Today in AI | Microsoft poaches Deepmind | Amazon shuts AI lab | Alibaba debuts Qwen3-Coder
Storyboard18 brings you the top AI news of the day.
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The world of Artificial Intelligence has only begun to affect human lives. In times like these, staying up-to-date with the AI world is of utmost importance. Storyboard18 brings you the top AI news of the day.
Microsoft poaches DeepMind as AI talent war escalates between Copilot and Gemini
In the intensifying arms race for AI supremacy, Microsoft has poached over two dozen employees from Google’s DeepMind, further fuelling the rivalry between its Copilot AI platform and Google’s Gemini assistant. This aggressive hiring spree marks another chapter in the ongoing power struggle between tech giants vying for dominance in the rapidly evolving generative AI landscape.
The latest high-profile move came on July 22, when Amar Subramanya, former VP of Engineering at Google, announced his transition to Microsoft AI as Corporate Vice President via LinkedIn. Subramanya, who played a key role in developing the Gemini assistant, had spent over 15 years at Google.
He’s not alone. In June, Microsoft brought on Adam Sadovsky, a decorated software engineer and senior director at DeepMind, who had been with Google for nearly 18 years. Both now report to Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of DeepMind who joined Microsoft in 2022 to lead its consumer AI division under CEO Satya Nadella. Suleyman’s arrival marked the start of a slow exodus of DeepMind talent, many of whom he’s brought along to build Microsoft’s next-generation AI strategy.
These poachings have left key roles at Google and DeepMind vacant, exposing the pressure mounting within Alphabet’s AI teams amid the Copilot-Gemini rivalry.
Amazon closes Shanghai AI Lab as U.S.-China tensions mount
Amid rising tensions between Washington and Beijing—and growing U.S. scrutiny of American companies operating in China—multinational tech giant Amazon is shutting down its artificial intelligence lab in Shanghai, according to a media report.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) established its Shanghai lab in 2018, and according to the report, the lab once employed over 1,000 people.
Wang Minjie, a scientist at the Shanghai lab, noted that his team was being dissolved as part of strategic adjustments amid ongoing geopolitical tensions.
Amazon joins a growing list of tech companies—including Meta and Microsoft—that began global workforce reductions in early 2025, driven by their increasing reliance on artificial intelligence.
Alibaba debuts Qwen3-Coder, its most advanced Open-Source AI for developers
In a significant step forward in the global AI arms race, Alibaba has launched Qwen3-Coder, calling it the company’s most powerful open-source AI model designed specifically for software development and agentic coding.
Unveiled on Wednesday, Qwen3-Coder is part of the Qwen family of foundation models developed by the Chinese tech giant. This latest release is not just another large language model—it’s purpose-built for complex programming workflows and next-generation AI coding tasks.
“We’re releasing Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B-Instruct, our most powerful open agentic code model to date,” said the Qwen team in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
What Makes Qwen3-Coder Unique The Qwen3-Coder model is built on a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture with a staggering 480 billion parameters, of which 35 billion are active at any time. The model natively supports a context window of 256,000 tokens and is capable of scaling up to 1 million tokens using extrapolation techniques. This enables it to handle extremely large and intricate codebases—an essential feature for enterprise and developer use.
IndiaAI Mission adds over 34,000 GPUs, backs 500+ proposals for foundation models
The IndiaAI Mission, launched in March 2024, is beginning to take shape as a cornerstone of the country’s artificial intelligence ecosystem. In a response to a starred question in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, Union Minister for Electronics & IT, Railways and I&B, Ashwini Vaishna Ashwini outlined the government’s AI roadmap, including infrastructure rollout, application development, talent support, and global engagement.
Built on the Prime Minister’s vision to democratize technology and tackle India-centric challenges, the mission aims to position India as a global leader in responsible and inclusive AI. The government has structured the initiative around seven key pillars to support innovation, upskill talent, and promote ethical use.
On the infrastructure front, the IndiaAI Compute pillar has onboarded 34,381 GPUs from 14 empanelled service providers. These GPUs are offered at subsidized rates to Indian startups and academia, with widely used H100 chips priced at Rs 92 per hour — significantly lower than commercial hyperscaler rates. The AIKosh platform, launched in beta in March 2025, complements this with over 890 datasets, 208 AI models, and 13 development toolkits. The platform has seen over 265,000 visits and 13,000 resource downloads to date.
PhysicsWallah launches Aryabhata AI model for precision-based JEE preparation
Edtech major PhysicsWallah (PW) has introduced Aryabhata 1.0, a purpose-built small language model (SLM) designed to support students preparing for the mathematics section of the JEE Main exam. The open-source model, named after the legendary Indian mathematician Aryabhata, is engineered with 7 billion parameters and delivers precise, exam-style responses tailored for competitive test environments.
Unlike general-purpose AI models, Aryabhata 1.0 is hyper-focused on academic rigor and problem-solving accuracy, reflecting India’s deep-rooted legacy in mathematical innovation. PW is making the model freely accessible to educators, developers, and researchers, encouraging widespread experimentation and innovation in education technology.
