July 24, 2026 —
Intel’s AI-driven rebound lifts quarterly revenue 25%
Today’s North America AI brief follows a sharp rebound in Intel’s data-center and foundry businesses, alongside a new federal safety proposal, expanding enterprise-cloud commitments, and product moves across models, retrieval, research infrastructure, voice, and email security.
Intel’s AI-driven rebound lifts quarterly revenue 25%
Intel reported second-quarter revenue of $16.1 billion, up 25% year over year, its strongest growth in more than 15 years. Data Center and AI revenue rose 59% to $6.3 billion, while Intel Foundry revenue increased 31% to $5.8 billion. The company guided third-quarter revenue to $15.8 billion–$16.8 billion.
The quarter still included an $11 billion GAAP net loss, largely tied to a $12.5 billion noncash charge disclosed in the results. Operationally, Intel said higher factory yields and shorter cycle times supported volume upside, while AI demand is prompting greater investment in equipment, clean-room space, and substrates.
OpenAI opens ChatGPT Health to eligible U.S. users
OpenAI began rolling out ChatGPT Health to logged-in U.S. users aged 18 and older across Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans on web and iOS. Users can optionally connect Apple Health and supported medical records, then ask questions grounded in that information. OpenAI says connected health data and related conversations are not used to train foundation models or target ads, and positions the experience as support rather than a replacement for medical care.
Bipartisan House bill would require shutdown controls for frontier AI
Representatives Ted Lieu and Nathaniel Moran introduced the AI Kill Switch Act, which would require covered developers to retain the technical ability to throttle, suspend, or shut down powerful AI systems. The proposal would also let the Department of Homeland Security, after consultation with Commerce and intelligence officials, order a graduated slowdown or shutdown when a system could cause catastrophic harm, while adding incident reporting and forensic-record requirements.
Databricks and Microsoft extend their AI partnership into the 2030s
Databricks and Microsoft expanded their strategic partnership through the 2030s. Databricks will run more core operations and analytics on Azure Databricks, increase its use of Azure Cobalt processors, and plans to adopt Cobalt 200. The companies will deepen integrations spanning Databricks Genie and Unity AI Gateway across Microsoft 365, Teams, Copilot, Power BI, Purview, Foundry, and other services so enterprise agents can operate with governed business context.
AMD builds a three-layer networking stack into Helios
AMD detailed new networking components for its Helios rack-scale AI system: the Salina DPU for front-end services, an open UALink-over-Ethernet approach for scale-up links, and the Vulcano 800 AI NIC for scale-out and scale-across traffic. AMD says Vulcano 800 can provide up to 2.4 Tbps of scale-out bandwidth per GPU. Helios integrates the components with Instinct MI455X GPUs, EPYC Venice CPUs, and ROCm software.
Microsoft previews higher-fidelity image and faster voice models
MAI-Image-2.5-Pro targets detailed generation, editing, and in-image text, while MAI-Voice-2-Flash offers lower-latency text-to-speech at a lower price than MAI-Voice-2.
Claude voice mode adds Opus and Sonnet
Paid Claude users can move beyond Haiku in voice conversations, selecting higher-capability Opus or Sonnet models for more involved reasoning and tasks.
Nvidia and KAIST launch a joint agentic-AI lab
The Seoul lab will pair Nvidia compute and Nemotron models with funding, internships, and support for at least 10 KAIST researchers each year.
Amazon Bedrock documents iterative agentic retrieval
The AgenticRetrieveStream API decomposes complex questions, searches one or more managed knowledge bases iteratively, evaluates sufficiency, and streams trace events.
AegisAI raises $36 million for AI-native email defense
Battery Ventures led the Series A, with Accel and Foundation Capital participating, bringing total funding to $49 million for the former Google security team.