Price Opacity and Tool Duplication Pushes Europe’s Software Overspend to €7bn
Europe’s small and medium-sized businesses are overspending on AI and SaaS products by as much as €7bn per year, according to Spendesk’s European Spend Report 2026, which identifies tool redundancy and vendor-level price variance as the two major factors in unnecessary spending.
Vendor-level price variance means that companies of the same size are often paying widely varying amounts for the same software packages, with the gap between ‘disciplined’ buyers and other enterprises stemming from failures to review long-running contracts, pricing opacity, and lack of negotiation.
- Operational Impact: Spendesk reviewed the spending of 2,500 SMEs over the past 12 months, discovering that each overpays around €40,000 per year on average, which is close to the average EU salary (gross), suggesting that overspend may be limiting the ability of enterprises to hire talent.
- Tool Duplication: 65% of companies using AI applications pay for at least two competing products, while duplication of all software (including AI) amounted to €15m for the 2,500 surveyed companies as a whole, or €3bn when extrapolated to all European companies with headcounts of between 50 and 250.
- Unpredictability of AI Costs: A big headache for finance departments is the variability of AI costs, with the median company’s monthly AI bill deviating by 61% in either direction from one month to the next, depending on token usage and rates.
- Greater Visibility: Enterprises may find it beneficial to centralise oversight and monitoring of their software spending, potentially by using a spend or SaaS management platform such as Cledera, Payhawk, Ramp, Spendesk or Flexera, among many others.
UK Data Without Power
Developers have submitted plans for a £200m data centre on the site of Microsoft’s former UK HQ in Reading, with the campus expected to provide 72MW of compute capacity and to consume 110MW of power at peak demand, although available grid capacity is only 1.8MW at present.
Sovereignty Without Open Source
A Linux Foundation report has found that 94% of European organisations say digital sovereignty is important, yet only 31% have an open source governance framework, despite the fact that organisations with such frameworks report, on average, quadrupling the value of their investments.
France Goes to Finland
Marseille-based HPC and AI infrastructure company Sesterce has announced a €10bn investment in a data centre project in Finland, with work set to begin by the end of 2026 and with plans to reach a capacity of 1GW in the longer term.
Startup AI Support
Anthropic has announced an expansion of its Claude for Startups program, offering one year’s free access to Claude Teams and $1,000 in API credits, as well as access to plug-in builder Claude Marketplace and to meetings with the lab’s Applied AI unit.
Chunky Language Model
Mistral has unveiled Large 4, also known as Le Chonk, a frontier AI model which the French lab says outperforms many Chinese open-weight models in numerous areas, including cybersecurity.
Mixed AI Signals
AI adoption has had no measurable impact on productivity data, according to a report by Apollo Global Management’s Chief Economist, Torsten Slok, yet major corporations continue to cut jobs as they invest in automation, with UK bank HSBC planning to reduce its advisory headcount by as much as 70%.
‘No AI’ Could Be Big
The Document Foundation has said that ‘no AI’ is a feature of the latest version of its LibreOffice open-source software, although the nonprofit developer has clarified that it’s not opposed to AI, so long as the implementation of AI won’t violate its principles of user control and strong privacy.
Pay with SAP Pay
SAP-backed Tereina has launched SAP Pay, a service which enables enterprises to pay employees, affiliates and suppliers directly within SAP Cloud ERP in either traditional fiat currencies or stablecoins.
Know Your Agents
French-American AI and data solutions provider Dataiku has launched Agent Management, a software product which connects with platforms such as AWS Bedrock, Databricks Agents, Google Vertex and Microsoft Copilot Studio to track and manage AI agents deployed in an enterprise’s digital environments.
HSBC Picks Singapore for AI Hub, Hong Kong Pushes Back
Even AI investments can spark a regional rivalry.
HSBC’s decision to establish a global AI hub in Singapore has reportedly drawn questions from Hong Kong’s financial regulator, which wants to know why the bank overlooked its largest individual market.
The center will recruit more than 100 AI specialists to develop applications for wealth management, treasury services, and digital payments.
Hong Kong hasn’t formally objected, and HSBC already has AI operations there. Meanwhile, Singapore continues to attract major investments, including $350 million from Databricks and over S$300 million from OpenAI, alongside the expansion of data center capacity.
As AI talent and infrastructure become increasingly valuable to financial hubs, HSBC’s move highlights how corporate investments could shape the future of AI development and innovation across Asia.
Meta’s Muse Wonder lands at the frontier
Meta Superintelligence Labs just released its long-anticipated Muse Wonder (Watermelon) and Muse Wonder Full, two powerful new AI models, with the full version landing #2 in Artificial Analysis’ intelligence rankings behind Anthropic’s Opus 5.5.
- Gemini 4 Argon, GPT-6 Astra, and Claude Fable 5.1 all hit 53 on AA’s Intelligence Index, putting Wonder Full three points clear of the pack and two behind Opus 5.5.
- In tests, Wonder Full passes Opus 5.5 and Astra at legal work, long coding, and memory, with Opus leading on health, computer use, and a few coding areas.
- Wonder Full is limited to Muse Code plans at $50 or $200/mo, while the standard model is live on Meta’s API and rolling out to paid Muse app subscribers.
- Both models are closed, unlike Meta’s open Llama era, with Alexandr Wang saying API prices will sit “meaningfully below” OAI and Anthropic’s top models.
Meta just forced its way into the frontier, which has been a two-horse race between OpenAI and Anthropic so far. The climb has been impressive, but the scarier part for rivals is everything around the model — the data centers, billions of users, and a hit agent app in Muse that are hard qualities for other labs to replicate.
Andrej Karpathy sketches AI’s ‘sharp funnel’
OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy just revisited his April post on how people judge AI, saying it has widened into a “sharp funnel” where only a tiny fraction sees what frontier AI is capable of while the majority uses lower-quality free options.
- Karpathy estimates that ~5000 people have access to true frontier AI inside labs, with capabilities like weeks-long agent swarms or solving open math problems.
- He said the funnel’s wide end holds nearly 6B people (3/4 of the world) who’ve hardly used AI, plus 1-2B users who only utilize free chatbots for quick answers.
- Karpathy traces the split to access tiers, problem size, and models that excel where answers are checkable and lucrative, like code and math.
- The researcher called it the “weirdness of the moment,” with most people still underestimating AI while a select few feel “the curve going vertical.”
If you’ve talked AI with anyone outside the bubble, you’ve likely felt the weirdness Karpathy notes — a huge disconnect between what people think the tech can do and what models already handle. Consider internal models, and the same disconnect plays out between the public, regulators, and the insiders feeling the acceleration.
Put Meta’s new Muse Wonder to work
In this guide, you’ll use Meta’s new Muse Wonder to turn a workshop brief into an agenda and budget. Then you’ll change the requirements and check whether it catches a plan that no longer works.
Step-by-step:
- Open Muse Code, sign in, and select Wonder. Check your access and billing first. The consumer Muse app has a separate rollout
- Paste the guide’s workshop brief, including the fixed times and activity lengths. Ask for a draft agenda in the conversation, with no bookings or messages
- Check the first agenda and budget. All six activities should fit before noon, and the planned cost should be $990 for 24 people
- In the same conversation, increase attendance to 30 while keeping the other rules fixed. Check that the cost rises to $1,089 and the agenda stays unchanged
- Move the facilitator’s availability to the later slot in the guide. Wonder should explain why the plan can no longer finish by noon and ask which rule may change
Pro tip: Ask the AI to flag a conflict before changing your rules. A tidy agenda can still hide a shorter session or an unquoted cost. Pro members get the briefs, change requests, answer key, and comparison record.
Microsoft’s Maia 300 takes aim at Nvidia
Microsoft unveiled Maia 300, its latest in-house AI chip, saying it expects 40% more AI output than leading GPUs on the same power — and plans to make Maia the main engine for running AI across Copilot and other products from 2027.
- Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called it “our biggest bet yet on our own silicon,” with the first multi-gigawatt Maia rollouts slated for next year.
- The current Maia 200 already powers Copilot and serves OAI’s models, and Reuters reported that Microsoft could deploy over 1M of the new chips next year.
- The push lands as Microsoft’s spending on data centers and equipment is set to top $175B this year, with OAI, Anthropic, and others also building their own chips.
Everyone is diversifying into homegrown AI chips, but what does that mean for Nvidia? Not much yet, with demand still sky-high, but once its biggest buyers can run on their own silicon, Nvidia loses at least some of the leverage over pricing that helped make it the kingmaker of the AI chip world and the first $5.5T company.
Natura’s $99 Smart Ring Puts AI Agents on Your Finger
Why open five AI apps when one button could do the trick?
Natura has unveiled Interface, a $99 smart ring that lets users summon multiple AI agents with a button press instead of juggling smartphone apps.
Powered by NatureOS, the screen-free wearable connects to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok Bot, Meta Muse, and other AI agents, with controls over which applications they can access.
Interface doubles as a health tracker, monitoring heart rate, sleep stages, steps, and skin temperature. It also packs a microphone for voice commands, haptic feedback, and an estimated six to 12 days of battery life. Natura says the microphone activates only when users press the button.
The catch? Interface currently has a waitlist, supports iPhone and Mac pairing, and could eventually carry a $9 monthly subscription. There’s also no confirmation that its AI agents can interpret health data, and real-world performance remains untested.
Natura is betting that AI’s next breakthrough isn’t a smarter model but easier access to existing ones. The ring offers a glimpse of screen-free, multi-agent computing, provided convenience doesn’t come at the expense of privacy and reliability.
Apple’s First Touchscreen MacBook Pro Could Arrive Oct. 27
Apple is reportedly preparing to unveil its first touchscreen MacBook Pro around Oct. 27, potentially ending years of keeping touch controls exclusive to iPads and iPhones.
According to Bloomberg, the redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch laptops will feature OLED touchscreens, slimmer designs, and Dynamic Island, replacing the familiar display notch.
Under the hood, the premium models are expected to pack M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, despite earlier rumors pointing to M6 processors.
Apple is also reportedly preparing an entry-level M6 MacBook Pro, an M6-powered iMac, and an OLED iPad mini with a repositioned camera for landscape video calls.
For creative professionals, OLED could mean richer contrast for photo and video editing, while touch controls could make everyday workflows more intuitive. But don’t start clearing your desk just yet. Apple hasn’t confirmed the launch date, pricing, or final specifications, and independent performance benchmarks remain unavailable.
Apple’s long-awaited touchscreen MacBook could blur the line between laptops and tablets, giving professionals more ways to work.