• SubCo will establish a trans-pacific submarine cable project dubbed ‘APX East’ that will directly connect Australia with mainland US.
• While Australia already has sovereign owned cables, it’s crucial that this type of infrastructure remains in domestic ownership to ensure data sovereignty is met.
Over the last few years, international connectivity strategies have largely been driven by scale – favoring bigger pipes, alternative routes, and the assumption that capacity would keep pace with demand. However, with the rise in data traffic contributed by AI, data-intensive workloads, and diminishing tolerance for outages, this is forcing carriers to rethink how international networks are designed and evaluated.
In that context, submarine network developer and operator SubCo, based in Australia, announced that it would build the APX East cable, directly linking Australia to the US by 2028. This can be viewed as a significant step forward in strengthening Australia’s national telecommunications resilience. As data continues to become a core and strategic national asset, a sovereign-owned international cable offers Australia greater control over how its critical information is transmitted, secured, and governed – reducing reliance on foreign-controlled infrastructure at a time of rising geopolitical and cyber risk. While this project is a commercial infrastructure, it will also be a nation-building digital backbone. Given cables are tied to national security and strategic importance, the Australian government should take steps to encourage local investments and ensure ownership for securing Australia’s digital future.
SubCo plans to establish a direct trans-pacific optical link connecting Sydney (Australia) to San Diego, California (US) using a 16 fiber-pair design with no intermediate landings. The system is expected to cost $500 million (AUD747 million). At an estimated length of 12,000 to 13,000 km (7,500 to 8,075 miles), the cable is expected to be the longest continuous subsea optical route in the world. The project is intended to support the rapid growth of AI infrastructure in Australia, where hyperscalers and emerging neocloud providers are expected to deploy up to 3GW of AI ”factories” in the coming years. This cable will complement the company’s existing Oman Australia Cable (OAC) connecting Perth (Australia) to Muscat (Oman), which was launched in late-2022. It is worth noting that both Vocus and Telstra (including Endeavour to Hawaii) have already built their own cables, which demonstrates that private businesses are ready to invest in the country’s digital backbone. As the importance of this infrastructure grows, ensuring continued domestic ownership of future investments is critical.
As highlighted in GlobalData’s recent subsea cable report (AI Growth Collides with Infrastructure Limits, December 19, 2025), governments are increasingly intervening in the development and operation of cable systems due to digital sovereignty concerns. These concerns directly affect government services, defense, healthcare, and other critical industries. As a result, it’s becoming increasingly important that Australia exercises greater control over how sensitive data is routed and protected, reducing exposure to foreign jurisdictions, commercial priorities, and strategic interests of foreign-owned hyperscalers. In an era of heightened cyber risk and geopolitical uncertainty, ownership and control of digital pathways are as important as capacity.
Governments already co-invest in critical infrastructure such as roads, power, ports, and defense assets. Subsea cables should now be recognized with the same category. The government could show support in various ways from co-investment, underwriting – it could even have long-term capacity commitments. The goal is not to remove private capital; rather, targeted public participation can help ensure that national security, resilience, and data sovereignty are met. As the window narrows for Australia to shape its digital future, projects like APX East will determine who controls the arteries of the nation’s digital economy.
Few things rival the usability and speed of a full-sized keyboard for text input. For decades, though, keyboards were mostly wired, which can limit where you use your favorite one. To address this, [KoStard]’s latest project uses an ESP32 to bridge a USB keyboard to BLE devices.
The ESP32-S3 packs a ton of fantastic functionality into its small size and low price—including USB-OTG support, which is key here. Taking advantage of this, [KoStard] programmed an ESP32-S3 to host a keyboard over its USB port while connecting via BLE to devices like cellphones.
There are some slick tricks baked in, too: you can pair with up to three devices and switch between them using a key combo. Some of you might be wondering how you can just plug a microcontroller into a keyboard and have it work. The truth is, it doesn’t without extra hardware. Both the keyboard and ESP32-S3 need power. The simplest fix is a powered USB hub: it can be battery-powered for a truly mobile setup, or use a wired 5V supply so you never have to charge batteries.
We love seeing a simple, affordable microcontroller extend the usefulness of gear you already have. Let us know in the comments about other hacks you’ve used to connect keyboards to devices never designed for them.
Apple is working on a wearable device that will allow the user to take advantage of AI models, according to sources familiar with the product who spoke with tech publication The Information.
The product is said to be "the same size as an AirTag, only slightly thicker," and will be worn as a pin, inviting comparisons to the failed Humane AI pin that launched to bad reviews and lackluster sales in 2024. The Humane product was criticized for sluggish performance and low battery life, but those shortcomings could potentially be addressed by Apple's solution, should Apple offload the processing to a synced external device like an iPhone.
The Information's sources don't specify whether that's the plan, or if it will be a standalone device.
With the nationwide launch of Edibles.com last spring, Edible Brands, the company behind Edible Arrangements, is entering bold new territory: THC. Yes, that Edible Arrangements — the name behind the flower-shaped pineapples and chocolate-covered strawberries gracing teachers’ desks and mother-in-laws’ kitchen islands since 1999.
The idea of transitioning to THC had been percolating for a while, with the brand acquiring the domain name a year ago after settling a cybersquatting lawsuit to release the name from World Media Group, an entity that had acquired the site with the hope of turning a profit by reselling it. Soon after, Edible Brands hired cannabis business professional Thomas Winstanley as executive vice president and general manager of the new venture, Edibles.com. Later that year, Somia Farid Silber stepped up as CEO after eight years with the company.
The synergy comes not only from the name, but also from the brand’s trusted reputation. In a market dominated by gas station grams and poorly labeled edibles in prohibition states, Edible Arrangement’s trusted reputation is a salve for those seeking regulation and reliability.
Thomas Winstanley
Edibles.com now reaches more than 65% of Americans with lab-tested, federally compliant THC products, offering same-day delivery in select markets. It’s a first-of-its-kind e-commerce network built for a category that, until recently, was defined by patchwork regulation, consumer uncertainty and underground connections.
Cannabis Now recently spoke with Winstanley to understand how this new model came to life, and what it means for the new era of cannabis commerce.
Building the “Amazon of THC”
Winstanley has described his ideal model as “The Amazon of THC.” In the same way Amazon helped build trust and ease in e-commerce, Edibles.com seeks to educate and serve as a central hub for THC nationwide.
“We shied away from that moniker initially, but the parallels are there.” Winstanley says. “Amazon started with one category, books, that made sense for e-commerce. For us, that entry point is functional ingestibles: products that are safe, tested and outcome-driven.”
But Winstanley’s ambitions go beyond product aggregation. “Amazon built an ecosystem that educated consumers about online shopping. We’re trying to do the same for cannabis,” he explains. “Our goal is to demystify the access point—to help people understand what they’re buying, why it’s legal and how to shop by outcome rather than just strain or potency.”
At the end of the day, Edibles.com’s is focused on consumer health and wellness—helping people enhance their wellbeing through hemp while being able to skip the hassle of going to the store. “Wellness is our guiding principle: highly categorized products that focus on outcome,” Winstanley says. “We have a lot of folks who are purchasing products online for the first time and having them delivered to their door.”
Even within such a massive framework, starting a new business is never easy. “In some ways, we’re beginning a business within a company. This is not an extension of more ways to sell strawberries, but a whole new portfolio of substances,” he says, adding that Edibles.com is currently primarily speaking to Edible Arrangements’ existing audience.
Designed for Function
Edibles.com’s UX/UI mirrors the company’s mission to deliver outcome-driven products. Rather than overwhelming users with a dispensary-style menu of hundreds of SKUs, Edibles.com organizes its offerings by need: sleep, stress, pain management, energy and mood uplift.
That health-forward lens, he notes, aligns more with Target’s vitamin aisle than a traditional cannabis shop. “My wife and I love Olly Sleep Gummies,” he says. “Our products belong in that same conversation. We’re not marketing ‘getting high’; we’re marketing better sleep, less stress and overall functional outcomes. That’s the bridge between cannabis and wellness.”
This framing places THC as a nootropic along the lines of ashwagandha, demystifying the ingredient as a part of the larger wellness landscape. Winstanley describes their framing as “more aligned with nutraceuticals than controlled substances.”
The Compliance Maze
With each state comes a new set of laws, bylaws and risk assessments, along with a separate set of legal reviews and ongoing vetting. “We move fast, but we’re also cautious,” he says. “Every day involves balancing innovation with compliance. You want to grow quickly, but you can’t jeopardize consumer trust or partner integrity.”
That trust is earned through curation and transparency. Edibles.com only features brands with established reputations, such as Wyld, Wana, Kiva, and Cann—all of which undergo rigorous compliance audits before being listed. “This is our varsity lineup,” Winstanley says. “It sets us up to reach further outside the margins.”
Restoring Confidence in a $28B Market
While the U.S. hemp-derived THC market now exceeds $28 billion, consumers remain skeptical of its legality. “We get asked all the time: ‘How is this legal?’” he says. “We’re talking about the same molecule, just different extraction processes due to regulation.”
Since hemp plants legally contain less than 0.3% THC, industry practice requires hemp-derived THC to take the route of using CBD to convert into THC. This process requires more sophisticated techniques, such as isomerization. “Marijuana” plants, however, have a naturally higher THC content, lending themselves to a more straightforward extraction process (including solvents, ethanol or CO2).
“Hemp leveled the playing field,” he says. “It allows for a vibrant, more diverse community of entrepreneurs and businesses that are no longer locked out of the market and can pursue their goals, finding a manufacturing contract with a brewery or gummy company, rather than in a regulated market.”
However, in November, President Trump signed a spending bill to end the 43-day government shutdown, which included a ban on all hemp-derived THC products. While nothing has taken effect yet—and industry professionals are pushing back—it remains a very real threat. Winstanley is one of those professionals, pledging to use the one-year grace period to organize resistance: “Farmers, brands, and consumers, once fragmented, are now mobilizing together to defend what they’ve built and to finally push for the federal framework the hemp industry has long demanded.”
“We’re executive directors of the US Hemp Roundtable. We’re aiming to ensure that federal laws don’t eliminate the $28 billion industry, 3,000 jobs, and revenue for farmers that they currently generate from soy and corn production. I’m fortunate to have to solve these problems; I think there’s a major generational shift happening – the issues we’re arguing about now will be so far in the rearview mirror in the next ten years. The pain will be worth it in the end.”
A Responsible Revolution
For Winstanley, the stakes go beyond business. “We’re not just selling THC, we’re proving we can do it responsibly at scale,” he says.
He’s candid about the risks that keep him up at night, the first concern being the very real consumer health threat posed by unregulated products. “I have a four-year-old and one-year-old, and if my son saw a Nerd’s Rope-infused gummy, he’s more likely to try something he shouldn’t. That’s why we self-regulate, use age gates, and push for better policies.”
Amid the challenges, Winstanley remains optimistic. “THC can help our country,” he says. “It’s grown, processed and sold here: a true homegrown supply chain. What excites me most is that we’re finally bringing cannabis into the same conversation as wellness, health and happiness.”
On Friday, OpenAI announced it will begin testing advertisements inside the ChatGPT app for some US users in a bid to expand its customer base and diversify revenue. The move represents a reversal for CEO Sam Altman, who in 2024 described advertising in ChatGPT as a "last resort" and expressed concerns that ads could erode user trust, although he did not completely rule out the possibility at the time.
The banner ads will appear in the coming weeks for logged-in users of the free version of ChatGPT as well as the new $8 per month ChatGPT Go plan, which OpenAI also announced Friday is now available worldwide. OpenAI first launched ChatGPT Go in India in August 2025 and has since rolled it out to over 170 countries.
Users paying for the more expensive Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise tiers will not see advertisements.
Microsoft is finally allowing some users to uninstall Copilot in Windows 11, but the option comes with strict conditions and is limited mainly to managed work devices, leaving most free users without a real off switch.
Paramount Skydance escalated its hostile takeover bid of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) today by filing a lawsuit in Delaware Chancery Court against WBD, declaring its intention to fight Netflix’s acquisition.
In December, WBD agreed to sell its streaming and movie businesses to Netflix for $82.7 billion. The deal would see WBD’s Global Networks division, composed of WBD's legacy cable networks, spun out into a separate company called Discovery Global. But in December, Paramount submitted a hostile takeover bid and amended its bid for WBD. Subsequently, the company has aggressively tried to convince WBD’s shareholders that its $108.4 billion offer for all of WBD is superior to the Netflix deal.
Today, Paramount CEO David Ellison wrote a letter to WBD shareholders informing them of Paramount’s lawsuit. The lawsuit requests the court to force WBD to disclose “how it valued the Global Networks stub equity, how it valued the overall Netflix transaction, how the purchase price reduction for debt works in the Netflix transaction, or even what the basis is for its ‘risk adjustment’” of Paramount’s $30 per share all-cash offer. Netflix’s offer equates to $27.72 per share, including $23.25 in cash and shares of Netflix common stock. Paramount hopes the information will encourage more WBD shareholders to tender their shares under Paramount's offer by the January 21 deadline.
Rumble on Wednesday announced the launch of a new digital wallet built in partnership with stablecoin giant Tether, allowing users and creators to send, receive and store cryptocurrency directly on the video-sharing platform without relying on banks or third-party payment processors.
The product, dubbed Rumble Wallet, will enable direct peer-to-peer payments using Bitcoin, Tether’s USDT stablecoin and Tether Gold (XAUt).
The company said the wallet is designed to let creators get paid directly by their audiences, reducing fees and limiting the risk of payment restrictions, account freezes or deplatforming by traditional financial intermediaries.
Founder, chairman and CEO Chris Pavlovski said the wallet aligns closely with the company’s free-speech mission and its long-running push to build alternatives to Big Tech infrastructure.
“Rumble represents free speech and liberty the same way that cryptocurrency and a decentralized internet represent freedom, and Rumble Wallet is the natural combination of those things,” Pavlovski said in a statement. “We are putting more power into the hands of users and creators so they can engage with and financially support the content they like.”
Later, Pavlovski posted on X, “If its not clear, I’ll make it really clear. Rumble Wallet will compete directly against Coinbase and Venmo — but we’re NOT custodial and we CANNOT shutdown your account. Its true financial freedom to buy, hold and tip crypto.”
BREAKING: Video streaming giant Rumble launches a crypto wallet to enable its audience to tip in #Bitcoin and crypto.
The announcement comes as the company continues to position itself as a “freedom-first” technology platform, appealing to creators and audiences frustrated with censorship, demonetization and opaque moderation policies on mainstream platforms.
The wallet is non-custodial, meaning users maintain confirmation of their own digital assets rather than handing control to a centralized provider.
The wallet is built using Tether’s Wallet Development Kit, which is designed to help platforms integrate crypto payments directly into their products.
CEO Paolo Ardoino said the collaboration reflects the company’s broader focus on decentralization and user autonomy.
“At Tether, we champion technologies that break boundaries and promote freedom, decentralization and the fundamental right to free expression,” Ardoino said. “Rumble Wallet brings those ideals together into one product that will give tens of millions of users more control than any platform has offered before, even in the United States.”
The two companies already have deep financial ties. Tether holds nearly 104 million shares of Rumble, representing roughly 48% of the company, according to disclosures.
MoonPay will power Rumble Wallet’s crypto on- and off-ramps, allowing users to seamlessly convert between digital assets and traditional payment methods such as credit cards, Apple Pay, PayPal and Venmo.
“Peer-to-peer payments powered by crypto are the future of the internet economy,” said MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright. “Rumble is one of the first major platforms to adopt this model, giving creators the ability to get paid instantly in stablecoins or Bitcoin and easily move in and out of fiat.”
Shares of Rumble rose 3% following the announcement, reflecting investor optimism around the platform’s expanding crypto strategy and creator monetization tools.
After a sudden internet cable break between Finland and Estonia, authorities have seized the cargo ship Fitburg. With two crew members arrested and sanctioned steel found on board, investigators are now probing if this was an accident or a deliberate act of hybrid warfare.
From top left, clockwise: Sheila Gulati, Cameron Borumand, Annie Luchsinger, Chris DeVore, Sabrina Albers (Wu), and Andy Liu.
AI has attracted unprecedented levels of capital and attention. And questions are growing about the so-called AI bubble: Are too many startups chasing the same ideas? Are valuations running ahead of real adoption? And will all this investment pay off — or pop?
GeekWire polled a handful of Seattle-area venture capitalists about whether they think an AI bubble exists, and how startups should prepare as they plan for 2026.
Taken together, the investors paint a picture of a market that is overheated in places, but far from broken. They see clear signs of excess in AI — especially in early-stage private companies where valuations often outpace real traction. But they largely reject the idea of a catastrophic bubble, and most argue that the technology itself is already delivering real value.
They differ on the details: Some see the biggest excess in data center buildouts. Others point to narrative-driven startups raising at huge valuations without real customer traction. One investor puts AI’s full impact 10 to 20 years out. Another sees immediate opportunity as companies rethink their software spending, making longtime vendors vulnerable.
Their advice to startup founders: ignore the hype, focus on real customer problems, build durable revenue and efficient businesses, and be ready for some market cooling.
“There’s clear froth in parts of the AI market, especially in early-stage private valuations where companies are priced well ahead of fundamentals, which fits a classic ‘bubble’ definition. In the public markets, the strongest AI companies are backing valuations with outsized earnings and growth, so it doesn’t look like a traditional bubble there.
The most pronounced exuberance is in the private markets, particularly at seed and Series A, where many investors are trying to get in earlier on AI exposure. As a result, capital is chasing startups with limited traction and valuations that price in outcomes that may take years of execution to justify.
Startups should focus on durable business fundamentals early on. Build repeatable revenue through annual or multi-year contracts, solve real customer problems, and differentiate by integrating deeply into the customer tech stack to create real product and company flywheels. Long-term success comes from delivering measurable value and defensible growth over time.”
“Many factors are at play here. You have a new and genuinely transformative technology in AI. Over the long term, it will radically reshape how nearly every industry operates. At the same time, history tells us that new technologies tend to be overestimated in the short term and underestimated in the long term. The most profound, fully realized impacts of AI may still be 10-to-20 years away.
In the near term (the next few years), I expect some pullback in the public markets as investors come to terms with the fact that true ‘enterprise readiness’ for AI will take time. This doesn’t suggest anything catastrophic — just that the roughly 21 percent year-over-year growth we’ve seen in the Nasdaq is unlikely to be sustainable and may revert closer to the 30-year average of around 10 percent. After a few meaningful pullbacks, pundits will inevitably claim that AI is overhyped. In reality, this would simply represent a normalization after an extraordinary, AI-fueled run in the public markets.
Late-stage private markets will see some overly hyped companies — this happens in every boom cycle. The winners will be bigger than ever, but the losses will also be bigger than ever. When you have companies like Anthropic growing from $1 billion to a projected $9 billion of revenue in 2025, it’s clear that AI is already delivering real, material impact in the world.
For startups, there’s no better time to be building than now. M&A markets are back, customers have budget, and talent wants to work on interesting projects. With that said, there is a lot of noise, so it’s best to go deep and really focus on a core customer problem. Most of the growth we’ve seen to date is in the infrastructure layer — the next few years will be about the next generation of AI-powered applications.”
Chris DeVore speaks at the GeekWire Summit in 2022. (GeekWire File Photo / Dan DeLong)
“Yes, a significant amount of capital being deployed globally in AI (and particularly in the data center buildout) is almost certainly being misallocated. Specifically in startups, outside a few presumed winners (OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor), the concern is less overcapitalization and more the prices at which financings are being done relative to the actual cash flows and margin potential of the companies being financed.
That said, unlike some recent bubbles I can think of (crypto, metaverse, etc.) there are actual babies in the bathwater this time. LLMs are remarkably capable tools even at their current state of development, and will remain core to many software development and knowledge work tasks long after rationality has returned to the financial landscape.
The founder and investor challenge in moments like the current one is how to make decisions that will look smart ten years from now, not just in the current moment. Are there ways to apply LLMs to create durable business value in segments of the economy that are not likely to be overcapitalized or competed to zero by the near-term flood of dollars? The only alternative strategy is to try to pick winners in the capital wars and pay whatever the market demands for those assets, but history suggests that’s a very low odds proposition for even the best players.
The recipe for success in times like this is not that different from any other time: pick a customer segment that you understand better than anyone else, engage deeply with those customers to understand what problems you can uniquely solve with LLMs that were too hard or expensive to solve previously, build quickly and iteratively to show value to those customers, and maintain that pace of shipping and learning for as long as you can.
That may sound simple, but it’s remarkable how few founding teams are able to pull it off, and that why startups are so hard, and so fun.”
Sheila Gulati of Tola Capital. (GeekWire File Photo)
“Broadly, I don’t think we’re in an AI bubble right now. Similar concerns existed when we launched the Azure platform about fifteen years ago. Back then, people were initially worried about racing to a zero-margin business.
Today’s massive AI infrastructure buildouts will shape the operational software layers that drive real-world performance — compute orchestration, data pipelines, memory systems, and large-scale inference efficiency. Value is shifting toward packaging and deploying intelligence across enterprise workflows.
Enterprise software startups should position themselves in the growing TAM of delivering full, end-to-end solutions and new ways of doing things where humans collaborate with AI agents. Winning startups will encompass both the growing IT TAM and economics of a portion of the labor market as well.
We are now seeing unprecedented malleability of CIO budgets. The deeply entrenched application stack can now shift to new players which are built with AI from the ground up. The market opportunity is massive, and companies should set their sights on building the new megacaps, not minor feature companies.”
“Yes, we are in an AI bubble, but not in the way most people think.
Capital and valuations are running well ahead of fundamentals, particularly for companies without clear customer pull, durable differentiation, or credible/reasonable paths to profitability. We’re seeing a growing gap between narrative-driven AI companies where ‘AI’ is largely a positioning exercise, and value-driven AI companies that use the technology to deliver measurable, repeatable value for customers.
The bubble seems most pronounced at the early and growth stages where AI storytelling can temporarily substitute for traction and raise capital at lofty valuations. Some strong companies will emerge from this cycle, but there will be meaningful drawdowns, recaps, or shutdowns as many startups fail to grow into those expectations.
Looking ahead to 2026, my advice to founders is straightforward:
Build real businesses, not decks. Products today can be built quickly with real revenue before raising capital.
Prioritize efficiency, customer ROI, and unit economics.
Use AI to create real leverage, not excuses for burning capital.
2026 is going to be an incredible moment to build. The cost of experimentation and building products has collapsed, and founders no longer need educational credentials (CS degrees or an MBA) to create real products and revenue. The next generation of durable AI companies will be built by small teams who focus less on hype and more on efficient execution. We’re definitely excited to see more teams building incredible products this upcoming year.”
“From my perspective, what we’re seeing is less an AI bubble and more a classic venture cycle playing out around a genuinely transformative platform shift. Venture has always adapted to new normals alongside major technology inflections (cloud, mobile, social), and AI is the fastest-moving one we’ve seen to date.
The difference this time is speed, scale, and capital availability. AI adoption is happening at a faster clip and at a much larger scale than prior platform shifts, all while private-market capital has reached historic highs. As those forces collide, pricing, timelines, and investor behavior evolve.
Capital moving ahead of fundamentals is not new. There will be some shakeouts, but that doesn’t mean underlying value creation isn’t happening. Companies with real technology, real distribution, and real customers will endure.”
AI has been the rage for at least three years now, first just generative AI (GenAI), and now agentic AI. AI can be pretty useful, at GlobalData we’ve done some very cool things with AI on our site. Strategic things, that serve a defined purpose and add value. The use of AI at GlobalData hasn’t been indiscriminate – it has been thought through with how it could help our customers and ourselves. Even this skeptical author can appreciate what’s been done.
But a lot of what is happening out there with AI is indiscriminate and doesn’t attack problems in a prescriptive way. Instead, it is sold as a panacea. A cure for all business and IT ills. The claims are always huge but strangely lacking in detail. It’s particularly true for agentic AI where only in the last month managed to get MCP into the Linux Foundation as a standard. The security issues of agentic AI are still largely unaddressed and certainly not addressed in any standardized fashion. It’s not that agentic AI is a bad idea, it’s not. But the way it’s being sold has a tinge of irrational hysteria.
Sometimes when a vendor introduces a new capability that proudly uses agentic AI, it’s not clear why that capability being ‘agentic’ makes any difference than just AI. New AI features are appearing everywhere, with vendors jamming Ai in every nook and cranny, ignoring the privacy issues, and making it next to impossible to avoid or turn off. The worst part is often these AI features are half-baked ideas implemented too quickly or even worse, written by AI itself and all of the security and code bloat issues that ensue.
The prevailing wind, no scratch that, the hurricane force gale in the IT industry is that AI is everything, AI must be everywhere, and *any* AI is good AI. Any product, service, solution, or announcement must spend at least half of its content on how this is AI and how AI is good.
AI *can* be a wonderful thing. But serious enterprise IT administrators, coders, and engineers know a few things:
1. In a new market like AI, not every company selling AI will continue to sell AI. There will be consolidation, especially in an overhyped trend. Vendors and products will disappear.2. Version 1.0 hardly ever lives up to its billing. Even Windows wasn’t really minimally viable until 3.1. 3. Aligning IT/business value received vs. costs to implement/continue is a core component to the job.4. The bigger the hype, the bigger the backlash.5. The bigger the hype, the bigger the fear of missing out (FOMO) amongst senior management.6. The problems are in the details, not in the overall concept.
So let’s all slow our roll when it comes to AI. More focus on what matters, what can *demonstrably* provide value vs. what is claimed will provide value. Implementation costs as well as one year, three year, and five year costs. Risk assessment from a data privacy, cybersecurity, and regulation standpoint. In short, a little bit more due diligence and a lot less FOMO. AI is going to happen; that’s not the issue. The issue is for enterprises to implement AI where it will help, rather than viewing it as a panacea for all problems.
Javier Tordable, CEO and founder of Pauling.AI, at the Plug and Play Seattle event held earlier this month. (Pauling Photo)
A Seattle-area startup called Pauling.AI is harnessing artificial intelligence to automate the early steps that lead to the discovery of new drugs. The technology can complete tasks in a matter of weeks that previously required three to six months, said founder and CEO Javier Tordable.
Using AI to accelerate research timelines could ultimately spark an exponential increase in new treatments, proponents say.
“The dream of a lot of people in the field would be that, at some point, we’ll go from 30 or 40 new drugs approved every year to 300 or 400,” Tordable said, “and cure all sorts of diseases.”
Tordable launched his company in 2024 after a 16-year tenure at Google, most recently as the technical director of the company’s healthcare and life sciences initiatives. While he doesn’t have expertise in biology or chemistry, Tordable said he’s skilled at building tech tools that can perform complex tasks — such as those required to create new pharmaceuticals.
The startup operates on a “scientist-as-a-service” model, allowing researchers to outsource early steps in the drug discovery process to AI. The platform performs computational chemistry work, engineering drug candidates and modeling how they might interact with molecules and inhibitors within a cell.
The result is a curated list of small-molecule compounds that scientists can then move into a physical laboratory for testing as therapeutics. In the future, the startup would like to produce more complex compounds as drug candidates, such as antibodies.
To accomplish all of this, Pauling is building automation tools that engage with existing large language models and databases from numerous sources.
The startup has six employees who work remotely. Its leadership includes Chief Scientific Officer Oleksandr Savytskyi, a computational biologist who worked in academia in Ukraine and did research at the Mayo Clinic.
Pauling has secured an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funding from Flex Capital and angel investors. It currently serves less than a dozen customers, including several high-profile academic institutions, Tordable said.
The company joins a burgeoning field of AI-biotech ventures, with numerous Pacific Northwest startups: Variational AI in Vancouver, B.C.; Seattle-based Potato and Synthesize Bio; and Xaira Therapeutics, which is based in San Francisco and has labs in Seattle. Additionally, FutureHouse is a California nonprofit in this sphere.
Ultimately, Tordable hopes that by shrinking the time and cost of drug development, it will become economically feasible to tackle rare diseases that are typically not served by big pharma, providing overlooked patients with treatments and cures.
“The nice thing of working in this field is that we’re not necessarily doing it just for economic returns,” Tordable said. “There’s also an enormous benefit to humanity.”
DXC has created AdvisoryX, a global advisory and consulting group to help enterprises scale their AI deployment and create business values.
Besides leveraging AI to drive innovation with customers, DXC is also adopting AI internally to gain productivity and embedding AI into its services.
DXC has made significant progress expanding its AI capability throughout 2025. The company recently launched AdvisoryX, a global advisory and consulting group designed to help enterprises address their most complex strategic, operational, and technology challenges. This is a positive move that can help enterprises accelerate their AI journey and achieve better outcomes. While enterprises are eager to implement AI, most of them do not have a well-thought-out strategy and operating model, or the necessary expertise to deploy AI successfully. What happens typically is departments working on siloed projects, without organization-wide collaboration, resulting in inefficiencies and governance issues. DXC’s AdvisoryX helps to overcome key challenges from getting started to the full lifecycle management.
DXC’s AdvisoryX offers five integrated solutions, which include DXC’s AI Core (i.e., the foundation including data, modeling, governance, and platform architecture); AI Reinvent (i.e., proven industry use cases across human-assisted, semi-autonomous, and autonomous operating models); AI Interact (i.e., redesigned workflows for collaboration between people and AI); AI Validate (i.e., continuous testing, observability, and governance); and AI Manage (i.e., production operations and lifecycle management).
With AdvisoryX, DXC has strengthened its position as a partner for AI innovation and allows the company to counter efforts by competitors to drive mindshare in the AI space. This is also a buildup of efforts the company has undertaken to develop its AI capabilities. In October 2025, DXC announced Xponential, which is an AI orchestration blueprint that has already been used by global enterprises to scale AI adoption. Xponential provides a structured approach to integrating people, processes, and technology. There are five independent pillars within the blueprint, including: ‘Insight’ (i.e., embedded governance, compliance, and observability); ‘Accelerators’ (i.e., tools to speed up deployment); ‘Automation’ (i.e., agentic frameworks and protocols); ‘Approach’ (i.e., collaboration of skilled professionals and AI to amplify outcomes); and ‘Process’ (i.e., delivery methodology). The company has indicated Singapore General Hospital as a client who has leveraged DXC’s expertise to develop the Augmented Intelligence in Infectious Diseases (AI2D) solution. This solution helps to guide antibiotic choices for lower respiratory tract infections with 90% accuracy and improve patient care while combating antimicrobial resistance.
In April 2025, the company introduced DXC AI Workbench, a generative AI (GenAI) offering that combines consulting, engineering, and secure enterprise services to help businesses worldwide integrate and scale responsible AI into their operations. The company has named Ferrovial, a global infrastructure company, as a customer reference that has leveraged DXC AI Workbench. The customer developed more than 30 AI agents making real-time decisions to optimize field operations, elevate safety measures, manage business knowledge, analyze competition, and assess regulatory impacts.
The company has identified AI as a key driver for business growth. Equally, it sees opportunities to apply AI internally for productivity and to gain experience from the technology. For example, DXC’s finance teams have used AI to transform back-office activities and eliminate repetitive processes; its legal department uses AI for legal research, drafting, and document preparation; and its sales and marketing teams deploy AI to automate workflows, generate proposals, etc. The company is also leveraging AI to enhance its service offerings. For example, it has partnered with 7AI to launch DXC’s agentic security operations center. These examples underscore DXC’s experience and capability in creating business values with AI.
That said, DXC is not the only systems integrator using AI to drive a with an AI advisory and consulting practice. While the company is showing traction and building customer case studies, competitors are also moving rapidly to engage clients in AI innovation and implementation. Accenture, for example, has nearly doubled its GenAI bookings in FY2025 to $5.9 billion from FY2024 and tripled its revenues to $2.7 billion. Tata Consultancy Services has also created a dedicated Tata Consultancy Services AI business unit, and it is driving transformation through a ‘responsible AI’ framework.
While DXC has introduced AdvisoryX, there is a lack of details in terms of the size of the group, areas of focus (e.g., geographical regions and industry sectors), and the assets underpinning its five integrated solutions. This makes it harder to see the differentiation against other providers that are also scaling their AI consulting practice. The company should also consider following up with announcements to highlight how AdvisoryX has made a difference in helping clients achieve their AI goals. This can be across the five integrated solutions, especially AdvisoryX’s AI Reinvent and AI Interact, which address many challenges related to human collaboration and business processes.
It is still early days in the adoption of AI, and competition in the AI space will become more intense. To stay competitive, service providers need to continue to strengthen their ability to help clients align business goals, industry-specific processes and challenges; enhance their AI platforms and tools; and expand their AI partner ecosystem. They also need to build more customer case studies to highlight success and gain credibility.
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