NEWS YOU CAN’T MISS

A New AI Billion-Dollar AI Push Has Begun

Qatar just announced a new national AI company called Qai, which will come under the country’s $524B sovereign wealth fund.

As Edward Ludlow and Maggie Eastland explain in their Bloomberg piece, Qai is Qatar’s bid to catch up with its neighbors in the Gulf, who have been pouring billions into AI infrastructure, chips, and national “AI champions.”

Qatar isn’t trying to build the next ChatGPT. Instead, it wants to:

• Invest in AI infrastructure in Qatar and around the world.

• Evaluate and deploy all popular AI models, making them safer for companies, governments, and everyday users.

• Build autonomous AI agents that can carry out tasks on their own.

There’s geopolitics at play: the advanced chips from companies like Nvidia aren’t something a country can buy off the shelf. The US controls who gets them and requires a clear, accountable organization to operate the hardware.

That’s why Saudi Arabia created Humain and the UAE built G42 - and why Qatar is now launching Qai. If Qatar wants to compete in the Gulf’s AI race, Qai is the vehicle that makes it possible. 

Can England Win the World Cup with AI? 🏆

England’s football team is heading into the 2026 World Cup with an unusual advantage: as BBC’s Daniel Austin and Harry Holmes share in this interesting analysis, they’re using AI to prepare for football’s most stressful moment - the penalty kick.

A quick explainer for non-fans: If a big match ends in a tie, players take turns kicking the ball from a distance while the goalkeeper tries to stop it alone. It’s a nerve-shredding, make-or-break moment. Entire tournaments have been won and lost here.

Traditionally, coaches and analysts spent days watching videos to guess where an opposing player might aim their shot. Now, England is using AI to pull data on every penalty taken by opponents - sometimes going back to when they were teens. 😲

The system looks for patterns humans would never spot:

• Does this player aim high under pressure?

• Do they prefer one side when the stakes rise?

• Which direction does the goalkeeper dive most often?

Players say it even changes how they feel in that moment. Before, they’d walk up thinking, “What if I choose wrong?” and start second-guessing themselves. Now, they have the comfort of knowing exactly which spot the data says gives them the best chance.

England has lost 7 of their 11 penalty shootouts and haven’t won a World Cup since 1966. With the next tournament kicking off on June 11, could 2026 finally be the year they bring the trophy home?

AI Travel Influencers: Fun or Buzzkill?

Meet Radhika: a flawless, sun-kissed travel creator wandering across India. Perfect hair, perfect backdrops, perfect saffron noodles.

Only catch? She can’t taste the food, or feel the sun. Because she’s entirely AI-generated.

She’s not alone. Organizations are now hiring AI influencers like Radhika, Sama (Qatar Airways’ virtual flight attendant), and Emma (Germany’s storyteller) to promote destinations for a fraction of the cost of working with real creators.

But many people are concerned; travelers say it’s getting harder to trust anything they see online, especially when AI will endorse anything without experiencing it.