Canadian AI lab Cohere made waves recently by announcing a merger with German AI startup Aleph Alpha, but now it has even more in store for enterprise builders around the globe: today, the firm co-founded by former Googler and “Attention Is All You Need” co-author Aidan Gomez unveiled Command A+, a highly optimized, 218-billion-parameter language model engineered specifically for complex reasoning, multimodal document processing, and agentic workflows.

The most significant aspect of the release is not just the model’s capabilities; it is its accessibility.

By releasing the model weights free on the popular AI code sharing repository Hugging Face under a highly permissive Apache 2.0 open-source license — a first for the company, according to a post by Gomez, now Cohere’s CEO, on X — Cohere is making a calculated bet on “sovereign AI”—the thesis that enterprises, governments, and developers should have the ability to run, control, and adapt frontier-grade AI entirely within their own secure environments, without sacrificing performance.

Sparse architecture with extreme quantization

At the architectural level, Command A+ represents a major evolution from Cohere’s previous dense models. It is a decoder-only Sparse Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) Transformer.

While the model houses a relatively modest 218 billion total parameters, even fewer — only 25 billion — are active during any given generation step. It’s a much lighter footprint and requires far less compute resources to run in inference (serving the model in production environments to end users or via agents) than the proprietary U.S. giants like OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.7, which are estimated by third-party observers to be in the trillions of parameters.

This sparse architecture is the key to the model’s efficiency. In plain terms, an MoE model routes incoming queries only to the specific “expert” neural networks best suited to handle them, leaving the rest of the model dormant.

This is a familiar formulation and one followed by most leading LLMs these days, allowing models to retain the vast knowledge base and nuanced reasoning capabilities of a giant, but at the faster speeds and reduced compute and energy requirements of a much smaller model, since only a fraction of parameters are ever activated at any time.

But where Cohere has taken an extra step beyond most for Command A+ is that it has focused heavily on hardware efficiency through quantization—a process that compresses the model’s memory footprint by reducing the precision of its parameters.

Command A+ is available in 16-bit (BF16), 8-bit (FP8), and a highly compressed 4-bit (W4A4) format.

The W4A4 quantization is the technical centerpiece of this release. Typically, reasoning models suffer an outsized “quantization tax,” where compressing the model leads to visible regressions in complex problem-solving.

Cohere mitigated this by only quantizing the MoE experts to 4-bit, while keeping the critical attention pathways at full precision, supplemented by a technique called Quantization-Aware Distillation.

The result is a nearly lossless compression that allows this massive model to run on a single NVIDIA Blackwell B200 GPU or just two NVIDIA H100 GPUs.

The speed gains are equally notable. According to performance data released by the company, the W4A4 quantization at low concurrency achieves 375 tokens per second (TOPS) with a Time-to-First-Token (TTFT) latency of just 113 milliseconds—representing up to a 63% increase in output speed and a 17% reduction in latency compared to the previous Command A Reasoning model.

Furthermore, Cohere has overhauled the model’s tokenizer. Tokenizers break text down into the fragments that AI models process. The new tokenizer is highly optimized for global enterprise use, featuring native support for 48 languages.

More importantly, it dramatically improves tokenization efficiency for non-European languages, reducing the number of tokens required to generate responses in Arabic by 20%, Japanese by 18%, and Korean by 16%. Because inference costs are calculated per token, this translates directly to lower operational costs for global, multilingual or non-English deployments.

Agentic workflows and high benchmarks on math, specialized fields

While raw speed and size dictate deployment, a model’s utility is defined by its product capabilities. Command A+ was built specifically for “agentic” tasks — workflows where the AI operates autonomously or semi-autonomously, uses external tools, queries databases, and synthesizes information across multiple steps.

The benchmark leaps over the previous generation are stark.

On 𝜏²-Bench Telecom, which tests complex reasoning, the model jumped from a 37% score to 85%. On Terminal-Bench Hard, which measures agentic coding performance, it climbed from 3% to 25%. In complex mathematics, it scored 90% on AIME 25, up from 57%.

Command A+ punches above its weight class (25B active parameters) in pure reasoning and mathematics, competing directly with much larger models like DeepSeek V4 Pro on math benchmarks. However, for deep agentic coding and general broad-scale intelligence indexing, it currently trails behind the latest generations from Chinese open source rivals like DeepSeek, Z.ai (GLM), and MiniMax.

That said, comparing them directly ignores Cohere’s core value proposition: hardware efficiency.

Beyond the benchmarks, Command A+ introduces deep integrations for enterprise trust and verification. The model supports conversational tool use via standard chat templates, allowing developers to connect it seamlessly to internal APIs, search engines, or SQL databases.

Crucially, Command A+ features native citation generation. When Command A+ retrieves information from an external tool, it doesn’t just synthesize the answer; it generates explicit “grounding spans.” Using special tags embedded in the output, the model directly links every factual claim it makes to the specific source document or database row it pulled the information from.

For enterprises heavily regulated industries like finance, healthcare, or legal, this traceability is the difference between an interesting prototype and a production-ready application. If a user asks for a daily sales report, the model will output the total sales amount and explicitly cite the database query result that provided that number, minimizing the risk of undetected hallucinations.

Additionally, Command A+ is fully multimodal, capable of processing both text and images natively within its massive 128K input context window, making it highly effective for complex document processing, such as analyzing scanned invoices, charts, or technical manuals.

The first fully Apache 2.0 licensed Cohere AI model

In the current AI landscape, “open source” has become a fraught term. Many leading AI companies release their model weights under restrictive commercial licenses or acceptable use policies that explicitly forbid large enterprises from using the models for commercial purposes, or prohibit the models from being used to train competing AI systems.

Indeed, Cohere’s prior models, including Command R and Command R+, were released under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 (Creative Commons NonCommercial) license. While their model weights were open for researchers and developers to download, tinker with, and evaluate, they were strictly prohibited from being used for commercial purposes without purchasing a separate enterprise license from Cohere or going through its application programming interface (API), similar to the arrangement many enterprises use for accessing AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and other leading labs.

Cohere has changed up its approach by releasing Command A+ under the Apache 2.0 license. This is a critical distinction for the developer community. Apache 2.0 is a true, OSI-approved open-source license. It allows anyone—from independent developers to Fortune 500 corporations—to use, modify, distribute, and commercialize the model without paying licensing fees or adhering to restrictive non-compete clauses.

As Gomez wrote on X, the decision was championed by fellow Cohere co-founder Nick Frosst, who posted a two-minute long overview calling it “the best model we’ve ever put out.”

For the enterprise, this license means total vendor independence. A company can download the Command A+ weights, fine-tune them on highly classified internal data, and deploy them on their own private servers or air-gapped networks. They are not tethered to Cohere’s infrastructure, pricing changes, or API uptime. It is the ultimate realization of sovereign AI.

The release was met with immediate traction across the AI developer ecosystem, driven heavily by its day-one integration with major open-source inference frameworks like Hugging Face and vLLM.

What’s next?

The release of Command A+ marks a maturing of the open-source AI ecosystem. By combining frontier-level reasoning, robust agentic tool use, and multimodal capabilities with an architecture specifically designed for hardware efficiency, Cohere is changing the calculus for enterprise AI adoption.

The requirement of massive, centralized compute clusters has long been a bottleneck for companies prioritizing data privacy and cost control. By democratizing access to a model of this caliber under a true open-source license, Cohere has provided the enterprise market with exactly what it has been asking for: the power of the cloud, capable of running securely in the server room down the hall.

If not for my love for Arc Browser, which has sadly become an abandonware, I would have used Vivaldi. No other browser comes even close to the customization and features it offers. And with its latest version 8.0 update, Vivaldi is making an even stronger case to ditch other browsers in its favor. 

I like that while browsers like Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge have been busy packing AI into every corner, Vivaldi has been quietly delivering features users actually want. 

The headline feature is a new design language called “Unified”. Previously, the different parts of the browser, tabs, toolbars, panels, and the content area all existed as separate, slightly disconnected layers. Unified removes those boundaries and places everything on one continuous surface. 

Is this just a visual refresh or something more?

When you apply a theme in Vivaldi 8.0, it flows through the entire browser without interruption. A dark theme is dark everywhere, not just in some parts. Wallpapers feel like part of the environment rather than something pasted on top. When you apply a wallpaper, it flows not only to the main window but also to the top bar, the address bar, and the tabs, giving the browser a unified look. 

Vivaldi has also added a fresh collection of default themes, and if none of them feel right, there are over 7,000 community themes you can choose from. If you prefer the old look, you can keep it. This is Vivaldi, after all, and you always have the final say.

Feeling overwhelmed by all the options?

One of the issues with Vivaldi was that it overwhelmed users with all its customization options. To solve this issue. Vivaldi 8.0 ships with six preset layouts to help new users get started. 

You can choose between a clean, minimal setup, tabs on the side, a full-screen browsing experience, or the classic Vivaldi look. I love this from Vivaldi, as it will ease the user onboarding process. If you like what you see, you can download Vivaldi 8.0 today for free on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

As the concept of “digital sovereignty” takes hold globally, an increasing number of countries are implementing blocks on major communication platforms like TikTok, X, and WhatsApp.

For governments, controlling these apps is a way to manage the flow of information; for citizens and visitors, it represents a massive digital roadblock.

SpaceX filed paperwork today that opens its books to the public for the first time and sets the stage for what could become the largest stock offering in history. The documents lay out clear numbers on revenue, customers, and spending that anyone can follow, while pointing to a future built around satellite connections, computing in orbit, and human presence on another planet.

As of the first three months of 2026, Starlink had 10.3 million paid subscriptions, more than doubling the five million it had the previous year. Each connection generates an average of $66 per month, down from $86 previously, as the business expanded into more nations with lower-cost options. These subscriptions are key to the connection business, which generated $11.3 billion in sales last year, accounting for 60% of the company’s overall revenue.

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In 2025, total revenue for the operation reached 18.7 billion dollars, rising about one-third from the previous year. The satellite internet segment alone generated a healthy operational profit of 4.4 billion dollars, more than doubling what it made previously. Launch services continue to handle more than half of all orbital journeys worldwide, but the business lost $657 million last year after making previous gains.

Overall, the company reported a net loss of 4.9 billion dollars in 2025 and another 4.3 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2026. These deficiencies are primarily due to high spending on a new artificial intelligence branch formed by the merger with xAI. Capital costs nearly doubled to $20.7 billion last year as the business expanded its AI infrastructure and continued to create larger rockets.

Elon Musk maintains decisive control using a dual-class share structure. Shares sold to the public carry one vote each, whereas special shares owned by insiders carry ten votes. Even after the offering, Musk still controls approximately 85% of the total voting power. His personal remuneration is directly related to major goals, such as reaching a seven-and-a-half trillion-dollar market value and establishing a permanent settlement on Mars with at least a million people.

The document also details an unusual lock-up arrangement for insiders and early investors, which differs from the conventional waiting periods used by most corporations. SpaceX intends to put aside a significant portion of its shares for everyday retail customers, and it even planned an event next month to host approximately 1500 of them. Goldman Sachs leads the banking group in charge of the transaction, which also includes Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan.

Cash on hand was sixteen billion dollars at the conclusion of the first quarter, after beginning the year higher. The corporation employs more than 22,000 workers and has no union contracts. The specific scheduling has still to be approved by regulators, but the road show could begin in early June, with shares trading by mid-month under the Nasdaq symbol SPCX.

In 2025, total revenue for the operation reached 18.7 billion dollars, rising about one-third from the previous year. The satellite internet segment alone generated a healthy operational profit of 4.4 billion dollars, more than doubling what it made previously. Launch services continue to handle more than half of all orbital journeys worldwide, but the business lost $657 million last year after making previous gains.

Overall, the company reported a net loss of 4.9 billion dollars in 2025 and another 4.3 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2026. These deficiencies are primarily due to high spending on a new artificial intelligence branch formed by the merger with xAI. Capital costs nearly doubled to $20.7 billion last year as the business expanded its AI infrastructure and continued to create larger rockets.

Elon Musk maintains decisive control using a dual-class share structure. Shares sold to the public carry one vote each, whereas special shares owned by insiders carry ten votes. Even after the offering, Musk still controls approximately 85% of the total voting power. His personal remuneration is directly related to major goals, such as reaching a seven-and-a-half trillion-dollar market value and establishing a permanent settlement on Mars with at least a million people.

The document also details an unusual lock-up arrangement for insiders and early investors, which differs from the conventional waiting periods used by most corporations. SpaceX intends to put aside a significant portion of its shares for everyday retail customers, and it even planned an event next month to host approximately 1500 of them. Goldman Sachs leads the banking group in charge of the transaction, which also includes Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan.

Cash on hand was sixteen billion dollars at the conclusion of the first quarter, after beginning the year higher. The corporation employs more than 22,000 workers and has no union contracts. The specific scheduling has still to be approved by regulators, but the road show could begin in early June, with shares trading by mid-month under the NASDAQ symbol SPCX.
[Source]

It’s on track to post $10.9 billion in revenue, according to The Wall Street Journal.

With the FIFA World Cup 2026 tournament coming to the US in June, host cities are expecting an influx of international travelers. Mobile carriers are offering ways to help them stay connected during the games.

Three of the largest US carriers have recently introduced eSIM plans that can be activated on unlocked phones for between seven and 45 days of calling, texting and mobile data. Using an eSIM while traveling is often more affordable than international roaming charges with an out-of-country wireless service.

If you have family or friends traveling to the US for the World Cup (or for any reason), here are three options they can check out. Remember that pricing matters, but so do the strengths of each provider’s network in the areas where they’ll be. It’s worth scrutinizing the coverage maps for AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon.

And if you’re thinking of jetting off to a country outside the US, be sure to check out our guide to the best travel phone plans.

eSIM by AT&T

AT&T’s offering includes unlimited data and 5GB of hotspot access for up to 30 days of coverage.

Pricing for the eSIM by AT&T plan breaks down like this:

• 1-Day Pass: $4 (US only)
• 7-Day Pass: $16 (US), $25 (US, Canada, Mexico)
• 15-Day Pass: $26 (US), $40 (US, Canada, Mexico)
• 30-Day Pass: $41 (US), $60 (US, Canada, Mexico)

Taxes and fees aren’t included in the cost of each pass.

One important detail is worth noting: The AT&T eSIM is a data-only plan, so calling and SMS texting aren’t included, and the subscriber won’t get a new number. Apps such as WhatsApp can offer those features. AT&T says the plan will expand to unlimited talk and text soon, but a timeline has not been announced.

Getting connected requires that the person download the Connect on Demand by AT&T app (for iOS or Android) on an unlocked 5G smartphone with an international phone number and an open eSIM slot, then purchase and activate the eSIM option within the app.

The company’s Turbo Live by AT&T service, which is supposed to improve connectivity in venues like sports stadiums, is also available as an add-on.

T-Mobile Prepaid US Pass eSIM

The T-Mobile Prepaid US Pass eSIM options include unlimited talk and text in the US, Canada and Mexico, as well as 50GB of high-speed 5G data, then unlimited data at a slower speed for the duration of the pass. They also include 5GB of high-speed data in Canada and Mexico. Fast mobile hotspot data amounts increase depending on which of the following plans are activated:

• 7-Day Pass: $25 (14GB hotspot data)
• 10-Day Pass: $30 (20GB hotspot data)
• 14-Day Pass: $35 (28GB hotspot data)
• 30-Day Pass: $50 (50 GB hotspot data)

Activation happens in the T-Mobile Prepaid eSIM app for iOS or Android. Taxes and fees are added to the cost of each pass.

Visible eSIM Travel Pass

Visible, Verizon’s prepaid arm, is offering a new Visible eSIM Travel Pass for the World Cup. The plans include unlimited high-speed data using Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband network, but there’s no hotspot data. When traveling in Alaska, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, subscribers get unlimited talk and text, and 2GB of data each day.

Preordering through June 10 (the day before the tournament kicks off) will save $10 on the lineup of passes with the code FIFA10:

• 7-Day Pass: $15 preorder ($25 regular), 90 minutes of international calling
• 14-Day Pass: $25 preorder ($35 regular), 180 minutes of international calling
• 30-Day Pass: $35 preorder ($45 regular), 300 minutes of international calling
• 45-Day Pass: $45 preorder ($55 regular), 500 minutes of international calling

Each pass also includes unlimited texting to 200+ countries. Taxes and fees are included in the price of each pass.

To fuel World Cup fervor among Visible’s existing customers, it’s giving away two World Cup match tickets through May 31 via a sweepstakes.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11

The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x is a budget-friendly, 15-inch Copilot Plus PC built on the Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 platform. It’s a machine aimed squarely at people who want long battery life, whisper-quiet operation and dependable everyday performance in a slender chassis. To hit its sub-$1,000 price, the IdeaPad Slim 5x features Qualcomm’s entry-level Snapdragon X2 Plus chip and the minimum 16GB of RAM needed to meet Microsoft’s definition of a Copilot Plus PC.

For a budget laptop, the IdeaPad Slim 5x does a lot right. It’s a practical offering for a standard day at the office, including browsing, email, streaming and light productivity, and its Arm-based design helps keep it efficient and cool. What keeps it from being an easy recommendation for everyone is the same thing that holds back most Windows-on-Arm laptops: software compatibility remains a real consideration, at least in some specific use cases. And gaming performance is average at best from the integrated Qualcomm Adreno GPU. 

The 15.3-inch display makes the IdeaPad Slim 5x a bit of a tweener, sandwiched between more commonplace 14- and 16-inch laptops. The Acer Aspire 16 AI offers a roomier 16-inch panel at a lower price and only a slightly heavier weight, and the HP OmniBook 5 14 is more compact and portable with its 14-inch display but offers even longer battery life. This trio of budget laptops features Snapdragon X series processors, but the IdeaPad Slim 5x has the advantage of being the newest of the three, and its Snapdragon X2 chip outpaces both the two older X1 machines.

The IdeaPad Slim 5x falls roughly in the middle of Lenovo’s broader IdeaPad lineup, which includes options with AMD and Intel processors, as well as the 3x and 7x Snapdragon X-based series, sized between 14 and 16 inches. Some of the 7x SKUs include the more advanced Snapdragon X2 Elite rather than the X2 Plus, which this model is built around.

The IdeaPad Slim 5x starts at $850 at Lenovo. We tested this entry-level model, but Lenovo offers a handful of upgrades. You can double the RAM to 32GB for an eye-watering $290 (thanks, RAMageddon) and bump the storage up from 512GB to 1TB for an also hefty $150.

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Two other upgrades are much more attainable, and we recommend both. It costs only $30 to swap out the basic 1,920×1,20-pixel, 120Hz IPS display for a 2.5K (2,560×1,600), 165Hz OLED panel. That’s a no-brainer for the added pixels alone, to say nothing about the better contrast and faster refresh rate, unless you require a touchscreen. The IPS offers touch support; the OLED doesn’t. You can also outfit the laptop with a bigger battery, going from a 54.7-watt-hour unit to 70 watt hours for just $10. The IdeaPad Slim 5x we tested offers great battery life, but more is always better.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x starts at £1,310 in the UK and AU$1,699 in Australia. 

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x performance

The processor at the heart of the IdeaPad Slim 5x, the Snapdragon X2 Plus X2P-42-100, is clearly tuned for efficiency first. That said, it manages to feel snappy in the ways that matter most for a mainstream productivity laptop. Apps open promptly, multitasking is smooth with 16GB of memory, and the machine feels comfortable handling a standard mix of browser tabs, Office work and streaming. It performed quite well against comparable machines in our benchmarks, and it should satisfy anyone looking for a reliable office notebook.

Its limitations show up when you push beyond that. The Adreno X2-45 integrated graphics are fine for light creative work, but this is not the laptop for serious gaming or any sustained graphics-heavy workloads.

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Qualcomm leads the way with laptop battery life, and the IdeaPad Slim 5x continues its run of success. The IdeaPad Slim 5x lasted 20.5 hours on our online streaming battery drain test, which was a half an hour shorter than the Acer Aspire 16 AI and nearly eight hours shorter than the HP OmniBook 5 14, but much longer than similarly priced laptops such as the Intel-based Lenovo IdeaPad 5i 16 and AMD-based Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1.

Another important note here: While Windows-on-Arm has made vast strides in terms of software compatibility, there are still issues. I was unable to get my VPN client to function on the IdeaPad Slim 5x, for instance, which has been an issue on other Arm machines, likely because of driver problems. I also couldn’t run Valorant, because its kernel-level anti-cheat system, Riot Vanguard, is incompatible with Arm architecture. You can check the apps you use to see if they have native Arm versions with this Window-on-Arm compatibility tool.

Practical, not premium design

The IdeaPad Slim 5x keeps the design language simple and practical, which suits the price. It’s solid enough for daily use, though nothing about it stands out as especially premium. While it’s fairly lightweight for its size at just over 3 pounds, it’s not featherlight or ultra-slim like some other ultraportables. It sits in the middle of the 14-inch HP OmniBook 3 14 (2.85 pounds) and the 16-inch Acer Aspire 16 AI (3.45 pounds) in size and weight.

The 15-inch chassis gives the keyboard enough room to avoid feeling cramped, and it feels responsive for a chiclet-style, low-profile deck. The touchpad is generously proportioned and precise, though not luxurious in the way that glass alternatives feel.

For an IPS panel, the display is one of the strongest parts of this configuration. It delivers a bright, color-accurate picture and is what I’d call a “workmanlike” panel that reflects the price. I liked getting touch support at this price and the anti-glare finish that keeps glare and reflections away. Lab testing with a Spyder X Elite colorimeter showed a peak of 432 nits of brightness, which is very respectable for a budget laptop. Color performance was also solid, with full sRGB coverage and measured results of 77% AdobeRGB and 78% P3. It’s suitable for everyday photo work and media consumption, though it won’t rival a creator-grade panel.

Sound quality is something of an issue. The two 2-watt speakers sounded distractingly tinny at times, especially when the treble was peaking, and the volume was underwhelming. The FHD webcam also didn’t blow me away. It looked a bit grainy when video was full-screened, and didn’t hold up to fast motion particularly well. 

The port allotment is relatively generous with two USB-C, two USB-A and an HDMI port along with a microSD card slot, but the USB-C ports are disappointingly slow. They are of the USB 3.2 Gen 2 variety, which offers just 10Gbps speed compared with the 40Gbps you’d get from Thunderbolt 4.

Should I buy theLenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x?