Accenture and Anthropic Form AI Safety Partnership With $1B Each
Accenture and Anthropic have formed a new partnership to improve the safety of artificial intelligence, with each company pledging to invest at least $1B into the initiative over the next five years. Shares of Accenture jumped 6% during early post-market trading on Friday. The companies will deploy a team of embedded evaluators to work with Anthropic's internal teams and safety partners to evaluate and red-team models, conduct alignment assessments and test model safeguards. Accenture CEO Julie Sweet said safety requires both deep technical expertise and a clear understanding of how AI is used in the real world, calling embedded evaluation an emerging area. Accenture will lean on its recent acquisition of Faculty, a U.K.-based AI firm it completed buying in March, to help in the evaluations, according to Accenture Chief Technology Officer Marc Warner.
SpaceX Weighs Buying Data From Failed Startups to Feed AI
SpaceX has held internal discussions about buying customer, operational and other data from troubled or failed startups to feed its AI efforts, according to Bloomberg. The talks remain informal and may not result in any transactions. SpaceX has already used information from Elon Musk's social network X, along with internal AI tutors, to help train and improve its software, and reportedly paused hiring for those tutors earlier this year. The push comes as AI becomes a larger part of SpaceX's spending: the company invested $15.8 billion in AI-related capital expenditures during the second quarter, while its AI business generated $2.56 billion in revenue during the period but posted a $1.26 billion operating loss. Investors will be watching whether that spending can eventually turn the company's expanding AI operation into a profitable business.
Nokia Expands Microsoft Partnership for AI-Driven Network Automation
Nokia Corporation is expanding its partnership with Microsoft Corporation to build an agentic, unified data foundation aimed at helping telecom providers scale artificial intelligence-driven operations. Under the agreement, Nokia Data Suite integrates with Microsoft Fabric, combining telco-specific data products with unified analytics, governance and AI capabilities across cloud, hybrid and on-premises environments. The company is initially applying these capabilities to autonomous Voice over New Radio assurance, where AI agents detect network anomalies, analyze service issues and recommend corrective actions. Nokia faces competition from Ericsson, which expanded its Intelligent Automation Platform to support automation across radio and core networks, and from Cisco Systems, which is integrating AI agents into its networking portfolio. Nokia shares have soared 123.6% over the past year compared with the industry's 20.6% growth, and the stock trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 2.42 versus the industry tally of 4.93.
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