Anthropic executive Mike Krieger departed Figma's board this week, marking a potential conflict-of-interest moment similar to Google's 2009 exit from Apple's board. Meanwhile, struggling shoemaker Allbirds announced plans to become an AI chip-leasing firm after selling its footwear business.
Krieger's exit from Figma's board reflects growing tensions as AI companies consolidate influence across tech leadership. The departure echoes Eric Schmidt's 2009 resignation from Apple's board during his tenure as Google CEO—a watershed moment for addressing competing corporate interests.
In a more dramatic shift, Allbirds is abandoning its core business after weeks of announcing the sale of shoemaking assets to American Exchange Group for $39 million. The company now plans to rebrand as NewBird AI, pivoting toward leasing and renting AI chip services. The announcement triggered a 600% stock surge, reflecting investor appetite for AI-related pivots regardless of fundamental business logic.
Both moves signal the gravitational pull of AI across the tech sector—from board-level strategy to complete business model overhauls. Figma's leadership transition suggests maturing concerns about competitive conflicts, while Allbirds' transformation illustrates how heavily the market rewards any AI-adjacent repositioning, even among companies with no prior chip experience.
India's JioStar is integrating generative AI into its streaming platform to enable conversational recommendations for shopping and entertainment. The move positions AI-powered interactions as a core revenue and engagement driver.
Cognition has released SWE-1.7, a new AI model trained using Kimi K2.7 that processes text at 1,000 tokens per second. The company claims the model matches performance of GPT-5.5 and Claude Opus 4.8 while reducing costs.
Westpac Banking Corp. is ramping up oversight of artificial intelligence costs by tracking token usage across the organization and directing routine tasks to cheaper models.
Google's Gemini app can now generate lifelike videos featuring AI avatars of users. The technology creates digital clones that mimic appearance and behavior with striking accuracy.