The EY Ireland CEO Outlook survey found that Irish CEOs remain confident about growth over the next 12 months despite global volatility and geopolitical risk.

EY Ireland has released its CEO Outlook survey, which explores how those in leadership are responding to global issues, challenges and opportunities. To gather data, EY partnered with FT Longitude and collected information from 1,200 globally dispersed CEOs throughout March and April of this year. 

What was discovered is that Irish CEOs are confident about the potential for growth over the course of the next 12 months, despite growing pressures from global volatility and geopolitical risk. Of those who were surveyed, 92pc of CEOs in Ireland said they were optimistic about revenue growth and their competitive position. 

However, despite the optimism, Irish CEOs harbour significant concerns about the landscape. Instability and conflict stand out as the most pressing issues for 70pc of Irish CEOs and other concerns include macroeconomic volatility (42pc), trade and supply chain disruption (22pc) and talent and capability gaps (16pc). 

There is a similar pattern among the global respondents, albeit at lower levels compared to the Irish figures. 56pc of global CEOs ranked geopolitical risk among their top two concerns, followed by macroeconomic volatility (31pc), technology disruption including AI-related risks (23pc) and trade and supply chain disruption (22pc).

Commenting on the results of the report, Helena O’Dwyer, a partner and the head of strategy at EY-Parthenon Ireland, said: “Irish CEOs are navigating a complex, unpredictable and rapidly evolving landscape. The confidence in their own growth prospects is real and there is a track record over the past decade of successfully navigating global uncertainty with confidence. 

“Even still, the pace and scale of the geopolitical upheaval is extraordinary, and geopolitical risk is no longer a background concern, it is a day‑to‑day operating reality – shaping decisions on costs, supply chains, capital and growth. From conversations with clients we know, however, that for mid-sized businesses in particular, the challenge is somewhat different. 

“They may lack the scale of management capacity to find the time to actively manage these issues, or struggle with the level of working capital or technology to be able to address issues or take advantage of opportunities. These leaders are more focused on keeping income steady, reducing costs, looking after staff and staying connected to customers.”

Past the testing phase

The report also noted that for many organisations and CEOs, artificial intelligence investment has moved on from the experimental stage to accountability – particularly for those sitting in Irish boardrooms.

84pc of Irish CEOs who contributed their insights explained that they have increased AI investment since 2025, with the focus increasingly shifting from experimentation to the expectation of measurable results. 

Data also suggests that leaders based in Ireland are expecting AI to deliver measurable results, with 68pc using standard metrics to measure and report on AI impact across major projects. 

60pc expect the large-scale AI reskilling and upskilling of existing employees to be among the two most significant workforce impacts over the next three years, while only one in 10 fear that it will reduce hiring in certain roles.  

‘Cultural resistance to change’, however, emerged as a major concern for four out of every 10 contributing Irish CEOs, who found it to be a barrier to deriving real value from AI. Globally, CEOs were less concerned, with just 16pc reporting a similar worry.  

The report explained that this is reflective of the broader maturation in how businesses are approaching AI. The question is no longer whether or not to invest, but rather, how to demonstrate that investment is generating returns and whether you are building the internal structures needed to sustain and scale it.

Carol Murphy, a partner and the head of markets at EY Ireland, said: “CEOs increasingly are not asking whether to invest in AI, they’re asking what it’s delivering and what comes next. The focus has shifted firmly to results and that’s starting to change how work is organised across businesses. 

“We’re seeing companies move beyond pilots and build AI into core operations, but that shift also brings a workforce challenge. Many organisations know they need to reskill and redesign roles to make the most of AI, but progress isn’t always straightforward. There can be resistance to change at all levels and for smaller and mid-sized businesses in particular, training and transformation have to happen in step with day-to-day delivery.” 

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Sony may have just dropped its biggest hint yet that a true PlayStation handheld is on the way. In a recently published Q&A with investors, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hideaki Nishino said the company’s next-generation PlayStation strategy will deliver a seamless gaming experience that extends “beyond the living room.” While he never explicitly mentioned a handheld, the comments have once again fueled speculation that Sony is preparing to return to the portable gaming space with the PS6 generation.

Sony finally said what everyone was thinking

The statement wasn’t made out of nowhere. Nishino acknowledged that gaming habits have changed over the years, with more players choosing personal monitors and flexible gaming setups instead of gathering around a TV in the living room. Sony says it’s already trying to adapt to those changing habits by expanding its ecosystem with accessories like monitors and speakers, while also pointing to the positive reception of the PlayStation Portal as proof that gamers want more ways to access the PlayStation experience. The executive also emphasized that future PlayStation hardware will leverage technologies that can work “in various forms and locations,” suggesting Sony is thinking beyond the traditional home console.

That said, Sony also poured a little cold water on the excitement. Nishino reiterated that the company doesn’t intend to sell future hardware at significant losses. That’s a notable statement at a time when component costs continue to rise, and gaming hardware is becoming increasingly expensive.

“As a principle, we do not intend to sell hardware at significant losses.” – PlayStation

Naturally, that has led many to question whether now is really the right time for Sony to launch a premium handheld, or whether the economics simply don’t add up. Honestly, I think that’s a fair concern. But I’m not convinced it’s enough to stop Sony.

The numbers might actually work in Sony’s favor

The biggest mistake people make when imagining a PlayStation handheld is expecting it to be a PS5 squeezed into a smaller shell. But honestly, it doesn’t need to be that.

A portable with an 8-inch display isn’t trying to push native 4K graphics onto a 65-inch television. A clean 1080p target changes the equation completely. Modern AMD APUs have already shown just how much performance can be packed into handheld hardware, and by the time Sony is ready with its next device, that technology will only become more efficient. Throw in dynamic resolution scaling, modern upscaling techniques, and a platform where developers know exactly what hardware they’re building for, and suddenly running current-generation PlayStation games on a handheld doesn’t sound nearly as far-fetched.

Then comes pricing. Could Sony really launch something like this for around $550 to $600? Maybe.

Yes, $600 is still a lot of money. There’s no pretending otherwise. But gaming hardware has become expensive across the board. Microsoft’s latest Xbox refresh now starts at around $800, while the Steam Deck, despite being several years old, has seen its price hiked to a little under $800 now. Suddenly, a $600 PlayStation handheld starts looking a lot less outrageous.

More importantly, Sony isn’t just selling a handheld. It’s selling an ecosystem. Every player who buys a PlayStation handheld is also likely buying first-party games, third-party titles, PlayStation Plus subscriptions, accessories, and digital content. That’s a luxury companies like Valve simply don’t enjoy to the same extent. Sony doesn’t need to make huge profits on the hardware itself if the ecosystem keeps players spending for years afterward.

There’s an even bigger reason why this makes sense

Now what about the launch timeline? See, on paper, launching a PlayStation handheld alongside Grand Theft Auto VI sounds like the ultimate power move, right? Pair the biggest game of the generation with brand-new hardware, and you’ve got a marketing campaign that practically writes itself.

But if Sony were really gearing up for a 2026 launch, the rumor mill would probably be working overtime by now. Hardware has a habit of leaking months before it’s announced, and so far, things have been surprisingly quiet. Besides, Sony is already using GTA 6 as one of the biggest reasons to buy a PS5 Pro. Launching another premium device at the same time could end up stealing its own thunder.

I feel that’s why a 2027 launch actually makes more sense.

Rockstar has a history of bringing GTA games to PC much later, and GTA 6 is widely expected to follow the same pattern. That gives Sony a golden opportunity to pitch its handheld as the easiest, and potentially only, way to play GTA 6 and PlayStation exclusives on the go. Suddenly, waiting a little longer doesn’t sound like a delay; it sounds like smart timing.

By then, Sony would have more mature hardware, better manufacturing yields, and a stronger lineup of games to support a new platform. It would also arrive at a time when handheld gaming has become more competitive than ever. Nintendo has the Switch. Valve proved the Steam Deck wasn’t just a one-hit wonder. ASUS, Lenovo, MSI, and Acer are all pushing Windows gaming handhelds further every year. Even Microsoft has finally embraced the category. Sony is now the only major gaming company without a true native handheld.

There’s another piece of the puzzle that makes this even more interesting. Sony has reportedly shifted away from bringing its flagship single-player games to PC, choosing instead to keep those experiences exclusive to PlayStation hardware. If that strategy continues, a native handheld becomes far more valuable than just another gadget. Instead of waiting years for a PC release, the only way to experience PlayStation’s biggest exclusives on the move would be through Sony’s own hardware. Honestly, that’s a pretty compelling reason to buy one.

Am I reading too much into this?

Will any of this actually happen? We don’t know yet. Sony hasn’t confirmed a handheld, revealed any hardware, or shared a launch window. Right now, it’s all speculation based on a few carefully chosen words. But sometimes, those carefully chosen words tell a bigger story. And if Sony really is preparing to take PlayStation beyond the living room, I think a premium handheld is exactly the kind of gamble worth taking.

So here’s my question to you: if Sony launched a “premium” handheld with a gorgeous 1080p display that let you play your entire PlayStation library anywhere, even if it cost around $600, would you buy one?

Amazon is looking for cheaper alternatives to Anthropic’s Claude models after a renegotiated contract will shift to token-based pricing that could substantially increase the company’s AI costs, according to The Information. The new pricing structure does not take effect until next year, but Amazon is already exploring options including OpenAI. The report highlights a deepening rift between two companies that were once inseparable partners in the AI race.

Amazon’s dependence on Claude runs deep. Its coding agent Kiro, workplace assistant Quick, and consumer-facing Alexa for Shopping all rely on Anthropic’s models, according to The Information. A shift to token-based billing would make that dependence far more expensive, particularly after Amazon recently scrapped an internal leaderboard that encouraged employees to burn through as many AI tokens as possible.

The search for cheaper models has sent Amazon toward OpenAI, a company it has already been growing closer to. Earlier this year Amazon committed $50 billion to OpenAI, giving the AI lab access to its cloud infrastructure in exchange for access to its models. That deal followed Amazon’s initial $4 billion investment in Anthropic, which has since grown to a potential $33 billion.

Anthropic, meanwhile, has been expanding its own relationships beyond Amazon. The company committed to spending $200 billion on Google Cloud and chips over five years, according to The Information, a deal that effectively makes Google a major infrastructure partner alongside AWS. Amazon’s latest $25 billion investment in Anthropic included a reciprocal commitment of more than $100 billion in AWS spending, but the Google arrangement signals Anthropic no longer depends on a single cloud provider.

The tension boiled over last month when the US government ordered Anthropic to shut down its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models after a security report that originated from Amazon. Andy Jassy reportedly told government officials that Amazon researchers had used Fable 5 to obtain information useful for cyberattacks. The timing raised questions, coming as Amazon was preparing to launch its own cybersecurity-focused AI agent designed to spot vulnerabilities.

The contract dispute, the move toward OpenAI, and the Fable 5 incident together suggest the Amazon-Anthropic relationship has entered a new and more adversarial phase. Amazon remains one of Anthropic’s largest investors and cloud customers, but both companies now have reasons to reduce their dependence on each other. For the broader AI industry, the fracturing of its most prominent investor-model-provider partnership would redraw the competitive map.

Security

At least two vulnerabilities are already under attack

Not everyone is willing to follow responsible disclosure of vulns. An anonymous researcher has dumped what they say is working exploit code for zero-day vulnerabilities across 15 software products and open source projects without notifying any vendors or maintainers prior to publishing – and attackers are already exploiting at least two of these.

The first is CVE-2026-55200, a critical, pre-authentication remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in libssh2, a popular client-side C library that implements the SSH2 protocol. Remote attackers can send crafted SSH packets with excessively large packet_length values to corrupt heap memory and achieve remote code execution.

A fix has been merged into the libssh2 mainline development source control branch, and maintainers are still preparing a libssh2 release containing the patch.

The second is CVE-2026-20896, a critical authentication bypass vulnerability affecting self-hosted Gitea Docker deployments that allows unauthenticated remote attackers to impersonate any user and fully take over the Git server. It’s fixed in Gitea 1.26.3.

The researcher, who goes by bikini, dropped the exploit code and vulnerability write-ups in a now-removed GitHub repository called exploitarium. They remind us of Nightmare Eclipse – the zero-day bug hunter who has been publishing Microsoft exploits over the past couple of months.

Unlike Nightmare Eclipse, however, bikini doesn’t appear to hold a grudge against any one vendor, publishing purported vulnerabilities across multiple products and projects including libssh2, Splunk, RustDesk, 7-Zip, VLC, AnyDesk, OpenVPN, c-ares, Gitea, and Floci.

Bikini claimed – and, to be clear, The Register has not verified these claims or that the code works – that none of the exploits in the repo have been reported. 

“Feel free to report them yourself and take credit for the CVE if handed out lulz,” the anonymous researcher wrote, as shown in this screenshot posted on X by Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet. “Please do not abuse these. I do this so to allure people into the field.”

Other researchers, including Federal Signal analyst Ethan Andrews, suggested that bikini used advanced AI models – specifically GPT-5.5 Codex – to automate fuzzing and vulnerability discovery, in yet another indication that the AI-induced vulnpocalypse is nigh.

In response to bikini’s data dump, Andrews built 44 KQL detection rules covering the full exploitarium repo with language translation available for non-KQL stacks. 

“The most technically significant findings – libssh2 pre-auth heap write and Gitea default Docker auth bypass – have been independently verified as high-risk with active exploitation observed,” Andrews wrote, noting that some of the exploitarium disclosures “have been dismissed by the community as low-impact AI-fuzzing noise.”

While the repository has since been removed by GitHub, nothing ever truly dies on the internet, and it’s safe to assume that attackers are now also using AI to scan for vulnerable instances. In many cases, bikini’s PoCs mean they don’t even have to spend time developing an exploit. ®

If you’ve ever been on vacation and chose to record video instead of taking photos only to avoid missing the fun moments, thinking you’d pause and take screenshots later, you might have ended up questioning your decision later. 

You see, the process involves multiple steps, starting from hunting for the right frame, pausing, and taking a screenshot. If it doesn’t look good, you go back to the video, pause somewhere else, and try taking another screenshot. You see where I’m going with this?

It’s a specific little misery that iOS 27 has now quietly fixed, and I genuinely can’t believe it took this long.

How does the new “Save video frame as photo” feature work?

The new “Save Video Frame as Photo” option in the Photos app does exactly what it sounds like. You can save a single frame from a video directly to the gallery as a photo, without the hassle of capturing screenshots. You can use it in two ways.

The first one lets you use the feature quickly and save a video frame as a photo in as little time as possible. Open the video in the Photos app, scrub to the moment you want, pause, tap the three-dot menu at the top right of the screen, then tap the “Save Video Frame as Photo” button. 

You should see a “Saved Video Frame” dialogue box pop up at the bottom of the screen. The saved frame shows up in your library, right next to the video you’ve extracted it from.

However, if you need frame-by-frame flexibility, open a video, then tap the hamburger menu at the bottom to enter the edit menu. Use the timeline at the bottom of the screen to scrub through the video one frame at a time. 

Once you find the exact moment, tap the three-dot menu again and tap “Save Video Frame as Photo.” You should see a “Photo saved to your library” message on the screen. Tap the “OK” button below it, and you’re good to go.

The feature is genuinely better than capturing screenshots

The difference in quality here is worth understanding. Saving a video frame as a picture is the same as taking a picture when you’re recording a 4K video at 60 fps; the saved frame comes out as an 8 MP photo (in Apple’s HEIF format). 

Screenshots, on the other hand, save as PNG files that are lower in resolution but larger in file size. In a nutshell, the frame-extracted picture has both a smaller file size and a higher resolution than screenshots. 

Furthermore, it doesn’t capture unwanted visual elements, such as the video progress bar at the bottom or a notification pop-up that shows up at the exact moment (I hate those).  

It’s one of those iOS 27 features Apple didn’t announce onstage, and yet once you know it exists, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it.