I’d just finished off several waves of fighter planes and attack helicopters headed for the last port still under the control of my desperate nation, keeping our feeble chances alive for one more day. I returned to our base, an aging aircraft carrier, to chat with the corporate bigwig who’d thrown in with our ragtag remainders. He pulled out his smartphone and showed me how he was manipulating photos to make it look like we had more fighter jets than the few we possessed, projecting strength through misinformation.
Strangereal is getting a dose of 2026’s reality.
As the first Ace Combat game in seven years, and the first on this generation of consoles, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve has a lot of technical and story modernizations. At a preview in Los Angeles, I played several hours of the game across six different missions. Rest assured: It wholly embodies the franchise’s particular flavor of tense aerial combat without the severe complexity of ultrarealistic flight simulators.
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It’s also undeniably set in the Ace Combat world of Strangereal, a fictional setting of vaguely European-styled nations embattled in generational wars fought with real-world planes… as well as massive flying wings and land battleships that wouldn’t look out of place in an anime. Yet in my time with the game, it’s what the developers at Project Aces — Bandai Namco’s internal team behind the Ace Combat series — pulled from our real-world 2026 that stuck with me.
Players can choose between one of three visual perspectives: traditional HUD from the pilot’s seat under the canopy, a canopy-free HUD looking straight out from the plane’s nose and a behind-the-jet view (seen here).
Bandai Namco
It’s integral to Project Aces’ framing for Ace Combat 8, which focuses on relationships between pilots and people close to the player. The game opens up with an unnamed player character being rescued from the sea and taken aboard an aircraft carrier carrying the last military resistance of the Federation of Central Usea, or FCU, following its defeat by the Republic of Sotoa. Before long, the player takes on the role of the titular Wings of Theve, a heroic pilot whose identity is obscured so that when one is shot down, another takes their place.
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Taking on the mantle to preserve the myth is an old storytelling theme, but it takes on new life in Ace Combat 8. Project Aces wanted to bring the lens down from the skies to a more personal level, connecting players with the people they’re flying alongside and protecting aboard the ship. But the breaks between missions, when players bond with these fictional characters, also show them shooting smartphone videos of the Wings of Theve that are sent far and wide as promotional footage. As intentionally surreal as Strangereal is — an abstraction built to stage colossal wars and geopolitical upheaval — it’s still a little bizarre to see real-world smartphone propaganda used to win hearts and minds bleed into a franchise centered on fighter jet dogfights.
Standard missiles will lock on within 2,000 meters of a target, but they’ll generally only hit if the player is flying behind the enemy.
Banda Namco
As CNET’s supervising editor of mobile coverage, it’s surreal to see social media warfare make its way into a military sim. But when the media sat down with Kazutoki Kono, the Ace Combat series brand director, at the preview, and I asked him about the inclusion of smartphone propaganda, Kono said he sees it as an extension of the player’s journey toward becoming an ace pilot.
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“Obviously, there’s massive boss fights, different encounters, super challenging situations that you’ll have to deal with in dogfight situations, perhaps other ace pilots that are your rivals,” Kono said. “But on a much larger scale, I think social media and misinformation is another challenge that teams have to overcome nowadays. You could say that social media is just one among a wide range of challenges that needs to be overcome so the player feels that sense of growth.”
It’s a very specific choice considering which elements of our 2026 reality Project Aces didn’t include — such as drones, which have become more and more a part of modern warfare. I first spoke with Kono back in December after Ace Combat 8 was revealed at the Game Awards 2025. He shared that the unmanned aerial vehicle drone enemies included in Ace Combat 7 were disliked by fans; they wanted the man-on-man dogfight experience with radio chatter and human tension.
“There is always going to be this reality line that we’re going to want to aim for. That being said, we still can’t go for that line at the expense of the player experience,” Kono said in December. “For the player to have fun is always going to be a priority for us as a game design philosophy.”
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The cockpit HUD view option is the purist simulator view, but it’s understandably more limited than the other two options.
Bandai Namco
Playing Ace Combat 8: Becoming the wings of legend
I was thinking about this push and pull between reality and fiction as I sat down at my station for the preview. Kono’s comments about eschewing real-world elements such as the rise of UAV aircraft made me wonder how much of Ace Combat 8 would be geared toward preserving the dogfighting fantasy evoked in popular media such as Top Gun, even as modern air combat continues to veer toward drones and beyond-visual-range engagements.
Indeed, after my player character was rescued and met the crew, he was sent into the air in the backseat behind the current Wings of Theve, whose aviator sunglasses and charming smile looked uncannily like those of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in Top Gun. In another nod to misinformation, the pilot, Cope, has had his record of enemy kills greatly exaggerated. When an enemy ace shot our plane down, Cope’s untimely death paves the way for the player to take his mantle — though he sticks around as a ghostly presence to guide you going forward. It’s a fun bit of torch-passing flavor that also provides context, as the player character is a classic wordless protagonist.
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The Professor is one of three wingmen for the main character.
Bandai Namco
After that prologue, the first mission has the player character taking on the mantle of the Wings of Theve as a publicity move to keep morale up. The second and third missions bring me together with my squadmates — former community college academic The Professor, taciturn Noise and former stunt pilot Tasha (whose colorful hair wouldn’t look out of place on a K-pop idol).
In-game, you can command them to focus fire on targets, choose their own or form up on you. It’s a nice bit of flexibility to suit your play style, though I often lost track of what they were doing while I focused on my mission objectives. Mostly, I enjoyed the radio chatter as they ribbed one another.
You can also kit them out with different aircraft and missile or bomb loadouts tailored to each mission, though I didn’t notice much of a difference when I split them between A-10 Warthog ground-attack aircraft and Eurofighter Typhoon air-superiority jets. (It’s possible I wasn’t paying close enough attention.) After starting out in the F/A-18C multirole fighter — which Kono told me in December is his favorite and serves as the game’s “hero aircraft”– players can unlock more than 30 real and fictional aircraft, each with its own stats and payload options. That variety makes some better suited for dogfights and others more effective against ground targets.
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Players will start with the F/A-18C jet, but can spend points earned completing missions to unlock over 30 others.
Bandai Namco
Unlocking is handled through a tech tree of sorts, starting with the F/A-18C and branching out not just to new aircraft but also to perks, including improved missile performance and larger bomb payloads. These can be equipped before missions, though each jet has a different perk capacity. With more than 100 standard missiles and dozens of additional missile and bomb options, armaments have always been where Ace Combat shifts from realistic aviation to arcade-style air combat. But it serves the heroic-pilot fantasy well — and makes missed shots a lot less painful.
We jumped around for the last segment of the preview. The fourth mission was a good blend of targets below and above, featuring harbors full of naval vessels to bomb, protected by enemy fighter jets. But it was the ninth mission that stopped me in my tracks: taking on a land battleship that looked like the USS Iowa on treads. My objective was to immobilize it while the iron leviathan’s guns, hovering quadcopter escorts and swirling defensive drone swarm tried to blast me out of the sky. They succeeded a few times, and it took several retries (and collapsed hotel buildings) to finally lock the beast in place.
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The formidable land battleship has three railgun turrets that can shoot the player down from any distance.
Bandai Namco
The last mission we got to play, the 11th, had my squad taking on massive flying-wing aircraft transporting land battleship parts into enemy territory. Thanks to radar jamming, I had to track the skyborne behemoths by their long contrails, then bring my squad in close and rely on short-range missiles and gunfire to take them down. Flanked by fighter escorts, I screamed through the clouds in a visually breathtaking sequence, seeing firsthand the game’s Cloudly tech that Kono had described to me back in December.
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Some targets like the Portage flying wing enemies (pictured) have several targets to hit before the whole vehicle goes down.
Bandai Namco
This feeling of breathless adventure among the clouds is one of the three core pillars at the heart of Ace Combat 8’s design philosophy, Kono told me and other media at the preview. Every decision they made needed to feed or strengthen one of them.
“The first [pillar] is photorealistic expression of the sky and giving the player the freedom to soar through it how they see fit,” Kono said. “The second is also at the player’s discretion, which enemies to engage with and the satisfaction of dogfights in the sky. The third is this process of becoming an ace pilot in the world, so you go from rookie to hero in the world of Ace Combat.” (Then he laughed, saying that there might be a fourth pillar they hadn’t even realized existed, given how vocal fans have been about the franchise’s background music.)
For all the effort devoted to realism, from recreating the world’s most iconic fighter aircraft to simulating cloud moisture droplets on the cockpit canopy, Ace Combat still delivers a powerful fantasy: that of a skyborne gunfighter fighting for what’s right. While I was caught off guard by Ace Combat 8’s decision to incorporate social media warfare, I was still swept up in watching my pilot’s legend grow — ideally through missiles and slick flying rather than doctored smartphone videos.
Contactless payments are great, but have you ever paid for your coffee with a magic wand?
Cash App, the digital payments service run by Block, has just launched the Cash App Wand – a pearlescent, star-shaped, NFC-enabled keychain accessory that lets you tap to pay at any contactless terminal. Yes, it is a real product that costs $25, and it is available right now for Cash App Card holders to buy in the app.
So how does this magical wand work?
The Cash App Wand is the first product under a new hardware line called Cash App Tags. Tags are NFC-enabled physical devices that require no Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection to function. To set one up, you simply hold it to the back of your phone, and it links directly to your Cash App account.
Cash App
After that, it works exactly like a debit card, except it clips onto your keychain or handbag like a charm bracelet. Block’s hardware lead Thomas Templeton says the whole idea is to make payments feel visible, fun, and expressive again.
He points out that digital payments have made buying things almost invisible, and even Cash App’s own cards spend 90% of their time sitting in people’s pockets. Cash App wants the wand to be the first thing you reach for when it is time to pay.
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This is just the beginning of Cash App Tags
The wand is the first of many quirky tap-to-pay hardware designs coming down the line. Limited runs of new Cash App Tag designs will drop to Cash App cardholders in the coming weeks, with general availability opening up later this summer.
Cash App
Whether you need a wand to pay for your morning coffee or just want to feel like a wizard at the checkout counter, Cash App has you covered.
The Nintendo Switch 2 is my favorite gaming handheld right now, but its battery life is still a weak point compared to older Switches. Belkin’s new $100 battery pack and grip combo accessory, called the Charging Grip, solves some of the battery issues and even handheld comfort. But it makes the Switch 2 a lot bigger in the process.
I’ve been trying an early review sample of the Charging Grip over the last week, and there’s stuff I appreciate. The 10,000-mAh battery has an LED screen to show charge amount, and generally resembles the battery that also came in an already-available battery pack-embedded Belkin Switch 2 case.
This time, the battery sticks onto the Switch 2 itself. A snap-on plastic shell has a magnetic panel the battery snaps onto, and then a little USB cable pops into the top to charge at 30W. The case I’m trying is black, but it also comes in lilac and olive. Belkin promises 1.5 Switch 2 recharges with the battery. So far, it’s been a helpful way to top off the Switch 2 over a day without redocking or plugging in.
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With the Charging Grip on, the Switch 2 is basically Steam Deck size.
Scott Stein/CNET
The plastic shell feels a bit flimsy, although it’s at least a little more protection for the Switch 2 body. There’s a cut-out on the back for the Switch 2’s kickstand to pop out.
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Two large Joy-Con controller grips come in the package, sliding on easily and locking in place. The rubbery texture and their overall size does make holding the Switch 2 feel more comfy to me, more like the generous size of Steam Deck and Windows gaming handhelds.
I like it, but maybe not enough to keep it on all the time.
Scott Stein/CNET
But the overall battery-plus-grip cosmetic change to the Switch 2 bulks it up a ton. It can still prop up with a kickstand on a table, and can technically narrowly slide into the dock without removing the grip case. But it definitely won’t fit into regular Switch 2 carry cases, although Belkin’s selling a new shoulder-carry travel bag for that.
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One of my favorite parts of the Switch 2 versus Windows handhelds is how much more compact it is, and unfortunately Belkin’s grip case erases that advantage. But if you’re looking for a battery boost and a comfier grip no matter the cost or size, this might be for you.
A new series of images claiming to be the iPhone 18 Pro chassis have been leaked, showing black, blue, and dark cherry red.
It’s always suspicious when a leaker has just a single image of a purported device, but now a series of shots have shown off most of the colors expected for the iPhone 18 Pro.
On Yeux1122’s blog, fellow leaker Lanzk claims to have samples of the aluminum frame for the iPhone 18 Pro. They comprise the back and sides of the phone, and appear to be stamped with “2026” plus some unclear Chinese-language markings.
Dark Cherry looks ever more certain to be one of the iPhone 18 Pro’s colors – image credit: Lanzk
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The leaker has shown off one Dark Cherry frame, two black ones, and three of the light blue version. There’s no distinguishable difference between the units when two or three are displayed.
There’s no indication of the source of the components. However, each of the black and light blue ones shown have a small plastic bag that appears to contain a SIM-card tray.
That would suggest that, however they got to the leaker, they may have come from manufacturers in China. There are other countries that still require a physical SIM card, however.
Even if the leak is as accurate as it appears, it may not be the complete set of colors due to be unveiled for the iPhone 18 Pro, and iPhone 18 Pro Max. While the current iPhone 17 Pro ships in three colors, previous rumors have said that the iPhone 18 Pro will return to the norm of having four.
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Those four are the ones shown in this leak plus a light silver. If reports correct and there will be a Dark Cherry option, it’s predicted to become a hit just as the iPhone 17 Pro Max’s Cosmic Orange has been.
Black version of the same frame part – image credit: Lanzk
However, some users will be more pleased at the return of a black option. That was last seen with 2024’s iPhone 16 Pro.
In the course of this review, we examined the image in depth. While there was no EXIF data to speak of, there generally isn’t and that’s not a sign of a fake.
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There are none of the hallmarks of a photo edit, or generative AI having fabricated the images. The chassis’ internal protrusions are not identical to that of the iPhone 17 Pro, either. We think these are the real thing, unlike data gathered from case manufacturers.
That all said, leaker Lanzk has not previously reported on iPhone colors. However, they have leaked accurately about Apple’s plans for what would ultimately become the MacBook Neo.
The big names in the artificial intelligence industry don’t always get along. We’ve seen lawsuits between AI companies and intense rivalries between leaders that turn into all-out feuds. But it seems that they generally agree on at least one thing: AI should not be used to create biological weapons.
CEOs of some of the world’s leading AI companies signed a public letter this week urging governments to address the risks that could come from bad actors using their technology. The letter encourages Congress to enact laws to improve the tracking of synthetic DNA sequences that could be used to create biological weapons.
Signed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Meta’s Alexandr Wang, Microsoft AI’s Mustafa Suleyman, Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and other scientists and AI lab leaders, the letter suggested legislation to require companies that sell synthetic DNA and manufacturers of synthesis machines to thoroughly check “sequences of concern and to verify customer legitimacy before shipping orders.”
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The letter, also signed by leaders in the synthetic DNA industry and experts in national security, makes it clear that AI accelerates the threat of biosecurity threats.
“While the issue is not new, the pace of progress in artificial intelligence is. AI systems now outperform Ph.D-level virologists on questions about highly technical laboratory procedures in their own domains of expertise,” the letter states.
“AI systems are improving rapidly, and alongside incredible benefits to science and medicine, there is a real possibility that the knowledge barriers which have historically prevented bad actors from obtaining biological weapons will meaningfully erode.”
The letter has a distinct sense of urgency, requesting that lawmakers implement guardrails swiftly. “This is a rare moment of agreement across stakeholders that are often at odds,” it reads. “We hope policymakers will meet it with decisive action.”
It more than doubles your gaming time while giving you a better grip.
Belkin
Belkin has introduced a new charging grip for the Switch 2 that lets you game longer and be more comfortable doing it. The Gaming Charging Grip for Nintendo Switch 2 comes with a 10,000 mAh power bank, built-in charging cable and modular grips for the Joy-Cons.
To use it, you slide your Switch 2 into the charger case and snap the modular grips onto the Joy-Con 2s. Once connected via the built-in 30 watt USB-C cable, the power bank can recharge the console 1.5 times, letting you play well over twice as long as without it (150 percent longer, of course). The charging level is shown in a digital display on the back.
Belkin
The grips are ergonomic and non-slip, Belkin says, and detach with the Joy-Con 2s when you remove them. They look pretty thick, so should support your hands well even if they get a bit slick after some hours of play. On the main charging case, there’s a slot at the bottom so it won’t interfere with the Switch 2’s kickstand.
Belkin also introduced the Travel Bag for Nintendo Switch 2, a cross-body everyday bag for gamers looking for a practical way to tote their console and accessories. It comes with a dedicated soft-lined pocket with a velcro strap, spacious storage, quick-access front pockets and a hidden compartment for trackers.
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Belkin loves to experiment with Switch 2 charging, having already released a Charging Case that doubles as a tabletop stand and a Charging Case Pro. The Gaming Charging Grip is now available at belkin.com, Amazon and other retailers for $100 in black, lilac and olive, while the travel bag can be purchased in those same colors for $50.
Generalist hopes to make ‘general intelligence’ robotics a reality.
US AI robotics company Generalist has raised $400m at a reported $2bn valuation to accelerate its plans towards achieving “physical” artificial general intelligence (AGI).
The round was led by Radical Ventures, with participation from Nvidia’s venture arm NVentures, Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions, World Labs founder and leading AI expert Fei-Fei Li, and Zoom CEO Eric Yuan.
Other participants include 8VC, Union Square Ventures, Hanabi Capital, Norwest, Boldstart Ventures, Spark Capital, NFDG and serial entrepreneur Naval Ravikant.
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With a team of AI and robotics experts with experience across Big Tech, Generalist hopes to make “general intelligence” robotics a reality.
The company was founded in 2024 by former DeepMind scientists Pete Florence, Andy Zheng, and former Boston Dynamics roboticist and Harvard machine learning scientist Andrew Barry.
Generalist launched its Gen-0 class of AI models last November, which it said was trained on an “unprecedented” scale of real-world data. The company said the model proved that physical experience and larger models could predictably produce more capable systems.
In April, it launched Gen-1, which showed commercial viability, it added. Gen-1 was three-times faster than similar state-of-the-art models, showcasing 99pc reliability on diverse tasks and demonstrated the ability to learn new and complex physical skills, according to Generalist.
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“Scaling robot learning creates better models, better models can do more useful physical work, and data from real businesses drives the next generation of more capable models,” the company said in a statement.
The new funding will allow Generalist to continue “scaling robot learning”, including building new models, scaling its physical data engine, expanding compute and training infrastructure and working with industries for commercialisation.
“Our goal is not to tie ourselves to any single method or label. Our goal is to build whatever is needed to make physical AGI real,” said the company.
The exact definition of AGI is difficult to pin down. According to Google, AGI refers to the hypothetical intelligence of a machine that allows it to “understand” or “learn” intellectual tasks that humans can, while IBM calls it the “abstract goal of AI development”, where human intelligence can be replicated by machines or software.
Meanwhile, Alphabet’s robotics software R&D company Intrinsic joined Google to work in close proximity with DeepMind, as well as tap into Google’s Gemini AI models and cloud services.
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AI apps led App Store growth in 2025, with the entire ecosystem garnering $1.4 trillion in payouts. Apple’s take of that is only 10%, assuming you agree with how they count.
Every year, typically right before WWDC, Apple releases a study showing how the App Store has fared over the prior year. In 2025, the App Store facilitated more than $1.4 trillion in developer billings. And, it said that the App Store ecosystem has tripled in size since 2019.
“Developers are the heartbeat of the App Store, and this year’s incredible milestone is a testament to their boundless creativity,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook.
“We are deeply committed to providing developers with the tools, technologies, and trusted platforms they need to build for the future,” Cook added. “Together, developers are creating apps that enrich the lives of users around the world.”
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Commission eligible and ineligible revenue
Apple notes that for more than 90 percent of the billings and sales, Apple did not receive a commission. That means that most apps are making money outside of the App Store.
The study reports that 90% of App Store sales are commission-free. The study lists this number as $1,437 billion, or what most people, and Apple, generally call $1.4 trillion.
Image credit: Apple & Analysis Group
Interestingly, Apple counts digital goods and services purchased outside the App Store as sales that are not eligible for commissions, but still in the $1.4 trillion total. These include subscriptions to Hulu, Audible, Spotify, and the New York Times.
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It’s hard to understand where exactly Apple fits into this. If a person purchases a subscription to, say, YouTube Premium outside of the App Store, but watches it on their Apple TV, does that count in this number?
The methodology mentioned in the study isn’t helpful, either. It reads:
“Sales and distribution of digital goods and services can occur through the App Store in the form of paid app downloads and in-app purchases, through linking out to webstores where content is consumed in-app but payments are made outside of the App Store, or through the sale of digital content and subscriptions from multi-platform apps that allow for the use and consumption of the app, both in the App Store ecosystem and elsewhere.”
It’s unclear whether the data includes purchases made after a user manually enters a website address to buy digital goods, or only purchases made through links accessed via buttons in the app.
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The study also doesn’t say where it gets its data, really. A small line reads “data sources include data from Apple, app analytics companies, market research firms, and individual companies.”
So the digital goods and services section is a bit hard to parse. And it accounts for about 10.3% of Apple’s total $1.4 trillion revenue figure, or $149 billion.
Other sources of revenue include physical goods and services, such as buying items on Amazon or ordering delivery through Instacart. Lastly, it mentions in-app advertising revenue, including ads displayed on TikTok, Instagram, and in games.
AI market saturation
This year, Apple is placing special emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI), claiming that apps featuring consumer-facing AI have seen four times the growth of their non-AI counterparts. This specifically refers to the top 100 apps, of which 40 currently have some form of consumer-facing AI.
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Of course, it’s hard to tell if AI was the primary growth driver or if the most popular apps were going to integrate AI regardless.
For example, 99% of Fortune 500 companies were using AI in some capacity in 2025. Customer service saw a 2199% growth increase between January 2025 and January 2026.
Global growth, by region
The App Store saw growth worldwide in 2025. And in some regions, that growth has exploded in the last several years.
According to the study, billings and sales facilitated by the App Store have more than doubled in China in the last six years. In that same time period, it’s more than tripled in the U.S. and Europe.
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Image credit: Apple & Analysis Group
Globally, physical goods and services accounted for the majority of all sales made in the App Store.
However, sales differed a little across regions. For example, travel was the second-largest category of spending in physical goods and services in the U.S., Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Brazil.
However, in Korea, food delivery was the second most popular. In the Chinese market, grocery and food delivery rounded out the top three slots.
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Apple’s investment in developers
In 2025, Apple hosted thousands of developers at its developer centers. There are more than 20 Apple Developer Academies around the world, including Brazil, Indonesia, Italy, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and the U.S.
Apple plans to open a Developer Center in Berlin sometime in 2026.
WWDC 2026 kicks off on June 8, allowing Apple to connect with developers and offer the first look at what tools and technologies will be available for the upcoming Apple operating system lineup.
Developers and students will have access to more than 100 new video sessions about tools, technologies, and design. They will also be invited to participate in Group Labs and join conversations in the Apple Developer Forums.
Every new AI agent your team deploys starts from scratch: no memory of how the business works, where data lives, or what rules apply. And as agentic coding tools spin up applications faster than anyone can govern them, each one risks becoming another silo outside your data layer entirely. Microsoft is addressing both problems directly at Build 2026.
According to VentureBeat’s VB Pulse’s Q1 2026 RAG Infrastructure Market Tracker, hybrid retrieval intent among 100-plus employee organizations tripled from 10.3% in January to 33.3% in March, a signal that enterprises have moved past expanding RAG coverage and are now focused on the architecture underneath it. Shared business context is the part retrieval does not solve.
On the context side, Microsoft is expanding Fabric IQ, its existing business data context layer, into a broader unified system called Microsoft IQ, adding three additional context sources covering how the organization works, what it knows and real-time global signals from the web, so any agent can tap all four as a single foundation. On the application side, Rayfin, a new open-source SDK and CLI, deploys agent-built applications directly to Fabric as a governed production backend, routing application data into the same platform rather than spinning up new silos.
Amir Netz, CTO of Microsoft Fabric, reached for a film analogy to explain where the data platform fits. The green screen of cascading code in “The Matrix” wasn’t atmosphere, it was the layer that built the world Agent Smith operated in.
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“Our job in the world of data is creating reality for agents based on data,” Netz told VentureBeat.
Microsoft IQ unifies four context sources into a single agent foundation
Microsoft IQ brings together four context sources that until now existed separately, designed so a developer can connect a new agent to all four in a single integration step.
Work IQ. Captures how the organization operates day to day, drawing on email, documents, meetings and schedules to give agents an understanding of people, teams and workflows.
Foundry IQ. Manages institutional knowledge, curating and indexing knowledge bases so agents understand what it means to work within the organization, what rules apply and what procedures to follow.
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Fabric IQ. Models the live operational state of the business through data, defining entities, relationships and business rules grounded in real-time signals from Fabric Real-Time Intelligence. Ontologies, the layer that captures that operational context, are expected to reach GA in the coming months.
Web IQ. Adds real-time global context from the web, giving agents a current picture of the world outside the organization alongside its internal data.
“The agents are going to become highly informed virtual employees,” Netz said. “That’s where the world is heading.”
VB Transform · July 14–15 · Menlo Park · Agentic context layers
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Your agents are only as good as the data they can reach.
Sessions at Transform cover the RAG architectures powering agentic systems at scale — including how enterprises are connecting agents to live genomics, clinical, and enterprise data.
Rayfin routes agent-built applications into the same data foundation
Building shared context solves one half of the problem. The other is what happens when agents start generating applications. Every new app needs a backend, and without a governed deployment path each one creates a new data silo outside the context layer entirely.
Rayfin provides an enterprise-grade back end and deploys agent-built applications directly to Fabric, so application data lands in Microsoft OneLake by default and feeds back into the Microsoft IQ context layer rather than accumulating outside it.
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Microsoft positions Rayfin against Supabase and Neon, the Postgres-compatible backends that agentic coding tools default to. The differentiator is governance: Rayfin routes the entire application fleet through Fabric’s unified data and compliance layer rather than creating isolated silos.
Netz described the relationship as bidirectional. The agent building a Rayfin application draws from the organization’s ontology. The data that application generates then enriches that ontology for the next agent.
Every major data platform is chasing the same answer, but execution is unproven
Microsoft is not the only platform building a shared context layer for agents. Snowflake announced its own context capabilities this week with semantic capabilities. Pinecone has its Nexus platform that expands the vector database to become a knowledge engine and Redis has developed its Iris context and memory platform.
Microsoft’s approach further reinforces the trend that RAG and model availability aren’t the issue anymore.
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“Fabric IQ and Rayfin are important because the enterprise AI challenge is no longer just about the model availability,” Robert Kramer, managing partner at KramerERP told VentureBeat. “The real question is whether Microsoft simplifies execution and strengthens trust or adds another layer to an already complex environment.”
The Honda CBR650R is a sport bike, but it’s not a supersport bike, and that’s an important distinction. For the uninitiated, it can be tough to tell the difference between sport bikes and supersport bikes. They look alike, and in many cases, they even share a naming convention — as is the case with the Honda CBR nameplate and its variants. As with cars, though, the ‘super’ prefix means there’s a difference in performance.
Honda’s supersport bike is the CBR600RR, a high-revving machine meant as a lightweight track missile. I rode a 600RR for years, and boy do I miss that bike. I took it all over the United States and modified it to fit my needs just right. Unfortunately, after years of ownership and hundreds of rides, I’d moved on to other bikes. I needed the garage space, and I wanted someone else to enjoy the bike I’d idolized, then purchased, and enjoyed for years, so I made the choice to sell the aging Honda. Enter my test of the 650R.
Victory Jon
A few months after I sold my CBR, Honda offered me the latest CBR650R as a test bike for a few weeks, and I immediately thought of it as an opportunity: one to see if the sub-super CBR could fill the Honda performance motorcycle void in my life. Could the less-expensive, albeit slower, but still somewhat-performance-oriented bike make up for the gap in my garage, and in my heart? Though more affordable than the current 600RR, it still has hearty performance on paper, and no massive sacrifice in the looks department. I rode the newest 650R for nearly a month to find out if it delivers.
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Plenty of power for entertainment
Travis Langness/SlashGear
From my first freeway ride with the 650R, I could tell it had more than enough grunt to put a smile on my face. I’d picked up the bike from Honda HQ and immediately laid into the throttle on the nearest highway onramp.
While it isn’t a high-revving supersport, the CBR650R does have a substantial amount of power and torque. It uses a 649cc inline four-cylinder engine that revs to 12,000 rpm. That’s a relatively low redline by inline-four standards, but it still produces a healthy 93.8 horsepower and 46.4 lb-ft of torque — much more than its parallel-twin class rivals.
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Snap the throttle back, and as RPMs climb through the rev range, the 650R’s power feels satisfying, even if it isn’t as thrilling as something like my old 600RR. The 650R doesn’t quite manage to get the front wheel off the ground without some over-aggressive riding behavior, but it’s eager to entertain right out of the box. The exhaust note has a nice pitch, and the volume goes up reasonably as the revs rise, giving you a nice bit of four-cylinder sound. An aftermarket exhaust could add some serious spice to this bike and that would probably be my first modification if I owned one.
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Light on its feet
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More than just adequately powered, the 650R is also relatively light. At 466 lbs (wet weight), the 650R felt easy to maneuver through traffic, and I imagine even novice riders would feel confident in the saddle (though they’d probably have an easier time getting used to Honda’s smaller CBR500R).
The front brakes are 310mm rotors being clamped down on by four-piston calipers, with a single-piston caliper and a 240mm rotor in the rear. Both the front lever and rear brake pedal have strong feedback, and it was easy to bring the 650R to a halt in traffic, or as I approached corners in the twisties.
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I got used to riding the 650R quickly, and I was able to lean into the performance easily once I was out of the city, which I did quite a bit of. More than just satisfying for the price or for the class, the 650R was properly fun and responsive without any qualifiers or necessary context. So far, so good, for the bike I’d arbitrarily assigned to fill my 600RR’s place.
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The E-Clutch is a pretty special trick up the CBR650’s sleeve
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On last year’s model, the CBR650R got the addition of Honda’s E-Clutch system, a feature that carries over for 2026. Employed on a few other Honda bikes (like the small, entry-level Rebel 300, and the CB750 Hornet), the system essentially eliminates the need for the hand-operated clutch lever most of the time. Honda says it eliminates stalling and makes gear changes effortless. For the most part, that characterization of the system is spot on.
If you’re shifting the bike as you accelerate or decelerate, you still need to tap the foot lever in the appropriate direction, but there’s no need to pull in the hand clutch. You can even come to a complete stop without ever engaging the clutch lever, and the bike won’t stall. In some scenarios, you’ll need to use the clutch lever to get going, or to give the clutch a bit of slip on steep uphills, but that’s about it.
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In operation, the E-Clutch also essentially acts as an ultra-slick quick shifter. You can adjust the E-Clutch’s shift sensitivity (there are three levels — I stuck with the lightest and easiest one) or you can shut off the E-Clutch entirely if you want to go full manual mode. Just a tiny tap of your left foot and the gears change with minimal pressure. The shifts are delivered quickly as you climb through the gears, and there’s no jolting forward as you engage the next gear. What’s more, unlike some DCT or fully-automatic motorcycle transmissions, the Honda still requires a bit of engagement from the rider, adding a bit to the riding experience.
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One bit of missing hardware
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Being relatively speedy and having the excellent E-Clutch, the CBR650R was easy to ride on a daily basis, but it was missing something. It doesn’t have much in the way of adjustable suspension, and that did make the ride a bit stiff at times. The 650R’s rear suspension has adjustable spring preload, but that’s it. It’s a pretty typical omission for this class, but some rivals — like the R7 — do offer rebound and damping adjustment.
Up front, the 650R has a Show 41mm SFF-BP fork with 4.7 inches of travel, and in the rear, there’s a single-tube monoshock with 5.1 inches of travel. The shocks absorbed most of the small-to-medium bumps, but bigger road imperfections caused some jostling and fairly-sized movements from the handlebars.
Luckily, when I had the 650R leaned over on a few of my local corners, the small bumps I encountered didn’t upset the bike’s handling enough to take me off my line. The Dunlop Roadsport 2 tires that came on the 650R were predictable and relatively quick to warm up. While I wouldn’t make the CBR650R, especially on the budget-friendly Dunlops, my first choice for a weekend track day, neither the bike nor the tires felt overwhelmed on spirited weekend rides.
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In it for the long haul
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Suspension adjustments notwithstanding, I felt pretty comfortable on the CBR650R. Riding on the freeway, eventually in the canyons, and commuting through LA at some of the worst parts of the day, it was easy to get comfy. At 5-foot-9, the foot pegs are low enough that my knees didn’t feel pressured to bend too much, and the handlebars are high enough that I didn’t have to fully rely on my wrists and forearms for stability.
All the long rides I took on the 650R were pain free. The 650R also felt particularly narrow, making lane-splitting especially easy. Getting just about anywhere on the svelte Honda was a quick errand.
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Travis Langness/SlashGear
The rider seat was pretty pain-free too. It’s forgiving enough that my rear end didn’t go numb after a few hours in the saddle (that can happen if a seat is too stiff, like the one on my old 600RR was), and it’s tapered properly towards the front so that riders with larger legs like me can still touch both feet on the ground. A seat height of just 31.9 inches means most riders should have no problem stabilizing the bike at a stand-still.
Form and function
Travis Langness/SlashGear
After a few weeks on the CBR650R, I was able to start seeing the details more clearly. Styling cues like the thin headlights and the narrow taillight help elevate the 650R to a premium status amongst sport bikes in its class. A bit of flake in the Matte Black metallic paint gives you the sensation that Honda spent a bit of money on this one — it’s not some sort of afterthought to an already-robust motorcycle lineup. They’re hidden, but the exhaust headers leaving the front of the engine, before they’re collected into the single exhaust, are an impressive sight to behold. Even the ladder-style license-plate mounting bracket looks the part of an aggressive sport bike.
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Unlike most sport bikes these days, especially the ‘super’ ones, the 650R had some surprising storage space, too. Pop the rear seat off, and there’s an area large enough for some tools, maybe a rag or two, and some window cleaner for when your visor is splattered with most of the local insect population. There are two little straps attached to the rear seat as well, where I could attach my helmet at stops and not worry about it falling off the handlebars or the mirror.
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Also combining form and function in a seamless manner is the CBR’s rider screen. The 5-inch TFT display is high contrast and easy to read, even in bright, overhead sunlight. It’s also easy to interact with, given Honda’s simple handlebar controls and the logical menu layout. Like most of the rest of the bike, the screen just plain works.
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Finding the pricing sweet spot
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The 2026 CBR650R, with its satisfying power, sleek looks, and slippery E-Clutch, has an MSRP of $9,799 (including a $600 destination fee). That represents a $100 price drop over last year’s model, and big savings over the 600RR, which currently starts at $13,099.
The CBR650R is pretty reasonably priced when you compare it to class rivals from Yamaha and Suzuki, too. For instance, the Honda is a few hundred dollars less than the newest R7 ($10,074), and a bit cheaper than the GSX-8R ($10,399). The Kawasaki Ninja 650 undercuts them all at $8,884 (with ABS — it’s $500 less without it), but that Honda still has pretty good value.
Travis Langness/SlashGear
The 650R is missing a few features that rivals have — like cruise control, which you get standard on the new R7 – but the Honda is still expertly assembled, and there are lots of details that give it a strong sense of quality. The E-Clutch is a great asset for the Honda, while tight tolerances on body panels, nicely constructed trim pieces, and stitching on the seat that doesn’t waver is all part of the package. It feels like any Honda motorcycle should: well built.
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2026 Honda CBR650R verdict
Travis Langness/SlashGear
The CBR650R doesn’t provide the same kind of fizz that my old 600RR did, but pretty quickly after hopping on, I realized that wasn’t the point — I’d been looking at this bike through the wrong set of lenses. While it might not be a track-day weapon, capable of revving to the moon, the 2026 Honda CBR650R is swift, sharp, easy-to-ride two-wheeled transportation that will definitely fit the bill for lots of riders. It’s much cheaper and more approachable than the 600RR; it’s still properly powerful; and it’s a more versatile tool. It makes sport bike riding more accessible, and that’s never a bad thing.
The E-Clutch is an excellent bonus for new riders who are intimidated by manual clutch-lever operation, and it also provides an easy riding experience for veteran riders like myself. If you know yourself and your riding style well enough to know you won’t be doing triple-digit-speed freeway pulls or local track days on a regular basis, you don’t have to shell out for the more-expensive CBR600RR. If you want something that’ll be proper fun on its own, don’t sleep on the easier-to-ride CBR650R.
Mustafa Suleyman has identified Microsoft’s biggest AI competitor, and it is not OpenAI. “Anthropic is extremely expensive and I think many people are urgently looking for alternatives,” the head of Microsoft’s in-house model effort told Bloomberg in an interview.
The statement is more than competitive positioning. It is a declaration of intent. “We pay a lot of money to Anthropic, so our goal is to reduce and ultimately eliminate that cost,” Suleyman said.
To back it up, Microsoft this week announced seven new in-house AI models at its annual Build conference for developers, including MAI-Thinking-1, a reasoning model it says matches Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 on a widely used coding benchmark at a lower price point.
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For Microsoft, which uses enormous quantities of AI tokens across Copilot and its own engineering teams, the cost question is existential. “Many, many people in our organisation are spending millions of dollars” on AI tokens, Suleyman said. Building cheaper in-house alternatives is not just a competitive move against external providers. It is a way to protect Microsoft’s own margins.
After refining its models for consulting firm McKinsey, Microsoft claims it was able to outperform OpenAI’s GPT 5-5 with 10 times better cost efficiency, according to Suleyman. The company has also been talking with Adobe about using the in-house models, Bloomberg reported.
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From contractually bound to building its own
Until late 2025, Microsoft was contractually prohibited from independently pursuing frontier AI development under its partnership with OpenAI. A renegotiated agreement freed the company to build competing models while retaining licence rights to everything OpenAI builds through 2032.
That clock is now ticking. Suleyman’s MAI Superintelligence team, formed in November 2025, has shipped its first public models within six months. For a company with virtually no track record in frontier model development, the pace is aggressive but the gap remains real.
Suleyman was candid about that. “We’ve closed an enormous gap in six months,” he told Benzinga, while acknowledging that Anthropic has released two more advanced models since Opus 4.6, giving it a lead of several months.
Why Anthropic, not OpenAI
The strategic calculus is revealing. Microsoft retains discounted access to OpenAI’s models through 2032. It does not have a comparable arrangement with Anthropic. That makes Anthropic the more expensive dependency, and the one Suleyman can most directly address by building in-house alternatives.
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There is also a competitive logic. Anthropic’s Claude models have become the default choice for enterprise AI coding tools, and the company is preparing an IPO that could value it above $1 trillion. If Microsoft can offer comparable performance at lower cost, bundled with the Azure infrastructure its enterprise customers already use, it undercuts the case for buying Anthropic separately.
Whether Microsoft’s models can actually match Anthropic’s latest generation, rather than a prior one, is the question Suleyman’s seven new models do not yet answer. Matching Opus 4.6 on a benchmark is a credible starting point. But Anthropic has already moved past it, and in a market where the frontier shifts every few months, catching up and staying there are very different problems.
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