. This cycle rewards creators that produce quality content with money and a following, while helping users discover new and interesting information,” Cloudflare said in its announcement. “That model is now broken. AI crawlers collect content like text, articles, and images to generate answers, without sending visitors to the original source — depriving content creators of revenue, and the satisfaction of knowing someone is reading their content. If the incentive to create original, quality content disappears, society ends up losing, and the future of the Internet is at risk.”

Pay per crawl

Cloudflare is testing a new mechanism payment mechanism, pay per crawl, that enables website owners to decide whether they will permit AI crawlers to access their content, and if that access will be free or they will charge for it. The technology, now in private beta, integrates with existing web infrastructure to create a framework to enable site owners to require payment, and tell the crawler the price via an HTTP “402 payment required“ response code.

The site owner can currently set a single price for the site or choose to let certain crawlers access it at no charge, but Cloudflare expects the feature to evolve over time, perhaps to allow dynamic pricing, or charge different amounts for various types of content.

“The true potential of pay per crawl may emerge in an agentic world,” the company said in a blog post about the new feature. “What if an agentic paywall could operate at the network edge, entirely programmatically? Imagine asking your favorite deep research program to help you synthesize the latest cancer research or a legal brief, or just help you find the best restaurant in Soho — and then giving that agent a budget to spend to acquire the best and most relevant content.”

Cloudflare acts as the merchant of record for the purchases, billing the crawlers and distributing the funds to the site owners.

If the crawler doesn’t yet have a billing relationship with Cloudflare, it is blocked but receives an error message indicating that with such a relationship it might gain access to the content.

Cloudflare has invited both crawlers interested in paying for content and content owners who wish to be paid to sign up for the beta; existing enterprise customers can also contact their account executive.

A win-win

Fritz Jean-Louis, principal cybersecurity advisor at Info-Tech Research Group, sees the approach as a positive move which addresses concerns about unauthorized use of content by AI crawlers..

“By giving website owners control over how their content is accessed and used by AI crawlers, this solution empowers content creators to protect their intellectual property and potentially monetize their content more effectively,” he said. “The requirement for AI companies to disclose the purpose of their crawlers introduces a level of transparency and accountability that has been lacking in the industry, helping to build trust between content creators and AI companies.”

But he does see unresolved issues that need addressing, such as how to handle what he called “legacy” information that had already been scooped up by crawlers.

Jean-Louis favors industry-driven solutions over punitive regulations: “This move by Cloudflare could indicate a shift in the industry toward supporting a fair and sustainable digital ecosystem, balancing the needs of content creators and AI innovators: a win-win situation.”

U.S. cyber agencies, the FBI, and NSA issued an urgent warning today about potential cyberattacks from Iranian-affiliated hackers targeting U.S. critical infrastructure. [...]

The Berlin Commissioner for Data Protection has formally requested Google and Apple to remove the DeepSeek AI application from the application stores due to GDPR violations. [...]

Microsoft says its Defender for Office 365 cloud-based email security suite will now automatically detect and block email bombing attacks. [...]

Following reports that Meta had hired away prominent researchers from OpenAI — in some cases offering $100 million — the company is now saying it will review compensation.

According to Wired, OpenAI’s management reportedly told employees they will not stand by and watch this happen. In a Slack message to staff, OpenAI’s chief scientist, Mark Chen, reportedly wrote: “I feel a strong, instinctive feeling right now, as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something”.

Chen said he, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and others in the company’s leadership are working “around the clock to talk to those who have received offers,” as well as “adjusting compensation and exploring creative ways to recognize and reward top talent.”

More OpenAI news:

• Microsoft and OpenAI: Will they opt for the nuclear option?
• OpenAI productivity suite could change the way users create documents
• Microsoft/OpenAI AGI argument unlikely to impact enterprise IT

The government in Switzerland is informing that sensitive information from various federal offices has been impacted by a ransomware attack at the third-party organization Radix. [...]

The Canadian government has ordered Hikvision's subsidiary in the country to cease all operations following a review that determined them to pose a national security risk. [...]

Microsoft has confirmed a new known issue causing delivery delays for June 2025 Windows security updates due to an incorrect metadata timestamp. [...]

Spanish authorities have arrested five individuals in Madrid and the Canary Islands, suspected of laundering $540 million (€460 million) from illegal cryptocurrency investment schemes and defrauding more than 5,000 victims. [...]

When you manage lightweight virtual machines (VMs) regularly, tools like Canonical's Multipass are a lifesaver. It's fast, reliable, integrates seamlessly with Ubuntu, and''until now''has had one major sticking point: not all of it has been open-source.

Linux admins and infosec professionals, let's talk about a sophisticated attack campaign targeting South Korean web servers. Threat actors are leveraging file upload vulnerabilities to deploy web shells and advanced malware, such as MeshAgent and SuperShell, in a coordinated, multi-stage process.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has warned Americans of cybercriminals impersonating health fraud investigators to steal their sensitive information. [...]

Ten years ago, Apple introduced the MacBook, a lower-end, more affordable 12-in. Mac the company called “the notebook redefined.”

At only 0.5 inches thick at its thickest point, the compact computer was the thinnest Mac ever at the time, and while the chip was relatively low-powered, it was a popular device until it was discontinued in 2018. Apple may be preparing to introduce something similar.

Ming-Chi Kuo, the widely-cited Apple analyst who seemingly secretively occupies an adjacent pocket to Mark Gurman somewhere in Apple’s boardroom, tells us Apple wants to introduce a new and lower-priced entry-level laptop, probably next year. In order to reach this low price, Apple will allegedly put its A18 Pro iPhone processor inside the Mac.

Doing so is not quite the trade off in performance you might imagine, as 9to5Mac points out the A18 Pro chip’s performance puts it at least on par with an M1 Mac mini, millions of which continue to be used quite happily today. (I use one.)

Compromise or opportunity?

What this means is that in exchange for using a processor that is produced in huge quantities (and therefore likely a little cheaper), Apple gets to offer up an entry-level Mac with enough performance for basic tasks at a low price and likely in a very, very thin chassis due to the low energy of the processor.

This all sounds grand so far, especially budget-holders and particularly those in the education sector who will be seeking an economical route to deploy thousands of Macs. If the speculation is correct, it also underlines two critical realities: Apple Silicon is enabling hardware designs Apple could not have introduced before, and it is becoming increasingly possible to run macOS on an A-series chip — assuming the speculated system is a Mac at all.

Could Kuo have caught half a rumor that leads toward a new hybrid device?

Only time, and probably Mark Gurman, can tell.

A little history

Apple replaced the popular iBook range with the first MacBook in 2006 during the Mac transition to Intel processors and continued to sell these systems into 2011 to make way for MacBook Air. Four years later, in 2015, the company returned with a new MacBook model — the “thinnest and lightest Mac ever.” It was once again updated in 2017 before being discontinued in 2019.

What these Macs did well is likely what Apple envisions for the speculated upon new model. Think web browsing, casual Mac use, access to web services, writing, reading, Apple Music and iCloud. It also likely means Apple Intelligence, access to cloud-based AI and almost certainly movies, light image editing, and so forth.

It won’t be the Mac you use for anything more sophisticated, but for a lot of people it is likely to be all the Mac they need. Thin, light and underpowered in contrast to MacBook Pro, it’s a model that could prove popular, particularly as the A-series chip means battery life should at least compete with other Macs. 

Building the business

Will Apple be cannibalizing its existing notebook markets with a system of this kind?

Perhaps, but perhaps not: You see, while it might lose some entry-level MacBook Air customers to the new product, most professional and aspirational customers will continue to get the best Mac they can afford.

These systems might also compensate for any diverted sales by boosting orders in large-scale markets, such as education, even as the prospect of a lower-cost Apple notebook could help the company secure gains in the all-important emerging markets; that’s where future economic prosperity might emerge as established economies collapse from their own internal moral/economic/political contradictions.

Any gains generated by these new Macs matter quite a lot, especially when seen through the lens of recent Canalys data showing Apple is now the second-biggest notebook maker in the US. (Apple has 18% of that market to HP’s 24%, with Lenovo and Dell sharing third position with 17% and others far behind. Apple is also the fourth largest desktop PC maker in the US, though by wider margins.)

That almost one in five notebooks sold in America comes from Apple shows the tremendous momentum the company once left for dead has built since the beginning of this century. Macs right now are powering a PC market recovery. A move to make some of its products more affordable (while also remaining satisfyingly profitable) can only consolidate these gains and set the scene for a much deeper push at the mid-range PC market. It’s amusing to think this push will in part be driven by an iPhone chip, a processor which with its own existence shows Apple’s growing industry leadership in processor design.

Finally, while it is unsatisfactory to end an article with a question, it is hard to avoid wondering whether Apple will finally put its own 5G modems inside these Macs? Use of an iPhone chip in a low power system does, after all, suggest it could.

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The days of taking care of business exclusively in an office are over. You’ve got a powerful productivity system in your pocket practically 24/7, after all — and with the right set of apps, you can stay synced with the same spreadsheets, documents, and presentations that are on your desktop and work with ’em seamlessly from anywhere.

Best of all? These days, achieving that level of connectivity on Android doesn’t require any kind of compromise. The bar’s really been raised when it comes to office app quality in the Play Store over the past several years, particularly compared to the limited landscape we saw in the platform’s earlier days. The question at this point isn’t if you can find a worthwhile set of office apps for your phone but rather which set of commendable offerings makes the most sense for you.

And to be clear: We’re talkin’ traditional office apps here, not their more contemporary AI-centric cousins. Generative AI apps can certainly be useful in the right sort of scenario — from web-based AI apps that offer a helping hand with presentation creation to Android-specific AI apps that assist in all sorts of interesting ways — but sometimes, you just need a solid tool for standard work that fits in naturally with everything else you’re using. And, of course, many of these apps do now offer some manner of AI elements, too, if and when you want ’em.

I’ve spent time testing all the current contenders, ranging from the small-name efforts that used to dominate my recommendations to the big-name products from prominent productivity players. Focusing on factors such as feature availability, ease of use, ecosystem integration, and overall user experience, these are the best office apps on Android today.

Looking for email apps? See my roundup of the best email and texting apps for Android.

The best fully featured Android office apps Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

Microsoft was embarrassingly late to the Android app party, but since the company started taking the world’s most popular operating system seriously some years back, its Android productivity services have been among the best around.

That remains true today with its core Microsoft 365, a.k.a. Microsoft Office, offerings: Word, for word processing; Excel, for spreadsheet editing; and PowerPoint, for presentation work. If you’re used to using the equivalent Microsoft 365/Office 365 products on the desktop — or if you just need fully featured mobile office apps with all the bells and whistles — Microsoft’s trio of Android apps is going to be your best all-around option for on-the-go productivity.

If you’re planning to use all three apps, you can also now download them in a space-saving and easier-to-manage all-in-one Microsoft 365 bundle (which is confusingly branded as “Microsoft 365 Copilot,” not to be mixed up with the other non-Office-associated Microsoft Copilot chatbot app — insert over-the-top facepalming here).

Perhaps the greatest strength of Microsoft’s Android apps is their effortless cross-platform compatibility and consistency: First, as you’d expect, all three apps handle standard Office file formats flawlessly and with pristine formatting fidelity. And beyond that, if you’re already using Word, Excel, or PowerPoint in any other setting, you’ll have little to no learning curve with the matching Android versions. The apps’ interfaces and interaction styles aren’t identical to their desktop and web environments, but they’re similar enough to make sense and be quite easy to master.

When you’re actively working on a document in the Word Android app, for instance, you see a small, scrollable toolbar at the bottom of the screen — a sized-down version of the traditional Office Ribbon at the top of a document in a desktop view. It’s a smart way to conserve space and allow you to have a large working area (especially when a virtual keyboard is present and taking up a significant portion of your screen).

Tapping an arrow at the toolbar’s right side, meanwhile, expands the toolbar into a larger form with menu sections corresponding to most of the Ribbon tabs you see in Word’s desktop or web app: Home, with common commands for basic text formatting; Insert, with the standard full range of options; Layout, with commands for adjusting your document’s margins, orientation, column configuration, and so on; Review, for checking spelling or word count, managing comments, and activating Track Changes mode; and View, for moving between different layouts and zoom settings.

Microsoft Word’s toolbar in its sized-down, scrollable form (at left) and when fully expanded (at right).

JR Raphael / Foundry

The Word app’s toolbar also has a Draw section, which is present in the desktop version only if your device has a touchscreen. It allows you to select from a variety of tools for drawing or highlighting directly on your document with your finger or a stylus. (The standard Word References section is curiously missing in this context, though most of the associated options are just scattered across other appropriate-seeming areas.)

The same approach and expansive feature set applies to Excel and PowerPoint as well. There’s really not much you can’t do with Microsoft’s Office apps on Android — including collaboration (as long as your co-workers are also in the Microsoft ecosystem) and cloud synchronization: Out of the box, the apps support both local device storage and cloud-based storage with Microsoft OneDrive, and if you dig around enough, you’ll even find options for connecting cloud-based accounts from Dropbox, Google Drive, and other providers for seamless in-app access.

Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint provide familiar and feature-packed interfaces on Android.

JR Raphael / Foundry

The one asterisk to all of this: In order to get the apps’ complete set of features — or to use the apps at all on tablet-sized devices — you’ll have to pay for a Microsoft 365 subscription, which runs $100 per year for individuals, $130 per year for families (with up to six users), or $72 to $264 per user per year for businesses. Those subscriptions include a bunch of Copilot AI features, though with a suspiciously vague description of exactly how much you’re able to use the features within any given month. (Officially, Microsoft says you get a monthly allotment of credits that “should be enough for most subscribers.” Riiiiiiiight.)

All AI ambiguity aside, assuming you already have such a subscription for desktop access, going with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on Android is pretty much a no-brainer. If you aren’t already subscribed and don’t necessarily need office apps with oodles of advanced features, though, our next option might be the better fit for you.

The best Android office apps for more basic needs Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides

‘Twas a time when Google’s mobile office apps were barely usable, bare-bones affairs. Make no mistake about it: Those days are no more.

Nowadays, Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides are thoroughly polished and impressively capable on-the-go productivity tools. They boast tight integration with the broader Google ecosystem, along with a first-class system for syncing, collaboration, and effortless cross-device access.

That last item is a critical part of the apps’ appeal. If you’re already invested in the Google ecosystem, personally or professionally — using Google Drive for storage, Gmail for email, and so on — Docs, Sheets, and Slides will fit naturally into your existing setup. You’ll use your same Google account to access them (and you won’t even have to sign in at all from your phone, since your account is already connected at the operating system level). You’ll be able to work on colleagues’ shared files right from your regular interface. And everything you do will be connected to your Drive storage and easily accessible from most any Google app on any device or platform.

The Docs, Sheets, and Slides Android apps are easy to navigate and have all the basic features you’d expect for their respective categories. In Docs, for instance, you can style text, insert tables, adjust alignment, and insert a variety of different types of bulleted lists. In Sheets, you can style and merge cells, create charts, and find and use all sorts of common spreadsheet functions. And in Slides, you can use rich formatting tools, add speaker notes, and insert your own custom backgrounds.

Google Docs and Sheets have easy-to-use interfaces with all the basic features you’d expect.

JR Raphael / Foundry

It’s with the more advanced word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation commands that Google’s apps lag a bit behind Microsoft’s — not being able to style tables within documents from the Docs app, for example, or not being able to sort rows within a spreadsheet in Sheets. If you need those sorts of beyond-the-basics capabilities, Google’s apps won’t be right for you.

In addition, the mobile apps surprisingly don’t sport many AI elements as of yet, which is slightly shocking, really, given how aggressively Google is shoving Gemini into our faces everywhere else thesedays — including within the browser-based Docs, Sheets, and Slides apps. For now, the Docs Android app does have certain limited Gemini functions available for organizations on the $168-per-user-per-year Workplace Business Standard plan and higher, including an AI-provided document summary command, the ability to create an AI-generated draft based on a prompt, and the option to ask Gemini questions about the document you’re viewing.

Other Gemini features are not yet present, and Sheets and Slides are still free from any and all Gemini-related elements — for now. Whether that’s a drawback or a positive, of course, is completely up to your interpretation.

Last but not least, Docs, Sheets, and Slides also use proprietary Google file formats instead of the typical Microsoft formats — but practically speaking, that really isn’t a big deal anymore. Google makes it incredibly easy to import and open any common file format, and it makes it equally painless to export and share your files in any format you need.

Google’s apps are completely free for individual use, without any restrictions. For companies and organizations that require a fully managed setup, the Google Workspace suite ranges from $84 per user per year for a basic setup to $264 per user per year for the fully featured “Business Plus” plan — and onward from there for customized enterprise-level arrangements.

The best Android app for creating, editing, and annotating PDFs Adobe Acrobat Reader

The one function all of these apps are missing is the ability to manage PDFs from your phone. For that, Adobe’s Acrobat Reader Android app is the tool you need to round out your mobile office suite setup. The free (for these purposes) utility has everything you could possibly require for mobile PDF management — and it’s by far the easiest way to view, sign, and edit PDFs on Android.

Even just for basic reading of a PDF, Reader’s one-tap “liquid” function forces a document’s typically static text into an adaptive format that actually makes it legible on a small screen without any awkward zooming. And when you need to sign or mark up a PDF in any way, Reader’s got you covered with an array of options for scribbling directly on your screen or inserting a variety of ready-to-roll elements — including your own saved signatures, if you have (or create) an Adobe account where those are stored.

Adobe’s Acrobat Reader app takes the pain out of editing and viewing PDFs on Android.

JR Raphael / Foundry

Acrobat Reader does offer a premium subscription with a variety of advanced options, including AI elements — but for most typical on-the-go PDF purposes, you really won’t need it. The app’s regular, free tier will handle everything you require.

And with that, your Android office app power-pack is complete. Time to take a brief break (I recommend a grape soda) and then think about what other categories of standout software could help supercharge your Android productivity setup. Note-taking apps? Calendar apps? Travel apps? Apps for team collaboration? Maybe some must-have Android widgets or clever apps for making your phone more efficient?

Whatever you need, I’ve got you covered.

This article was originally published in October 2018 and most recently updated in June 2025.