Press & Insights from
 OAKAI by Ralph Schwehr

A no-name TV box from an electronics store and a trillion-dollar market capitalization have raised the same question this week. Not: What can AI do? But: Who actually controls it? The IMF is warning of AI corrections, Brussels is sending its first requests for information to OpenAI and Anthropic, eight US states are suing, and Beijing wants to place AI models under export controls. When everyone suddenly asks about control at once: Can you prove you have it? 📉 Profit is no l

The challenge today is no longer access to AI, but rather assessing opportunities, risks, and priorities . We have developed three executive formats specifically for this phase between interest, uncertainty and concrete implementation: AI Executive Speaker A thought-provoking idea. Understandable, practical, and without buzzword bingo. Ideal for management meetings, strategy days, leadership events, or customer events. AI Executive Briefing A compact executive format that tra

On the night of October 8th, a data center in Sasovo, about 300 kilometers from Moscow, went offline. The cause was not a software error, but a drone attack, and a second location was hit the following day. At the same time, ChatGPT users received a completely new interface, Europe presented its largest AI model to date, and in New York, OpenAI was sued for over $250 million. This week's question is: If the cloud has an address The attack hit the data center of Yandex, Russia

New tools, studies, trends, and success stories appear daily. But more information doesn't automatically lead to better decisions. Leaders don't need another flood of AI news, they need relevance . Because only those who receive the right information at the right time make better decisions. Our free Voice of AI newsletter provides guidance through selected insights, strategic analysis, and an honest reality check. So that information becomes guidance. And guidance becomes cla

A car manufacturer halts its new model because its brakes fail reliably during testing. The next day, it puts the predecessor model into continuous operation: driverless, around the clock, almost everywhere except in Europe. No car manufacturer has actually done this; the image is merely for illustrative purposes. But precisely this pattern played out in the AI world this week: OpenAI stopped GPT-6.1 Astra because the model continued tasks without authorization during testing

Many companies are already using AI. But are the employees who work with it actually qualified enough? Do they possess the necessary skills to use AI safely and responsibly? In our practical AI competence workshop, we impart the necessary know-how for the safe, responsible and compliant use of AI and at the same time create the basis for a reliable proof of competence in accordance with the EU AI Act . Instead of dry theory, the focus is on concrete use cases, practical e

That's exactly why we developed the AI Readiness Day . A compact, structured workshop that delivers a clear picture of your current status within a single day and reveals how AI-ready your company truly is. No risk. Fixed price . Up to 20 stakeholders complete the online assessment in the morning. In the afternoon, the results are evaluated, prioritized, and incorporated into an initial roadmap. AI-supported and at the touch of a button. What you will receive at the end of th

On September 3, OpenAI President Greg Brockman opened the launch livestream with the words, " Welcome to the AGI era ." On September 6, the company's chief scientist wrote that it was a time that demanded extreme caution and that he was concerned no one was prepared for the consequences. In between lie three days and a model that OpenAI itself, for the first time, classifies as critical for cybersecurity. Both are true simultaneously. That is the news. Three days between two

Last week I wrote here that Canada builds and America buys. Four of Toronto's best chip startups now belong to US corporations. This week, the opposite trend emerges: Canada has appointed 64 top researchers, 48 of them from the US , from Cornell, Harvard, Yale, and MIT. $504 million over eight years; the University of British Columbia is among the recipients. Companies flow south, minds flow north . Only one of the two can be bought. What Canada bought this week Industry Mini

Over the past few weeks, I've had dozens of conversations with founders, frontier providers, and friends at the University of British Columbia. Surprisingly little was said about business models. Electricity, however, was almost always the topic. The reason lies in one number: British Columbia is allowed to allocate 400 megawatts to new data centers over the next two years; around 800 have been registered, and a decision will be made in mid-September. What strikes me is that

My father would have asked if the factory would create jobs. My children ask how much water it uses. In Vancouver, some 600 people commented on a proposed AI data center, prompting the city council to postpone the hearing until after the October municipal elections. Meanwhile, AMD is acquiring a Toronto startup, Alphabet is restructuring its AI leadership, Meta is opening up a model that runs on a single graphics card, and a Vancouver-based company is promising to reduce its

A sixteen-year-old today has access to more computing power than the CEO of a DAX-listed company did three years ago. She just rarely has the entry-level job where she could demonstrate it. This week has brought both of these trends into sharp focus: top-tier computing halved in price, the largest open-source models in history became freely available for download, a Frontier system unilaterally left its testing environment, and in five days, Europe will begin testing, rather

On July 27th, a Chinese lab will upload a model to the internet that performs as well as the most expensive model you can currently buy. For free. Six days later, on August 2nd, any unlabeled chatbot on your website will become a punishable offense with a fine of up to €35 million. Two dates. Thirteen days away, and in most German boardrooms, neither of them is currently on the calendar. July 27th: When peak performance becomes available for download Moonshot AI released Kimi

A government shuts down and then reactivates the world's most powerful AI model. The EU finalizes its regulatory roadmap. And Tesla introduces a weekly budget for AI tokens . Three events, one message: The era of unregulated experimentation is over. From now on, the winners are those who not only use AI, but control it. Brussels provides clarity, but no respite. On June 29, the EU Council gave its final approval to the AI Act simplification package, following formal confirmat

OAKAI Partner Network. Klarheit statt Hype. Wirkung statt Versprechen. Gemeinsam wachsen statt Einzelkämpfer. ​Wir verbinden ausgewählte Consultants, Freelancer und Boutique‑Beratungen mit der OAKAI‑Expertise, dem OAKAI‑Toolstack und einem Netzwerk, das für Vertrauen, Miteinander und Qualität steht. ​Für unsere Partner bedeutet das: Mehr Sichtbarkeit, mehr Komp

For three years, Samsung had banned ChatGPT. This week, the company lifted the ban, handing OpenAI one of its biggest enterprise deals ever . But the real turning point lies deeper. While companies are still grappling with the best model, governments and hardware giants are suddenly fighting over something else, something far more significant: control. This week's question is no longer which AI is the smartest. It's who owns the underlying infrastructure. Qualcomm is building

It didn't take a cyberattack. It didn't take a market disruption. It took a single letter, sent on a Friday evening. Within hours, the world's two most powerful AI models were shut down for every user outside the US— unregulated, unchecked, simply deactivated. Anyone who had built their business strategy on a US frontier model at that moment experienced firsthand what strategic dependency means in practice. The moment AI became a national asset The US government ordered Anthr

Berkshire Hathaway, for decades the most prominent skeptic of expensive tech bets, poured $10 billion into Alphabet's AI offensive this week. SpaceX is holding a $60 billion option on a single coding tool. And at the same time, a survey of 2,400 executives shows that only 29 percent see a real return on their AI investments. Both scenarios are simultaneously accurate. This very discrepancy is what makes 2026 so uncomfortable. To succeed in this environment, you don't need a b

There are moments when the industry announces its own turning point without explicitly labeling it as such. This was one of them. On May 4, 2026, OpenAI and Anthropic founded two joint ventures with the world's largest private equity firms, within hours of each other . Their sole purpose: to finally bring artificial intelligence to productive use in businesses. When the very inventors of the models admit that the model alone creates no value, the hype cycle is officially over

There are weeks when individual headlines grab attention. And there are weeks when a pattern emerges that will later be recognized as a turning point. What happened between April 15 and May 1, 2026, unequivocally belongs to the latter category. Within 16 days, the rules of the game shifted simultaneously on four levels. Models, pricing, distribution, and software architecture were all rewritten in parallel. AI agents are no longer applications running within our software. The