IBM and OpenAI Announce Major Enterprise AI Partnership
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Top story: IBM and OpenAI deepen their partnership
IBM announced a strategic partnership with OpenAI aimed at accelerating enterprise AI adoption. As part of the deal, IBM will establish a dedicated OpenAI practice within IBM Consulting and will train and certify tens of thousands of consultants on OpenAI's technologies — including Codex, its API, and cybersecurity solutions. The company will also integrate OpenAI's latest models, including GPT-5.6, into its enterprise AI platform, IBM Consulting Advantage.
The deal comes roughly six months after IBM announced a similar alliance with Anthropic, reflecting a broader trend: major AI vendors are increasingly investing in partnerships with global consulting firms to reach enterprise customers — not just improving their models in isolation. For small and mid-sized businesses considering AI adoption, this is a clear signal: professional guidance and integration are becoming as central to the market as the underlying technology itself.
Microsoft merges its Copilot apps — and drops underperforming features
Microsoft is beginning to merge its consumer-facing Copilot app with the more business-oriented Microsoft 365 Copilot app into a single experience. At the same time, the company is dropping several features that failed to gain traction: Group Chats, AI-generated podcasts, experimental Copilot Labs features, Deep Research (business users get Researcher as a replacement), and its animated character, Mico. The move mirrors a broader industry trend of consolidating AI apps — Anthropic folded Cowork into regular Claude chat, and OpenAI merged Operator into ChatGPT. For both business and consumer Copilot users, this is a tangible change worth preparing for.
OpenAI launches 'Ultrafast' mode — 14x faster
OpenAI announced a new mode called Ultrafast for its flagship model GPT-5.6 Sol, enabling it to work at up to 750 tokens per second — 14 times the standard speed, powered by a partnership with chipmaker Cerebras. The company says the mode targets enterprise scenarios requiring near-instant responses: incident response, customer service, financial market analysis, and e-commerce. Access is currently limited to a small group of preview customers.
Google cuts Gemini 3.7 Flash pricing by 50%
Google launched Gemini 3.7 Flash, an upgraded model focused on coding, agentic workflows, and knowledge work — alongside a temporary 50% API price cut through the end of 2026 ($0.75 per million input tokens, $3.75 per million output tokens). The model shows significant gains on enterprise workflow-automation benchmarks, making it an attractive option for businesses looking to run AI agents at a controlled cost — while the discount window lasts.
Anthropic to start watermarking Claude-generated content
Anthropic announced it will begin embedding invisible watermarks (following the C2PA standard) in text and images generated by Claude models, enabling AI-generated content to be identified. The move is especially relevant for businesses and content creators using Claude for writing and editing, and joins a broader industry trend toward AI transparency and standardization.