TECH NEWS

Meta offers rival AI chatbots a limited free pass into WhatsApp, on Brussels’ terms

After January’s blanket ban and March’s $0.0625-per-message fee, Meta has filed a fresh European Commission proposal: free WhatsApp access for OpenAI, Perplexity, and others, up to a usage cap, then a fee.

Meta has filed a fresh European Commission proposal that would give rival AI chatbots, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Perplexity, Anthropic’s Claude and others, free access to WhatsApp in Europe up to a usage threshold, then start charging beyond it, Reuters reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The proposal was submitted last week after the European Commission signalled it was considering a formal order forcing Meta to open WhatsApp to third-party AI services under the Digital Markets Act.

Meta blocked all third-party AI assistants on WhatsApp on 15 January, an action that affected ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, and several smaller third-party assistants that had built distribution inside the messaging app.

The blanket ban triggered antitrust attention...

Copyright of this story solely belongs to thenextweb.com. To see the full text click HERE

https://media.thenextweb.com/2026/05/CircuitHub.avif

CircuitHub takes $28m from Plural to make PCBs the way clouds make compute

The Cambridge-rooted, Massachusetts-based automated electronics factory has delivered more than two million boards across 20,000 engineers. Plural’s bet is on the trillion-dollar reshoring tailwind behind it. CircuitHub, the automated-electronics-manufacturing company founded by Andrew Seddon, has raised $28m in funding led by Plural. The round is the largest CircuitHub

https://media.thenextweb.com/2026/05/Viktor-founders.avif

Viktor takes $75m from Accel to put an AI coworker inside Slack and Teams

The Warsaw- and Munich-based ex-Meta engineering team hit $15m annualised recurring revenue in ten weeks. The angel list reads like a who’s who of European and US software. Viktor, the Warsaw- and Munich-based AI-agent company built by former Meta engineers Peter Albert and Fryderyk Wiatrowski, has raised a $75m

https://media.thenextweb.com/2026/05/AI-displacement.avif

Gen Z is not booing AI. It is booing its own job market

Eric Schmidt stood at a lectern at the University of Arizona’s spring commencement and told a stadium full of graduates that the impact of artificial intelligence would be ‘larger, faster, and more consequential’ than anything they had so far lived through. The former Google chief executive was attempting, on

https://media.thenextweb.com/2026/04/OpenAI.avif

OpenAI plants its first overseas applied-AI lab in Singapore, with a $235M commitment

The company will scale to about 200 staff in the city-state and align the lab’s work to Singapore’s public-sector, finance, healthcare, and digital-infrastructure priorities. OpenAI said on Wednesday it will open its first applied-AI lab outside the United States in Singapore, with a S$300m (about $235m) commitment

Read more

CircuitHub takes $28m from Plural to make PCBs the way clouds make compute

Viktor takes $75m from Accel to put an AI coworker inside Slack and Teams

Gen Z is not booing AI. It is booing its own job market

OpenAI plants its first overseas applied-AI lab in Singapore, with a $235M commitment