Lee Hickin, National AI Centre exec director, says Australia should focus on AI applications in data-rich sectors like agriculture and healthcare, not competing on frontier models. Worth noting for sales teams: enterprise AI adoption is already at 68%, but the play is sector-specific tools, not generic platforms.
Google has put a reported $20 billion data centre investment on hold after the Australian government indicated the infrastructure would create a permanent establishment, triggering local tax obligations. The move comes as competitors like AWS commit billions to ANZ cloud infrastructure.
Tech Council of Australia reports the sector now contributes $248.5 billion to the economy, making it Australia's third-largest industry. Worth noting: nearly half that value comes from indirect tech adoption, not the tech industry itself. Job growth is lagging the council's 2030 targets.
Meta's reported 20% workforce reduction is not about AI replacing jobs. It is about capex priorities: when you spend tens of billions on Nvidia infrastructure, the depreciation eats operating cash flow. Meta cannot afford both the compute and the headcount. Meanwhile, NVIDIA's $1 trillion revenue forecast landed with a shrug because the market already priced it in.
Google says it's building controls to let sites opt out of AI features in search. Publishers aren't buying it. The proposed opt-out still ties traditional search visibility to AI inclusion, and there's no detail on how it actually works or what penalty you'll pay for using it.
ServiceNow reported 603 customers spending over $5M annually, averaging $14.7M each. The company closed 244 deals over $1M in net-new ACV in Q4 alone, up 40% YoY. Paul Fipps, President of Global Customer Operations, detailed how they built the GTM engine behind $10B+ revenue and five years of 20%+ growth.
Every major software company has printed lower growth rates each year since 2021. Salesforce went from 25% to 8%, Snowflake from 106% to 24%. The culprit is not AI replacing software yet. It is simpler: CIOs are reallocating finite budgets to foundation model providers, and traditional software vendors are taking the hit.
Amazon leads 2026 tech layoffs with 16,000 cuts attributed to AI efficiency. Reality check: Goldman Sachs data shows AI threatens 2.5% of US jobs, and workers in AI-exposed roles show no higher job loss rates yet. The automation narrative is running ahead of the evidence.
Australia's financial regulator surveyed 1,227 18-28 year olds. Two-thirds use social media for investment decisions, one in five rely on AI tools, and 52% trust finfluencers. ASIC Commissioner Alan Kirkland warns algorithms prioritise clicks over accuracy, putting young investors at risk.
Most B2B software companies are slowing down. Cloudflare just posted its best quarter since 2021: $614.5M revenue, up 34% year over year, with new ACV growing nearly 50%. The numbers point to aggressive sales hiring and territory expansion ahead.
New research from Anthropic tracks actual AI usage at work, not theoretical capability. Sales operations and research roles show higher exposure than client-facing positions. The data reveals which sales functions are already being automated versus which remain human-dependent.
Sydney's Canva ranks third for monthly AI web users behind ChatGPT and Gemini, according to A16Z analysis. The design platform outranks Claude, Perplexity, and Deepseek after expanding AI features through Magic Studio. Worth noting: this counts web visits, not revenue or enterprise adoption.