Computerworld.com [Hacking News]

The recently reported cyberattack against Tata Electronics is shaping up to be one of the most consequential attacks exposing important trade secrets belonging to Apple and, conceivably, other clients, including a slew of details about the upcoming iPhone 18 Pro. The attack follows May’s assault against key Apple manufacturing partner Foxconn.

World Leaks iPhone 18 Pro

Hackers from the ransomware group World Leaks managed to penetrate systems belonging to Apple’s most important manufacturing partner in India to exfiltrate hundreds of documents, including drop test videos, schematics, design details — even specifics about Apple’s C2 modem design. 

Reuters confirmed last week’s Apple Insider scoop that the leaked documents also included the purported board layouts for the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max, as well as data sheets for the rumored A20 Pro chip.

The data reveals some of this year’s colors, including a red, dark cherry, and gray, and indicate that the basic design remains the same, albeit with a slightly wider camera bump. They also suggest the upcoming high-end iPhone is a little thicker than current models and hint at a smaller Dynamic Island.

A brand new processor design

But the leaks also show something far more interesting: Apple is adopting a new processor design in the A20, a design that promises up to 20% additional performance and even more effective battery management. 

That’s thanks to Apple’s adoption of TSMC’s new Wafer-Level Multi-Chip Module (WMCM) packaging technology. What’s good about this tech is that it places the RAM alongside the SoC within the same package. 

The current design sees the RAM placed on top of the SoC, which is slightly less efficient and runs hotter. This informative image helps explain the difference between the two designs; essentially, the new architecture should reduce heat dissipation and speed up communication between the two components. 

That results in better performance and power efficiency and also means the vapor cooling system inside Apple’s upcoming pro iPhones can work more efficiently to reduce heat dissipation. While no one knows for sure, some estimates claim this new WMCM packaging should enable 15-20% performance boost, even before we consider the improved efficiency inherent in the new A20 chip.

A huge data heist

All of this information is carried within the 200,000+ files (630GB) World Leaks published on its dark web site. The data also includes confidential Apple supplier list info, detailed information concerning the circuit board, battery parts, and camera modules – even confidential information about which suppliers are competing to supply specific components. These are all confidential trade secrets the company is unlikely to want public, as they give rivals rare insight into how the company’s supply chain is structured.

Apple’s own crack team of security specialists is now involved in investigation of the attack, while Tata Electronics says it has restricted internal access and is engaged in a forensic investigation of the attack. 

Manufacturing is under attack

The scale of the attack is significant — so much so that it suggests the attackers engaged in extensive work to compromise the systems at Tata. This might have involved targeted attacks on employees, phishing, exploitation of weak access controls, the use of stolen credentials, and more. The attack point is unlikely to have been via Apple, but through a less protected supplier. 

There’s no doubt this leak is one of the worst to have hit the company, including the pre-release iPhone 4 left in a Redwood, CA nightclub that was then sold to a tech website. About the best thing to say about both leaks is that they help stoke up pre-release interest in an upcoming iPhone.

In truth, the story should be a wake-up call to business users that when it comes to system security, they are only ever as safe as the weakest link in their supply chain. This is particularly true in manufacturing. The IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2025 described manufacturing as the most targeted industry across four successive years.

Expect more such attacks with AI

Today’s sophisticated attackers are very accustomed to crafting multi-stop attack chains to get what they want, and World Leaks successfully attacked several larger enterprises, including Dell and Nike in recent months. 

Did this attack rely on AI? It’s not impossible, given Apple’s rush release of a security update designed to patch numerous vulnerabilities covering maliciously crafted web content and malicious web extensions, data exfiltration and sensitive data leakage, hijacked clipboard data, and more.

“It cuts both ways. The same AI helping researchers find these flaws is helping attackers exploit them faster, so expect more frequent updates, not fewer bugs, and the advantage shifts to whoever deploys the fix fastest,” said Adam Boynton, senior enterprise strategy manager for Jamf.

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With AI agents increasingly expected to remember conversations, preferences, and decisions over extended periods, Microsoft Research has developed Memora, a memory system designed to provide more scalable and reliable long-term recall than existing approaches.

AI agents are increasingly expected to retain context across weeks or months rather than individual chat sessions. Memory can become fragmented, leading to duplicate information and slower retrieval as knowledge grows.

According to Microsoft, Memora can solve this problem by decoupling what the AI remembers from how it looks up that information, ultimately reducing context token usage by up to 98% while matching or exceeding full-context accuracy, Microsoft Research claimed in a blog post.

Limitations of today’s memory architectures

As AI assistants and autonomous agents move into long-horizon deployments, the absence of a principled memory system has become a critical bottleneck. While modern LLMs are powerful reasoners, they still start every session from scratch.

Long conversations require models to repeatedly re-read their entire history, while new information is either stored as raw text or compressed into summaries where important details may be lost.

Solutions to address these are available, but they too have limitations. For instance, systems like Mem0 extract atomic facts from conversations, retrieval-augmented (RAG) approaches index raw text fragments for later recall, and graph-based memory systems such as Zep and GraphRAG impose structure through entity relations. But these mostly fall into two extremes.

Content-fragmentation systems, such as RAG and Mem0, embed extracted facts or text fragments directly. This preserves detail but produces brittle, isolated entries that lose narrative coherence.

Coarse-abstraction systems compress experience into compact summaries but strip away the constraints, edge cases, and numeric details that make memory useful in the first place.

Graph-based systems add structure on top of content but still rely on the content itself for retrieval and typically require rigid ontologies that don’t generalize across domains.

Decoupling memory from retrieval

Memora architecture claims to address this by decoupling what is stored from how it is retrieved. For this, each memory entry will have two components.

The first will be a primary abstraction, which is a short phrase (6–8 words) that will capture what the memory is fundamentally about. The second will be a memory value, which will hold the rich content itself. As a result of this separation, new information about an evolving topic will be merged into the existing memory entry under the same primary abstraction and will not be fragmented into a chain of partial duplicates.

Complementing primary abstractions, cue anchors are short, context-aware tags extracted from each memory’s value, providing alternative access paths to the same memory. They will function as flexible, organically-generated metadata, claimed the post.

Memora also introduces a policy-guided retriever that, rather than returning the top-k semantically similar items in a single shot, iteratively refines its query, expands through cue anchors to surface related-but-not-similar memories, and decides when to stop.

“The deepest flaw in current agent memory is that it mistakes retrieval for memory. A vector store is superb at finding text that looks relevant. An enterprise agent needs more than resemblance. It needs to know what has changed, what still holds true, and what should never be recalled in the task at hand,” said Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst at Greyhound Research.

Memora is interesting precisely because it refuses that shortcut, Gogia noted. It separates the rich detail of a memory from the handle used to find it, indexing a stable abstraction and a set of cue anchors while keeping the full content intact beneath them. Retrieval then becomes an act of navigation rather than a single hopeful guess, as the system re-queries, widens its search, or stops once it has enough, he added.

Benchmarking Memora

Microsoft evaluated Memora on two long-context benchmarks. LoCoMo, where dialogues average 600 turns, and LongMemEval, which uses 115,000-token contexts. According to the company, Memora achieved 86.3% LLM-judge accuracy on LoCoMo and 87.4% on LongMemEval, outperforming RAG, Mem0, Nemori, Zep, LangMem, and even full-context inference.

It also stored nearly half as many memory entries per conversation as Mem0 (344 versus 651) while reducing token consumption by up to 98% compared with full-context inference.

While the benchmark results suggest significant efficiency gains, enterprises should not assume lower token consumption will automatically translate into lower infrastructure costs.

Gogia cautioned against taking the token reduction number at face value. It is a benchmark context reduction, not a promise that an enterprise bill will fall by 98%, he said. “Real cost also includes memory construction, indexing, storage, and the audit logging that governance demands.”

He warned that Memora’s strongest retrieval mode is also its slowest. Its policy retriever runs at between roughly five and six seconds per query across several model-calling steps, against under a second for the simpler semantic mode.

The saving in prompt tokens is partly repaid as retrieval latency and extra inference. So the memory crunch does not disappear but moves. Instead of paying only for longer prompts, enterprises must now manage what is written, updated, and forgotten, and the indexing and testing that govern it.

Enterprise implications

Memora is currently an active Microsoft Research project, but the company has made the research code available on GitHub, enabling developers to experiment with the architecture and adapt it for their own AI applications.

However, portability on paper should not be confused with production readiness. While a memory layer of this design can, in principle, sit above models from any major provider, Gogia suggests that until the code is fully verifiable, maintained, and supportable under enterprise controls, the prudent posture for IT leaders is to study Memora as an architecture rather than operationalize it as software.

Beyond the technology, organizations will need governance and compliance policies to ensure AI memories are managed securely and remain auditable. He noted an enterprise must decide who may write to memory, who may read it, how long it persists, and how an auditor reconstructs why a memory shaped an action.

“An enterprise must decide who may write to memory, who may read it, how long it persists, and how an auditor reconstructs why a memory shaped an action. ‘The agent remembered it’ will not satisfy a regulator under the European Union’s AI Act traceability duties, nor a customer under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act,” Gogia said.

The article originally appeared on InfoWorld.

There are a variety of security concerns about artificial intelligence (AI), especially when it comes to the behavior of agentic AI. But until recently, the concept of locking down the models to prevent tampering hasn’t gotten a lot of attention.

Now, a security technology called “confidential computing” has emerged that could help solve that problem: it protects AI models from hackers by restricting models to authorized users. (It also protects data wherever it is — in storage, when moving between systems, and when it is accessed.)

With many top cloud and hardware providers championing confidential computing for AI, Computerworld talked with Dion Harris, Nvidia’s senior director of high-performance computing and AI factory solutions, about what the technology does and how it works.

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Dion Harris, Nvidia’s senior director of high-performance computing and AI factory solutions.

Nvidia

Why should organizations care about confidential computing now? “Seventy percent of data exists outside the cloud, in on-premise data centers and data lakes. To deliver AI on this data while maintaining security, you need confidential computing to unlock that use case for enterprise AI.”

Why is confidential computing suddenly important in the AI age? “Enterprises want AI on sensitive data — customer records, medical information, financial data — without exposing it in cloud environments where they lose control.

“Traditional encryption protects data at rest and in transit, but not during computation. When you run an AI model, you must decrypt data. It sits in plain text in memory, accessible to administrators and cloud operators. Confidential computing creates a hardware-rooted trusted zone where data is decrypted only when computation needs it, then immediately re-encrypted.

“This lets enterprises get AI value without compromising security. Financial services, healthcare, government, and regulated industries are adopting it.”

How is confidential computing changing with agentic AI? “We’ve gone from generative to agentic AI being deployed and used to solve real business problems. To deliver agentic capabilities with required privacy, security and performance in enterprise, confidential computing provides the unlock.

“We can spawn agents, access data, leverage tools and generate real useful work. With agentic AI, confidential computing helps in two ways: protecting the data and helping design implementation and workloads. It’s deployment, implementation, and use combined.”

How does confidential computing work? “Encryption at rest protects stored data. Encryption in transit protects data moving over networks. Encryption in use is the problem — when you compute on data, you must decrypt it in memory. 

“Confidential computing encrypts data in memory and between CPUs and GPUs. A dedicated element in the GPU decrypts information only when needed for computation, 100% inline, with minimal performance impact.”

Can you walk through a real-world example? “Apple’s standard operating policy for years has been to keep private information on device to avoid having access to private data. However, to leverage advanced AI models, they no longer fit on the device. Apple instituted their Private Compute Cloud, and now they’re extending that to Google Cloud.

“Let me give a hypothetical and hopefully describe how it works. If you have a user who wants to upload a medical transcript from their doctor, their system creates a secure, attested environment. It sends a request to the server: validate yourself. That attestation says: ‘I am a Nvidia GPU. This environment is secure. It hasn’t been tampered with.’ Now, it’s okay for you to send your information over that secure line. Remote attestation allows the edge device to ensure it’s sending to a trusted environment.

“The medical data comes over encrypted and remains encrypted until it lands in the GPU memory. Specific compute engines in the processor decrypt that information only to use it. The LLM dissects and summarizes it. Then it re-encrypts and sends it back over the wire.

“They get the capabilities of data center AI mode — larger, more advanced, delivering more services. But they also get the security and privacy from Apple’s [Private Cloud Compute]  platform. It’s the best of both worlds: efficiencies and intelligence from data center AI with Apple’s PCC security.

What prevented confidential computing adoption? “The main challenge in the past was significant performance impact. When you adopted confidential computing, you had to trade off performance for privacy. A 30% to 40% throughput reduction undermined the economic viability of the entire solution. If you sacrifice that much performance, it reduces the ability to get full utilization out of the hardware you’re deploying to deliver tokens or deliver a service in an economical fashion.”

How was that solved? “With Blackwell and newer GPU architecture, you can deploy confidential computing without impact to performance. You get both privacy and performance, a win-win scenario.

“Performance now translates directly into economics. You get full utilization of the hardware, which matters for delivering tokens or services at scale. When we built Blackwell, we made confidential computing a first-class system feature to deliver not just the security, but also the performance the market requires.”

Where is adoption accelerating? “Companies are thinking about the cloud. Model builders can’t expose APIs, enterprises customize for their business. Hybrid on-prem and cloud models — where builders deliver services behind enterprise walls — require zero trust. We’re no longer in fully owned infrastructure.

“By 2030, [billions of dollars] is expected in confidential computing use cases. It’s emerging as essential infrastructure for AI adoption across the industry. For organizations using cloud infrastructure, deploying AI on sensitive data, or operating under regulatory requirements, confidential computing is becoming essential.”

What should organizations do? ”The performance problem is solved. The technology is ready, ecosystems are built, partners enable it. If you want to deploy agentic AI on sensitive data, protect customer privacy, meet regulatory requirements, and maintain security across hybrid environments, you need confidential computing in your strategy.

“Most customers start with a developer license, validate performance and security, then migrate to a commercial license. Partners like Red Hat and Fortanix integrate these mechanisms within their platforms. Google Cloud offers it through their services.

“Start with a proof of concept. Validate it works. Plan deployment. Organizations gain competitive advantage securing AI on sensitive data.”

Ford has rehired approximately 350 experienced engineers after the company’s investment in AI and automated quality control systems failed to meet expectations, according to Bloomberg. In short, the technology did not detect enough problems.

“We mistakenly believed that we could create a high-quality product simply by introducing artificial intelligence and inputting our design requirements,” Charles Poon, head of Ford’s hardware development, told Bloomberg.

The rehired quality inspectors — known internally as “gray beard” engineers for their experience and years with the company — are now working to identify defects before components reach the factories.

Still, Ford is not abandoning AI completely; the experienced engineers will be asked to help train younger employees and improve the company’s AI tools.

Apple’s ongoing problems with RAM shortages and higher prices won’t be solved anytime soon, because rapidly accelerating demand for high-end AI memory is devouring the consumer electronics industry. 

GoPro has already warned it might go out of business — and the scale of the crunch has prompted analysts to call it an “absolute existential crisis” for smaller tech firms.

An endless night

The whole issue might get worse. Noted Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes the supply/demand crisis will deepen through 2027. He expects up to 20% of the remaining memory manufacturing capacity currently going to consumer electronics could be diverted to feed data centers in the coming year. That’s a message of doom to smaller firms, and the Android market will be eaten up. 

It’s lazy thinking to see Apple as a villain in this scenario. The company might have been charging more for add-on memory than market rates, but there were real technical reasons to do so. And while critics might be castigating Cupertino for those past practices, they’ll still find themselves now paying more for whatever brand of electronic devices they use to write their screeds on in future.

It’s all about supply and demand. Memory manufacturers see the opportunity to feed AI need, even if it means sacrificing consumer markets as they do.

Cash through chaos

You can argue that the consequences of that decision are unethical. Should memory makers have considered the consequence of curtailed supply on their existing markets? After all, every business, every school, and almost every consumer is now a digital entity, and the massive increase in PC, smartphone, and other consumer electronics prices will have a consequential impact across all layers of society.

It generates yet another inflationary pressure (as if more is needed) on the global economy, and the decision to further limit supply of consumer electronics memory could be seen as corporate irresponsibility. That’s partly why a class action against the big three memory makers (Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron) has been filed in California. Between them, those three firms control around 90% of global memory supply, giving the trio colossal market power.

It’s a real power imbalance. 

This is market power

GoPro is typical; as a smaller vendor, there isn’t much it can do to save itself. Apple has more clout, so it might be able to forge a way forward. But even then, it’s rowing against what CEO Tim Cook has already called “a hundred-year flood.”

So even if the company can convince the Trump Administration to let it secure memory from currently embargoed Chinese manufacturer ChangXin Memory Technologies, the move is unlikely to ease the pressure much at all.  “Tim Cook is one of the few tech leaders who can still navigate both Washington and Beijing, so this is better handled before he steps down as CEO,” wrote Ming-Chi Kuo. That’s true, though Cook will continue “engaging with policy makers” once he takes on his new role as executive chairman of Apple’s board of directors in September.

Apple will likely also be speaking with partners to explore the possibility of investing in additional fabrication plants together (or building its own, given it has its own stable of experts quite capable of doing so). But even if those talks come to something, it will be years before they enter operation. Sadly, manufacturing investment from the existing big memory firms seems focused on data centers.

The shortage will continue until morale improves

What happens now? Short of any direct intervention to change the situation, memory prices will continue to accelerate. Jefferies Equity Research warns they will rise up to 50% in Q3 and an additional 30% to 40% by the end of 2026. They’ll also continue to increase next year, by which time some new production capacity might begin to come on stream. 

The scale of these price increases means no one can know whether Apple’s most recent product price increases (and the looming iPhone price increases in fall) will cover the full extent of the anticipated memory price hike. 

Will we see prices fall if memory price inflation eases off? History says we’re unlikely to see AI-flation go in reverse, but it’s not completely impossible. Meanwhile, businesses everywhere will struggle with unexpected hardware cost increases that are impossible to plan for. You can also anticipate some smaller vendors exiting the market, leaving companies who might have deployed those products across their business exposed, as software updates and hardware repairs will cease.

Yes, AI has already changed the world – it’s more expensive

They told us AI would change the world. It appears to be doing so by making everything more expensive. 

While there will still be opportunity to generate cash through this chaos, it’s far from delivering the kind of stable, business-friendly environment most governments rely on to balance their books.  In the end, all of this calls to mind the 2002 DRAM price fixing scandal, the only difference being that the consequences are much greater in this digital-everything age. 

Please join me on social media at BlueSky,  LinkedIn, or Mastodon, and do subscribe my daily human-curated Apple news headline summary on Substack.

Italy’s competition watchdog has opened an investigation into Microsoft over concerns it may not have clearly informed consumers about the integration of Copilot and Designer into Microsoft 365 subscriptions, associated price increases, and automatic upgrades to higher-cost plans.

The Italian Competition Authority (AGCM), in a statement to the press, said it had opened an investigation into Microsoft S.r.l., the vendor’s Italian subsidiary, and Microsoft Ireland Operations Ltd. to assess whether the way the changes to M365 pricing were communicated may have unduly restricted consumers’ freedom of choice.

Although the AGCM’s announcement does not explicitly identify the pricing event under investigation, its description aligns with Microsoft’s January 2025 rollout of Copilot and Designer for Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers.

At the time, Microsoft announced its first price increase for the consumer subscriptions since the launch of Copilot and Designer, stating that existing subscribers would pay the higher price at their next renewal after the AI features were added.

Could scrutiny spread beyond Italy?

The Italian probe is not the first time Microsoft’s communication around AI-related Microsoft 365 pricing has drawn regulatory attention.

The investigation follows earlier scrutiny of Microsoft’s consumer pricing communications in Australia and New Zealand, where Microsoft apologized and revised some of its messaging after regulators raised concerns over how AI-enabled Microsoft 365 subscriptions were presented to customers.

That episode could prove relevant for the current investigation, even though the legal frameworks differ, said Pareekh Jain, principal analyst at Pareekh Consulting.

“Microsoft’s apology and revised communications show similar concerns were raised before,” the analyst said.

“While the legal cases differ, Italian regulators may see it as evidence that clearer customer communication was already known to be necessary,” he added.

Jain also expects regulators elsewhere to watch the outcome of the Italian investigation: “Regulators in the EU, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada are likely to watch closely, especially where AI is bundled into existing subscriptions with higher prices or automatic renewals.”

Enterprise buyers are likely to scrutinize AI pricing more closely

Whether the Italian investigation ultimately results in penalties against Microsoft remains to be seen, but analysts say the probe could have an impact on M365 commercial plans, which are separate and set to take effect on July 1.

The investigation serves as a reminder for enterprises to examine AI-related price changes even if Microsoft’s commercial licensing process seems more transparent than its consumer subscription model, Jain said. “CIOs should still verify what is changing at renewal and whether AI features are optional.”

Enterprise procurement teams should ask tougher questions during negotiations, said Bhupendra Chopra, chief revenue officer at IT consulting firm Kanerika.

“Procurement teams should ask questions, such as what AI am I paying for, can I see it itemized, and can I decline it without losing the rest? Buyers would be right to want AI pricing written into renewal terms with clear opt-outs and price protection,” Chopra said.

These questions, according to Jain, could provide additional leverage during licensing discussions to negotiate flexible terms.

However, Chopra pointed out that the investigation is symptomatic of a broader tension between software vendors’ efforts to integrate AI into existing products and regulators’ expectations around transparency and customer choice.

“Building AI into existing products and pricing it in is becoming standard across software, not unique to one vendor. Regulators are testing an old question against a new feature — whether buyers were given clear information and a real choice,” the analyst said.

For enterprises, the analyst added, the practical takeaway is straightforward: “Expect AI to show up inside the tools you already own, expect it to carry a cost, and review what each renewal actually includes. Treated as routine cost discipline, it stops being a surprise.”

Microsoft said it is committed to complying with Italian consumer law and will cooperate with the Italian Competition Authority in its preliminary investigation.

Reading about the “revolutionary” nature of generative AI technology these days, it’s hard not to feel a little left out.

Sure, services like Google’s Gemini and its contemporaries can be useful in certain limited, specific areas for productivity purposes. But working with them can also be pretty disheartening and overwhelming — from prompt fatigue and an onslaught of AI workslop to the fear of lost jobs and even just the simple inconsistencies and inaccuracies these systems are so prone to providing. (And that’s to say nothing of the ever-increasing creepy factor that often accompanies this type of technology.)

More and more, it seems the most significant impact of these systems is in areas like coding, where AI is allowing ambitious tech-heads to create their own custom programs with limited to no programming knowledge (but a lot of time, vision, and patience) — as well as allowing accomplished coders to produce products more quickly by letting AI do the dirty work and then spending their time guiding, tweaking, and correcting its output.

That’s all well and good, but the reality is that most of us mere mortals are never gonna mess with anything that daunting. That doesn’t, however, mean we can’t enjoy a slice of the custom-coding pie and the productivity advantages it offers — on a much simpler but still supremely useful level.

The average-worker answer lies in an oft-overlooked middle-ground possibility these AI chatbots possess to help us create relatively basic but extremely high-potential custom browser extensions. As their name suggests, these simple little programs run entirely in your browser — the same exact sorts of add-ons you’d typically find and install in a marketplace like Google’s Chrome Web Store.

But with Gemini or any other similar genAI platform, you can dream up your own web-improving extension and turn it into reality in a matter of minutes — simply by describing your goal and then guiding the AI gently along the way. And given how much time most of us spend on the web these days, that opens up a tantalizing series of doors for taking total control of your work environment.

Hate all the extraneous bells and whistles gunking up the Google Docs interface? Gemini can create a Chrome extension that removes them. Annoyed by a glitchy web app? Ask Gemini for an extension that makes some under-the-hood improvements. The possibilities are endless.

Let me show you how exactly it works, how easy it is to approach and master, and how many work-enhancing possibilities are out there just waiting to be created.

The ins and outs of Gemini’s custom Chrome extensions

First things first: You don’t need any special tools or subscriptions to make this happen. For the purposes of this article, we’ll focus on Google’s Gemini for the creation and the standard desktop Chrome browser for the installation — but the same basic process would work with most any AI chatbot, if you happen to prefer ChatGPT or Claude, as well as with any extension-supporting, Chromium-compatible browser (a list that includes everything from Microsoft Edge to Brave, Vivaldi, and beyond).

Google offers a dizzying array of Gemini modes and options and an equally overwhelming series of AI subscription plans that control how much you can use those capabilities, but you don’t need to worry about any of that to create custom Chrome extensions. You might sometimes see better results if you switch your Gemini model to “Pro” or your Gemini thinking level to “Extended” — designations that even Gemini itself has trouble deciphering (believe me, I asked!) — but just using the default Gemini settings with a free Google account will generally work quite well.

Getting going with a custom Chrome extension is as simple as opening up a new Gemini chat and telling the system what you want it to cook up for you. The hardest part is deciding what you want and what’d be helpful for you — something we’ll explore more in a moment, via specific examples and suggestions. Once you’ve got that, you can just ask Gemini to create a Chrome extension that’ll accomplish what you’re envisioning, with as much specificity as possible about what it’ll do and how it’ll look.

Gemini will spit back a series of plain-text code chunks with instructions to copy each cluster and paste it into a new plain text file with a certain specific name — things like “manifest.json,” “content.js,” and “styles.css.” All you’ll do is use the on-screen button to copy each segment, then open up any simple text editor (like Windows Notepad, macOS TextEdit, or any number of simple online text editors) and paste the text in, then save it under the name Gemini gives you.

You’ll need to put all the files into a single isolated folder on your computer, and then you can go into Chrome, type chrome:extensions into its address bar, and install your shiny new creation by:

• Flipping the toggle next to “Developer mode” in the upper-right corner of the screen into the on and active position, if it isn’t already
• Clicking the “Load unpacked” button
• And selecting the folder you just created in the pop-up that appears

Chrome’s “Developer Mode” toggle and “Load unpacked” button are the keys to importing any extension you create.

JR Raphael / Foundry

And that’s pretty much it: No complicated compiling or program publishing — the extension you envisioned will be alive and working right in your browser and ready to use.

Now, odds are, it won’t be exactly what you wanted in its first iteration, and you’ll have to go back to Gemini to request several rounds of updates and corrections. Each time, Gemini will create a new set of code chunks, and you simply overwrite the text in each file with its corresponding new code chunk.

It’s still a bit of a process. But you’ll rarely spend more than an hour on something simple and maybe a few hours on something especially multifaceted and specific, and whatever you create will then work to your advantage indefinitely from that point onward, on any computer where you install it.

Before we dive into specific slivers of inspiration, let’s just note the hopefully obvious asterisk that this’ll work only if you’re either (a) using a personal computer that isn’t associated with an organization or (b) using a work-connected computer where custom Chrome extensions are permitted. In either scenario, you’ll want to use your own best judgment to ensure that whatever you’re adding into your browser won’t expose any corporate data or cause your IT comrades any alarm if they see you using it in your workday.

With most common examples, though — including all the ones we’re about to go over — you shouldn’t have any problem or cause for concern.

Capisce? Capisce. Let’s get into it.

Custom extension category #1: The interface fixer

Our first custom Chrome extension category is the one that won me over to this practice initially and has been the most shapeshifting for my own browser-based workflow — and that’s the simple-seeming but transformational ability to have AI remake any web app you rely on to remove unneeded elements and redesign the interface to your exact specifications.

The best example I can show you is what I did with my completely homemade, Gemini-created Docs Zen extension. Google Docs, to put it mildly, has devolved into a cluttered mess. There are so many on-screen elements I never use and, ironically enough, irrelevant AI elements I’d rather not have in my hair. I just want a calm, simple, minimalist environment for writing — with Google’s second-to-none syncing, universal access, and collaboration systems beneath it.

So rather than try to reinvent the wheel, I described to Gemini all the elements I wanted to remove from Docs and all the ways I wanted to rethink how its interface appeared for me.

My original request to Gemini, followed by rounds of expansions and revisions (and eventually also a more poetic name).

JR Raphael / Foundry

I went back and forth with numerous iterations and kept coming up with interesting new additions to further flesh out and improve the experience — and I ended up with a delightful setup that gives me a distraction-free view of my writing space with a simple toggle to reveal the main Docs menus and a palette icon that allows me to switch from one eye-pleasing theme to another.

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Google Docs with my custom Docs Zen extension — a true delight for daily writing.

JR Raphael / Foundry

My setup deliberately doesn’t include comments or other collaborative elements, as I’m mostly writing by myself these days — but when I do need those elements, the eye icon in the upper-right corner of the screen disables my custom adjustments and takes me back to the standard Docs interface. I can then click the eye icon again in that environment to switch back.

My custom extension includes a simple on-off toggle for times when I need the full Docs setup.

JR Raphael / Foundry

I used Gemini to create something similar for Trello, with which I also have a love-hate relationship — loving the foundational functions and easy access everywhere but hating the interface that’s lost focus, gained bloat, and gotten noticeably clunky and slow over time.

With the same sort of step-by-step, plain-English guidance, I was able to transform Trello from this…

Trello, in its typical current-day state.

JR Raphael / Foundry

…into this:

Trello, with my custom modifications in place.

JR Raphael / Foundry

I couldn’t even begin to recount the number of superfluous features and elements I’ve removed, along with revamping the overall interface to make it both more efficient and more visually pleasing to my eye.

Whether it’s a web app you rely on regularly or even just a website you open often, the possibilities are practically endless for the ways you can reshape it and mold it to make it work better for you.

Speaking of which…

Custom extension category #2: The feature creator

In addition to the surface-level adjustments and feature removals in my aforementioned Trello-enhancing extension, I also added in several components — such as one-click buttons for archiving or moving cards — and I managed to speed up the site by making some under-the-hood adjustments Gemini suggested when I asked about its choppy performance. The same sort of concept can apply to any web-based interface you’re using, if there are any options that are annoyingly buried within menus, shortcuts that’d make your life easier, or other improvements you’ve longed to see.

You can also consider some simple standalone extensions for giving yourself on-demand features that aren’t necessarily associated with any one specific website but could be useful in plenty of productivity scenarios. For instance:

• I do a fair amount of basic image editing and frequently find myself needing to reference a hex color code that corresponds with a particular brand color, and I always end up having to open up a new tab and look in a note somewhere to find the code I need. Well, no more: I used Gemini to create a super-simple custom color code pop-up where I can store all the colors I need and then copy any of ’em onto my clipboard with a single click. Major time-saver.

All the color codes I need are now never more than a couple clicks away.

JR Raphael / Foundry

• I’m also constantly converting time zones, either for meetings with clients or colleagues or for trying to wrap my head around publishing systems that insist on using random time zones with no meaning to me. It’s infinitely easier for me to manage now, thanks to the custom Chrome extension I made that shows the current time in all the zones I need most often — as well as allowing me to put any other time into any field and have all the other zones instantly adjust to match. It also offers a brilliant plain-text conversion box where I can just type things like “1pm-3pm PT in MT” and have it cough back up an instant answer for any conversion I need.

My custom time zone conversion extension comes in handy countless times a day.

JR Raphael / Foundry

Maybe what you want is the ability to interact with data on different websites more easily — to be able to save any table on a page in front of you as a CSV file, mayhap, or even to save any text you highlight on a page into a new Google Docs document. Whatever the case may be, Gemini can handle it — and that superpower that you’ve always wished for but never found the right tool to make possible can actually now be yours.

Custom extension category #3: The browser expander

Our final category of custom Chrome extensions to consider moves beyond the web itself and into your actual browser. The browser is essentially the modern-day desktop, after all — and for the first time now, you can expand and enhance it in all sorts of interesting ways.

Some specific examples, to get your brain-motor whirring:

• You could walk Gemini through creating a smart auto-snooze system for your open browser tabs, both to clear clutter and help with Chrome’s performance. It could save any tab that hasn’t been touched in a certain amount of time to your local storage and then give you a simple searchable “Archive Dashboard” where you can find all those auto-closed tabs and re-open ’em as needed.
• With the right guidance, Gemini could give you a custom browser research panel — where any info you highlight on a page gets beamed over into a sidebar-style panel that serves as a running scratchpad of notes from the day.
• Or, if you find yourself often needing to see two tabs together side by side, you could have Gemini cook up a custom extension that instantly detaches any tab in front of you and puts it into a new tab window in a perfectly sized and spaced pattern. One keyboard shortcut could make that move happen, while another keyboard shortcut could recombine the two tabs into a single centered window.

As with all the other ideas we’ve gone over, all you’ve gotta do is ask — and now, with the right inspiration in mind, you’re ready to get your custom extension adventures going and start bending the web to your will.

Windows 11 25H2 has been publicly released, but behind the scenes, Microsoft is constantly working to improve the newest version of Windows. The company frequently rolls out preview builds to members of its Windows Insider Program, allowing them to test out — and help shape — upcoming features.

Skip to the latest builds

Our story “How to preview and deploy Windows 10 and 11 updates” details how the Insider program has worked until now. However, Microsoft recently announced sweeping changes to the program that will include the ability to select which new features to test. As the first step, the company is introducing a new channel system and transitioning Insiders like so:

• Beta Channel > Beta
• Beta Channel (for devices on Windows 11 version 26H1) > Beta (26H1)
• Dev Channel > Experimental
• Canary Channel (28000 series) > Experimental (26H1)
• Canary Channel (29500 series) > Experimental (Future Platforms)
• Release Preview Channel > Release Preview 24H2/25H2
• Release Preview Channel (for devices on Windows 11 version 26H1) > Release Preview (26H1)

This transition is happening over time, starting with the Dev Channel. See Microsoft’s blog post for more information about the transition.

Below you’ll find information about the Windows 11 preview builds that have been announced by Microsoft in the past six months. For each build, we’ve included the date of its release, which Insider channel it was released to, a summary of what’s in the build, and a link to Microsoft’s announcement about it.

Note: If you’re looking for information about updates being rolled out to all Windows 11 users, not preview builds for Windows Insiders, see “Windows 11: A guide to the updates.”

The latest Windows 11 Insider preview builds Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8754

Release date: June 26, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

In this build, administrators can now configure Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365 sessions that use Microsoft Entra ID authentication to automatically disconnect when a redirected smart card is removed. This extends smart card removal policy enforcement to Microsoft Entra authenticated remote sessions, helping organizations meet security and compliance requirements.

It also fixes a bug in which the OneDrive shortcut in File Explorer stopped working when File Explorer was running in administrator mode.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8754.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.2366

Release date: June 26, 2026

Released to: Beta 26H1 Channel

This update, for devices running Windows 11 26H1, gradually rolls out a small set of improvements and fixes, including the ability to add and manage your mobile devices in Settings under Bluetooth & Devices > Mobile Devices. On this page, you can manage features such as using your device as a connected camera or accessing your device’s files in File Explorer.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.2366.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8758

Release date: June 26, 2026

Released to: Experimental Channel (formerly Dev)

Several minor new features are being rolled out gradually in this build, including a dedicated Taskbar Size setting that makes it simpler to find, understand, and personalize the taskbar.

Several bug fixes are also being gradually rolled out, including for one in which the OneDrive shortcut in File Explorer stopped working when File Explorer was running in administrative mode.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8758.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28120.2374

Release date: June 26, 2026

Released to: Experimental 26H1 Channel (formerly Canary)

This update, for devices running Windows 11 26H1, gradually rolls out a small set of improvements and fixes, including the ability to add and manage your mobile devices in Settings under Bluetooth & Devices > Mobile Devices. On this page, you can manage features such as using your device as a connected camera or accessing your device’s files in File Explorer.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28120.2374.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29617.1000

Release date: June 26, 2026

Released to: Experimental Future Platforms Channel (formerly Canary optional 29500)

This build gradually rolls out several new features, including screen tint, a new accessibility setting that applies a color overlay across your entire display, softening its intensity so it’s easier on your eyes throughout the day. Other additions include improved explorer reliability when switching between multiple desktops; improved reliability and persistence for color profiles; and Voice Access support for Portuguese (Portugal), Portuguese (Brazil), and Korean (South Korea).

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29617.1000.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8690

Release date: June 19, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

This update improves the reliability of the Start menu and of Settings > Apps > Startup. It also fixes one virtualization bug that could result in bug checks citing HYPERVISOR_ERROR (0x20001) and KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED (0x1E) errors after installing the latest flights on some devices during system restarts, virtual machine operations, or while running some gaming applications.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8690.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.2308

Release date: June 19, 2026

Released to: Beta 26H1 Channel

This update, in the words of Microsoft, “includes a small set of general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience” of running Windows 11 26H1. It also improves the reliability of the inbox HD Audio driver.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.2308.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8697

Release date: June 19, 2026

Released to: Experimental Channel (formerly Dev)

Several minor new features are being rolled out gradually in this build, including improving visual consistency and reliability of the Copy dialog in Dark mode. It also fixes one virtualization bug that could result in bug checks citing HYPERVISOR_ERROR (0x20001) and KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED (0x1E) errors after installing the latest flights on some devices during system restarts, virtual machine operations, or while running some gaming applications.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8697.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28120.2315

Release date: June 19, 2026

Released to: Experimental 26H1 Channel (formerly Canary)

This update, in the words of Microsoft, “includes a small set of general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience” of running Windows 11 26H1. It also improves the reliability of the inbox HD Audio driver and improves caption style responsiveness by redrawing captions immediately for caption style changes.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28120.2315.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29613.1000

Release date: June 19, 2026

Released to: Experimental Future Platforms Channel (formerly Canary optional 29500)

This build gradually rolls out adjustments to Settings > System > Sounds, by updating the “All sound devices” page with the ability to change default devices from this page and other enhancements.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29613.1000.)

Windows 11 Insider Release Preview Builds 26100.8728 and 26200.8728

Release date: June 12, 2026

Released to: Release Preview 24H2/25H2 Channel

A wide variety of features and enhancements are being gradually rolled out in this build, including increased reliability of the Windows networking stack. It reduces bug checks (blue screen errors) related to Wi-Fi power and improves cellular (WWAN) connectivity, including support for IPv6 VPNs. Compatibility with third-party VPN software and SR-IOV configurations on server hardware is also improved. Network adapter settings and bindings are now preserved across OS upgrades.

Immediately rolling out are several quality improvements, including additional high-confidence device targeting data, increasing coverage of devices eligible to automatically receive new Secure Boot certificates. Devices receive the new certificates only after demonstrating sufficient successful update signals, maintaining a controlled and phased rollout.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Builds 26100.8728 and 26200.8728.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28000.2333

Released to: Release Preview 26H1 Channel

Release date: June 12, 2026

This build, for Insiders using Windows 11 26H1, gradually rolls out a wide variety of new features, including improved visibility into NPU usage in Task Manager. New optional NPU and NPU Engine columns are available on the Processes, Users, and Details pages, along with NPU Dedicated Memory and NPU Shared Memory optional columns on the Details page. Neural engines that are part of a GPU now appear on the Performance page, providing a more complete view of AI-related activity. A new optional Isolation column on the Processes and Details pages shows which apps are running in an AppContainer. You can add any of the new columns by right-clicking a column header in Task Manager and selecting them from the menu.

Being rolled out immediately is improved Netlogon secure channel connections between domain controllers, enabling successful connections from member servers to domain controllers set up before 2025.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28000.2333.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8680

Release date: June 12, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

This update offers a wide variety of changes and improvements, including a new set of default Widget settings designed to reduce unexpected alerts and visual interruptions. They include:

• Disabling Open on hover by default
• Turning off Taskbar badging by default
• Opening to widgets experience on first launch
• Placing Weather as the only default widget on the lockscreen
• Restricting the number of Taskbar alerts that can be sent daily
• Limiting Taskbar alerts until you choose to open and engage with the Widgets experience

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8680.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.2298

Release date: June 12, 2026

Released to: Beta 26H1 Channel

This update, in the words of Microsoft, “includes a small set of general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience” of running Windows 11 26H1. It also introduces the new screen tint accessibility setting. In addition, Task Scheduler will now persist column width adjustments in task list view across sessions.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.2298.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8687

Release date: June 12, 2026

Released to: Experimental Channel (formerly Dev)

Several minor new features and enhancements are being rolled out gradually in this build, including improved reliability of loading the system tray area of the taskbar and a new recovery remote management plug-in for extending WinRE management capabilities for MDM providers.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8687.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28120.2302

Release date: June 12, 2026

Released to: Experimental 26H1 Channel (formerly Canary)

This update, in the words of Microsoft, “includes a small set of general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience” of running Windows 11 26H1. It also accelerates app launch and core shell experiences such as Start menu, Search, and Action Center.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28120.2302.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29599.1000

Release date: June 12, 2026

Released to: Experimental Future Platforms Channel (formerly Canary optional 29500)

This build gradually rolls out several minor changes and improvements, including improved performance when navigating to see storage on large volumes via Settings > System > Storage > Advanced Storage Settings > Disks & Volumes.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29610.1000.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8575

Release date: June 8, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

This update adds the ability to extend Windows Update as many times as you need. It also fixes three bugs: one that caused audio not to work, another that impacted the reliability of Settings > Apps > Installed Apps, and a third that caused freezes with search, Notepad, and other parts of Windows.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8575.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.2236

Release date: June 8, 2026

Released to: Beta 26H1 Channel

This update, in the words of Microsoft, “includes a small set of general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience” of running Windows 11 version 26H1.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.2236.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28120.2242

Release date: June 8, 2026

Released to: Experimental 26H1 Channel (formerly Canary)

This update, in the words of Microsoft, “includes a small set of general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience” of running Windows 11 version 26H1.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28120.2242.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8544

Release date: May 29, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

Several minor new improvements and fixes are being rolled out in this build, including consistent solid (donut) spinners across key Windows scenarios including Boot, Logon, Restart, Shutdown, and Update. This update replaces legacy spinner visuals to deliver a more cohesive experience aligned with Windows design standards. Users will now see a unified spinner behavior with corresponding status text (e.g., “Restarting”, “Working on updates”, “Welcome”).

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8544.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8553

Release date: May 29, 2026

Released to: Experimental Channel (formerly Dev)

Several minor new features are being rolled out gradually in this build, including a number of changes to the Start menu. These were first outlined in the May 15 Insider blog post Making Taskbar and Start more personal. They include:

• “Recommended” section renamed to “Recent” in Start and Settings page
• Section-level toggles to independently show or hide Pinned, Recommended, and All
• Choose between a small and large Start menu, in addition to already available “Automatic (default)” setting
• Option to hide your name and profile picture in Start
• Redesigned Start menu settings page

One known issue, in which resetting your PC may have gotten stuck when using “Reset this PC,” has been fixed.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8553.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.2207

Release date: May 29, 2026

Released to: Experimental 26H1 Channel (formerly Canary)

This update, in Microsoft’s words, “includes a small number of minor bug fixes and improvements.”

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.2207.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29599.1000

Release date: May 29, 2026

Released to: Experimental Future Platforms Channel (formerly Canary optional 29500)

This build gradually rolls out several minor changes and improvements that, in the words of Microsoft, include “platform changes in moving to a new active development build.” The update also gradually rolls out a fix for a bug in which some Insiders unexpectedly saw an erroneous message saying they weren’t connected to internet (when they actually were) when signing into their Microsoft account in certain apps. It also improves CPU speed display on the Performance page of Task Manager for VMs, so it doesn’t show higher than unexpected numbers after resuming from hibernate.

There is one known issue that causes crashes with AMD machines supporting System Guard, so these devices in Windows Information Protection will not be offered the build.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29599.1000.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8491

Release date: May 22, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

This update, in Microsoft’s words, “includes a small number of minor bug fixes and improvements.” It introduces Voice Isolation, a new option in Voice Access that helps the tool focus on your voice, even when others are speaking nearby, by filtering out other voices and background noise.

Microsoft says the single known issue with this release, in which your PC could have gotten stuck when using “Reset this PC,” has been fixed.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8491.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8497

Release date: May 22, 2026

Released to: Experimental Channel (formerly Dev)

A variety of new features are being rolled out gradually in this build, including several to improve accessibility. Among them are making it easier to connect the Braille display to Narrator by using the HID open industry standard for Braille displays. If your display supports HID, connect it via USB, with no additional setup required. For Bluetooth, pair your HID Braille display in Settings > Bluetooth & devices just like any other accessory. Another new feature is Voice Isolation in Voice Access, as detailed for Beta Channel Build 26220.8491 above.

The build has one known issue, in which your PC may get stuck when using “Reset this PC.” To complete the reset successfully, choose the cloud download option (Cloud PBR) instead of local.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8497.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.2149

Released to: Experimental 26H1 Channel (formerly Canary)

Release date: May 22, 2026

This build, for Insiders using Windows 11 26H1, gradually rolls out a wide variety of new features, including one that improves the reliability of explorer.exe when closing the input switcher, and when switching between multiple desktops.

Microsoft says the single known issue with this release, in which your PC could have gotten stuck when using “Reset this PC,” has been fixed.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.2149.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29595.1000

Release date: May 22, 2026

Released to: Experimental Future Platforms Channel (formerly Canary optional 29500)

This build, in the words of Microsoft, “includes platform changes in moving to a new active development build.”

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29595.1000.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8474

Release date: May 15, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

Several minor new improvements are being rolled out in this build, including one that improves the reliability of Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP) notifications to help prevent the service from becoming unresponsive.

It has one known issue in which your PC may get stuck when using “Reset this PC.” To complete the reset successfully, choose the cloud download option (Cloud PBR) instead of local.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8474.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8493

Release date: May 15, 2026

Released to: Experimental Channel (formerly Dev)

A variety of new features are being rolled out gradually in this build, including the ability to change the position of taskbar on your screen. In Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Taskbar Behaviors, you can select the side of the screen you want your taskbar on: bottom, top, left, or right. In these other positions, tooltips, flyouts, and animations will still come from the taskbar, and most customization settings like “small taskbar” and “never combine taskbar icons” will work with all locations.

It has one known issue in which your PC may get stuck when using “Reset this PC.” To complete the reset successfully, choose the cloud download option (Cloud PBR) instead of local.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8493.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.2134

Release date: May 15, 2026

Released to: Experimental 26H1 Channel (formerly Canary)

This build gradually rolls out an improvement in the reliability of Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP) notifications to help prevent the service from becoming unresponsive. It also rolls out gradual changes to updating Windows, including the ability to skip updates immediately during the out of box experience (OOBE) and to extend update pauses as many times as you need.

It has one known issue in which your PC may get stuck when using “Reset this PC.” To complete the reset successfully, choose the cloud download option (Cloud PBR) instead of local.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.2134.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29591.1000

Release date: May 15, 2026

Released to: Experimental Future Platforms Channel (formerly Canary optional 29500)

This build introduces new features for Windows Update, including the ability to skip updates immediately during the out of box experience (OOBE) and to extend update pauses as many times as you need. New Windows update features also include having always available options to shut down and restart with updating, and additional insight about available updates to make more informed installation decisions.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29591.1000.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Builds 26200.8514/26200.8514

Release date: May 14, 2026

Released to: Release Preview 24H2/25H2 Channel

A wide variety of features and enhancements are being gradually rolled out in this build, including a new shared audio feature that allows two people to listen to the same audio from a single Windows 11 PC at the same time. In addition, Task Manager now offers improved visibility into NPU usage on PCs with an NPU. New optional NPU and NPU Engine columns are available on the Processes, Users, and Details pages, along with NPU Dedicated Memory and NPU Shared Memory optional columns on the Details page. 

One new feature is being rolled out immediately, in which Windows quality updates now include additional high-confidence device targeting data, increasing coverage of devices eligible to automatically receive new Secure Boot certificates. Devices receive the new certificates only after demonstrating sufficient successful update signals, maintaining a controlled and phased rollout.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Builds 26200.8514/26220.8514.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28000.2173

Released to: Release Preview 26H1 Channel

Release date: May 14, 2026

This build, for Insiders using Windows 11 26H1, gradually rolls out a wide variety of new features, including one that expands the list of archive formats that can be used in File Explorer to include uu, cpio, xar, and NuGet Packages (nupkg). Also being gradually rolled out is a new way to monitor your agents from the taskbar. It supports agents across first- and third-party apps, with Researcher in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app as the first adopter.

One new feature is being rolled out immediately, in which Windows quality updates now include additional high-confidence device targeting data, increasing coverage of devices eligible to automatically receive new Secure Boot certificates. Devices receive the new certificates only after demonstrating sufficient successful update signals, maintaining a controlled and phased rollout.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28000.2173.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8370

Release date: May 8, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

Several minor new improvements are being gradually rolled out in this build, including improved reliability of Japanese IME usage when Administrator Protection is enabled. In addition, the build fixes a single bug, in which there were notification issues and certain apps hung on launch.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8370.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8376

Release date: May 8, 2026

Released to: Experimental Channel (formerly Dev)

A variety of new features are being rolled out gradually in this build, including new File Explorer address bar support for paths containing double backslashes and quotation marks (for example, C:\Users\user or “C:\Users\user”), improving compatibility with a wider range of inputs.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8376.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.2075

Release date: May 8, 2026

Released to: Experimental 26H1 Channel (formerly Canary)

This build gradually rolls out, in Microsoft’s words, “a small set of general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience” of running Windows 26H1. It also improves performance when opening clipboard history.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.2075.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29585.1000

Release date: May 6, 2026

Released to: Experimental Future Platforms Channel (formerly Canary optional 29500)

This build gradually rolls out, in Microsoft’s words, “platform changes in moving to a new active development build.”

It also updates the experience when you use voice typing with the touch keyboard. To reduce distractions, the new design removes the previous full‑screen overlay and instead shows voice typing animations directly on the dictation key.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29585.1000.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8340

Release date: May 1, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

Several minor new improvements are being gradually rolled out in this build, including making Windows ShareSheet more intelligent for Azure Active Directory (AAD) users, with a simple setting to turn promotional app recommendations on or off. Previously, that capability was only available to Windows users with Managed Service Accounts (MSA).

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8340.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8346

Release date: May 1, 2026

Released to: Experimental Channel (formerly Dev)

A variety of new features are being rolled out gradually in this build, including making Windows ShareSheet more intelligent for Azure Active Directory (AAD) users, with a simple setting to turn promotional app recommendations on or off. Previously, that capability was only available to Windows users with Managed Service Accounts (MSA). Another change “quiets” the default behavior for Widgets, with the goal of making them feel less distracting and overwhelming.

There are several known issues in this build, including one in which Insiders who use Feature flags to enable the new WIP experience may see the feature state incorrectly marked as current; however, changing state and applying changes will work as expected.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8346.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1921

Release date: May 1, 2026

Released to: Experimental 26H1 Channel (formerly Canary)

This build gradually rolls out several improvements to Task Manager, including one that provides better insight into NPU usage for PCs that include an NPU. Optional NPU and NPU Engine columns are now available on the Processes, Users, and Details pages, with optional NPU Dedicated Memory and NPU Shared Memory columns on the Details page to give you deeper visibility into how workloads are using NPU resources. Additionally, if there are neural engines that are part of a GPU, they will now appear on the Performance page, providing a more complete view of AI‑related system activity.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1921.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29580.1000

Release date: May 1, 2026

Released to: Experimental Future Platforms Channel (formerly Canary optional 29500)

This build gradually rolls out, in Microsoft’s words, “a small set of general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience for Insiders running this build on their PCs.”

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29580.1000.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8283

Release date: April 24, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

Several minor new improvements and fixes are being gradually rolled out in this build, including improved detection of clicks at the leftmost edge of the taskbar to invoke the Start menu when the taskbar icons are left-aligned.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8283.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8289

Release date: April 24, 2026

Released to: Experimental Channel (formerly Dev)

In a phased rollout, Insiders in the Dev Channel are being moved to the new Experimental channel. Insiders who do not see the new experience on their device can enable it under Settings > Windows Update > Windows Insider Program > Feature flags.

Several minor new features are also being rolled out gradually in this build, including improved detection of clicks at the leftmost edge of the taskbar to invoke the Start menu when the taskbar icons are left-aligned.

There is one known issue in this build: Insiders who use Feature flags to enable the new Insider experience may see the feature state incorrectly marked as current; however, changing the state and applying changes should work as expected.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8289.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28200.1873

Release date: April 24, 2026

Released to: Experimental 26H1 Channel (formerly Canary)

This build is gradually rolling out a variety of small improvements, including an updated voice typing experience for the touch keyboard. To reduce distractions, the new design shows voice typing animations directly on the dictation key rather than on a full-screen overlay.

It also fixes a bug in which Settings > Network & Internet > Data Usage showed large, unrealistic values.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28200.1873.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29576.1000

Release date: April 24, 2026

Released to: Experimental Future Platforms Channel (formerly Canary optional 29500)

This build is gradually rolling out a variety of changes, including Point-in-time restore for Windows, which can quickly roll your device back to a previous state, potentially helping minimize downtime and simplify troubleshooting when disruptions strike. 

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29576.1000.)

Windows 11 Builds 26100.8313 and 26200.8313 (KB5083631) 

Release date: April 17, 2026

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build introduces a wide variety of new features rolled out gradually, including a new way to monitor your agents from the taskbar. It supports agents across first- and third-party apps, with Researcher in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app as the first adopter. When Researcher works on a report, Windows shows progress on the taskbar so you can check updates at a glance.

For IT administrators, the update gradually rolls out support for a dynamic app removal list to the “Remove Default Microsoft Store packages” policy for Windows Enterprise and Education. It also removes default trust for cross‑signed third-party drivers, while drivers from the Windows Hardware Compatibility Program (WHCP) and an allow list of trusted legacy drivers remain allowed. Enterprise State Roaming can now be managed through Windows Backup for Organizations policies.

The update also immediately introduces two minor improvements for everyone. Windows quality updates now include additional high-confidence device targeting data, which increases coverage of devices eligible to automatically receive new Secure Boot certificates. In Windows Security, the name of the affected application is now included in event logging related to CVE‑2024‑30098. This change makes it easier to identify applications that rely on smart card certificates and may need updates following recent security changes.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Builds 26100.8313 and 26200.8313.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8271

Release date: April 17, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

Several minor new features were made available in this build for those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, including improved reliability and performance of Windows Hello fingerprint after your PC wakes from sleep.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8271.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8276

Release date: April 17, 2026

Released to: Dev Channel

In this build, several minor new features are being gradually rolled for those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, including improved reliability and performance of Windows Hello fingerprint after your PC wakes from sleep.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8276.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1863

Release date: April 17, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build fixes a bug that prevented some apps from signing in due to a false report of no internet connectivity. The fix is rolling out gradually.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1863.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29570.1000

Release date: April 17, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel (29500 build series)

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates in the Canary Channel on the optional 29500 build series, this build has a variety of minor changes rolling out gradually, including more widget options and support for lock screen widget personalization, a new setting in Settings > Bluetooth & Devices > Touchpad that lets you can choose how large the right-click zone is, and support for a dynamic app removal list to the “Remove Default Microsoft Store packages” policy for Windows Enterprise and Education.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29570.1000.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8165

Release date: April 10, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build gradually rolls out several minor features, including one in which the size limit for formatting FAT32 volumes via the command line has increased from 32GB to 2TB, and another in which the Windows Security app gets new badges and text that reflect your device’s Secure Boot state and certificate status.

It also gradually rolls out a fix for a bug that caused Settings > Network & Internet > Data Usage to show large, unrealistic values.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8165.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8170

Release date: April 10, 2026

Released to: Dev Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build gradually rolls out several minor features, including one in which the size limit for formatting FAT32 volumes via the command line has increased from 32GB to 2TB, and another in which the Windows Security app gets new badges and text that reflect your device’s Secure Boot state and certificate status.

It also gradually rolls out a fix for a bug that caused Settings > Network & Internet > Data Usage to show large, unrealistic values.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8170.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1812

Release date: April 10, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build gradually rolls out general improvements and fixes, including a new setting that lets users choose the size of their touchpad’s right-click zone, as well as new badges and text in the Windows Security app that reflect your device’s Secure Boot state and certificate status.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1812.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29565.1000

Release date: April 10, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel (29500 build series)

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates in the Canary Channel on the optional 29500 build series, this build includes “platform changes in moving to a new active development build,” as well as new badges and text in the Windows Security app that reflect your device’s Secure Boot state and certificate status

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29565.1000.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8148

Release date: April 3, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build gradually rolls out several minor features, including a new icon in print settings to indicate when a printer supports Windows Protected Print Mode.

Several bugs are also being fixed, including one in which some apps weren’t able to sign in, citing an internal connection issue when internet was actually connected.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8148.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8155

Release date: April 3, 2026

Released to: Dev Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build gradually rolls out several minor features, including one in which users will be able to feel haptic feedback effects on compatible input devices while performing certain actions, such as aligning objects in PowerPoint, window snapping, resizing, or hovering over the Close button. These haptic effects can be configured in Settings under Bluetooth & devices > Mouse > Haptic signals.

Several bugs have also been fixed, including one in which some apps weren’t able to sign in, citing an internal connection issue when internet was actually connected.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8155.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1803

Release date: April 3, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates in the Canary Channel, this build includes a small set of general improvements and fixes, including improved reliability for configuring the fluid dictation option in voice typing settings.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1803.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29560.1000

Release date: April 3, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel (29500 build series)

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates in the Canary Channel on the optional 29500 build series, this build “includes platform changes in moving to a new active development build,” in the words of Microsoft. Several bugs have also been fixed, including one in which attached USB devices weren’t working for some Insiders.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29560.1000.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8138

Release date: March 30, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build gradually rolls out several new features, including one in which you can enable Administrator Protection in Settings under Privacy & security > Windows Security > Account protection and switching the toggle to on. A restart will be required. 

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8138.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8142

Release date: March 30, 2026

Released to: Dev Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build gradually rolls out several new features, including one in which you can enable Administrator Protection in Settings under Privacy & security > Windows Security > Account protection and switching the toggle to on. A restart will be required. 

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8142.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1797

Release date: March 30, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel

This update, in the words of Microsoft, “includes a small set of general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience” of running Windows 11.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1797.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29558.1000

Release date: March 30, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel (29500 build series)

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates in the Windows 11 Insider Canary Channel on the optional 29500 build series, this build introduces several new features, including a variety of improvements to the Windows Console, many of which were created by open-source contributors. Several bugs have also been fixed, including an authentication error people received when trying to connect to Azure Virtual Desktop.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29558.1000.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8079

Release date: March 20, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build gradually rolls out several bug fixes, including for one in which the Network and Sharing Center incorrectly displayed two active Wi-Fi connections after switching from one Wi-Fi network to another. The Network and Sharing Center now correctly shows a single active Wi-Fi connection when you connect to a new network. 

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8079.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8085

Release date: March 20, 2026

Released to: Dev Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build resumes rollout of the Point Indicator Accessibility setting, which enables low-vision users to easily locate and use their cursor. The build also introduces the new Feedback Hub, which offers Insiders simpler navigation and feedback submission flows.

In addition, several bugs were fixed, including one in which the Network and Sharing Center incorrectly displayed two active Wi-Fi connections after switching from one Wi-Fi network to another. The Network and Sharing Center now correctly shows a single active Wi-Fi connection when you connect to a new network.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8085.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1743

Release date: March 20, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build includes several new features being rolled out gradually, including one in which shared audio now provides individual sliders for each listener which adjusts their volume without affecting the other. You can continue to adjust volume for both listeners at the same time through the main volume controls available through Quick Settings or on-device and keyboard controls.

The build also introduces the new Feedback Hub, which offers Insiders simpler navigation and feedback submission flows.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1743.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29553.1000

Release date: March 20, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel (29500 build series)

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates in the Canary Channel’s optional 29500 build series, this build introduces the new Feedback Hub, which offers Insiders simpler navigation and feedback submission flows.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29553.1000.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8062

Release date: March 13, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build includes numerous changes and refinements, including an update to the “Remove Default Microsoft Store packages” policy for Windows Enterprise and Education SKUs that allows IT administrators to remove MSIX/APPX apps by adding their app package family name (PFNs) to a dynamic list.

Starting with this update, the Windows kernel will enforce a new policy removing default trust for cross-signed drivers. The policy allows third-party drivers from the WHCP program by default, with an allow list of trustworthy publishers and drivers from the cross-signing program.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.8062.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8068

Release date: March 13, 2026

Released to: Dev Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build includes numerous changes and refinements, including an update to the “Remove Default Microsoft Store packages” policy for Windows Enterprise and Education SKUs that allows IT administrators to remove MSIX/APPX apps by adding their app package family name (PFNs) to a dynamic list.

Starting with this update, the Windows kernel will enforce a new policy removing default trust for cross-signed drivers. The policy allows third-party drivers from the WHCP program by default, with an allow list of trustworthy publishers and drivers from the cross-signing program.

(Get more info about  Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8068.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1737

Release date: March 13, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build makes refinements to the Pen settings page, including small changes to the options for the pen tail button. A new option, “Same as Copilot key,” enables the pen tail button to launch the same app as the Copilot key.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1737.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29550.1000

Release date: March 13, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel (29500 build series)

For those  who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates in the Canary Channel’s optional 29500 build series, this build has a variety of minor changes, including one in which changes to global power settings (for example, Display, Sleep, Hibernate timeouts, Power/Sleep button, and lid close actions) from Settings are now applied to all power plans. This should help improve persistence of chosen settings.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29550.1000.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Builds 26100.8106 and 26200.8106

Release date: March 12, 2026

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build introduces a wide range of minor features being rolled out gradually, including the ability to turn Smart App Control (SAC) on or off without needing a clean install. To make changes, go to Settings > Windows Security > App & Browser Control > Smart App Control settings. When turned on, SAC helps block untrusted or potentially harmful apps.

The update also improves stability in Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) when you run x64 apps on ARM64 devices. These apps run more smoothly and respond as expected.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Builds 26100.8106 and 26200.8106.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7961

Release date: March 6, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build re-enables Administrator protection, which aims to protect free-floating admin rights for administrator users, allowing them to still perform all admin functions with just-in-time admin privileges. This feature is off by default and can be enabled via OMA-URI in Intune or via group policy.

Other changes and improvements being gradually rolled out to the same group include the ability to use voice typing (Windows key + H) when renaming files in File Explorer, as well as a smaller peek view in the drag tray.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Build 26220.7961.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.7965

Release date: March 6, 2026

Released to: Dev Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build re-enables Administrator protection, which aims to protect free-floating admin rights for administrator users, allowing them to still perform all admin functions with just-in-time admin privileges. This feature is off by default and can be enabled via OMA-URI in Intune or via group policy.

Other changes and improvements being gradually rolled out to the same group include the ability to use voice typing when renaming files in File Explorer, as well as a smaller peek view in the drag tray.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.7965.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1685

Release date: March 6, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build lets you use voice typing (Windows key + H) when renaming files in File Explorer. The build also improves the reliability of removing Windows Update files and windows.old files via Settings > System > Storage.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1685.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7934

Release date: Feb. 27, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build gives administrators and Application Control for Business policy authors additional controls over the processing of batch files and CMD scripts. Starting with this release, admins can enable a more secure mode for processing batch files that ensures they do not change during execution by adding a value to the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor named LockBatchFilesWhenInUse (DWORD, value 0 or 1). Policy authors can also use the LockBatchFilesWhenInUse application manifest control documented here to enable this mode.

There are a variety of other improvements being rolled out gradually, including one in which a new taskbar indicator displays while you’re sharing, giving a quick reminder that audio is still being shared. Clicking the indicator is a fast path to open sharing settings to change volume or stop sharing.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7934.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.7939

Release date: Feb. 27, 2026

Released to: Dev Channel

For those who opted to receive the latest updates, this build gives administrators and Application Control for Business policy authors additional controls over the processing of batch files and CMD scripts. Starting with this release, admins can enable a more secure mode for processing batch files that ensures they do not change during execution by adding a value to the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor named LockBatchFilesWhenInUse (DWORD, value 0 or 1). Policy authors can also use the LockBatchFilesWhenInUse application manifest control documented here to enable this mode.

There are a variety of other improvements being rolled out gradually, including one in which a new taskbar indicator displays while you’re sharing, offering a quick reminder that audio is still being shared. Clicking the indicator is a fast path to open sharing settings to change volume or stop sharing.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.7939.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1673

Release date: Feb. 27, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel

For those who have opted to receive the latest updates, this build gets a variety of new features being rolled out gradually, including one in which Quick Machine Recovery (QMR) now turns on automatically for enterprise managed Windows Professional devices, as well as Windows Professional devices that are not domain-joined. These devices receive the same recovery features available to Windows Home users. For domain-joined devices, QMR stays off unless it is enabled by the organization.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1673.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7872

Release date: February 20, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build offers a variety of new features, including simplified specifications on the ‘Device info’ Card on the Settings Home page and improved mouseover animations for app groups on the taskbar.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7872.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.7877

Release date: February 20, 2026

Released to: Dev Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build offers a variety of new features, including simplified specifications on the ‘Device info’ Card on the Settings Home page and improved mouseover animations for app groups on the taskbar.

Several bugs have also been fixed, including one in which all File Explorer open windows and tabs unexpectedly jumped to Desktop or Home.

Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.7877.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1619

Release date: February 20, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build offers a variety of new features, including one in which Windows Hello Enhanced Sign-in Security (ESS) supports peripheral fingerprint sensors. Previously, ESS was only available on PCs with built-in biometric sensors, but now it can be used when you plug in a supported ESS fingerprint reader.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1619.)

Optional Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29531.1000

Release date: February 18, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel

This build is the first in a new Canary Channel optional path with a focus on platform development, which will introduce new features before the existing 28000 Canary Channel series. Microsoft recommends that most people remain on the 28000 build path, but adds that those who want to get the newest platform changes as early as possible may want to switch to this new 29500 path. Note, though, that if you switch to the 29500 path by installing this build, you won’t be able to go back to the 28000 Canary Channel series.

The build itself, in Microsoft’s words, “includes platform changes in moving to a new active development build.”

Microsoft warns, “because of the focus on platform development for this path, you may notice a temporary loss in some features that you have today. These features will return to this new active development build.”

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 29531.1000.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7859

Release date: February 17, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build displays an option to upgrade to a different Microsoft 365 plan on the Accounts page within the Settings app. It also rolls out fixes for several bugs, including one in which all File Explorer open windows and tabs unexpectedly jumped to Desktop or Home.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Preview Build 26220.7859.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Builds 26100.7918 and 26200.7918

Release date: February 17, 2026

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build gradually rolls out a variety of new features, including one in which Quick Machine Recovery (QMR) now turns on automatically for Windows Professional devices that are not domain‑joined and not enrolled in enterprise endpoint management. These devices receive the same recovery features available to Windows Home users. For domain‑joined or enterprise managed devices, QMR stays off unless it is enabled by the organization. The build also improves login screen reliability.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Builds 26100.7918 and 26200.7918.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1611

Release date: February 12, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel

This build brings Sysmon functionality natively to Windows. Sysmon functionality allows you to capture system events that can help with threat detection, and you can use custom configuration files to filter the events you want to monitor. The captured events are written on the Windows event log, enabling them to be used with security applications and in a wide range of use cases.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1611.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7755

Release date: February 9, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build gradually rolls out several new features, including Emoji 16.0, which contains a new set of emojis, and the ability to directly control pan and tilt for supported cameras in the Settings app.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 226220.7755.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.7760

Release date: February 9, 2026

Released to: Dev Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build gradually rolls out several new features, including Emoji 16.0, which contains a new set of emojis, and the ability to directly control pan and tilt for supported cameras in the Settings app.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.7760.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1546

Release date: February 4, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel

This update, in the words of Microsoft, “includes a small set of general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience for Insiders” running Windows.

It also fixes one bug that affected apps working with files stored on OneDrive or Dropbox.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1546.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7752

Release date: February 3, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

Those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get Sysmon functionality natively in Windows. Sysmon functionality allows you to capture system events that can help with threat detection, and you can use custom configuration files to filter the events you want to monitor. The captured events are written on the Windows event log, enabling them to be used with security applications and a wide range of use cases. (This feature is being gradually rolled out.)

The same group also gets a number of bug fixes being gradually rolled out, including for a File Explorer bug in which icons/tooltips for “Add to favorites” were missing.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 26220.7752.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.7733

Release date: February 3, 2026

Released to: Dev Channel

Those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates get Sysmon functionality natively in Windows. Sysmon functionality allows you to capture system events that can help with threat detection, and you can use custom configuration files to filter the events you want to monitor. The captured events are written on the Windows event log, enabling them to be used with security applications and a wide range of use cases. (This feature is being gradually rolled out.)

The same group also gets a number of bug fixes being gradually rolled out, including for a File Explorer bug in which icons/tooltips for “Add to favorites” were missing.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 26300.7733.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1495

Release date: January 28, 2025

Released to: Canary Channel

This build, in Microsoft’s words, “includes a small set of general improvements and fixes that improve the overall experience [of Windows 11].” It also fixes a variety of bugs, including one that led to the Windows Update settings page hanging when loading.

The build has two known issues, one that sometimes causes all open File Explorer windows and tabs to unexpectedly jump to Desktop or Home in File Explorer, and another in which the desktop watermark is showing the wrong build number.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 28020.1495.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Builds 26100.7701 and 26200.7701

Release date: January 27, 2026

Released to: Release Preview Channel

This build gradually rolls out a variety of new features for Copilot+ PCs, including one in which Narrator gives you more control over how it announces on‑screen controls. You can choose which details are spoken and adjust their order to match how you navigate apps. These settings apply throughout the app to help reduce extra speech and make Narrator easier to follow.

The build also immediately rolls out a variety of new features for all PCs, including one in Data Protection Application Programming Interface (DPAPI) domain backup key management. Administrators can now set how often keys rotate automatically. This strengthens cryptographic security and reduces reliance on older encryption algorithms.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Builds 26100.7701 and 26200.7701.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7670

Release date: January 27, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build gradually rolls out several bug fixes, including for an issue in which the Search process was showing an icon with an X instead of a magnifying glass.

The build has five known issues, including one in which some Insiders’ apps aren’t showing in the system tray when they should be.

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 26220.7670.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.7674

Release date: January 27, 2026

Released to: Dev Channel

In this build, the Dev Channel jumps ahead to receive 26300 series builds. This means that the window to switch from the Dev Channel to the Beta Channel is closed once Build 26300.7674is installed on your PC. This build for the Dev Channel is identical to the Windows 11 Build 26220.7653 release (see below).

(Get more info about Insider Preview Build 26300.7674.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7653

Release date: January 21, 2026

Released to: Dev Channel

This build for the Dev Channel is identical to the January 16th Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7653 released to the Beta Channel. See the writeup below for details.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7653.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7653

Release date: January 16, 2026

Released to: Beta Channel

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build gradually rolls out several changes, including one in which you can now set .webp images for your desktop background in Settings > Personalization > Desktop Background.

The same group also gets a number of bug fixes being gradually rolled out, including for a bug in which Settings crashed when interacting with audio devices.

The build has four known issues, including one in which some Insiders’ apps aren’t showing in the system tray when they should be.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7653.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1371 

Release date: January 14, 2026

Released to: Canary Channel

This build gradually rolls out a variety of bug fixes for those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, including a bug in which File Explorer showed a white flash when navigating between pages.

There is one known issue in this build: The desktop watermark shows the wrong build number.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1371.)

Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7535

Release date: January 9, 2026

Released to: Dev & Beta Channels

For those who have turned the toggle on to receive the latest updates, this build gradually rolls out Copilot-powered image descriptions to Narrator on Copilot+ PCs, making it possible for blind and low-vision users to hear detailed, AI-generated descriptions of images, charts, and graphs.

The same group also gets a number of bug fixes being gradually rolled out, including for an issue in which File Explorer was causing explorer.exe to crash for some Insiders when invoking the context menu on the desktop.

The build has seven known issues, including one in which Settings crashes when interacting with audio devices.

(Get more info about Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7535.)

Microsoft is continuing its push to bring generative AI (genAI) into Excel, with new Microsoft 365 Copilot skills designed to automate common processes and a “plan” mode to provide more control over Copilot’s outputs when handling financial data.

Microsoft made Microsoft 365 Copilot generally available in Excel in late 2024 and since then has added several capabilities, including agentic tools, a Copilot function within Excel, and Python support for advanced data analysis.  

On Thursday, Microsoft unveiled a skills feature that lets users define processes Copilot can perform in Excel — such as building a discounted cash flow, Microsoft suggested, preparing a variance analysis, or refreshing a monthly reporting model.  

“Instead of starting from scratch each time, a skill guides Copilot through the steps, applying the right structure and formatting, and helping produce an output that is easier to review, reuse, and trust,” Brian Jones, vice president for Excel at Microsoft, said in a blog post.

Users can access a library of pre-built finance skills or create their own custom skills and save them as a SKILL.md in OneDrive, where the Copilot assistant can access them. Microsoft’s partners are also building their own skills, including finance software vendors such as LSEG, Ramp and Velixo — these are “coming soon,” Microsoft said. Custom skills are available today via the Insider channel and generally available next month.

A new “plan” feature is aimed at giving users greater oversight of the AI assistant’s proposed actions before it starts interacting with spreadsheet data. The Copilot assistant can now draft a list of planned interactions — such as changing a formula — and, before it gets to work, ask the user to “approve, edit, or answer clarifying questions,” said Jones.

After it has completed the list of actions, the Copilot assistant will post a link to any changes in the chat window. Edits made by the AI assistant will then appear alongside other those from human users in the Show Changes pane.

Copilot can connect to third-party platforms now, pulling in data from sources such as Moody’s, CB Insights, Morningstar, and PitchBook.

The features will roll out “progressively” for customers, Microsoft said, and are available to paid Microsoft 365 Copilot users. Microsoft offers two payment options: $30 per user each month for larger customers, or the Microsoft 365 Copilot Business plan, which costs $21 per user a month for organizations with fewer than 300 employees.

US authorities are getting decidedly twitchy about frontier AI models. Just a couple of weeks after ordering Anthropic to prevent foreign companies from getting hold of its latest release, Mythos/Fable 5, it’s been putting the squeeze on another AI company..

Now, the Trump administration is asking OpenAI to hold back on the general release of GPT-5.6, according to a report from Bloomberg.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly told employees that the government is asking that the model be released only to a short list of trusted partners, initially 20, before being more widely disseminated.

Altman reportedly told staffers that the administration was getting nervous about the capabilities of the latest AI tools. It didn’t go as far as forbidding access to foreign users but it’s clear that the White House is looking to act as the power of the new models becomes more apparent.

The administration’s actions will undoubtedly cause some anxiety among AI companies, particularly in light of OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s upcoming IPOs. There will be concerns that new software developments could be postponed or even halted. However, it should also be noted that the administration was already displeased with Anthropic over its moral stance on defense issues, so the action against Mythos should be placed in context.

Indeed, the government is trying to play down such fears. Bloomberg quoted a White House official as saying that the Trump administration continues to collaborate with frontier AI labs to develop shared approaches for addressing the challenges of scaling the technology.

Chinese tech giant Tencent is set to launch an AI assistant inside WeCom, its Slack-like collaboration tool for enterprises. The new tool, Dayuan, is built on the latest large language models from Chinese AI developer DeepSeek.

Tencent announced the news in a post on Chinese messaging platform Weibo by Tencent’s public relations manager Zhang Jun. Dayuan will automatically understand user requests and will respond according to the demands of the user, he wrote, according to a translation by Bloomberg. “At any time within WeCom, simply swipe left to summon Dayuan. It can intelligently recognize the interface you’re on, understand what you’re asking, and help you resolve issues more effectively,” he wrote, according to the report.

In addressing the Chinese enterprise market, Tencent has an advantage over other companies in the AI space because it has a vast reservoir of customers who use WeCom. Earlier this month, it announced a range of AI productivity agents to address the demand for more AI tools across enterprises.

Tencent has been intensifying its efforts in the AI space in an attempt to beat US competition. In April, it launched an updated version of its Hunyuan model to catch up with more established AI companies such as ByteDance, Alibaba and DeepSeek.

The launch of Dayuan with its vast supply of user data will provide a step-up for Tencent and will reinforce Chinese efforts to establish serious AI competition to US products.

Following a seven-month investigation, the European Commission has reached a preliminary decision that Amazon’s and Microsoft’s cloud platforms — AWS and Azure, respectively — should be classified as “gatekeepers” under the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), Reuters reports.

The DMA, also known as the Digital Markets Regulation, aims to limit the market power of dominant players. For cloud services, this would entail, among other things, requirements for increased interoperability and data portability, as well as restrictions on how these services might favor their own products and services.

The Commission pointed, among other things, to AWS and Azure’s large market shares, extensive investments, large customer bases, and high costs for customers who wish to switch providers.

If the decision is approved, the companies would be subject to the same type of regulations that apply to several of the largest technology platforms. Both Amazon and Microsoft were critical of the assessment. Amazon argued that the EU already regulates the cloud market through the Data Act, while Microsoft believes the EU is underestimating the growing competition from Google Cloud.

Amazon and Microsoft will have the opportunity to respond to the European Commission’s preliminary conclusions before a final decision is expected later this year.

Australia’s Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) has uncovered an attack on a critical infrastructure operator’s network. State-sponsored actors had compromised the network and were preparing to sabotage it, according to its director general, Mike Burgess.

Other countries face similar cyber-threats to critical infrastructure.

It’s impossible to exaggerate the danger that the country is facing from cyberattacks on its infrastructure, he said, presenting ASIO’s annual threat assessment this week. “We categorize them into ‘threats to life’ and ‘threats to our way of life,’” he said.

In this case, the hackers had gained access to login details and passwords for active users of the networks, including the IT professionals guarding it. ASIO had set up a specific team to deal with the issue of cyber sabotage.

Australia isn’t alone in facing threats from the same state actors, Burgess said. “We struggle to find a single country in our region that has not been compromised by this state’s cyber apparatus.”

This meant that Australia is facing a persistent threat in the future, one that could have consequences for the way that the critical infrastructure is deployed and managed. “The biggest challenge is the cumulative one: in a degraded security environment defined by concurrent, cascading, compounding threats, when resources are limited, how and what do you prioritize?” he said.

This article first appeared on CSO.

Apple’s decision to raise prices in response to memory cost increases is not unique to the company. If Apple has to do it, everyone else will as well. 

Apple announced stiff price increases Thursday — up to 25% in some cases — that extended across most products, including refurbished Macs and iPads (which saw prices increase up to $330). Apple might have left iPhones out of the mix for now, but they’ll likely see price increases when new models appear this fall. Omdia believes the memory price crisis spells the end of low-cost smartphones.

The price hikes begin

“We had assumed a price hike of $100 to Pro and ProMax iPhones, and $50 hike to base models,” wrote IDC Senior Director Nabila Popal. “However, seeing the price hikes to iPads and Macs going as high as $300 for some models, my personal instinct says the hike to iPhones may be even higher than what we assumed — perhaps even $200 to the Pro/Pro Max models. I think the days of $50 price increases are over.”

What’s driving all this? The answer, increasingly, is AI. The buildout of large language model (LLM) infrastructure requires vast quantities of high-bandwidth memory and that appetite is accelerating faster than manufacturers can respond.

Will Apple suffer? Maybe, though perhaps not too much. Popal notes that the introduction of Siri AI will give a large number of existing users a reason to upgrade. Given most of these devices are sold on installment plans, even a $200 price increase over 36-months might not pose a major barrier to sales. IDC expects iPhone sales to decline, but only by 5% — while the rest of the industry shrinks.

The worst is yet to come

This may not be the worst of it. Major players now warn that the supply-demand gap could continue to widen in the coming years. The higher costs that result will spread across all types of electronic devices, so anything with memory, a processor, or storage will become more expensive.  

Microsoft announced its own price increase, adding up to $150 to the cost of Xbox this week. And Lenovo made its own contribution when it warned that high memory prices will become the new normal into 2030, and prices might never return to early-2025 levels.

Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix describe the situation as beyond their control, saying they’re having difficulty meeting demand even for their top customers. These companies are generating massive profits all the while. 

In Lenovo’s case, the company claims that while it is introducing additional manufacturing capacity, this is not making a dent in the supply-demand imbalance. SK Hynix is expected to expand its manufacturing capability by accelerating its original 2040 expansion plans to 2030, at which time it should have tripled output; even that might be insufficient to meet demand. 

A long journey ahead

“We currently do not have line of sight as to when memory supply will be able to catch up with increasing demand,” Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said this week.

With no end in sight, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives says he believes Apple is attempting to get ahead of the inflationary spiral, speculating that the latest price increases bake future increases into their model. 

Memory prices began to spiral out of control last fall, with prices today reaching levels no one anticipated. They rose as much as 98% in the first quarter of 2026 and are set to jump by another 58% to ​63% in the current quarter, according to TrendForce.

This consequential uncertainty is affecting tech stocks. Asian stock markets fell sharply on Friday, led by a sell-off in technology firms. Trading on South Korea’s Kospi was temporarily suspended as a result — for the third time this week. Apple shares are down again, and the sell-off is expected to continue.

So, who’s winning?

The beneficiaries of this memory squeeze are not hard to identify. While consumers face higher prices for phones, laptops and games consoles, the companies driving memory demand — the hyperscalers and AI firms building out server farms at extraordinary scale — are posting record revenues. The costs flow down; the profits flow up.

Some, including Naomi Klein, see it as a kind of strip mining of human intellect and ingenuity, a cultural wealth transfer in which human innovation is packaged and resold as competing chatbots, for a fee. 

There are signs this may not be sustainable. A UBS Group survey finds approximately 60% of companies have started curbing AI spending because of token costs, shifting to low-cost and open-source models. But even if AI-driven memory demand softens, there is little reason to expect consumer tech prices to follow. History suggests they rarely do.

Truncated dreaming

For Apple watchers, it was pleasant enjoying a few months in which the dream of a sub-$500 Mac was realized, only for that happy reverie to be dashed by the VC-funded race to deploy AI server farms for the benefit of those with pockets deep enough for the tokens to feed them. 

Please join me on social media at BlueSky,  LinkedIn, or Mastodon, even better, please subscribe to The Core for your daily collection of human-curated Apple News.

For years, Microsoft has hyped Windows 11 cas an OS with AI, and the company is finally putting the building blocks in place for that transformation.

Microsoft execs shared examples of how the company is integrating AI in Windows 11 at its Build event earlier this month, highlighting how AI models and agents will make the OS smarter, allowing users to interact with it using natural language and intent.

Specifically, Windows 11 PCs will provide unmetered intelligence so users can run AI for free without a network connection. “No token cost. No sensitive data leaves the device. It also reduces latency,” Anastasiya Tarnouskaya, product manager for Windows ML, said during a Build session.

Hardware makers introduced AI-capable hardware before the applications were available. But Tarnouskaya said more than 500 million PCs are already running local AI workloads. “Thanks to recent advancements in AI models, hardware, and the software stacks that run them, today, every Windows PC is becoming increasingly AI-capable,” she said. 

The AI experiences are blended into apps and the Windows UI, not working only as chatbots such as those offered by ChatGPT or Gemini. 

Microsoft Office, Photos and Teams already use on-device AI capabilities, with Outlook, for instance, summarizing emails using Microsoft’s Phi Silica model and a GPU on the PC.

“And it’s not just developers that are betting on local AI…, [companies] from Adobe to WhatsApp are building some incredible local AI-powered experiences.” Tarnouskaya said. Other early adopters include Canva, Affinity, and Speechify.

AI apps for Windows 11 proliferated after Microsoft shipped Windows ML last fall, she said. (Windows ML helps developers create offline AI applications without accessing cloud models. It maps applications, localized AI models and hardware such as GPUs and neural processors.)

Windows ML is part of Microsoft’s “Foundry” portfolio of products, which includes Foundry Local for running open-source models on Windows devices, and Windows AI APIs that automate tasks such as conversation summarization, speech recognition, and video upscaling.

Microsoft is also turning to AI agents to change how users interact with Windows 11. Users can describe a task through natural language, and a long-running agent will get to work and complete the action. “Windows is evolving into a platform where natural language can map to real system outcomes,” said Samantha Song, product manager for Windows at Microsoft.

Song demonstrated how users could just tell or type how they want to personalize colors, wallpaper, or menus, and the agent will do it. “There is no manual set up against themes, setting or lighting. The system treats it as one coherent action,” Song said.

For the effort to succeed, developers will need to create a skills file that maps how an agent behaves. That skill can then be reused over and over again, Song said.

“At the enterprise level, you could imagine a world where a user switches into a secure finance mode, and the system aligns apps, access boundaries and environment automatically,” Song said.

Microsoft also demonstrated how OpenClaw can be used to create personalized agents to run Windows functions.

At Build, LLMware.ai demonstrated an agent on a Qualcomm laptop that collects Jira issues in real-time, summarizes them locally, and emails daily summaries of top issues to the team. The agent runs automatically without prompting.

“You can get optimized performance on the NPU [neural processing unit] by running the model locally…and you also implement a scheduled run of your automated agents,” said Darren Oberst, co-founder of LLMWare.ai.

Samsung, Lenovo and others are rolling out — albeit slowly and carefully — agentic AI features under the moniker of ‘personal AI,’” said Leonard Lee, principal analyst at Next Curve. “The problem is ensuring safe deployment,” he said.

Microsoft’s efforts to embed AI in Windows will force enterprises to rethink hardware strategies, said Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates. And since AI chips excel at different tasks, Microsoft will have to support multiple chips to offer choice to enterprises, he said.

“We recommend — and others do, too — that any new PC purchases, especially for enterprise, be done with this in mind and purchase AI PCs during any upgrade cycle,” Gold said.

AI is here, and we must help workers adapt: That’s the response of a new non-profit organization to the ongoing debate about whether AI will destroy jobs and cause catastrophe or take the economy to new heights.

Launched Thursday, Raise Us is a nonpartisan national organization that says it will partner with state governors, employers, workers, and training organizations to help the US workforce make a successful transition to an AI economy. It says it will design and pilot new corporate incentives to retrain and redeploy workers, develop new approaches to support people through job transitions, and create new training models tied to changing employer demand.

It has already raised more than $500 million and hopes to bring that up to $1 billion in multi-year commitments from philanthropists and industry sources. Anchor partners include Amazon, Microsoft, Anthropic, and the OpenAI Foundation, and more than two dozen other organizations including Cisco, IBM, ADP, AMD, and Deloitte have also signed on.

The organization is led by two former US state governors, Gina Raimondo, who will serve as CEO and co-chair, and Eric Holcomb, co-chair, and its initial government partnerships are with the states of Arkansas, Connecticut, Maryland, and Utah, which, it said, “will serve as the first proving grounds for outcome-driven pilots.”

However, analysts are skeptical that the initiative is anything other than a public-relations effort for the AI industry.

Jason Andersen, VP and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said the organization’s initial communications are more marketing and posturing than strategy and action. “It also does not help that there are many CEOs involved who have already displaced thousands of workers due to AI,” he said.

The organization has chosen to work with state governments rather than the US federal government but even partnering at the state level may be too broad, he said, given that the industry makeup varies from state to state, with some leaning towards knowledge workers, while others are more manufacturing-focused.

AI-washing

Technology analyst Carmi Levy said Raise Us’s mission is laudable, but, “Unfortunately, for all its slick website and optimistic-sounding copy, Raise Us is possibly the highest-profile example of AI-washing thus far, a well-intentioned but ultimately futile attempt to illustrate that something is being done to cut through the uncertainty and empower the workforce of tomorrow. In reality, it’s a convenient vehicle for a diverse range of stakeholders, including state governments, educators, financial institutions, and companies like Amazon, Anthropic, Microsoft, and the OpenAI Foundation, to virtue-signal that they’re doing their utmost to solve the AI employment crisis and mitigate the impact of this generational technology deployment on everyday workers.”

Like Andersen, he noted that since many of those same companies have already had multiple rounds of tech-driven layoffs, “It’s more than a little rich for them to be joining an initiative whose mission revolves around protecting workers from the worst risks associated with AI.”

But, he said, “If Raise Us can deliver on its lofty promises, it could be an important first step in the great AI workforce transition. Otherwise, it could end up being little more than a high-profile exercise in creating plans and reports and conference panels with little on-the-ground execution to show for it. I’ll believe in its mission when middle-aged, mid-level administrative workers are realistically redirected into new AI-enabled career paths without a massive pay cut.”

Andersen, too, said he’s keeping an open mind, “but something more measurable and specific is in order, or this just looks like a public relations effort.”

Have you seen “The Founder”?

It’s the story of McDonald’s and how Ray Kroc (played by Michael Keaton) transformed the company from a local burger joint to a global landlord. According to the movie, Kroc’s accountant gave him the revelation: “You’re not in the burger business. You’re in the real estate business.”

When brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald transformed their San Bernardino, CA barbecue restaurant into a fast-food burger joint in 1948, their model was to make and sell their own burgers. They would succeed or fail based on making better food products than other restaurants. 

By the time Kroc bought out the McDonald brothers in 1961, the new model was leasing real estate to other people, and those other people would make the food. Whether the original San Bernardino McDonald’s succeeded or failed became irrelevant to the success of the McDonald’s corporation. 

SpaceX has done the same thing. Its San Bernardino location, i.e. xAI, can now succeed or fail without affecting the success of the parent company, which is SpaceX. 

The company this week signed a compute lease with Reflection AI, a pre-revenue startup founded by former Google DeepMind researchers. Under the agreement, Reflection pays $150 million per month for use of the Nvidia GB300 chips housed at Colossus 2, SpaceX’s expansion facility in Memphis, TN. If the lease runs for the full term, SpaceX as a landlord stands to make around $6.3 billion. (Reflection AI has shipped open-weight models, but has no widely adopted frontier model yet, and was reportedly raising capital at a $25 billion valuation.) 

Earlier this month, an S-1 filing revealed that Google agreed to pay SpaceX approximately $920 million per month for 32 months. SpaceX stands to make around $30 billion. And last month, SpaceX disclosed that xAI made a big deal with Anthropic that could bring in to SpaceX as much as $45 billion in revenue.

Regardless of whether xAI — or, for that matter, Reflection, Google, or Anthropic — succeeds or fails, SpaceX still wins. 

Like McDonald’s (which developed its super efficient burger-building system in order to succeed with its San Bernardino location and ended up using that system to succeed as a landlord), SpaceX is using the Colossus infrastructure it built for xAI’s Grok to succeed as an AI landlord.

Grok might succeed, or it might fail. But SpaceX makes bank if Grok’s competitors pay their rent. 

That makes Elon Musk, who is the CEO of SpaceX, the Ray Kroc of AI. 

Nvidia is Mayor McCheese

Colossus originally went online in July 2024, powered by 100,000 Nvidia H100 Hopper GPUs housed in a Supermicro liquid-cooled HGX H100 chassis. The company doubled that to 200,000 GPUs within a short time and it now comprises more than 220,000 Nvidia GPUs including H100, H200, and next-generation Blackwell-class accelerators. The entire fabric runs on Nvidia’s Spectrum-X Ethernet platform, specifically the Spectrum SN5600 switch built on the Spectrum-4 ASIC. 

Also: Nvidia is also heavily invested in companies that are renting compute power on Colossus. The company invests in Anthropic and Reflection AI — and, for that matter, xAI itself and, therefore, SpaceX. 

Nvidia has positioned itself as the Mayor McCheese of the AI industry, collecting taxes at every node of the AI economy. It supplies the GPUs and networking fabric that every frontier lab must train on and collects hardware revenue from the winner’s rivals, even as it profits from the winner’s success. 

So whether Anthropic, Google, Reflection AI, xAI, or some yet-unformed lab produces the dominant model, the computing power was bought from Nvidia and the landlord’s machine was built from Nvidia silicon. 

And Apple is the Hamburglar

Apple’s AI strategy is even more brilliant than Nvidia’s. 

It’s built on a three-tier routing system. When you ask Siri to do something, a built-in orchestrator in the operating system decides how complex the task is. According to third-party estimates, around 85% of requests are handled on your Apple device by Apple’s own small, efficient models. (It does things like summarizing text, prioritizing notifications, cleaning up photos, or suggesting replies.) Roughly 12% of all queries get sent to Private Cloud Compute, Apple’s own server infrastructure running Apple’s larger models on Apple silicon in Apple-owned data centers. Only the hardest 3% of queries get routed to an external partner model.

This design lets Apple avoid the ruinous cost of training a frontier model from scratch. Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon each spend tens of billions of dollars per year on GPU clusters, energy, and research teams to build and run trillion-parameter models. Apple doesn’t. Its own models are deliberately small and run on chips Apple already sells you, so the inference cost is basically absorbed into the device. It only needs a frontier model for that tiny sliver of hard queries, which is where the partnership strategy kicks in.

While frontier labs are collectively spending trillions to build AI infrastructure, Apple is paying Google a mere $1 billion per year to license a custom Gemini model that powers the rebuilt Siri and Apple Intelligence’s complex-query path.

The reason Apple can swap partners is the Foundation Models framework, a native Swift API with a published LanguageModel protocol that any provider can implement. Google’s Gemini conforms to it. Anthropic’s Claude probably conforms to it. Any future model can theoretically conform to it. Apple’s orchestrator routes to whatever model fits the interface, so switching providers means changing routing logic, not rebuilding the whole system. 

Apple profits through several channels. Apple Intelligence requires recent hardware, driving upgrade cycles. Advanced features push users toward higher iCloud storage tiers. 

And so while everyone else is investing trillions, creating what is essentially debt that has to be repaid somehow, Apple is mainly just collecting billions without the massive investments needed by the frontier model companies. 

The AI industry has been telling itself a story: that the companies building the best models will win, that intelligence is the product, that the chatbot with the most capabilities and the cleverest training run will capture the market. That story is wrong. Some of the companies building the best models are tenants. The companies that rent out the compute are landlords. 

Ray Kroc would recognize SpaceX’s strategy immediately. The burger doesn’t matter; the land does. Right now, the most valuable land in the world isn’t in Silicon Valley. It’s a data center complex in Memphis full of hundreds of thousands of GPUs. 

The man who owns it just realized that he’s not in the AI business at all. He’s in the real estate business. (And he’s probably lovin’ it.)

AI disclosures: I don’t use AI for writing. The words you see here are mine. I used a few AI tools via Kagi Assistant (disclosure: my son works at Kagi) as well as both Kagi Search and Google Search as one part of my fact-checking for this column. I used a word processing product called Lex, which has AI tools, and after writing the column, I used Lex’s grammar checking tools to hunt for typos and errors and suggest word changes. Why I disclose my AI use and encourage you to do the same. 

Microsoft’s controversial claim that its Majorana chip program will make possible a scalable quantum computer by 2029 has been thrown into new doubt by a scientific paper that questions whether the company has correctly interpreted its own experimental evidence.

According to a peer-reviewed paper by Dr. Henry Legg from the University of St Andrews, published this week in Nature, Microsoft’s Topological Gap Protocol (TGP) framework, designed to infer the existence of quantum states in theorized Majorana particles, is flawed.

“Last year Microsoft claimed they had built the equivalent of a precision Swiss watch. However, when I opened the case to examine the mechanism, I found what looked like a chaotic jumble of mismatched parts,” said Legg.

He believed the results gathered from Microsoft’s TGP software data analysis could also be explained by other effects, as well as being skewed by the data chosen for analysis. Because of this, he believed the company’s researchers had jumped to the wrong conclusions.

“Something was making noise, but it didn’t look like the breakthrough Microsoft had claimed. Despite the headlines, the vast majority of scientists in the field were skeptical of Microsoft’s claim from the start; my critique simply backs up that skepticism in the scientific record,” he said.

Topological qubits

The ability to create Majorana ‘zero modes’ that resist the errors suffered by traditional qubit-based designs is fundamental to Microsoft’s entire quantum computing strategy, stretching back two decades. This, of course, assumes the existence of subatomic Majorana fermions, named after the Italian physicist who first proposed them in 1937. To this day, they remain only theoretical.

In 2018, Microsoft said its researchers had detected evidence of their existence, an apparently major breakthrough it was forced to retract when the data was successfully challenged. Nature’s editors subsequently backed this up with the blunt note: “The results in this manuscript do not represent evidence for the presence of Majorana zero modes in the reported devices.”

Despite the setback, Microsoft persisted, in 2025 publishing a new paper in Nature that claimed the company had worked out how to exploit the principle in a new “transistor for the quantum age,” the Majorana 1 chip.

Earlier this month, the company launched its successor, Majorana 2, claiming that AI had helped to achieve a 1,000-fold improvement in reliability compared to the earlier chip. “With this progress, the team now expects to achieve a scalable quantum computer by 2029, cutting its original timeline in half,” the company announced.  

However, Microsoft again finds itself on the defensive after the latest criticism from Legg, who said, “I am simply reflecting what most in the field felt from the initial announcement. I felt that I needed to put these concerns into a formal scientific critique. It is good that it has now been peer-reviewed and published.”

His criticism relates to the transport data system, not the raw experimental data itself, which Microsoft had yet to make fully public in a way that would allow independent analysis.

Microsoft still confident

Microsoft said by email that it remains confident that the Majorana has brought usable quantum computing a step closer, pointing to its collaboration with DARPA as part of the Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing (US2QC) program.

“We stand by our results and our roadmap,” said technical fellow and vice president of quantum hardware, Dr. Chetan Nayak. “At the end of the day, success is the delivery of a scalable quantum computer. We are confident in our ability to execute against our roadmap.”

“Skepticism and rigor are hallmarks of the scientific process, which we appreciate and have supported from various academics,” he added. “We have participated in dialogue and our thorough rebuttal was accepted and published by Nature.”

Microsoft is not the only company researching quantum computing hardware, with Google, IBM, and Amazon also working on designs. But even if the hardware matures on the schedule claimed by Microsoft,  many believe the gap between technology and implementation inside enterprises could be more of a slow burn than a sudden jump forward.

This article originally appeared on NetworkWorld.

Apple’s threatened product pricing hike arrived Thursday with steep increases landing across all its products (except the iPhone) — and rapidly accelerating RAM prices are to blame.

Apple CEO Tim Cook had warned last week about the need for price increases, with Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman subsequently telling us these were “imminent.”

The increases have been imposed as a result of the massive demand for memory and storage components generated by the rapid investment in AI servers. Prices have increased to meet this demand, with vendors shifting manufacturing to the advanced memory modules demanded by AI companies. In doing so, they have not invested in additional production capacity, further exacerbating the demand/supply imbalance.

“Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” Cook told The Wall Street Journal. “We’re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable.”

The price increases are going to hurt

The price hikes even affect products Apple hasn’t updated in years, such as the HomePod and Apple TV. The extent of the increase is big in some cases — the Apple TV is up 55% while an M3 Ultra Mac Studio sees a 32.5% rise. While I had hoped any higher prices would be aimed at Apple’s high-end products, the extent and scale of the changes suggests the enormity of the component price increases the company has been struggling with.  

“We haven’t seen anything like this in modern Apple,” said Neil Cybart at Above Avalon.

Here’s what starting prices look like now:

Macs

• MacBook Pro, up $300 to $1,999.
• MacBook Air, up $200 to $1,299.
• MacBook Neo, up $100 to $699.
• iMac, up $200 to $1,499.
• Mac mini (M4 Pro), up $200 to $1,599. 
• Mac Studio (M4 Max), up $500 to $2,499.
• Mac Studio (M3 Ultra), up $1,300, to $5,299.

iPads

• iPad Air, up $200 to $749.
• iPad Pro, up $200 to $1,199.
• iPad, now starts at $449.
• iPad mini, now $599.

Other hardware

• Vision Pro, up $200 to $3,699
• HomePod mini, up $30 to $129.
• Apple TV, up $70 to $199.

There were no immediate changes to the iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods — but no guarantees, either, that their prices won’t also jump.

This is AI-flation

The scale of these increases is like a dose of cold water on the already tepid optimism of investors. This was quickly reflected by a big sell off on Apple stock, which was down more than 6.5% at one point today. And the impact was contagious across the sector as investors realized that if Apple was forced to increase prices even at the lower end of the market it so recently secured, it’s likely other manufacturers will be forced to do the same. This can only further dampen market optimism.

Concerning the MacBook Neo, Francisco Jeronimo, IDC vice president for client devices, said: “The $100 increase takes the entry model from $599 to $699, close to a 17% increase, one of the sharpest percentage hikes in the announcement, and it hits one of Apple’s best-selling, most price-sensitive laptops right as it is winning share. Raising the price of its fastest-selling entry product indicates that Apple believes demand will stay strong, given the value the product offers. It also signals Apple is willing to give up some unit growth at the bottom of the range to defend margin, and it widens the gap the Neo had just closed against Windows entry-level machines.”

The fact of the matter is that consumers are effectively paying an inflationary fee for the benefit of the ongoing global AI rollout. That rollout is already consuming vast quantities of investor cash, despite the shaky business plan of existing incumbents. 

“We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly,” Apple ​said in a statement. “We have shielded our customers from these increases so far, but we have now reached a point where we need to begin ⁠raising prices on a number of products, including today’s increases for iPad and Mac.”

Apple and the entire industry will not want to maintain prices at these levels if they can avoid it. That’s going to mean the entire tech industry will now begin leaning on memory manufacturers such as Micron to do more about building out production capacity, or at least promising to do so. Of course, the other hope might be that investors finally see the folly of the AI business model and slow down deployment, though that seems unlikely.

“We know this is not welcome news, and we are working tirelessly to find solutions,” the company said.

Please join me on social media at BlueSky,  LinkedIn, or Mastodon, even better, please subscribe to The Core for your daily collection of human-curated Apple News.

As enterprises deploy increasing numbers of AI agents across applications and organizations, the Linux Foundation on Wednesday announced plans to launch a new Agent Name Service framework designed to establish identity, ownership, and trust for these systems.

The ANS framework, which is expected to allow systems and users to verify who an agent represents, what permissions it has, and whether its code and operational history remain authentic and unchanged, will be based on the existing Domain Name System (DNS), the Foundation said in a statement.

Just like DNS translates human-readable website names into internet addresses, ANS aims to create a standardized naming and discovery layer for AI agents, with the ability for enterprises to publish agent identities through domains they already control, enabling other agents and systems to verify who an agent represents and discover information about its capabilities and ownership before interacting with it, it added.

This, the Foundation further added, creates a federated mechanism for agent discovery and verification without any reliance on any proprietary registry or centralized control.

Growing demand for an agent identity framework

ANS solves an emerging problem for enterprises, especially in scaling AI deployments, said Charlie Dai, principal analyst at Forrester, too. “The agent identity problem is already emerging in early production deployments, particularly where multiple agents interact across tools, APIs, and organizational boundaries without consistent authentication and accountability models,” he said.

“We have seen growing concerns around provenance, authorization scoping, and auditability in agent-to-agent interactions, especially in regulated industries and multi-vendor environments,” Dai said.

Agent identity has become a more critical concern for enterprises, pointed out Jaishiv Prakash, director analyst at Gartner: “Agent identity has moved from an architectural consideration to an operational control-plane gap.”

“The evidence we see from enterprise clients is consistent: they need to know which agent acted, who it represented, what authority it had, and whether its runtime behavior matched its intended design,” Prakash said.

Beyond the problem ANS seeks to solve, analysts also said the framework’s architecture could prove equally important for enterprise adoption.

“For enterprises, one of ANS’s biggest advantages may be its reliance on DNS, especially since they already use it to manage domains and trust. It avoids creating a new registry and lets companies publish and verify agent identities using existing internet infrastructure, making adoption easier and cheaper,” said Pareekh Jain, principal analyst at Pareekh Consulting.

More so because enterprises don’t have to build anything new, according to Amit Jena, AI development manager at IT consulting firm Kanerika.

However, there are downsides to being built on DNS, especially on the security front, Dai cautioned.

“DNS was not originally designed for high-assurance identity. This will make it susceptible to spoofing, hijacking, and latency or propagation inconsistencies that can undermine trust guarantees,” Dai said.

To bypass these security concerns, enterprises should complement ANS with IAM, workload identity, AI gateways, and API security controls, according to Prakash.

The Foundation, though, argues that DNS alone is not intended to serve as the sole trust mechanism inside ANS and the framework supports Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs), allowing enterprises to tie agents to existing digital and organizational identity systems as part of the broader identity verification model.

Battle of the standards

Even so, ANS is entering an increasingly crowded ecosystem of standards and frameworks that enable and govern enterprise AI agents.

While protocols such as MCP and A2A focus on connecting agents to tools and facilitating communication between each other, the Foundation itself hosts two standards that touch on agent identity, discovery, and trust.

One of them is DNS-AI Discovery (DNS-AID), a proposed framework that uses DNS records to help agents advertise their capabilities and make themselves discoverable across networks. Another is AGNTCY, a Cisco-led project that aims to provide a broader infrastructure stack for multi-agent systems, including capabilities for agent discovery, identity, messaging, and observability.

That raises the possibility of fragmentation if competing approaches evolve in parallel.

However, Prakash pointed out that the presence of multiple similar frameworks that touch on agent trust, identity, and discovery shows that the agent infrastructure market has entered its standards discovery phase, not its standards consolidation phase.

“Overlap in discovery, identity, messaging, and observability is expected at this stage,” Prakash said.

Enterprises, thus, the analyst added, should wait for “clarity and clearer interoperability guidance” before they treat any one initiative as strategic infrastructure.

The article originally appeared on InfoWorld.