Damilare Dosunmu / Rest of World:
Google unveils WAXAL, a new open speech dataset for 21 African languages to ease speech technology development; African institutions own the dataset  —  A new 21-language dataset gives African institutions ownership and control in a field long dominated by Big Tech.

Ben Jiang / South China Morning Post:
Multiple responses from DeepSeek's namesake chatbot confirm that the startup has expanded the context window of its flagship AI model from 128K tokens to 1M+  —  The upgrade will allow DeepSeek's AI model to remember and process more information in a single conversation or task

Zaheer Kachwala / Reuters:
Grab agrees to acquire US fintech company Stash Financial in a deal initially valued at $425M and forecasts FY 2026 revenue of $4.04B-$4.1B, below $4.13B est.  —  Singapore's Grab (GRAB.O) forecast fiscal 2026 revenue below Wall Street expectations on Wednesday, signaling slower momentum …

CNBC:
Hong Kong-listed Zhipu AI surged 30% after releasing GLM-5, an open-source LLM with enhanced coding capabilities and long-running agent tasks  —  Chinese artificial intelligence stocks rallied Thursday as several companies unveiled upgraded models and top policymakers renewed calls for a broader adoption of the technology.

Reuters:
Zhipu AI says it will raise prices by at least 30% for new GLM coding plan subscribers to accommodate surging demand for its AI coding tools  —  Chinese artificial intelligence startup Zhipu on Thursday said it was raising prices for subscriptions to its GLM coding plan to accommodate …