The Stack — July 01, 2026

Today's technology briefing highlights significant developments across AI/ML, industry moves, infrastructure, and the developer world.

AI/ML

Google has introduced Nano Banana 2 Lite, a new AI image-generation model that emphasizes speed and cost-effectiveness, though it struggles with text and detailed images. This model is part of the Gemini 3.1 family and is tailored for rapid prototyping. Meanwhile, Anthropic has launched Claude Sonnet 5, enhancing its AI model with improved reasoning and tool use at a competitive price point, focusing on agentic capabilities and cybersecurity tasks.

Industry Moves

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has established a new internal team of AI-focused forward-deployed engineers, committing $1 billion in resources. This initiative aims to embed engineers within client companies to facilitate AI deployments, drawing inspiration from models used by companies like Palantir. In other industry news, Singapore-based startup Acti has launched an AI-enabled keyboard for iOS and Android, integrating AI tools directly into smartphone keyboards, supported by $5.3 million in seed funding.

Infrastructure

South Korea is making a substantial $1 trillion investment to expand its memory chip production, AI data centers, and the commercial deployment of humanoid robots by 2028. This initiative aims to double the country's DRAM production within five years, driven by high demand in the AI industry. Additionally, AI chip startup Etched has announced significant sales and a high valuation, backed by $800 million in funding, as it tests its frontier inference clusters to enhance AI processing capabilities.

Cybersecurity

The US government has announced a $10 million reward for information on a Russian cyber group targeting Signal and WhatsApp accounts. This group employs phishing tactics to access accounts and has evolved methods to capture encrypted backups, raising concerns about privacy and security.

Developer World

ZLUDA, a project enabling CUDA applications to run on non-NVIDIA GPUs, has released Version 6, which includes support for PhysX and Blender, improved Windows support, and performance enhancements. This project has transitioned from commercial funding to a personal endeavor, affecting its development priorities. Additionally, a new project named "webernetes" has ported Kubernetes functionalities to the browser using TypeScript, aimed at educational and interactive content.

These updates reflect ongoing innovation and strategic investments across various tech sectors, emphasizing the integration of AI in hardware, the expansion of open-source tools, and the evolving landscape of cybersecurity and infrastructure.