• Google CEO Sundar Pichai said, "all of us are going to do well" when it comes to the AI race.
• He said he met with Elon Musk and thinks his ability to build future technologies is "unparalleled."
• Pichai said success in AI will depend on innovation and execution, which is driven by top talent.

The launch of ChatGPT set off a race among Big Tech companies and startups to scale AI, but Google CEO Sundar Pichai doesn't see it as a situation where only one player wins.

"I think all of us are going to do well in this scenario," Pichai said during an episode of the "All-In Podcast," published Friday.

Podcast host David Friedberg agreed with Pichai and said there seems to be a misconception that there's one winner "and everyone else is a loser." Friedberg said AI is introducing "an entirely new world" that's bigger than that.

Pichai's comments came after former Googler and Podcast host David Friedberg asked for his thoughts on rival companies like Microsoft, xAI, OpenAI, and Meta and their leaders. The Google CEO acknowledged that "by definition, it's a very impressive group."

"I think maybe only one of them has invited me to a dance, not the others," Pichai said, referencing Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's comments that the "new Bing" will make Google "come out and show that they can dance."

Pichai added that he spent time with Elon Musk about two weeks ago and described the billionaire's ability to build future technologies as "unparalleled." He said that while there is competition among the companies discussed, there is also respect and partnerships.

Pichai said that AI offers a much larger "opportunity landscape" than any previous technology combined. He added that there may be companies that enter the playing field that haven't been established yet. Pichai raised the point that when the internet came out in 1983, Google hadn't even been launched as a company yet. Now, it's become the dominant search engine.

"There are companies we don't even know, haven't been started yet, their names aren't known," Pichai said, adding that those "might be extraordinarily big winners" when it comes to AI.

Pichai said that the companies that end up doing well will be those that are able to "innovate and execute with the best talent." That is what will be the driver for success, Pichai said.

Google is actively investing in that belief. Last year, the tech giant reportedly spent $2.7 billion on a deal largely intended to get AI scientist and startup founder Noam Shazeer back at the company. Other companies are following the same path: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has directly called candidates to persuade them to join his startup.

OpenAI also poached dozens of Googlers last year, and Zuckerberg has reportedly written personal emails to AI researchers at Google's DeepMind as a recruitment attempt. Even if Pichai is right that there's room for multiple companies to win the AI race, the competition hasn't shown signs of letting up anytime soon.

Google declined a request to comment from Business Insider.

• Microsoft is among the latest to cut middle management jobs.
• Tech giants like Intel, Amazon, and Google are also flattening structures for efficiency.
• Experts warn that while flattening can speed decisions, it is possible to take it too far.

Companies are shedding bloated layers of management in an attempt to reduce bureaucracy. Some employees are applauding the move, known as flattening the middle, in the hopes of getting faster and boosting efficiency.

Microsoft said Tuesday it's slashing around 6,000 employees. While the days since have made it clear many of those cut were individual contributor-level engineers, executives previously told BI one motivation behind the recent cuts was to increase managers' "span of control," or the number of reports per manager.

Intel announced a great flattening last month, emphasizing more time in the office, less admin, and leaner teams.

"The best leaders get the most done with the fewest people," said the chip giant's new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, in a memo to staff.

Amazon has also increased the ratio of individual contributors to managers. They call it a "builder ratio." Google CEO Sundar Pichai told staff late last year that the company cut vice president and manager roles by 10% as part of an efficiency push. Meta has been at it for years, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg writing in a 2023 memo, "flatter is faster."

The risk is that these companies cut too many managers, leaving the remaining folks with too many direct reports.

But for now, it appears to be a risk companies are willing to take.

Agility and expertise

The logic of cutting from the middle to speed up is sound, management experts say.

"You can't go faster and be more connected to a larger ecosystem if you're having to go up and down a hierarchy for every decision," Deborah Ancona, a professor of management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Business Insider.

While some companies have been trying for decades to zap management layers, there's a new urgency to do so. Businesses exist in "an exponentially changing world," Ancona said.

Dell executives explained this to employees earlier this month, when they began reorganizing managers to have more direct reports. The company, whose head count has dropped by 25,000 in two years, also pointed to the influx of artificial intelligence as a reason it needed to move faster.

Ideally, companies would remove layers and spread decision-making throughout the organization so that those closest to customers or technology, for example, could generate ideas and make decisions, Ancona said.

"You're kind of flipping the organization," she said. "Rather than all the ideas coming from on high, you have entrepreneurial leaders who are lower down in the organization coming up with new ideas."

Bayer CEO Bill Anderson is leery of having to run everything up the chain. After taking over the German biotech company in 2023, he began implementing what he calls a "dynamic shared ownership" setup that has cut thousands of managers. Staffers come together in "mini networks" for 90-day stretches to work on projects.

"We hire highly educated, trained people, and then we put them in these environments with rules and procedures and eight layers of hierarchy," Anderson previously told BI. "Then we wonder why big companies are so lame most of the time."

Fewer managers, more reporting, more meetings?

When middle managers are cut and layers condensed, inevitably, more workers report to fewer managers. The logistics of that vary, and the success in terms of morale has a lot to do with the starting point.

Amazon started flattening last year. In September, CEO Andy Jassy ordered a 15% increase in the ratio of individual contributors to managers by March. BI reported that senior Amazon Web Services managers received a memo in January instructing them to restrict high-level hiring and increase their number of direct reports.

An Amazon spokesperson told BI at the time that the memo may have been intended for one team, but does not apply to the company at large. The Amazon spokesperson also referenced a September memo from Jassy on the importance of reducing management layers.

An AWS manager told BI this month that the flatter structure has since put more burden on employees on her team to report on what they're doing day-to-day, in addition to their actual work, since managers have less time to inspect individuals' work.

Plus, this manager said they are spending more time in meetings as they took on a more diverse group of direct reports. The Amazon spokesperson also emphasized that the individual employee's anecdote does not represent the company as a whole.

Yvonne Lee-Hawkins was assigned 21 direct reports when she worked for Amazon's human resources. She told BI that she had to quickly learn new skills to handle the load, like asynchronous work strategies, but her teams' performance suffered as her number of reports grew from 11 to 21 employees.

Weekly one-on-ones — the subject of much debate among tech titans — became impossible, and she had to cut them in half.

At Microsoft, a half-dozen employees who spoke to BI about the manager flattening trend generally regarded it as a positive step to eliminate inefficient and unnecessary levels of managers. Some managers have as few as one or two reports.

Microsoft ended up with many management layers, the people said, because it often tried to reward good engineers by promoting them to become managers. Often, those engineers-turned-managers still spent most of their time in the codebase and weren't very effective as managers.

Meanwhile, larger groups of direct reports often work better for senior employees, who need less one-on-one time and can do more things in a group setting.

A Microsoft spokesperson did not comment when asked about these factors.

Gary Hamel, a visiting professor at London Business School who lives in Silicon Valley, told BI that pushing managers to take on more direct reports can reduce micromanaging, a common bane of corporate existence.

When managers have a lot of people to oversee, it pushes them to hire people they trust, mentor rather than manage, and give up a "pretty big dose" of their authority.

"Those are all hugely positive things," he said, even if they require "a fairly dramatic change" in how managers see their role.

How many direct reports is too many?

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang famously has 60 direct reports. Managers at Dell have been told they should have 15 to 20. An AWS document viewed by BI in January mandated no fewer than eight per manager, up from six. An Amazon spokesperson told BI there are no such requirements companywide.

Gallup research indicates that the quality of a manager matters more than the number of direct reports in terms of how well teams perform. That's because more engaged managers tend to lead to more engaged teams. And small teams — those with fewer than 10 people — show both the highest and lowest levels of engagement because managers can have an outsize effect, for better or worse.

That may explain why some companies seem to thrive with dozens of direct reports per manager and others fail.

The nature of the work matters, too. When work is more complex, it can be harder for managers to oversee too many people.

Managing dozens of people gets harder when "life intersects with work," Ravin Jesuthasan, the global leader for transformation services at the consulting firm Mercer, told BI.

When employees have an issue, they often need someone to talk to about it.

"As a manager, you are the first port of call," he said.

That's one reason, Jesuthasan said, that having something like 20 direct reports would likely be "really hard." For most managers, the couple of dozen direct reports that many tech companies are aiming for is probably the limit, he said.

Strong managers can powerfully boost a company's ability to develop talent and its bottom line. A 2023 analysis from McKinsey & Company, for example, found that organizations with "top-performing" managers led to significantly better total shareholder returns over five years compared with those entities that had only average or subpar managers.

While flattening schemes may be successful at reducing bulk in the middle and speeding up decision-making, they can hinder future growth if they're not well-managed.

Jane Edison Stevenson, global vice chair for board and CEO services at the organizational consulting firm Korn Ferry, told BI that removing layers from a management pyramid can help elevate those high performers. But flatter companies may fail to develop leaders who can pull together the disparate parts of an organization.

At some point, she said, "You've got to start to make a bet on the leaders that are going to have a chance to build muscle across, not just vertically."

• Jeff Dean, chief scientist at Google, said it will soon be possible for AI to match the skills of a junior engineer.
• He estimated it could happen within the next year during the "AI Ascent" event.
• AI will have to know more than basic programming to truly be at the level of a junior programmer, he added.

Jeff Dean, Google's chief scientist, thinks that AI will soon be able to replicate the skills of a junior software engineer.

"Not that far," he said during Sequoia Capital's "AI Ascent" event, when asked how far AI was from being on par with an entry-level engineer. "I will claim that's probably possible in the next year-ish."

Plenty of tech leaders have made similar predictions as models have continued to improve at coding, and AI tools become increasingly popular among programmers. With sweeping layoffs across the tech industry, entry-level engineers are already fielding intense competition — only to see it compounded by artificial intelligence.

Still, Dean said, AI has more to learn beyond the basics of programming before it can produce work at the level of a human being.

"This hypothetical virtual engineer probably needs a better sense of many more things than just writing code in an IDE," he said. "It needs to know how to run tests, debug performance issues, and all those kinds of things."

As for how he expects it to acquire that knowledge, Dean said that the process won't be entirely unlike that of a person trying to gain the same skills.

"We know how human engineers do those things," he said. "They learn how to use various tools that we have, and can make use of them to accomplish that. And they get that wisdom from more experienced engineers, typically, or reading lots of documentation."

Research and experimentation is key, he added.

"I feel like a junior virtual engineer is going to be pretty good at reading documentation and sort of trying things out in virtual environments," Dean said. "That seems like a way to get better and better at some of these things."

Dean also said the impact "virtual" engineers will likely be significant.

"I don't know how far it will take us, but it seems like it'll take us pretty far," he said.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Business Insider prior to publication.

Android is getting its biggest visual update in years, and rather than unveiling it for the first time at its big annual developer conference, Google announced Material Three Expressive at a pre-show event broadcast on YouTube the week before. If a major design language shift for the world's most popular mobile OS doesn't qualify as a headliner at I/O, then what does? You guessed it: AI.

We expect Google to talk all about Gemini during I/O, which kicks off on Tuesday, and how it's improving it and bringing it to products in areas that consumers will see even more.

If you've paid attention to the past couple of I/O keynotes, this won't be a surprise. Android was barely mentioned in 2023, and CEO Sundar Pichai said AI so many times that we lost count. Last year's keynote was more of the same, except that Pichai saved us some trouble and counted mentions of AI for us. All of this reflects the very obvious, inescapable shift that Google and every other tech company have made recently to pump out AI features at a breakneck pace.

But in a way, less news about the newest Android OS at I/O is actually a good thing.

Google has made a big effort in recent years to bring new features to …

Read the full story at The Verge.

• Eric Schmidt warned that anyone, from artists to doctors, who doesn't embrace AI will be left behind.
• The former Google CEO recently used AI to get up to speed quickly on a rocket company he bought.
• Schmidt warned that the pace of change could catch many off guard.

Eric Schmidt thinks every worker, from CEOs to artists, needs to get to grips with AI — or risk being left behind.

The former Google CEO argued in a recent TED interview that the speed of AI progress was forcing a fundamental shift in every job, from the arts to business to science.

"Each and every one of you has a reason to use this technology," Schmidt said, referring to AI.

"If you're an artist, a teacher, a physician, a businessperson, a technical person, if you're not using this technology, you're not going to be relevant compared to your peer groups and your competitors and the people who want to be successful. Adopt it, and adopt it fast."

Schmidt, who ran Google from 2001 to 2011, says AI tools let anyone get up to speed in almost any field. He pointed to his recent decision to buy a rocket company despite knowing little about aerospace.

"It's an area that I'm not an expert in, and I want to be an expert, so I'm using deep research," Schmidt said, who was named CEO at Relativity Space in March, a California rocket startup vying to compete with SpaceX.

He said this kind of rapid learning was just the beginning. Schmidt pointed to studies that estimate AI could drive a "30% increase in productivity" annually — a jump so dramatic that "economists have no models for what that kind of increase looks like."

While predicting that entire industries could be disrupted as AI simplifies or automates work, some professions will evolve rather than disappear in his view.

"Do you really think that we're going to get rid of lawyers? No, they're just going to have more sophisticated lawsuits," Schmidt said.

'Marathon, not a sprint'

The pace of change may catch many off guard: "As this stuff happens quicker, you will forget what was true two years ago or three years ago. That's the key thing. So my advice to you all is ride the wave, but ride it every day."

When asked if he had any advice for those feeling overwhelmed by the pace of change, Schmidt, who now advises governments and startups on tech strategy, offered some perspective from his own experience.

"One thing to remember is that this is a marathon, not a sprint," he said. "Every day you get up, and you just keep going."

At the AI summit in Paris in February, Schmidt criticised Europe's AI laws as too strict but insisted that regulation was essential. "It's really important that governments understand what we're doing and keep their eye on us," he told BBC News.

He's made similar warnings before, calling in December for "meaningful control" over military AI.

• Google CEO Sundar Pichai was asked about his biggest regret with the company.
• He said Google debated acquiring Netflix "super intensely" at some point.
• Pichai also highlighted Google's achievements in research as a source of pride.

Sundar Pichai said he still wonders about some decisions Google has made — one of them being that the company never acquired Netflix.

The Google CEO gave a wide-ranging interview on the "All-In Podcast," which posted Friday. At the end of the talk, host David Friedberg, a former Googler himself, asked Pichai about his proudest moments — and biggest regret.

"We debated Netflix at some point, super intensely inside," Pichai said.

Pichai, who has been with the company since 2004 and became CEO about 10 years ago, said that acquisitions like Netflix were "debated hard" and the company "came close" to a deal. He later clarified that the decision against an acquisition was not a "regret," though.

In 2014, UK-based technology research firm CCS Insight predicted that Google would acquire Netflix in 2015, but there weren't widespread reports about acquisition discussions.

Since kicking off its global expansion in 2016, Netflix has been at the forefront of the entertainment industry and has hit over 300 million subscribers. While Google has entered the television space with its smart TV platform, Google TV, and its internet-based live streaming service, YouTube TV, it never fully broke into the traditional streaming space like Netflix.

Google has a long history of eating up the competition through high-profile acquisitions, but Netflix stands as one of the biggest names the tech giant has revealed it considered buying. Over the years, Google has successfully acquired a number of companies that have become central to its product line like Waze, Wiz, Nest, Fitbit, Android Inc., and YouTube.

Pichai added in the interview that he's proud of the fact that Google has pushed the boundaries of technology. He said there aren't many companies winning Nobel Prizes and conducting research and development that leads to the creation of businesses.

In 2024, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and director John Jumper won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing AlphaFold, an AI system that predicts the 3D structure of proteins. The tech giant also has departments like Google Research, which has invested in a wide range of topics and turned its findings into real-world products like wildfire detection and flood forecasting technology.

"I think we've done an extraordinary job at that, and we aspire to do that," Pichai said in the podcast, adding that it's a unique aspect of Google.

The rapid expansion of generative AI has changed the way Google and other tech giants design products, but most of the AI features you've used are running on remote servers with a ton of processing power. Your phone has a lot less power, but Google appears poised to give developers some important new mobile AI tools. At I/O next week, Google will likely announce a new set of APIs to let developers leverage the capabilities of Gemini Nano for on-device AI.

Google has quietly published documentation on big new AI features for developers. According to Android Authority, an update to the ML Kit SDK will add API support for on-device generative AI features via Gemini Nano. It's built on AI Core, similar to the experimental Edge AI SDK, but it plugs into an existing model with a set of predefined features that should be easy for developers to implement.

Google says ML Kit’s GenAI APIs will enable apps to do summarization, proofreading, rewriting, and image description without sending data to the cloud. However, Gemini Nano doesn't have as much power as the cloud-based version, so expect some limitations. For example, Google notes that summaries can only have a maximum of three bullet points, and image descriptions will only be available in English. The quality of outputs could also vary based on the version of Gemini Nano on a phone. The standard version (Gemini Nano XS) is about 100MB in size, but Gemini Nano XXS as seen on the Pixel 9a is a quarter of the size. It's text-only and has a much smaller context window.

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It's not TV, it's HBO. No, sorry, it's HBO Go. And also HBO Now. But now it's HBO Max, except wait, now it's not HBO at all? It's just Max? Actually, I'm being told it is once again HBO Max. Thank you for joining us on this wild and utterly nonsensical branding journey. Please keep watching The White Lotus.

On this episode of The Vergecast, Nilay, David, and The Verge's Jake Kastrenakes start the show with some personal news before digging into Warner Bros. Discovery's decision to rename its streaming service again this week, re-embracing the HBO brand after eschewing it only a few years ago. (Now that we think about it, maybe we should have seen this coming from a company that couldn't come up with a better combined name than "Warner Bros. Discovery.") The hosts also talk about the rest of the news in a busy week in streaming, from ESPN's upcoming service to the plan for Fox One.

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After that, it's time to talk gadgets. Apple's next-generation CarPlay, now called CarPlay Ultra, is finally here, but it's not at all what we expected. Google revealed the colorful, bouncy future of Android, and we really like …

Read the full story at The Verge.

• Big Tech dominated Kantar BrandZ's most valuable global brand ranking.
• Apple topped the list for the fourth year in a row.
• Companies like ChatGPT and Chipotle made their debut.

Try as they might, brands can't take a bite out of Apple.

Kantar BrandZ, a marketing data and analytics company, published its annual ranking of the world's most valuable brands.

The global market has weathered storms in the past, but the volatility caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and shifting consumer expectations over the last five years have rattled the landscape. The ongoing tariff discussions between the United States and other countries have added another layer of uncertainty to the formula. While some companies succumbed to the pressure, others steamrolled ahead.

Topping the list for the fourth year in a row is Apple with a brand value of about $1.3 trillion. That's a 28% increase from 2024, according to Kantar.

After overthrowing Jeff Bezos' Amazon in 2022, the tech giant has continued to dominate the list while Google, Microsoft, and Amazon vie for second, third, and fourth place. Under CEO Tim Cook, Apple has managed to fend off international competitors like China's Huawei and South Korea's Samsung.

Another standout on this year's list is Jensen Huang's Nvidia, which saw its brand value increase 152% from 2024. The chipmaker, which reached a $3 trillion valuation after announcing a deal with a Saudi Arabian tech firm, appeared at No. 5 on the list.

Here is Kantar's top 10 most valuable global brands:

1. Apple
2. Google
3. Microsoft
4. Amazon
5. NVIDIA
6. Facebook
7. Instagram
8. McDonald's
9. Oracle
10. Visa

Kantar's report also highlighted some "newcomers," brands making their debut on the list.

ChatGPT was the highest-ranking newcomer at No. 60, coming 25 spots ahead of financial service company Stripe and 26 spots ahead of Chipotle.

Here are the top seven newcomers:

60. ChatGPT

85. Stripe

86. Chipotle

89. Booking.com

95. Hilton

97. Uniqlo

99. DoorDash

Martin Guerrieria, head of Kantar BrandZ, said brands need to do more than differentiate themselves from competitors to stay afloat in the global market.

"The dominance of brands like Apple, Instagram, and McDonald's underlines the power of a consistent brand experience that people can relate to and remember," he said. "ChatGPT's dramatic rise shows how a brand can find fame and influence society to the extent that it changes our daily lives. But with generative AI competition accelerating, OpenAI will need to invest in its brand to preserve its first-mover momentum."

Google is rolling out a handy update for Chrome on Android, as it will now allow you to zoom in on text without affecting the appearance of the webpage. You can use a slider to enlarge text, and then set it for one page or for all the sites you visit.

Previously, when you zoomed in on a page in Chrome’s Android app, it enlarged the entire page, making the site more difficult to navigate. You can try out the updated zoom feature by tapping the three-dot menu in the top-right corner of Chrome and then selecting how far you want to increase the size of the text.

Additionally, Chrome’s Optical Character Recognition tool, which converts an image of text into a machine-readable format, will now automatically recognize scanned PDFs on desktop, letting you highlight, copy, and search for text, as well as use a screen reader with them. Google first started rolling out this feature in beta earlier this year, but now it’s available to all users on desktop.

Google is also expanding Gemini’s integration with TalkBack on Android, a screenreader that uses AI to identify and describe images on your screen. Now, TalkBack will let you ask follow-up questions about an image, such as what color an object is, what material it’s made of, and what else is in the image.

The company is launching Expressive Captions as well, which Google says “provides real-time captions for anything with sound across most apps on your phone — using AI to not only capture what someone says, but how they say it.” That means you’ll see captions that tell you when someone is saying “noooooo” instead of “no.” Google is adding captions for more kinds of sounds as well, like whistling or someone clearing their throat. This feature is rolling out in English in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia on devices running Android 15 and later.

• Tech's heaviest hitters are racing to build new AI tech for healthcare.
• They're landing partnerships with health systems and Big Pharma and selling consumer health AI tech.
• Here's how tech powerhouses from Microsoft to Alphabet to Nvidia are investing in healthcare AI.

Artificial intelligence is gaining ground in healthcare, and tech's biggest players are racing to stake their claims.

Many tech giants have been building healthcare businesses long before the AI boom. Amazon, for example, invested heavily in the industry when it acquired primary care provider One Medical for $3.9 billion in 2022.

Now, those tech powerhouses are sharpening their healthcare strategies with AI at the center. Chipmaker Nvidia has rapidly expanded its healthcare ambitions in the past two years, aiming to tackle everything from surgical robotics to drug discovery.

Their healthcare ambitions reflect a broader shift: as AI advances, Big Tech sees fresh opportunities for transformation — and revenue — in the complex industry.

From AI-powered wearables to robotic surgery, here's how tech's most powerful companies are investing in healthcare AI.

Microsoft: Doubling down on its healthcare cloud

Microsoft first entered healthcare nearly two decades ago. Now, it's integrating AI into its cloud solutions to automate hospital operations.

Microsoft bought the ambient intelligence company Nuance in 2022 for nearly $20 billion. Nuance dominates the market for AI-powered medical scribing, though it now faces tough competition from startups like $2.75 billion Abridge. Its latest release is Dragon Copilot, a solution Microsoft announced in March that integrates the company's voice dictation tech with Nuance's ambient listening, in a move the company said would help doctors save even more time documenting patient visits.

In an October 2024 KLAS report, most healthcare organizations said they considered Nuance when purchasing a clinical documentation solution, in part due to prior contracts with Microsoft and the company's extensive healthcare software suite. The tech giant is integrating AI into those other healthcare cloud offerings to organize and analyze medical records and automate tasks like patient scheduling and paperwork.

Microsoft also partners with Nvidia to combine Nvidia's AI tech with Microsoft's cloud solutions to power advanced healthcare and biopharma research and better medical imaging.

Apple: Banking on AI-powered consumer health tracking

Apple's AI efforts have been understated compared to its peers, as have its healthcare investments.

Much of Apple's healthcare attention to date has focused on its Apple Watch, which includes several AI-powered health features for consumers, from AI-powered fall detection and irregular heartbeat tracking to sleep analysis.

After Apple released its augmented reality headset Apple Vision Pro last year, the company said multiple healthcare organizations were using the new tech for various applications, including reviewing patient surgical plans or training clinicians to use new medical devices.

Apple's next big health AI push could be on the horizon. Bloomberg News reported at the end of March that Apple was developing an AI-powered health coach to provide personalized lifestyle recommendations based on its consumers' health data, as tracked through devices like the Apple Watch and iPhone.

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Nvidia: Bringing "physical AI" to the hospital

Chip giant Nvidia is digging into a wide range of healthcare specialties, from radiology to drug discovery, primarily by partnering with other healthcare companies.

Nvidia VP of healthcare Kimberly Powell told Business Insider in April that medical imaging was one of Nvidia's entry points into healthcare. The company has notched a number of medical imaging partnerships powered by its AI platforms, most recently with GE Healthcare in March. GE Healthcare plans to use Nvidia's tech to simulate autonomous medical imaging, including autonomous X-rays and ultrasounds, to test their application in physical medical devices.

It's a similar collaboration to Nvidia's existing deal with IT solutions provider Mark III to work with healthcare systems to create simulations of their hospital environments for AI development. "Physical AI," or AI that can analyze and interact with the physical world, is a key part of Nvidia's vision for healthcare. 

"This physical AI thing is coming where your whole hospital is going to turn into an AI," Powell told BI in November. "You're going to have eyes operating on your behalf, robots doing what is otherwise automatable work, and smart digital devices. So we're super excited about that, and we're doing a lot of investments."

Nvidia is also an investor in several healthcare startups, most notably clinical documentation startup Abridge, which raised $250 million in February from investors including Nvidia's venture arm NVentures at a $2.75 billion valuation, and Hippocratic AI, which raised $141 million in Series B funding from NVentures and other firms at a $1.64 billion valuation.

It's also partnered with many of its portfolio companies, such as Moon Surgical, a robotics company that uses Nvidia's medical device AI platform Holoscan for its surgical assistant robot.

Amazon: Adding more tech to consumer care

Amazon is bringing AI to doctors, patients, and pharma companies across its healthcare businesses.

In March, Amazon announced it was testing a new chatbot feature called Health AI, which the company says can give users advice and suggest products for common medical needs. The health AI assistant can direct users to Amazon's online pharmacy or to talk to a doctor at its primary care chain, One Medical, for further care. An Amazon spokesperson told BI that the chatbot is in beta, and the retailer is collecting feedback from customers and working on new features for its AI assistant.

The retail giant also offers its own medical transcription tool, called HealthScribe, which analyzes doctor-patient conversations to create clinical notes for providers. It's one of several AI capabilities that One Medical's clinicians use, in addition to features that assist with patient messaging and care coordination.

Amazon provides a number of generative AI tools through Amazon Web Services for life sciences companies, too. Genentech and AstraZeneca, for example, have used AWS's AI tools for drug discovery research and clinical trial tasks.

Amazon has also suffered more false starts in healthcare than its peers. The retailer shut down its telehealth service Amazon Care in 2022, three years after its launch, and discontinued its wearable fitness tracker Amazon Halo in 2023. Last year, One Medical came under fire after media reports and a malpractice lawsuit raised concerns about the primary care chain's patient safety practices. An Amazon spokesperson said that the company is prohibited by law from discussing patient records, but that One Medical has extensive quality and safe measures in place for patient care.

Alphabet: Powering better health research with foundation models and search tools

Alphabet has created several healthcare AI tools that build upon Google's core search capabilities, with a focus on healthcare-specific foundation models.

Google launched MedLM, a set of healthcare foundation models, in 2023 to enable tech to summarize patient-doctor conversations, conduct clinical research, and automate insurance claims processing. In October, it announced Vertex AI Search for Healthcare, a specialized search engine that gives clinicians answers to their medical questions about a patient's health records or medical documents. It's also built a research AI system designed to assist with patient diagnosis, which can analyze data such as medical images and simulate patient-provider interactions.

On the consumer front, Google has released a number of tools with health applications, such as Google Lens, which allows people to take a picture of their own skin and search for visually similar skin conditions. It's also working on personal health AI models that can interpret sleep and fitness data to offer personalized wellness suggestions.

Isomorphic Labs, Alphabet's AI research arm spun out of Google DeepMind, has partnered with pharma giants like Novartis and Eli Lilly on more efficient drug development, building on DeepMind's AlphaFold protein structures.

Dr. Karen DeSalvo has led Google's health initiatives since 2019. At the beginning of May, she announced her retirement as chief health officer; Google Health chief clinical officer Dr. Michael Howell will replace her when she steps down in August.

Oracle: Leveling up health records with AI

Oracle's long-awaited plans to revolutionize electronic medical records with AI will come to fruition this year, according to the tech company.

In October, Oracle unveiled its "next-generation" electronic health record system, which the company said would incorporate several of Oracle's cloud and AI capabilities, including clinical AI agents, search capabilities, and patient data analytics. Its goal is to seamlessly integrate AI into providers' workflows and automate healthcare administrative tasks. The AI-powered EHR is slated for release to early adopters this year, the company said.

Oracle made its biggest investment toward this goal in 2022, when it bought EHR company Cerner for $28.3 billion and rebranded it as Oracle Health. Its efforts to transform Cerner have hit a number of snags, however. BI reported in May 2024 that flaws in Cerner's EHR rollout at the Department of Veterans Affairs led to thousands of medical orders vanishing, resulting in delayed or missed treatments for many veterans, and leaving Oracle scrambling to fix Cerner's tech after the acquisition.

Oracle is also financially backing Stargate, a joint venture with OpenAI, SoftBank, and investment firm MGX, to invest up to $500 billion in US-based AI infrastructure. Oracle cofounder and executive chairman Larry Ellison said in January that the team is working on tools for advancing disease detection, including cancer detection, with AI.

Salesforce: Selling ready-made health AI agents

Salesforce is jumping onto the AI agent trend with a range of pre-built AI assistants for healthcare organizations.

In February, the cloud-based software company announced Agentforce for Health, a library of AI agents that healthcare companies can use to automate patient tasks like appointment booking, provider tasks like summarizing a patient's medical history, and life sciences tasks like clinical trial matching. Salesforce also landed a partnership with electronic health record company Athenahealth to integrate Agentforce for Health capabilities into Athenahealth's EHR.

The agentic AI release builds on Salesforce's previous healthcare assistant tool, Einstein Copilot, which launched in March 2024 to allow providers to query patient data as consolidated in Salesforce's Health Cloud.

Salesforce is also powering new AI platforms created on its Health Cloud, such as Blue Shield of California's AI-powered prior authorization tech, which the two companies said would enter testing in early 2025.

Palantir: Partnering with health systems on AI transformation

Palantir is primarily known for its billions of dollars in defense tech contracts with the US government. But it's also spent the past four years building out a healthcare business, working with top healthcare systems to improve their operations with AI.

Palantir works with health systems including Cleveland Clinic, Tampa General, and Nebraska Medicine to automate key hospital functions, including revenue cycle management, staffing and scheduling, and patient flow, co-heads of healthcare Jeremy David and Drew Goldstein told BI in April.

Palantir said in May it would work with the Joint Commission, a nonprofit that evaluates healthcare organizations for accreditation, to streamline the Joint Commission's data collection process and help hospitals manage their quality standards using Palantir's AI and analytics.

Palantir is also partnering with R1 RCM, the AI-powered revenue cycle management company acquired by TowerBrook and CD&R in an $8.9 billion take-private deal in August. Beyond its partnerships, Palantir aims to equip more healthcare startups with its AI tools through its software platform HealthStart.

Google's DeepMind research division claims its newest AI agent marks a significant step toward using the technology to tackle big problems in math and science. The system, known as AlphaEvolve, is based on the company's Gemini large language models (LLMs), with the addition of an "evolutionary" approach that evaluates and improves algorithms across a range of use cases.

AlphaEvolve is essentially an AI coding agent, but it goes deeper than a standard Gemini chatbot. When you talk to Gemini, there is always a risk of hallucination, where the AI makes up details due to the non-deterministic nature of the underlying technology. AlphaEvolve uses an interesting approach to increase its accuracy when handling complex algorithmic problems.

According to DeepMind, this AI uses an automatic evaluation system. When a researcher interacts with AlphaEvolve, they input a problem along with possible solutions and avenues to explore. The model generates multiple possible solutions, using the efficient Gemini Flash and the more detail-oriented Gemini Pro, and then each solution is analyzed by the evaluator. An evolutionary framework allows AlphaEvolve to focus on the best solution and improve upon it.

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• Donald Trump is on a whirlwind tour of the Middle East.
• His mission? To come away with deals that strengthen ties between the US and oil-rich states.
• Here are all the deals that have been announced since Trump landed in the region.

Donald Trump's Middle East trip had been billed as a dealmaking opportunity — and it's been living up to that expectation.

The president's first major overseas tour of his second term has begun with the flow of billions of dollars as US companies have lined up to announce deals with Middle Eastern nations.

A flurry of announcements came out of the Saudi-US Investment Forum held in Riyadh on Tuesday, where deal after deal emerged.

In January, Trump announced that Saudi Arabia had committed to investing $600 billion in the US over the next four years, a sign that both countries were seeking to build closer ties.

Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's de facto leader and crown prince, has made it a priority for his country to diversify its economy away from oil as part of his grand economic plan, Vision 2030.

It's why he has been busy courting business leaders in the US, with the likes of Elon Musk, OpenAI boss Sam Altman, and BlackRock's Larry Fink all in attendance at the investment forum on Tuesday.

Here's a look at some of the major deals that have been announced during Trump's visit so far.

An arms deal worth $142 billion

The US and Saudi Arabia struck an arms deal worth nearly $142 billion on the first day of Trump's trip to the Middle East. The White House described it as the "largest defense sales agreement in history."

The deal would see the US provide Saudi Arabia with "state-of-the-art warfighting equipment and services from over a dozen U.S. defense firms," according to the White House.

The services will offer Saudi Arabia defense coverage that includes air force advancement and space capabilities, air and missile defense, maritime and coastal security, border security and information and communication systems upgrades, Trump's administration added.

Nvidia brings chips to Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia's grand plans to become a regional leader in AI depend on its access to highly advanced chips to train and run leading models. That's where Nvidia comes in.

The US chipmaker is set to bring at least 18,000 of its Blackwell GPUs to Saudi Arabia as part of an initial deployment phase involving Humain, a new AI subsidiary established by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund.

Humain's aim is to build so-called AI factories to fulfil its ambitions, with plans to make use of "several hundred thousand of Nvidia's most advanced GPUs" over the next five years.

A top Nvidia rival is building Saudi ties, too

AMD, one of the top rivals to Nvidia, has not let down the opportunity to build close ties with Saudi Arabia, either.

On Tuesday, the company announced it will work with Humain to invest up to $10 billion in AI compute over the next five years.

According to the company, the infrastructure built will involve "a network of AMD-based AI computing centers stretching from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the United States."

Amazon is building an 'AI Zone'

Amazon Web Services is getting in on the action too, with a more than $5 billion plan to build what it calls an "AI Zone" in Saudi Arabia.

According to the company, the "first-of-a-kind" area will provide a space in which a vastly complex set of infrastructure including servers loaded with chips aimed at delivering "faster AI training and inference."

It follows an announcement last year in which AWS said it would bring data centers to the country in 2026 and invest more than $5.3 billion.

Google is eyeing Saudi Arabia's AI startups

Betting on startup talent is a big priority for Saudi venture capital firm STV. It's about to get a helping hand in that process from Google, which is backing STV's $100 million AI investment fund.

The fund will invest in companies in the Middle East and North Africa, or MENA.

"Our backing of STV's AI Fund represents a strong commitment to supporting the AI ecosystem in MENA, building on our broader efforts to provide access to the opportunity behind AI for everyone," Google said in a blog post on Tuesday.

Supermicro's $20 billion data deal

California-based tech firm Supermicro might not have the same heft as the Big Tech firms surrounding it in Silicon Valley, but the company is showing it can play a strategic role in forging deep ties with Saudi Arabia.

This week, the company, which specializes in developing servers, signed a multi-year partnership worth $20 billion with DataVolt, a Saudi data center company founded in 2023.

The deal involves operations and manufacturing taking place in both Saudi Arabia and the US.

• Chelsey Fleming conducts research at Google Labs on how people engage with emerging tech like AI.
• Fleming spoke with BI about how companies can encourage their employees to experiment with AI.
• This article is part of "CXO AI Playbook" — straight talk from business leaders on how they're testing and using AI.

There may not be many archaeologists in Silicon Valley, but perhaps there should be.

A deep understanding of the past, after all, can offer insights into the future — especially when it comes to navigating technological change. That's how Chelsey Fleming, a UX research lead at Google Labs who earned her doctorate in archaeology from UCLA, sees it.

Fleming studies how people interact with emerging technology, drawing parallels between ancient innovations and today's AI-driven developments. "Every major technological shift can feel like a massive disruption," she said. "That's not to minimize or negate its significance, but history shows that we adapt, we learn."

Throughout history, new technologies and advancements — from recorded music to refrigeration to the internet — have often been met with resistance. Yet they became essential to progress. "What feels like a radical change now will, over time, become part of how we live and work," Fleming said.

But that shift shouldn't come at the cost of workers. Instead, companies should focus on using AI to reskill rather than replace them. With so much hype around AI-powered tools, Fleming said companies should be intentional about treating AI as a collaborator, not a substitute for humans. "It's important to focus on the partnership."

She said experimentation and exploration are key to building that partnership. BI spoke with Fleming about how businesses can put that into practice.

The following has been edited for clarity and length.

As AI becomes more embedded in companies, you say that employers should focus on upskilling rather than cutting costs. Why?

First and foremost, it makes for better products. A lot of companies are focused on being "AI first," but often the best solutions are human-driven or involve other types of problem-solving. Whether you're making products or changing work processes, it's about balance.

Do you think companies sometimes miss the mark when it comes to how they integrate AI into work?

I talked to someone recently who's thinking of starting a company. He asked me, "How can we use AI to help people work better?" I said that while AI can definitely improve efficiency, the first step is understanding what people actually do, the problems they face, and what they need help with. There are aspects of work people enjoy and find rewarding — those are areas where AI shouldn't intervene. People want their work to feel meaningful. It's not just about adding AI, but making sure it supports the right aspects of work.

There's evidence that many employees are reluctant, and even resistant, to using AI. Why do you think that is?

I think a lot of people feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of AI tools out there and by the thought of having to learn them. I get that. It's hard to know where to start.

And when companies treat AI training as a requirement, it can feel like a chore. If you're thinking, "I have to learn this for my job," it's a burden.

So, how can companies make using AI and upskilling more engaging?

When people are given room to experiment with new tools, it becomes much more engaging. On my team, we had a series of Friday workshops where we could explore AI: prototyping and testing things out. It made all the difference. If companies want people to learn, they should make it enjoyable by carving out small amounts of time for experimentation.

How should a company measure the ROI of that exploration?

I wouldn't necessarily try to quantify experimentation; that's the point of experimenting. Sometimes you'll realize a tool isn't useful, and that's a great learning outcome. If you figure out it's not going to work for you, fantastic — you can move on and focus on something that does.

When we develop these tools, we try to anticipate every possible use case, but once they're out in the world, people come up with things we never expected. That's part of the joy. But if you don't have a healthy mindset around experimentation and adaptation, people won't discover unexpected ways to apply the tool. They'll only see what's right in front of them.

In your line of work, do you think there will always need to be a human in the loop?

AI applications are powerful for accelerating research, but they don't eliminate the need for human insight, by, say, asking the right questions and framing them the right way. These tools speed up the work, but they don't replace human ingenuity or creativity.

Google is preparing to add a new section to restaurant and bar search profiles. The new section will let owners include timely deals or events in search results in a way that they can control, either manually or by linking to a social media profile, the company says in a post spotted by Search Engine Land.

The promos will show up under the label “This week” in the block of information that you’ll get for most local businesses in a Google search. Google suggests that companies will use it for things like daily specials or to promote upcoming live music events. It’ll launch first in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand for “single Food and Drink businesses,” the company says, though it’s not clear when.

Called “What’s Happening” on the business-facing side, bars and restaurants can update this through Posts on Google, which Google launched nearly a decade ago for brands and celebrities before expanding it to local businesses, letting them post content directly to a carousel in their Search profiles. Alternatively, companies can link their Instagram, Facebook, or X accounts for automatic cross-posting.