MacBook Air M5
MSRP $1,099.00
“Performance stopped mattering. Excellence remained.”
Pros
Cons
The MacBook Air M5 is what happens when Apple keeps refining an already excellent laptop instead of reinventing it. On paper, the upgrades feel modest. The design is unchanged, the display is still 60Hz, and the M5 chip isn’t delivering the dramatic leap that makes last year’s model instantly obsolete. Yet after spending two weeks with it, none of that really matters.
What stands out is how effortless everything feels. The M5 delivers more performance than most users will ever need, battery life remains excellent, the keyboard and trackpad are still among the best in the business, and macOS Tahoe continues to benefit from Apple’s tightly integrated ecosystem.
The lack of an OLED display and the continued presence of the notch prevent it from being perfect, but they are minor complaints in an otherwise outstanding package.
If you’re coming from an Intel Mac, an M1 MacBook Air, or an ageing Windows laptop, the MacBook Air M5 is one of the easiest laptop recommendations I’ve made in years. It’s not revolutionary. It’s just exceptionally good at almost everything.
| Specification | Apple MacBook Air M5 (13-inch) |
|---|---|
| Model Name | Apple MacBook Air M5 |
| Operating System | macOS 26 Tahoe |
| Processor | Apple M5 (10-core CPU) |
| NPU | 16-core Neural Engine |
| Graphics | Apple 8-core GPU |
| Memory | 16GB Unified Memory |
| Storage | 512GB SSD |
| Display | 13.6-inch Liquid Retina IPS Display |
| 2560 × 1664 resolution | |
| 60Hz refresh rate | |
| 500 nits brightness | |
| P3 Wide Colour Gamut | |
| True Tone Technology | |
| Support for 1 billion colors | |
| Screen-to-Body Ratio | Not officially specified |
| Build Material | Recycled Aluminium Unibody |
| Color Options | Sky Blue, Silver, Starlight, Midnight |
| Camera | 12MP Center Stage Camera |
| Wireless Connectivity | Wi-Fi 7 |
| Bluetooth 6 | |
| Ports | 2x Thunderbolt 4 / USB-C |
| 1x MagSafe 3 charging port | |
| 1x 3.5mm headphone jack | |
| Audio | Four-speaker sound system |
| Spatial Audio support | |
| Dolby Atmos support | |
| Three-microphone array | |
| Keyboard | Backlit Magic Keyboard with Touch ID |
| Touchpad | Force Touch Haptic Trackpad |
| Battery | Built-in lithium-polymer battery |
| Battery Life (Tested) | 13 hours 28 minutes |
| Charging | MagSafe 3 / USB-C charging |
| Cooling | Fanless passive cooling |
| Dimensions (W × D × H) | 30.41 × 21.50 × 1.13 cm |
| Weight | 1.24 kg |
I bought the base-model MacBook Air M5, specifically the 13-inch version with 16GB of unified memory and 512GB of storage. No upgrades, no custom configuration, and no attempt to justify spending even more money on a laptop – instead, the version most people are likely to buy.
Here’s the short version of this review: stop worrying about performance.
Reviewers will show benchmark charts because that’s what we do. Those charts will tell you the M5 is faster than the M4. They are correct. The M5 is faster. Apple has once again made the number bigger.
The problem is that the numbers stopped mattering a while ago.
The M4 MacBook Air already had more performance than most people would ever need. The M5 simply adds even more horsepower to a machine that was never struggling in the first place. It is a bit like replacing a sports car with an even faster sports car when your daily commute consists mostly of traffic lights and roadworks.
What you actually notice is how effortlessly everything works.
I’ll admit that unboxing the MacBook Air gave me a genuine little buzz. Partly because it is a gorgeous piece of hardware. The Sky Blue finish is particularly lovely, looking silver from some angles before revealing a subtle blue tint when the light catches it.
The bigger reason is that I’m now in my late 30s, and this is apparently what excitement looks like. Some people buy concert tickets. I admire laptop finishes.
Booting up takes around 30 seconds, although I should mention that about half of that time is spent entering my password incorrectly. Once you’re in, everything feels instant. Safari opens in less than a second. Apple Music launches before I’ve fully registered, clicking on it.
Coming from an ageing Windows laptop, the difference is striking. My old machine approached every task with the enthusiasm of someone being asked to help a friend move house on a Sunday morning. The MacBook Air M5, meanwhile, treats every request like it has had three coffees and a motivational speech.
And honestly, that’s the real story here. Not benchmarks, not charts, just a laptop that feels effortlessly fast all the time.
Quick take: Apple’s familiar design remains elegant, portable, and surprisingly difficult to fault.
If you’ve seen a MacBook Air released at any point over the last three years, you’ve already seen the MacBook Air M5.
That’s not necessarily a criticism. Apple landed on a winning design back in 2022 when it introduced the M2 MacBook Air, and the company has spent the years since doing what Apple does best: changing almost nothing and hoping nobody notices. To be fair, when the design is this good, it’s difficult to argue with the strategy.
My review unit is the 15-inch model in Sky Blue, and I genuinely think it is the colour to get. Depending on the lighting, it shifts between silver and a subtle metallic blue. It is understated enough to take into a boardroom, but distinctive enough that you won’t immediately lose track of it among a sea of silver laptops in a coffee shop.
The chassis itself remains carved from aluminium and feels every bit as premium as you’d expect from a laptop at this price point. The flat surfaces and rounded edges strike a nice balance between modern and comfortable. Four years into this design language, it still looks elegant, even if it no longer turns heads the way it once did.
Then there is the notch.
Look, I know some people stopped noticing it years ago. I haven’t. Every time I open the lid, my eyes go straight to that little black chunk hanging down from the top of the display. Apple insists it is there to house the webcam. I understand the reasoning. I still don’t like it. It is the only part of the MacBook Air’s design that feels like a compromise rather than a deliberate choice.
Port selection remains functional rather than exciting. On the left side, you’ll find MagSafe charging alongside two Thunderbolt 4 ports. The right side gets a solitary 3.5mm headphone jack, which feels a bit lonely over there.
My biggest complaint is one I’ve had for years. I wish Apple would place a USB-C port on either side of the laptop. MagSafe is excellent and remains one of Apple’s smartest features, but giving users the flexibility to plug accessories or chargers into either side would make daily life just a little easier. Instead, you’re still occasionally doing the awkward desk dance where the cable is on the wrong side, and you’re trying to convince yourself it doesn’t bother you.
The real magic of the MacBook Air, though, is how little you notice it when carrying it around. Even the larger 15-inch model feels absurdly thin and light. Sliding it into a backpack almost feels like you’ve forgotten to pack a laptop at all. The fanless design helps here, allowing Apple to keep the profile remarkably slim without sacrificing rigidity.
And somehow, despite having no fan whatsoever, the M5 chip barely seems to care. Whether I’m juggling browser tabs, editing photos, writing, streaming music, or bouncing between half a dozen apps at once, the MacBook Air remains cool, quiet, and completely unbothered. No noise, no drama, no sudden bursts of fan activity.
Just effortless performance wrapped in one of the best laptop designs Apple has ever produced.
Score: 9/10
Quick take: A sharp, colour-accurate display that prioritises consistency over OLED flashiness.
Apple may call it a Liquid Retina display, but what you’re actually getting is a 13.6-inch IPS panel with a resolution of 2560 x 1664 and a standard 60Hz refresh rate. The screen is technically larger than its “13-inch” branding suggests, and that extra space is immediately noticeable when compared to smaller ultraportables.
It’s also a very Apple display in the best possible sense.
The MacBook Air’s panel is sharp enough that text looks printed onto the screen rather than rendered on it. Whether you’re writing documents, editing photos, or spending your afternoon with an unhealthy number of browser tabs open, everything looks crisp and clean.
Watching the recently released Spider-Man: Brand New Day trailer proved to be a particularly good showcase for the display. Spider-Man’s bright red-and-blue suit stood out vividly against darker cityscapes, while shadow-heavy scenes retained plenty of detail. The colors looked rich without feeling exaggerated, which is something Apple continues to do better than many rivals.
Part of that experience comes from Apple’s True Tone technology, which automatically adjusts the display’s colour temperature based on ambient lighting conditions. It sounds like a gimmick until you spend a few days using it. Then every other display starts looking slightly off.
The MacBook Air’s display is also surprisingly colour accurate. In our usage, it delivers excellent coverage of both the DCI-P3 and sRGB colour spaces, putting it remarkably close to the more expensive MacBook Pro in terms of colour reproduction. For photographers, content creators, and anyone who cares about accurate colors, that’s impressive considering the Air uses a standard LED panel rather than the mini-LED technology found on Apple’s professional machines.
Of course, there’s one aspect of the display that remains divisive: the notch.
Nestled into the top of the screen, the notch houses the webcam and cuts into the menu bar. If you’re seeing it for the first time, it can look a little odd, particularly in light mode where the black cutout stands out against brighter backgrounds.
The good news is that the practical impact is almost nonexistent. Apple effectively uses the area above the traditional display boundary for the menu bar, meaning you still get a full 16:10 workspace below it. In other words, you’re not losing screen real estate. You’re actually gaining some.
And when you’re watching films or YouTube videos, the notch mostly disappears from view because most content doesn’t extend into that section of the display anyway.
The only real criticism is that OLED displays are becoming increasingly common on premium Windows laptops. Those panels still offer deeper blacks and more dramatic contrast than Apple’s IPS technology can match.
Even so, the MacBook Air’s display remains one of the best laptop screens available today. It is bright, sharp, colour accurate, and comfortable to use for hours at a time. It may not have the visual fireworks of OLED, but it gets almost everything else right.
Score: 9/10
Quick take: Apple still sets the benchmark for everyday laptop usability and comfort.
If there’s one area where Apple continues to embarrass much of the laptop industry, it’s the everyday stuff. Not the processor. Not the AI features. The things you interact with hundreds of times every day.
Let’s start with the keyboard.
On paper, the MacBook Air’s keyboard isn’t particularly exciting. Key travel is relatively shallow compared to some traditional laptop keyboards, and mechanical keyboard enthusiasts will probably continue writing angry comments about it until the end of time. But in actual use, it’s excellent.
The layout is logical, spacious, and refreshingly free from unnecessary experimentation. The full-sized function row remains intact, the inverted-T arrow keys are exactly where they should be, and the entire keyboard feels precise and predictable. After a few minutes of typing, it simply disappears beneath your fingers, which is arguably the highest compliment any keyboard can receive.
As someone who spends most of the day staring at a blinking cursor and pretending deadlines don’t exist, I found typing on the MacBook Air genuinely enjoyable.
My only complaint is a surprisingly petty one. Apple has continued its recent obsession with replacing text labels on keys like Tab, Shift, Enter, Caps Lock, and Delete with symbols. The icons are familiar if you’ve spent years using iPhones and iPads, but I still think actual words are clearer. This isn’t a functional problem by any means. Touch typists won’t care. It’s just one of those tiny design decisions that makes me wonder whether someone at Apple is being paid by the glyph.
The power button doubles as a Touch ID sensor and remains one of the most convenient authentication systems available on any laptop. A quick tap and you’re logged in before you’ve had time to remember what your password actually is.
Then there’s the trackpad.
At this point, reviewing Apple’s trackpads feels a bit like reviewing gravity. They’re so consistently good that it’s difficult to find new ways to praise them.
The large glass surface remains among the best in the business. It’s smooth, responsive, and absurdly accurate. More importantly, the haptic feedback system continues to perform its party trick of convincing your brain that you’re physically clicking something when, in reality, you’re not.
Unlike traditional trackpads that hinge from the top, the MacBook Air registers clicks evenly across the entire surface. Whether you’re clicking near the top, bottom, or corner, the experience feels the same. Once you get used to it, many Windows trackpads suddenly feel strangely primitive.
macOS gestures are equally brilliant. Swiping between desktops, launching Mission Control, or zooming with pinch gestures all feel fluid and intuitive. Everything responds instantly, making navigation feel effortless.
The speakers deserve credit, too. Given how impossibly thin the MacBook Air is, the sound quality is genuinely impressive. Music sounds clear and detailed, vocals come through beautifully, and podcasts are crisp enough that you’ll suddenly realize how many people say “um” professionally.
That said, physics remains undefeated. While the four-speaker system delivers plenty of clarity, it can’t quite match the bass response of thicker laptops or Apple’s own MacBook Pro models. Drums sound punchy, but they don’t have the chest-thumping weight that larger speaker systems can produce.
Still, for a laptop this thin, the overall package is remarkably good. The keyboard is excellent, the trackpad remains the industry benchmark, and the speakers are more than capable of handling everything from work calls to late-night Netflix sessions.
In typical Apple fashion, none of these features is flashy. They just work exceptionally well, every single day.
Score: 9/10
Quick take: The 12MP webcam delivers sharp, natural video quality for every call.
Nestled inside the controversial notch is a 12MP webcam, and thankfully, it’s a genuinely good one.
Video calls on the MacBook Air look sharp, detailed, and natural. During testing, the camera captured everything with impressive clarity, including individual strands of hair and, somewhat less helpfully, every sign that I probably should have gone to bed earlier the night before. The camera is honest, perhaps a little too honest.
Still, that’s exactly what you want from a webcam. Colors look accurate, detail levels are strong, and image quality is comfortably ahead of the grainy, washed-out webcams that continue to plague many Windows laptops.
Apple also includes its Center Stage feature, which automatically tracks and keeps you in frame as you move around during video calls. It’s a clever piece of technology that works surprisingly well, particularly if you’re the sort of person who likes to pace around while talking.
Personally, I rarely make much use of it because my video call strategy consists largely of sitting in one spot and trying not to accidentally leave myself on mute for half the meeting.
For most people, though, Center Stage is a nice bonus rather than a headline feature.
The bigger story is that the MacBook Air’s webcam is simply reliable. Whether you’re jumping into a work meeting, catching up with family, or pretending your camera isn’t on while frantically looking for a document, it delivers consistently excellent image quality with minimal effort required.
Score: 8/10
Quick take: macOS Tahoe refines the experience while Apple’s ecosystem remains unmatched.
The MacBook Air M5 ships with macOS 26 Tahoe, which brings Apple’s biggest visual redesign in years. Whether that’s exciting or mildly concerning depends entirely on how much you enjoy translucent user interfaces.
The headline feature is something Apple calls “Liquid Glass,” a new design language shared across macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. In practice, this means menus, buttons,s and interface elements now have a glass-like appearance that reflects and refracts content behind them. Apple wants it to feel modern and dynamic. Cynics might describe it as the software equivalent of discovering the transparency slider in Photoshop and refusing to stop using it.
When Liquid Glass was first revealed, reactions were mixed. Some people loved the fresh look, while others immediately began demanding Apple dial it back. To the company’s credit, it listened. Several tweaks during the beta period reduced some of the more aggressive visual effects, and the final version feels much more restrained.
Thankfully, macOS seems to be the platform that benefits most from the redesign. While Liquid Glass can occasionally feel a little overenthusiastic on iPhones and iPads, its implementation on the Mac is more subtle. After a few days of use, I largely stopped thinking about it, which is probably the best outcome for any interface redesign.
Beyond the visual refresh, Tahoe introduces several genuinely useful features.
Live Translation is one of the most impressive additions, bringing real-time language translation to Messages and FaceTime conversations. The revamped Phone app also makes its way to the Mac, allowing calls and communication features to feel more integrated across Apple’s ecosystem.
Live Activities finally arrive on macOS as well, giving you quick access to ongoing tasks, deliveries, sports scores, and other real-time information without constantly switching between apps.
Spotlight search has also become smarter and more capable. Long-time Mac users already treat Spotlight as the fastest way to do almost anything, and Tahoe makes it even more useful. The less time spent digging through folders and menus, the better.
One feature that deserves special mention is Clipboard History. It sounds incredibly boring until you need it. Then it instantly becomes one of your favourite additions. Being able to revisit previously copied items saves a surprising amount of time and frustration.
Last year, Apple made some very ambitious promises about AI-powered Siri features. Most of those features never arrived, and the company spent the following months explaining why they weren’t ready. It wasn’t Apple’s finest moment.
As a result, Tahoe takes a noticeably quieter approach to artificial intelligence. Apple Intelligence is still present, but it no longer dominates every conversation about the operating system. Frankly, that might be for the best.
The real strength of macOS continues to be the ecosystem rather than any single AI feature.
My favourite example remains iPhone Mirroring. The ability to control your iPhone directly from your Mac still feels vaguely like witchcraft. Need a two-factor authentication code? Need to respond to a message? Need something from an app on your phone while that phone is buried somewhere in your house? iPhone Mirroring handles it all without forcing you to leave your desk.
Also, connectivity is future-proof. The MacBook Air’s N1 chip adds support for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, giving it a sense of readiness for the next generation of wireless devices and networks.
And that’s ultimately why macOS Tahoe works. The new design is nice, the AI features are fine, but the real magic remains Apple’s ability to make all of its devices feel like parts of the same machine. Few companies do that better.
Score: 9/10
Quick take: Dependable all-day battery life means one less thing to worry about.
Battery life continues to be one of the MacBook Air’s greatest strengths, even if it no longer feels quite as magical as it did when Apple Silicon first arrived and collectively made Windows laptop manufacturers very nervous.
In our testing, which included web browsing, video streaming, and some light gaming with the display set to 75 percent brightness, the MacBook Air lasted 13 hours and 28 minutes on a single charge. That’s comfortably enough to get through a full workday without spending half your afternoon hunting for a power socket.
More importantly, the battery life feels dependable. I never found myself nervously checking the battery percentage every hour or lowering screen brightness like a survivalist rationing supplies after the apocalypse. The MacBook Air simply gets on with the job.
And if you do happen to run low, charging is refreshingly straightforward. Apple’s MagSafe connector remains one of the best charging solutions in the business, snapping into place with satisfying ease while also protecting your laptop from an accidental cable yank. Alternatively, you can charge through USB-C if that’s more convenient.
With a charger nearby, whether it’s MagSafe or USB-C, stretching the MacBook Air through an entire day of work is remarkably easy.
In short, battery life isn’t a headline-grabbing feature on the M5 Air. It’s something arguably more valuable: one less thing to worry about.
Score: 9/10
Quick take: The M5 chip makes an already fast laptop feel even faster.
The new MacBook Air 13 with Apple’s M5 chip feels like Apple is perfecting a formula it already perfected years ago. The base model sounds humble enough on paper (10-core CPU, 8-core GPU, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD), but in day-to-day use, I rarely felt like I was using an “entry-level” machine. Even in my early testing, the laptop handled heavier workloads far better than I would have expected from something so thin and light.
My unit had a 10-core CPU with an 8-core GPU, so GPU performance will obviously vary if you go for the upgraded 10-core GPU option. But the combination of the M5 chip, faster storage, and ample memory makes this MacBook Air feel really fast. This will be more than enough machine for most users and even quite a few professionals.
But what surprised me even more than the raw performance was the overall software experience on macOS Tahoe 2,6 which feels very polished. Apple’s latest OS is rich, well-organized, and deeply integrated into the wider Apple ecosystem. The more Apple devices you have,e the more this laptop starts to feel like the hub of everything.
Also, one gripe we had – Apple needs to ramp up its gaming portfolio, which currently consists of Cyberpunk 2077 and a couple of other games, fewer than the number of fingers you have on one hand.
Liquid Glass provides a more uniform visual style across Apple’s ecosystem, whether you’re moving from an iPhone 17 Pro to the MacBook Air. Fortunately, Apple has toned the effect down a bit on macOS. It still looks modern and fresh, without making the desktop look too shiny or distracting.
The desktop experience itself is still one of the biggest strengths of macOS. I still find features like Stacks very useful in keeping files organized, and I like how widgets can stay in monochrome to minimize distractions. It’s clean without trying too hard to be futuristic.
Where it gets really impressive is in the ecosystem integration. I loved being able to mirror my iPhone directly to the MacBook Air and get phone notifications on the desktop. Universal Control still feels almost unbelievably smooth. I could seamlessly switch my work control between an iPhone and the MacBook sitting side by side without even thinking about it. And for someone coming from Windows stable, this feels like a huge step-up.
Quick take: Benchmark gains are real, but everyday responsiveness is the bigger story.
Moving to benchmarks. The benchmark results indicate the base MacBook Air M5 is far more capable than its thin-and-light design would suggest. In the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, the SSD managed to hit around 5.4 GB/s reads and 1.1 GB/s writes, which is fast enough for demanding workloads like 4K and even some 8K video editing.
On the other hand, the results on the AmorphousMemoryMark show a very high memory bandwidth, with read speeds over 124GB/s. In real-world use, this translates to zippy multitasking, faster app launches, and smooth handling of heavier creative workloads. Memory and storage performance on the M5 feels surprisingly near pro-level territory for a “Air” machine.
The MacBook Air M5’s benchmark numbers become far more impressive once you compare them with previous MacBook Air generations and modern integrated graphics solutions from the Windows side. In several GPU-focused 3DMark tests, the Air is now performing closer to entry-level gaming laptops than traditional ultraportables.
In Solar Bay, my unit scored 19,975 points at 1440 p.m. For perspective, verified online results show the MacBook Air M4 with a 10-core GPU averaging around 15,570 points in the same test. That means the M5 Air is delivering roughly a 28 percent jump in ray-tracing performance generation over generation. Even more interestingly, AMD’s Radeon 780M integrated graphics – one of the strongest Windows iGPU solutions right now – scores around 11,490 points in Solar Bay, putting the M5 comfortably ahead.
The same trend continues in Steel Nomad Light. My MacBook Air M5 scored 4,462 points, while the M4 GPU averages roughly 4,097 points online. That is not an earth-shattering jump, but it does show Apple steadily widening the gap between the Air and most integrated Windows graphics solutions. The Radeon 780M, for example, averages around 2,662 points in the same benchmark, which means the M5 Air is roughly 67 percent faster here.
The heavier Steel Nomad benchmark is where things become more realistic. My system scored 932 points, while Notebookcheck’s Apple M5 GPU database shows averages closer to 1,098 points. That suggests my 8-core GPU configuration is performing slightly below higher-end M5 variants, but still within the expected range for a fanless machine. By comparison, an M5 MacBook Pro with the 10-core GPU has posted scores around 1,138 points. So while the Air is clearly slower than actively cooled Pro models, the difference is smaller than you might expect.
Wild Life Extreme may be the most impressive result overall. My MacBook Air M5 scored 9,974 points at 4K resolution while running on battery power. Online M4 GPU averages sit around 9,591 points, while some optimized M5 systems reportedly cross 11,000 points. That puts the Air significantly ahead of older Apple Silicon chips like the M2 Pro, which typically scores around 10,955 points despite using a much larger and actively cooled laptop chassis.
The Geekbench 6 results show just how powerful Apple’s M5 chip has become for a thin-and-light laptop. My MacBook Air M5 scored 4,171 in single-core and 16,325 in multi-core CPU performance, putting it well ahead of most ultraportable Windows laptops and even ahead of several older MacBook Pro models. For perspective, the M4 MacBook Air typically scores around 3,800 single-core and 15,000 multi-core, meaning the M5 delivers a noticeable generational jump. GPU performance also looks strong, with an OpenCL score of 40,488. That places the Air comfortably above AMD’s Radeon 780M integrated graphics and close to entry-level discrete GPU territory in some creative workloads.
The benchmark results paint a clear picture: the MacBook Air M5 is no longer just a great ultraportable. It is becoming a genuinely capable performance machine. Apple’s new M5 chip delivers noticeable gains across both CPU and GPU workloads, with the biggest improvements appearing in graphics-focused tests.
In Geekbench 6, the M5 scored 4,171 in single-core and 16,325 in multi-core performance, extending Apple’s lead over competing ultraportable chips from Intel and Qualcomm. These gains may not look dramatic on paper, but they contribute to the Air’s exceptionally responsive everyday experience.
The GPU results are even more impressive. In Solar Bay, the M5’s 8-core GPU scored 19,975 points, roughly 28 percent ahead of the M4 and significantly faster than AMD’s Radeon 780M integrated graphics. Similar trends appear in Steel Nomad Light and Wild Life Extreme, where Apple’s fanless laptop continues to close the gap with entry-level gaming hardware.
What’s most remarkable is that these results come from a silent, fanless machine. The MacBook Air M5 may not replace a gaming laptop or MacBook Pro, but it comfortably delivers some of the strongest performance currently available in the ultraportable category.
No, the MacBook Air M5 is still not competing with RTX 4060 or RTX 4070 gaming laptops. But compared to integrated GPUs like Radeon 780M, older Apple Silicon machines, and even the previous-generation M4 Air, these numbers show Apple’s fanless ultraportable has become a genuinely capable GPU machine for creative work, GPU acceleration, and lighter gaming workloads.
Score: 9/10
The MacBook Air M5 is a slightly frustrating product to review because there isn’t much left for Apple to improve.
The design is largely unchanged, the display remains excellent rather than revolutionary, the keyboard and trackpad continue to lead the industry, and the battery life is comfortably good enough to get through a full day. Even macOS Tahoe, despite its flashy Liquid Glass makeover, feels more like a refinement than a reinvention.
What Apple has created with the MacBook Air M5 is arguably the most complete mainstream laptop you can buy today. It is thin, light, silent, powerful, exceptionally well-built, and backed by one of the best software ecosystems in the industry. It handles everyday productivity with ease, powers through creative workloads without complaint, and delivers performance levels that would have been considered absurd for a fanless laptop just a few years ago.
The most impressive thing about the M5 MacBook Air isn’t how fast it is. It’s how little you think about its performance. Everything happens instantly. Apps launch without hesitation, multitasking feels effortless, and the laptop never gives you a reason to question whether it can handle the next task.
Sure, I would love an OLED display. I’d happily take an extra USB-C port. And yes, I still dislike the notch.
But those complaints feel minor when viewed against everything else Apple gets right.
The MacBook Air M5 isn’t exciting because it changes everything. It’s impressive because it proves Apple already figured out the formula years ago and continues to refine it.
For most people, this is not just the best MacBook to buy. It’s the best laptop, full stop.
Yes. For most people, the answer is remarkably simple: buy the MacBook Air M5 and stop overthinking it.
If you’re upgrading from an Intel MacBook, an M1 MacBook Air, or an ageing Windows laptop, the improvement will be immediately noticeable. You’ll get exceptional battery life, near-instant responsiveness, a fantastic keyboard and trackpad, excellent build quality, and a level of polish that very few Windows laptops can consistently match.
It’s also powerful enough that most buyers won’t come close to finding its limits. Whether you’re a student, office worker, content creator, programmer, or someone who simply wants a premium laptop that lasts for years, the M5 Air has more than enough performance in reserve.
The only people who should think twice are existing M3 or M4 MacBook Air owners. The M5 is faster, but not dramatically so. If your current Air is doing everything you need, upgrading purely for benchmark gains makes very little sense.
Similarly, professional video editors, 3D artists, and users running sustained heavy workloads may still be better served by a MacBook Pro with active cooling and a more powerful GPU configuration.
Everyone else can safely ignore benchmark charts and spec-sheet debates.
The base 13-inch MacBook Air M5 with 16GB RAM and 512GB storage hits a sweet spot that feels unusually difficult to fault. It offers enough performance to satisfy enthusiasts, enough simplicity to please casual users, and enough longevity to remain relevant for years.
In a market full of laptops that excel in one area while compromising somewhere else, the MacBook Air M5 stands out because it compromises remarkably little.
Buy it, use it, and spend the next five years worrying about something more important than laptop performance.
If you’re considering alternatives to the MacBook Air M5, there are a few standout options depending on what matters most to you.
The 15-inch MacBook Air M5 is the obvious alternative within Apple’s own lineup. It delivers the same excellent performance, battery life, and fanless design as the 13-inch model, but with a larger display and improved speaker system. For users who spend long hours working on documents, spreadsheets, or creative projects, the extra screen space can be well worth the added cost.
The Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 takes a different approach, focusing on AI-powered features, a premium design, and impressive battery life. Its high-quality display and comfortable keyboard make it one of the best Windows laptops available, although ARM app compatibility can still be a consideration for some users.
Meanwhile, the LG Gram remains a compelling choice for anyone who prioritises portability. Despite offering larger display options, it stays remarkably lightweight and includes a generous selection of ports. Battery life is excellent, and its ultra-light design makes it particularly appealing for frequent travellers.
What makes the MacBook Air M5 stand out is its balance. It may not have the largest display or the most ports, but few laptops combine performance, battery life, build quality, silent operation, and ecosystem integration as successfully. It doesn’t dominate every category – it simply gets almost everything right.
I used the MacBook Air M5 as my primary laptop for over two weeks, relying on it exactly as most buyers would. During that time, it handled everything from writing and research to photo editing, media consumption, video calls, and the endless browser tabs that somehow become part of every workday.
The laptop travelled with me between home, café,s and workspaces, spending time both plugged in and running exclusively on battery power. Testing wasn’t limited to synthetic benchmarks or controlled workloads. Instead, I focused on understanding how the MacBook Air performs in real-world conditions where responsiveness, reliability, and battery life matter more than benchmark scores.
Daily usage included multitasking across Safari, Apple Music, productivity apps, messaging platforms, and cloud-based tools. I also spent time watching videos, testing the speakers, participating in video calls, and evaluating the overall macOS Tahoe experience.
The goal was simple: to find out whether the MacBook Air M5 remains the laptop most people should buy. Rather than treating it as a test device, I actually purchased it as my everyday computer and judged it on how well it disappeared into daily life while getting work done.
Each year, the bar for luxury gets higher, especially when it comes to our kitchens, and many major refrigerator brands have been stepping up to the challenge. For the affluent, who care about their kitchen aesthetics as much as its functionality, some pretty common refrigerator features are top of mind, like being built-in and panel-ready. After all, there’s nothing fancier than a classic kitchen wherein you don’t know where the fridge is at first glance.
As for functionality, it’s almost expected that all high-end refrigerator models have dual-evaporator cooling and an integrated water filter. Not to mention, there’s the theater-style interior lighting that can make even your leftovers look yummy, the barely-there background noise, and the kind of doors that don’t slam when they close.
These days, luxury refrigerator brands like Miele, Signature Kitchen, Sub-Zero, and JennAir, as well as appliance brands more familiar to us commoners like LG and Samsung, have been rolling out cool features that might be perfect for people for whom budget is no object. For wine lovers who are always ready to celebrate or amateur mixologists who make cocktails for fun, there are refrigerators with beverage-focused features. Others integrate tech features that feel like they’re straight from a sci-fi novel, like with motion sensor technology or artificial intelligence. So, if you’re looking for inspiration for your dream kitchen, here are some cool features that your next refrigerator might have.
For people who love hosting guests in their home, making sure you have the right drinks is important to set the mood. Whether it’s being able to make cold juice for your summer pool party or making sure everyone’s cocktails are perfect for a cozy indoor gathering, having enough ice can make all the difference. In reality, the tech behind fridge ice makers have been around for a long time. But while it’s becoming increasingly common even for mid-priced models, some luxury refrigerator brands like Thermador aren’t done innovating it. For its bottom freezer refrigeration collection, it doesn’t just have a designated ice drawer, but it makes two distinct types of ice: diamond ice and entertainment ice.
To start with, the diamond ice doesn’t just have a unique appearance, its shape is designed to cluster more closely, reducing dilution over time. For its 42-inch and 48-inch models, Thermador also offers entertainment ice, frozen in larger gem shapes that maintain their structure better than regular ice, and well-suited to keeping cocktails colder for longer. Both ice varieties use the refrigerator’s built-in water filter. That said, if you don’t want to sell a kidney to be able to get ice within reach, there are tons of portable ice makers that can fit a wide range of budgets from brands like Frigidaire, Euhomy, and Aglucky.
When you have all the money in the world, doors just seem to open by themselves, including refrigerators doors, it seems. Several luxury appliance manufacturers like Liebherr have rolled out models with automatic doors that you can also trigger via knocking, smartphone app, or voice command. Capable of working with smart home assistants, like Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa, you can customize how much it opens with a minimum of 70 degrees. You can also leave it open for a set duration, which ranges from half a minute to five minutes.
Sometimes, it can be difficult to open heavy refrigerator doors while trying to put things in that needs two hands, such as when we’re loading up newly bought groceries. But on a more practical note, luxury refrigerator models like these can also be useful for homes with family members or guests that have limited mobility. Since it doesn’t require the same level of force, it can be ideal for individuals who rely on crutches, walkers, or wheelchairs.
For its AutoDoor innovation, Liebherr also took home the 2023 iF Design Award with claims of being the world’s first refrigerator that both opens and closes automatically. While not as sophisticated, Samsung has Auto Open Door features for some of its models that still require a light touch. LG Signature also has something similar, which requires using your feet to step on a light projection that says “Door Open.”
Who says refrigerators have to cool food? While Miele is a pretty well-regarded maker for luxury refrigerators in general, it also offers several luxury built-in wine refrigerators that can make any wine connoisseur’s heart sing, like the Miele KWT 2672 ViS.
Priced at $10,599, the KWT 2672 ViS MasterCool Wine Conditioning Unit is one of its most expensive wine refrigerators the brand makes. It comes with three temperature zones, so you can optimize it for your collection. It comes with nine Beechwood FlexiFrame racks, which add an elegant look. The fridge has a temperature range between 5 degrees Fahrenheit to 20 degrees Fahrenheit. With a total capacity of 13.38 cubic feet, you can store around 91 bottles of 0.75-liter Bordeaux style bottles, which is a lot more than the LG Signature Wine Cellar‘s 65-bottle capacity. Although, it’s also designed to hold different bottle sizes.
With fancy handless doors, the Miele fridge also ships with a SommelierSet that includes an easy-to-reach section with wine glasses, decanter, and a home for each item. With this, you don’t have to go very far to drink perfectly conditioned wine. It can also be hooked up to the brand’s Miele@home app, which can be integrated to your smart home system. Since it doesn’t include one, you might want to get something like the Cokunst electric wine opener, a great luxury gadget to help beat holiday stress.
Although all refrigerators are designed to keep food fresher for longer, some brands do it better than others. Among luxury refrigerator brands, Sub-Zero boasts using NASA-inspired purification technology for some of its models. By scrubbing the air in 20-minute intervals, it claims to reduce the presence of everything from bacteria, odors, and even ethylene. While naturally occurring, ethylene exposure can expedite spoilage for produce stored in your refrigerator. Managing its presence in your refrigerator can drastically affect how long your fruits and vegetables last. According to researchers at Penn State, foods likes carrots, broccoli, cucumbers, asparagus, and herbs like parsley and mint are all more sensitive to ethylene exposure.
Since the removal of ethylene helps prolong the freshness of produce, it can help reduce overall food waste in your home and keep fruits and vegetables more palatable. While a Sub-Zero fridge may be out of the budget for a lot of people, there are several food waste apps that you can download to keep track of what’s inside your fridge, purchase assorted overstock goods, or donate food that you know you can’t consume in time. And if your fridge doesn’t come with these fancy air purifiers, you can still snag a just under $20 Fridge Ninja Fridge Deodorizer, which is one of the many Amazon gadgets we think can make spring cleaning easier.
Making sure your fridge is stocked properly can be difficult, especially for people who lead busy lives. Not only can this lead to food waste, but it can also keep you from cooking all the recipes you were planning. Thankfully, the intersection between luxury and smart fridge brands are slowly making these problems a thing of the past.
Like something out of a sci-fi movie, we now live in a time where AI-assisted food management is becoming even more accessible, with Samsung’s Bespoke AI Family Hub leading the charge. In May 2026, Samsung shared major improvements with its AI vision technology, announcing in a press release that its AI Food Manager was gaining the ability to detect packaged goods from global brands, in addition to fresh produce. The feature will also pay attention to how fast you go through various foods, and automatically send you notifications when it’s time to buy more.
In January 2026, GE also announced its pioneering scan-to-list barcode scanner, which is meant to help you track what’s inside your fridge. Aside from being able to generate shopping lists, it can also sync with Instacart. The brand also introduced FridgeFocus, a feature that lets you check the live inventory of your fresh fruits and vegetables remotely.
To make this list, we looked into some of the top-of-the-line offerings from luxury refrigerator manufacturers. We reviewed common features that are seen across brands to understand what is expected for luxury refrigerator brands in both aesthetics and function. Afterward, we isolated features specific to particular brands, and how they translate into premium experiences that are not yet as readily available in many cheaper refrigerator options. To round out each section, we looked for competing brands that aim to solve similar problems through different methods, to bring up as both competing luxury counterpoints and more affordable alternatives. When possible, we also mention specific products you can buy if you want a similar experience, without the luxury price tag.
“About 59% of TikTok videos served to a new account’s For You feed are AI slop,” writes Search Engine Journal, “according to a report from Kapwing, the video creation tool company. That’s roughly three times the rate Kapwing found on YouTube.”
The company manually reviewed over 10,000 TikTok videos across 20 categories and ran a separate fresh-account test, counting AI-generated content in the first 500 For You videos. Kapwing ran the same fresh-account test on YouTube and found that 104 of the first 500 Shorts, or 21%, were AI slop. On TikTok, 294 of 500 For You videos hit that threshold…
Of the 2,000 videos Kapwing reviewed in TikTok’s Kids category, 57% were AI slop. That was the highest rate of any category in the analysis. The highest-rate tag was #cartoonkids, where 97 of 100 featured videos were AI-generated. Tags like #cartoons and #babysong both reached 83%, and #forkids came in at 79%. After Kids, the next highest AI slop rates were in Science and Education (35%), Health (33%), and History (33%). All three are categories where visual illustration and voiceover narration make up much of the content.
On the other end, categories where on-camera presence or physical demonstration are central had the lowest rates. Fashion came in at 1.3%, Music at 1.5%, and Fitness at 1.6%.
The article notes that by last November, TikTok “had already labeled 1.3 billion videos as AI-generated, according to the report.”
It’s no secret ICE officers are using their phones and their tech toys to do way more than they’ll openly admit to doing. Tech tools that can be abused will be abused. And ICE has plenty of those, including an app that’s supposed to be used for “verification” of migrant status, but is just facial recognition tied to whatever other information ICE has access to.
The cameras come out and the harassment begins, as detailed here in this NPR report. Shortly after Portland, Maine resident Xenia Pantos stopped her car to observe some ICE activity in her neighborhood, their spouse, Carly Williams got a call from a blocked number. The caller identified himself as calling from the Department of Homeland Security.
Williams said the caller asked if anyone else drives her vehicle. When Williams mentioned her spouse sometimes did, the caller asked Williams if she knew her spouse had stopped at an incident that morning.
“What he basically said was, ‘You should let her know to not do that anymore because people who are doing that type of thing are getting added to a domestic terrorist watch list,’” Williams recalled in an interview with NPR.
ICE continues to deny it targets anti-ICE protesters with its surveillance tools. According to the report, it has “repeatedly denied” utilizing its tools and databases to find out more about those who protest or observe its anti-migrant efforts.
Rep. Lou Correa, D-Calif., cited a well-circulated clip of an ICE agent in Portland, Maine, telling a person videotaping that she would be added to a “nice little database.”
“I can’t speak for that individual,” said Todd Lyons, who serves as acting director of ICE. “But I can assure you that there is no database that’s tracking United States citizens.”
Lyons doubled down on his denials about the database’s existence during a Senate hearing Thursday. When asked if ICE is giving protester information to any other agency, Lyons said: “We do not.”
That’s what Todd Lyons said in February. And it’s definitely not true. ICE has a database that is definitely capable of “tracking American citizens,” because it has access to plenty of law enforcement databases filled with information about American citizens. One needs to look no further than the heat it has drawn by asking local law enforcement to perform searches of things like Flock’s ALPR databases on its behalf.
And it’s definitely not true because the same Todd Lyons said as much in a written response [PDF] to congressional queries that has only recently been made public.
Lyons in February: “There is no database that’s tracking United States citizens.”
Lyons in April: “Well… except for this one.”
Your letter asks what specific personal information DHS officers collect. ICE collects information to identify the person(s) with whom the officer or agent is engaging. During these interactions, a variety of data may be collected by ICE law enforcement officers to enforce federal immigration and criminal law. ICE collects essential biographic and biometric information and situational details required to support criminal investigations, safety, and immigration concerns.
If individuals who interact with ICE officers are not arrested or detained, any information collected during those encounters is maintained consistent with applicable law and DHS and ICE policies and is treated as an official government record.
That sounds like a database is being created and maintained — one that deals solely with people who are not targets of immigration enforcement effort. And most of those people would be (1) US citizens and (2) protesters and observers engaging with ICE officers.
Further down in the letter, Lyons offers up another phrase that sounds like a denial, but really isn’t:
DHS is not creating or maintaining a separate, standalone database for individuals encountered that haven’t been arrested or detained.
That would mean something if no information was collected on these people. But Lyons has already stated that officers collect this information. If DHS is not “creating or maintaining a separate database,” that only means exactly what that says. However, it does not mean DHS is not collecting and storing information about people ICE officers “encounter” who are not “arrested or detained.”
Even if all applicable laws and retention standards are being followed (and DHS has given us little reason to believe it follows laws and standards), this information is still being collected, stored, and — because it’s there — accessed by federal officers.
And even if we choose to believe Lyons’ dissembling, we’re still left with the fact that people identifying themselves as federal employees are calling up citizens who’ve done nothing more than exercise their First Amendment rights and threatening them with being added to government databases. So, even if Lyons ain’t lying, the people who worked for him (until he stepped down) aren’t doing what Lyons thinks they’re doing. They’re doing the other thing: collecting information on protesters and observers for the sole reason of keeping an eye on them, if not actually tracking them down to harass them.
Filed Under: free speech, ice, protests, surveillance, todd lyons
Google Cloud Summit came to London last week, and we took the opportunity to sit down with database execs Sailesh Krishnamurthy (VP engineering) and Yasmeen Ahmad (product executive Agentic Data Cloud).
The event was wall-to-wall agentic AI, and true to the theme, Ahmad told us that “we’re putting agents at the center … with the goal that humans are not going to be using data platforms in the next three to five years. It’s going to be humans orchestrating agents, and agents actually doing the work.”
One of the key AI-driven changes, Krishnamurthy said, is that when retrieving data “it’s not so much about getting the exact results, but getting the best results.”
For developers skilled in crafting SQL queries that get precise results in the most efficient way, the notion of inexact queries that go through some sort of non-deterministic and compute-expensive parsing may seem like a step backwards.
“If you have exact questions, you need to be able to provide exact answers,” Krishnamurthy told us. “But I think inexact questions are what people are also going to expect. When you think about agentic workloads and operational databases, you want to be able to ask more flexible questions.” An example might be a natural language query that takes into account context, such as previous interactions.
Krishnamurthy described “AI native infrastructure,” including vector indexing, text indexing, and graph technology where “you combine structured and unstructured data, you have to be operating in terms of inexact results and data quality.”
The company is also investing in the “knowledge catalog,” formerly called Dataplex, which is enterprise search now also treated as context for LLMs (large language models). Knowledge catalog aggregates organization data across multiple sources including structured and unstructured sources.
Krishnamurthy said that exact SQL queries are not going away, and that sometimes a “fuzzy question in natural language” might generate an SQL query with exact results.
How do you verify that AI-generated SQL is producing the results you want? “The answer is the same, not just about SQL, but about many AI-related things,” said Krishnamurthy. “The answer is a set of evals you have to maintain … you might start with something where some results work well and some don’t. And then you have to keep iterating on your blueprints and other pieces of context until your eval set is 100 percent working well.”
By eval set, Krishnamurthy means “a set of questions that are representative tests that users may have, and what is the right query that is generated associated with it, and then a determination of is this query, is this answer correct or not?”
Google SQL as used in its distributed Spanner database, PostgreSQL-compatible AlloyDB, and in the BigQuery data warehouse engine now has AI functions such as AI.IF, which evaluates a condition described in natural language and returns true or false. The prompt value is evaluated using a Gemini LLM; and could return an error or null if the model fails such as when unavailable or out of quota.
The inefficiency of functions like AI.IF is a problem, but there are possible solutions. One is the idea of proxy models, which Krishnamurthy described as “a tiny model in the database.” A proxy model is trained on the fly, based on a small sample of the data. The query engine evaluates the results from the proxy model, and if good enough, uses it for inference in place of a call to the LLM. According to a paper on the subject proxy models “consume about 400x less tokens, and the latency goes down by 30x-100x.”
We asked Ahmad why she believes humans will soon not interact directly with Google’s data platform. The answer, she said, is based on the idea of intent-driven engineering. “Three years ago everyone was doing prompt training classes. Really, these models were co-pilots or assistants. Now these models are doing multi-step execution, parallel execution, handling complexity. So you can define an intent, a goal, an outcome, and the model will figure out the steps to get there.”
According to Ahmad, humans will act as orchestrators, thinking about business outcomes, and models will do “the hard graft of figuring out the low-level data wrangling.”
She said that today’s staff need to be skilled not so much in prompt engineering, but rather using AI for spec-driven development. “The focus for the human is getting to the right plan and iterating with the model on what is the right way to think about the problem.”
In business intelligence, she said, companies will move away from dashboards because they only “serve the first layer of predictable questions.” In their place will be “conversational analytics for business users.”
She believes that unwelcome aspects of generative AI, such as hallucinations and prompt injections, are mitigated by improved context, such as from Knowledge Catalog. “I have customers who have got 90 percent plus accuracy with conversational analytics, but that was not the case 18 months ago when the models would get one out of every two questions wrong because they would not have that context.”
A problem here is that even over 90 percent accuracy is not good enough if you are, for example, a customer of a company with heavy AI adoption confronted with a blocked transaction or other rejection because of an inaccurate response.
Another issue is that injecting AI into every interaction means paying for tokens on top of the base compute and storage resources traditionally consumed by cloud database platforms. Higher productivity and reduced staff costs may more than compensate, but this cannot be taken for granted, particularly as reducing the skill barrier with features like conversational analytics also tends to increase usage.
Giant cloud providers like Google though have plenty to gain. AI, Krishamurthy told us, is driving growth in data storage as well as token usage. He described “a huge overall growth in the business because everyone needs data … Anthropic, for example, rely on BigTable to store all their prompt information. They have other workloads too which are not public.”
Two metrics he is permitted to talk to us about, he said, are that Spanner “now runs 7 ½ billion queries per second at the peak … a year back Spanner might have been 5 billion queries per second.”
Spanner, he said, “has about 23 exabytes of data. It’s the same with BigTable, roughly 7 billion queries per second and double-digit exabytes.”
Models make more queries, he said. “Instead of taking the user request and just sending one query, one pattern I’ve seen is a model will send five different queries … it’s hard to say exactly what is happening because the models are trying different things.”®
On this week’s episode of the Smart Home Insider podcast, Jon Harros from the Matter governing body joins to talk through the latest release of the home automation standard.
Jon Harros is head of testing and certification for the Connectivity Standards Alliance, and he drops in on the podcast from Unify. Unify is the CSA’s first public-facing conference on the smart home and there were many announcements from the week.
We start the episode going through the news. The big release was the Schlage Sense Pro UWB.
This lock will be available to preorder by the end of June and supports Apple Home Key via UWB with Aliro later in 2026. With Aliro, it will also support Google and Samsung wallets.
There was a lot of new television news as of late. During the episode, we talk about HDMI 2.2, Roku, and Philips.
It appears the very first HDMI 2.2 devices will hit the market by the end of 2027. The new standard, with up to twice the bandwidth, will likely start with high-end TVs.
Apple TV is launching on the new 2026 Philips television sets. They are no longer running Google TV and can stream from the Apple TV app with Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, and 4K.
Finally, Roku has agreed to be purchased by Fox. Fox will take over the hardware business which compliments its media infrastructure.
The bulk of the episode was dedicated to the new announcements from the CSA. Jon Harros explains the details in Matter 1.6.
Matter 1.6 has many changes, but the most notable is new NFC commissioning that doesn’t require Bluetooth or dedicated power, more context for thermostats, and a Joint Fabric layer for multiple ecosystems to use the same devices.
There was also the Product Security 1.1 release. This time it’s more about extending the security beyond the hardware to apps and software as well.
Those interested in sponsoring the show can reach out to us at [email protected]
Keep up with everything Apple in the weekly AppleInsider Podcast. Just say, “Hey, Siri,” to your HomePod mini and ask it, and our latest Smart Home Insider episode too. If you want an ad-free main AppleInsider Podcast experience, you can support the AppleInsider podcast by subscribing for $5 per month through Apple’s Podcasts app, or via Patreon if you prefer any other podcast player.
Meta is betting on India for WhatsApp’s next chapter, naming entrepreneur Kunal Shah to lead the messaging app and succeed Will Cathcart, who is stepping down after nearly seven years at the helm to take on a new product-building role at the company.
The move comes alongside a Meta-led $900 million financing for Indian fintech giant CRED, structured through a combination of primary and secondary share purchases. The deal will make Meta a minority investor in the CRED, which said Shah will step down as chief executive while retaining his personal shareholding.
India is WhatsApp’s largest market, with more than 500 million users accounting for a significant share of the app’s global base of over three billion people. The country has also emerged as a key battleground for Meta’s ambitions in business messaging and digital payments, areas seen as critical to WhatsApp’s next phase of growth.
Cathcart, who has led WhatsApp since 2019, oversaw a period of rapid expansion that helped the service become one of the world’s most popular messaging apps, including with more than 100 million users in the United States. Under his leadership, WhatsApp expanded beyond private messaging with the launch of products such as Communities, Channels, and AI integrations, while deepening its focus on business messaging.
But efforts by WhatsApp to push into digital payments have delivered mixed results. While WhatsApp Pay gained traction in India, the service struggled to replicate the scale and engagement achieved by local rivals such as PhonePe and Google Pay, leaving significant room for growth in one of the world’s largest payments markets.
Meta is betting that Shah’s experience building a consumer internet company in India can help unlock WhatsApp’s next phase of growth.
In a statement, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Shah had built CRED into “one of India’s most important technology companies” and brought the “builder mentality and global perspective” needed to run the world’s largest messaging app.
The appointment comes as Meta seeks to expand WhatsApp’s business beyond messaging, particularly in areas such as payments, commerce and business communications. India, as WhatsApp’s largest market, has been central to those efforts.
In 2018, Shah founded CRED, a fintech platform with 17 million monthly active users, after earlier building FreeCharge, one of India’s early digital payments startups. Beyond his operating roles, he has become one of India’s most prominent startup investors, backing more than 250 companies and serving in advisory and industry leadership positions across the country’s technology and financial services sectors.
Meta’s investment values CRED at about $4.5 billion on a post-money basis. The startup was last valued at about $3.6 billion in a funding round in May 2025, below its peak valuation of $6.4 billion in 2022. Before its Series F round, the company had raised more than $1 billion from investors.
As part of the transition, Miten Sampat, who has overseen strategy and finance at CRED since 2020, will take over as interim chief executive with immediate effect. Shah will retain his shareholding in the company after stepping away from day-to-day operations.
CRED said its board and leadership team were working on a longer-term management structure as the company prepares for an eventual initial public offering, with the fresh capital expected to support growth across its payments, lending, insurance, and wealth businesses.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
Sila raised its first round of funding in September 2011 — the same month solar power manufacturer Solyndra went bankrupt, sullying the sustainability sector.
But the California-based startup developing high-performance battery materials kept plugging away, and eventually batteries started booming as EV sales and concerns about the lack of domestic battery production accelerated in the U.S.
Last fall, Sila began manufacturing material in Moses Lake, Wash., at the first automotive-scale, silicon-anode plant for both the company and the nation.
“With something like this, you just keep plugging away at it,” said Gene Berdichevsky, Sila’s CEO and co-founder. “And you ride the waves.”
Keep reading to learn more about Berdichevsky’s sustainability journey. His quotes have been edited for clarity and length.
What was the moment you realized you had to work in energy?
In my freshman year, I discovered the Stanford Solar Car team. We were student-run group, and the group was building a solar-powered electric car for a race that would go 2,300 miles from Chicago to L.A., and I started participating. It was very little adult supervision, lots of students. And I fell in love with energy, like everything energy. It’s really at the foundation of civilization. And what was super interesting to me is it felt like there was still so much opportunity to make an even better energy system.
What gives you the most hope for the planet?
The creativity of people and the opportunities for science and technology to solve impossible problems. It wasn’t that long ago that the world faced a choice between depopulation or starvation, as the world was thought to not have enough resources for the food needed for a few billion people. But crop science solved it. The same can be said as we face energy challenges today — and I believe material science can solve it.
What’s your biggest concern when it comes to addressing climate change?
You cannot cut your way to solving climate change, yet that is often the temptation and the rhetoric. The only way we will solve climate change is by harnessing scientific breakthroughs, technology, and the power of markets to make the clean option simply the better, more economical option.
What’s the biggest misconception about building an energy company?
In the end, there is no such thing as a billion-dollar energy company. When you start an energy company from zero, you have to understand what it takes to succeed at a $10 billion or $100 billion scale and stay rooted in the long term because that’s the minimum threshold to have an impact on the world of energy — and nothing smaller will survive.
What’s one habit you’ve changed personally because of sustainability concerns?
None. I drive an EV because they are more fun to drive — but they happen to be clean. When I travel internationally, I try to fly on 787’s because they’re designed for more passenger comfort — and they happen to be more efficient. When I travel in major cities, I take the metro because it’s faster to get around. Let’s make the cleaner option simply the better one.
Coffee with any energy leader, past or present — who do you pick?
Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse. The scientist and the entrepreneur responsible for transforming our world and making electricity flow as freely as water in our lives. While Thomas Edison was the stronger businessman, Tesla was so ahead of his time, and his partnership with Westinghouse created the competition with Edison that revolutionized our world.
What impact do you hope your work has in 20 years?
A better energy foundation for the world. Oil, coal, and gas have created immense prosperity and transformed our society for the better in the 20th century. But an even better, more resilient, lower-cost, and cleaner energy foundation is possible with batteries, geothermal, and renewables. That is the path to yet more prosperity for the world in the 21st century — and it requires innovation, commercialization, and incredible scaling. My hope is for Sila to play an important part in that energy foundation.
OpenAI’s books show zero debt and just $46mn of quarterly capital spending. The catch, reported by The Information: around $665bn of commitments sitting just off the balance sheet, now heading for regulators’ desks.
On paper, OpenAI looks like a lean software business. The reality is far heavier.
As at 31 March, the ChatGPT maker had zero debt and less than $750mn of lease liabilities, according to The Information, which reviewed its financial statements. Its capital spending for the quarter came to just $46mn. That is less than Salesforce, a company that merely sells software.
For one of the most hardware-hungry businesses in tech, those are remarkable numbers.
The spending has not vanished. It has moved off the balance sheet.
OpenAI carries around $665bn of purchase commitments that do not show up as debt. Most of it is compute: long-term deals to rent the data centres and chips its models run on.
The company leans on Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon and joint ventures such as Stargate and Fluidstack for that capacity. The obligations are real and enormous. They simply do not appear where investors usually look.
The structure raises a second question. Who sits on the other side of these deals?
About 72 per cent of OpenAI’s cost of revenue flows to related parties such as Microsoft. Microsoft is both a major backer of the company and one of its key suppliers.
That kind of concentration invites scrutiny over conflicts of interest. It is exactly the sort of arrangement that public-market regulators tend to probe.
This is landing as OpenAI prepares to go public. It filed confidentially with the SEC on 8 June, a week after rival Anthropic, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley leading the deal.
The filing valued OpenAI at about $852bn. Analysts think a debut could push it past $1tn, perhaps this autumn. It follows SpaceX, which listed in June in the largest IPO on record.
The filing also hands financial regulators their first proper look at OpenAI’s accounting and its tangle of business relationships.
None of this would matter if the growth were already there. It is not.
OpenAI projects advertising revenue rising from $2.4bn this year to $102bn by 2030, when ads would be more than a third of its sales. Ad group WPP expects the entire AI search and chatbot ad market to be worth about $101bn in 2030. That figure already includes Google.
In short, OpenAI is forecasting that it can capture, on its own, a whole market the rest of the industry will be fighting over.
The cash, meanwhile, keeps pouring out. OpenAI spent about $34bn last year and burned through $3.7bn in the first three months of 2026 alone.
A clean balance sheet usually reassures investors. This one may do the opposite. Zero debt means little when $665bn of commitments sit just out of frame. Sceptics already warn that an OpenAI stumble could ripple across the whole AI supply chain.
Ireland takes over the EU Council presidency on 1 July with a tech-heavy legislative agenda, but its economy depends on the very companies those rules target. Two firms, understood to be Apple and Microsoft, paid 40 per cent of all Irish corporate tax in 2024.
TL;DR
Ireland takes over the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU on 1 July, inheriting a legislative agenda that includes proposals to curb Europe’s reliance on American tech, simplify the bloc’s digital rulebook, decide whether to ban children from social media, and overhaul telecom regulations. The country holding the presidency is supposed to act as an honest broker, finding common ground among 27 member states rather than advancing its own interests.
That role is complicated when the broker’s economy runs on the companies being regulated. Sixteen of the world’s 20 largest tech firms reportedly operate hubs in Ireland, and more than 100,000 people work in the sector.
Ireland’s fiscal watchdog, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, warned earlier this year that just two companies, understood to be Apple and Microsoft, paid almost 40 per cent of all corporate tax in Ireland in 2024. That amounted to roughly €11 billion, with a third firm, understood to be Eli Lilly, bringing the share to 46 per cent.
The 💜 of EU tech
The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
“It’s widely acknowledged, including by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, that Ireland is too reliant on Big Tech firms,” said Michael McNamara, the liberal MEP who co-led the European Parliament’s package to roll back elements of the AI Act. He said Ireland needs to be “clear-eyed about the pressures that will come during the Presidency” from companies headquartered in Dublin.
Ireland’s presidency agenda runs through the same regulatory territory where it has faced sustained criticism. The Irish Data Protection Commission, the body responsible for policing GDPR compliance by tech firms that base their European operations in Dublin, has been accused of being too lenient on enforcement and of allowing a revolving door between the regulator and the private sector.
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties has called for Ireland to recuse itself from all digital files during the presidency. Lynn Boylan, a left-wing MEP from the opposition party Sinn Féin, said Ireland’s economic model is “deeply tied to keeping a small number of overwhelmingly American tech corporations comfortable,” creating an “obvious conflict.”
Tech firms made their priorities clear in a public consultation Ireland held ahead of the presidency. CCIA Europe, the Big Tech lobby group, called for Ireland to “double down” on simplifying tech rules and “firmly reject” sovereignty provisions that could exclude foreign firms.
Meta urged Ireland to “adopt a leadership position in shaping Europe’s digital agenda,” calling for a “complete overhaul” of the bloc’s digital rules and a “pause on implementation” of new regulations. It also said Ireland should bring its “unique relationship with the U.S.” to the fore during the presidency.
Bram Vranken, a researcher at the transparency group Corporate Europe Observatory, said that while companies lobby every country holding the presidency, “in the case of Ireland they know they have more leverage.” Irish officials pointed to the fact that they published all lobby submissions received during the consultation as evidence of transparency.
Ireland’s defenders point to its track record. During its last presidency in 2013, Ireland pushed GDPR negotiations so hard that diplomats from other member states slept in tents to maximise negotiating time, earning praise from then-Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding.
Two EU diplomats, granted anonymity to speak candidly, told Politico that Ireland had been “very fair” and “very professional” on previous digital files. Niamh Smyth, Ireland’s minister of state for artificial intelligence, rejected the idea that Big Tech’s presence would compromise the presidency.
“We have had many presidencies before, and we have always done our job well and done it objectively,” Smyth told Politico. Billy Kelleher, a liberal MEP from the governing Fianna Fáil party, added that Ireland should “not be embarrassed about being a success story.”
Whether simplification tips into deregulation will define how the presidency is judged. The question for the next six months is whether Dublin can separate what is good for its economy from what is right for the bloc.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with YARBO.
If you’ve been pricing out a robot mower for a genuinely large property, Prime Day just made the math easier. The YARBO Robot Lawn Mower Pro is down to $4,999 on Amazon (from a $5,999 list price), a $1,000 Prime Day saving on a machine built for yards most robot mowers can’t touch. At that price and that capability, this is the kind of purchase that changes how an entire weekend gets spent, and the RTK and AI vision navigation underneath means there’s no perimeter wire to bury, which is the install headache that defines most of the category.
A robot mower for a large property earns its keep differently than a small-yard model does. Where a basic unit taps out at a fraction of an acre and needs a boundary wire trenched around the lawn, the YARBO Pro is rated for up to 6 acres and skips the wire entirely, using RTK positioning and AI vision to map and navigate. For a property that size, that distinction is the difference between a gadget and an actual labor replacement.
The modular design is what makes this worth caring about beyond mowing season. The Pro is built as a year-round yard-care platform rather than a single-season mower, so the same base robot is designed to take on other tasks as the seasons change rather than going into storage in October. Dual motors deliver up to 2500W peak power, the 20-inch cutting width covers ground quickly, and a 120-minute runtime lets it work through large sections on a charge.
The practical control side holds up too. The cutting height adjusts from 0.8 to 4.0 inches for everything from a tight finish to longer grass, and the smartphone app handles scheduling, remote operation, and RTK positioning with privacy protection built in. It’s positioned for both residential and commercial use, which tracks given the acreage it’s rated for.
A $1,000 Prime Day saving on any single item is significant, and on a large-acreage robot mower it brings a genuinely capable machine to $4,999. Comparable wire-free robot mowers built for multi-acre properties sit at or above this price, often before any sale, and the YARBO Pro’s RTK navigation and modular platform keep it competitive with anything aimed at yards this size. For a property where the alternative is a riding mower plus the hours to run it, the value calculation shifts quickly.
The YARBO Robot Lawn Mower Pro at $4,999 is the big-ticket Prime Day buy that’s hard to talk yourself out of if you’ve got the acreage to justify it. The wire-free RTK navigation, 6-acre coverage, modular all-season design, and app control add up to a machine that earns its price in reclaimed weekends, and the $1,000 day-one Prime Day saving makes this the moment to commit if a robot mower has been on the list.
Weekend Open Thread: Miami – Corporette.com
The Adder At The Heart Of Intel’s 8087 FPU
Renter of Home in Anne Heche Crash Denies Settlement With Son
Soccer-U.S. defends Iran World Cup travel restrictions, says discussions ongoing
Wall Street Week Ahead: Investors see Micron earnings as pulse check of AI rally momentum
BBC Reporter Discusses Cross Party Criticism Of Trumps Iran Deal
HIVE shares jump as $220M AI deal speeds Bitcoin mining pivot
Microsoft accidentally kills epic Outlook email threads
Jake Chervinsky accuses CME of protecting derivatives monopoly
Can Charles Hoskinson Really Rescue Cardano?
FIFA World Cup 2026: Canada beat 9-men Qatar 6-0 to register first ever win | FIFA World Cup 2026
MHP SE 2026 Q1 – Results – Earnings Call Presentation (OTCMKTS:MHPSY) 2026-06-20
Brexit cost 6% of UK economy, Bank of England company data suggests
Anthropic’s Dario Amodei Urged AI Unity at G7, Even as US Banned His Models
Andy Burnham and the meaning of Makerfield
Robinhood opens AI-powered trading to all users, sending HOOD stock past $100
Weeks Of In-The-Field Testing And A Verdict
Adobe adds its AI assistant to Premiere, Illustrator and InDesign
Signal’s Meredith Whittaker says AI chatbots ‘are not your friends’ and calls Copilot agents a backdoor
Iren (IREN) Stock Surges on Jefferies Buy Rating: AI Infrastructure Play Gains Momentum
You must be logged in to post a comment Login