November 18, 2025, 5:50 PM EST. Ethical Web AI announced the beta launch of AI Vault 2.0, a major upgrade to its enterprise generative AI platform. The release introduces in-country deployment and data sovereignty controls, letting customers choose their deployment country to keep data within jurisdiction. It adds Hybrid SaaS access for non-AWS customers, with workloads hosted on dedicated AWS instances. New DPO roles and expanded compliance reporting enable executives to govern AI usage and demonstrate regulatory adherence. The update features global shared history access, improving cross-organization oversight, and a significantly enhanced UI for large teams. The move supports go-to-market expansion with partners like Ingram Micro and AWS, aiming for strong year-end momentum and growth.
November 18, 2025, 5:48 PM EST. Morning reading: three years ago, most companies saw generative AI as an uncertain curiosity. Today, Fortune 500s are rethinking core processes to leverage it, and momentum is accelerating toward 2026. In conversations with Wharton professor Stefano Puntoni and the WHAIR study, 800 senior leaders report that 88% expect to increase generative AI investment in the next year, and 62% anticipate budgets rising by more than 10% within two to five years. After early concerns about data leakage, liability, and consumer protection, many firms are moving ahead with guardrails. Adoption has surged-from 37% weekly users in 2023 to 82% now, with 46% using it daily. Leaders track ROI on profitability, productivity, and throughput, though results vary by size, with larger enterprises facing slower progress.
November 18, 2025, 5:46 PM EST. Cloudflare faced a global outage after a spike in unusual traffic before the errors began, impacting platforms like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Shopify, and X (formerly Twitter). Downdetector flagged widespread issues as other services such as Indeed, Anthropic's Claude, and Truth Social also appeared affected. Cloudflare said the spike occurred around 6:20 a.m. ET, with some traffic passing through its network experiencing errors as it worked on a fix. The company emphasized it does not yet know the cause and is actively investigating. The outage underscored Cloudflare's role in securing and routing traffic for roughly a fifth of the web and came amid recent cloud-service disruptions from AWS and Microsoft Azure. Updates were being posted to its status page as the situation evolved.
November 18, 2025, 5:44 PM EST. OpenAI's ChatGPT is down due to a Cloudflare service disruption, with updates reaffirming a third-party provider issue. Cloudflare reports a spike in unusual traffic affecting some users, while OpenAI points to the external provider as the root cause and promises updates. Downdetector shows incidents across ChatGPT and other services on Cloudflare's network. The outage comes amid AI developments around Gemini and new ChatGPT builds (5.1). Users are reporting login failures and unavailability on web and mobile apps. As OpenAI and Cloudflare investigate the traffic spike, expect further status updates and potential workarounds. Stay tuned to official status pages; for now, many users are briefly unable to access ChatGPT, OpenAI, and related AI services as Cloudflare works to restore normal service.
November 18, 2025, 5:40 PM EST. Apple captured about 25% of China's smartphone market in October, as iPhone 17 demand drove a 37% YoY surge in sales, according to Counterpoint. The overall China smartphone sell-through rose 8% YoY, with gains led by Apple and domestic brands. All three iPhone 17 variants posted mid-to-high double-digit growth, led by the base model, and new models accounted for more than 80% of Apple's unit sales. Analysts say rising ASPs are lifting Apple's top line, and momentum suggests a possible record December quarter. The milestone mirrors a 2022 peak when competition in the premium segment was softer, underscoring Apple's strength in the China market.