Landmark licence enables Block Earner to originate and offer regulated digital asset-backed credit products

Block Earner, has been granted an Australian Credit Licence by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), making it the first digital asset platform in Australia to be regulated to provide credit products under its own licence.

The milestone marks a significant step in the evolution of digital assets within Australia’s financial system, creating a regulated pathway for eligible customers to use digital assets as security for credit.

The licence follows Block Earner’s launch of Australia’s first Bitcoin-backed home loan in July 2025, which has already generated more than $500 million in mortgage demand at the waitlist stage, highlighting strong appetite from crypto holders seeking new pathways into property without needing to liquidate their holdings.

Block Earner will now conduct its lending activities under its own Australian Credit Licence, enabling it to originate, underwrite and offer regulated credit products directly.

Up to this point, Block Earner has operated as a credit representative of existing Australian Credit Licence holder, Mortgage Direct under ASIC’s regulatory framework.

The licence includes the appointment of Charlie Karaboga and James Coombes as Responsible Managers.

With more than 4 million Australians now holding digital assets, Block Earner is targeting growing demand from investors seeking to use those assets within regulated financial products.

Its lending products recognise digital assets as collateral, creating an alternative to traditional credit providers that have generally not served this segment of the market.

Charlie Karaboga, Co-founder and CEO of Block Earner said, “Securing this Australian Credit Licence is a significant milestone for Block Earner and for Australia’s digital asset industry.”

“For the first time, a digital asset platform in Australia can provide credit products under its own Australian Credit Licence, creating a regulated pathway for customers to use digital assets as security for credit.”

“We welcome ASIC’s continued progress in providing a clear pathway for firms in this space. Digital assets are becoming an increasingly common store of wealth for Australians,” said Karaboga

“As that happens, it is important that products built around those assets are brought within established regulatory frameworks that support transparency, responsible lending and appropriate consumer protections.”

“Operating with strong governance and responsible lending has always been our priority. As a registered Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) now holding an ACL, we are proud to be shaping a compliant, disciplined future for the digital asset economy in Australia and globally,” he said.

Board Strengthened For Next Phase of Growth

Block Earner has also appointed two senior financial services and investment leaders to its Board as it prepares for its next phase of growth.

Simon Cant, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Reinventure and Founding President of FinTech Australia, brings deep regulatory and policy expertise. He is joined by Shiau Sin Yen, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Titan Fund (CMCC Global), who previously held senior leadership roles at UBS.

The appointments add global financial services expertise and institutional oversight as Block Earner scales under its Australian Credit Licence, further aligning the business with established financial markets.

Commenting on the Licence, James Coombes, Chief Commercial Officer said,” Securing an Australian Credit Licence is a major step for Block Earner and reflects the increasing maturity of Australia’s digital asset sector.”

Digital assets are now part of the wealth picture for millions of Australians. The next phase is about ensuring those assets can be used within regulated financial products that meet the standards expected of Australia’s credit system.

“As the first digital asset specialist to obtain an Australian Credit Licence for this purpose, Block Earner is reinforcing its commitment to building within Australia’s established regulatory framework.”

“As an AUSTRAC-registered provider, Block Earner has built its platform on a foundation of regulatory alignment, transparency and user empowerment, delivering innovative financial solutions powered by digital assets and blockchain technology.”

Block Earner is also progressing an Australian Financial Services Licence as part of its broader regulatory roadmap, ahead of the implementation of Australia’s Digital Assets Framework.

The reforms are expected to extend the financial services licensing framework to parts of the digital asset sector, consistent with Block Earner’s focus on operating within Australia’s regulated financial system.

The post ASIC Grants Block Earner An Australian Credit Licence In Digital Asset Industry First appeared first on Tech Business News.

It’s about calling out something that is genuinely disrespectful to writers, to real journalism, and frankly to anyone who still believes that quality work should mean something.

So here’s what happened.

I spent hours, real hours, on a single article. Keyword research, data verification, cross-referencing statistics, reading everything published on the topic, editorial commentary, reader responses, social media conversations, what actual people with actual opinions were saying in the real world.

Then more hours writing, structuring, refining. The kind of work that, when you’re done, you know you’ve produced something worth reading. Something genuinely useful. Not filler. Not recycled takes. Something that took knowledge, time, and care to build from scratch.

Then I spent another 30 minutes writing a pitch to inkl.com. A proper pitch, respectful and considered, not a template I fired off to 50 people at once.

Their reply confirmed they accept guest post submissions. Then the next sentence arrived and I had to read it twice. My article, they said, falls under their “standard Category 1 rate of $75.”

I want to sit with that for a second, because it deserves to be looked at directly.

They want me to pay them. For taking my work. Work I researched, wrote, and packaged entirely at my own expense, in my own time, drawing on my own expertise and professional understanding of the subject.

They want me to “Pay Them” $75 to put it on their own website. Me pay them. To give them my own work.

And they said this while confirming they accept guest contributions, as if those two things can coexist in the same email without being an absolute contradiction.

Now, I want to be fair here, because there is a version of this arrangement I actually understand. If someone writes a thin, 500-word article that exists purely to park a backlink somewhere, I get why a publication might charge for that.

It’s not a model I respect, but I understand the logic. You’re not bringing them value, you’re using their domain authority as a tool, and they know it. Fine. Charge for it. That’s a transaction between two parties who both know exactly what they’re doing.

But that was not what I was doing. Not even close.

I wasn’t approaching inkl.com with a link-building play disguised as content. I was approaching them as a contributor.

Someone with genuine knowledge of the subject, offering a well-researched, thoroughly sourced article that their readers would actually benefit from reading.

The expectation on my end was simple and completely standard: they publish the piece, they cite me as the author, I get the attribution and the credibility that comes with being published in a legitimate outlet.

That’s it. No tricks, no hidden agenda, just a straightforward editorial relationship where both sides get something real.

Instead, they treated a serious, high-quality contribution exactly the same way they would treat someone trying to quietly buy a backlink.

Which means one of two things: either they genuinely cannot tell the difference between real content and SEO spam, or they can tell the difference and just don’t care, because the $75 looks the same either way.

Both possibilities are a problem.

A guest contribution, in every legitimate sense of the term, works like this: a writer produces something valuable, a publication recognises that value, runs the piece, and offers something in return, usually an author bio and a backlink.

The publication gets quality content it didn’t have to commission or pay for. The writer gets visibility and credit. Both parties walk away having exchanged something real. That’s the model. That’s how it has always worked when it’s done honestly.

What inkl.com described is not that. What inkl.com described is a publication that has figured out it can charge people for the appearance of editorial credibility.

Dress it up in professional language, call it a “Category 1 rate,” make it sound like some structured internal system rather than what it actually is, and maybe the writer won’t notice they’re being asked to fund someone else’s content operation with their own unpaid labour.

And beyond the personal insult of it, there is a genuinely serious problem with what they’re doing.

Google has been clear for years that paying for links, or charging for content placement under the cover of editorial publishing, is a violation of search engine guidelines. It doesn’t matter what you call the rate.

It doesn’t matter how the invoice is worded. If money is changing hands in exchange for a link inside what appears to be editorial content, that is a paid link scheme, and that is exactly the kind of practice that gets websites penalised.

The framing doesn’t change the substance.

What makes this worse is that inkl.com isn’t some obscure directory site or paid link PBN site. It presents itself as a legitimate news aggregator and publishing platform.

Which means writers approaching them in good faith, investing real time, doing real research, writing real articles, are doing so under the impression they’re engaging with something authentic. That impression is being exploited.

I’m not angry that they said no to the pitch. Publications decline pitches every day and that’s completely fine. I’m angry that they said yes, and then sent me a bill for the privilege of that yes.

Those are two completely different things, and the fact that they seem not to understand the difference, or more likely don’t care about it, tells you everything about how much respect they actually have for the people creating the content that keeps their platform alive.

The guest posting world has been deteriorating for a while. Anyone working in content or SEO knows that.

But there was always an assumption that the more reputable a publication appeared, the more likely it was to operate with some basic integrity around these arrangements.

What this experience made clear is that the appearance of reputation and the presence of actual standards are not the same thing, and confusing the two is an expensive mistake to make with your time.

The post Spent 4 Hours Writing An Article For inkl.com Then They Asked For Payment To Give It To Them appeared first on Tech Business News.

The answer, at least for a handful of companies, is unambiguous.

A tight group of technology firms is pulling away from the rest of the market, posting revenue growth rates that would have seemed fantastical even during the pandemic boom years.

Here is where the money actually went — and who earned it.

1. Nvidia: The Infrastructure Company the World Cannot Live Without

Jensen Huang called it last year when he said demand for compute would “accelerate and compound.” He was right.

For Nvidia’s full fiscal year 2026, the company posted $215.9 billion in total revenue, up 65% from the prior year.

Data centre revenue alone reached $193.7 billion, growing 68% year over year, and in Q4 alone the company booked $68.1 billion in revenue, a 73% annual increase. Net income for the full year hit $120 billion.

These are not chip company numbers. They are what happens when one manufacturer becomes the gating factor for the most consequential infrastructure build in corporate history.

The Blackwell platform drove the acceleration, with data center networking revenue surging 142% as companies scaled their GPU clusters with NVLink interconnects.

Hyperscalers — Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta — accounted for just over half of data center revenue, but the other half came from enterprise customers, sovereign AI projects, and model builders, a diversification that matters because it shows the dependency is structural rather than concentrated.

For any business evaluating where to deploy technology budgets, the practical signal from Nvidia’s numbers is that the companies buying the most compute are winning the most customers.

The infrastructure race is not slowing; combined AI capital expenditure across the major hyperscalers is now tracking approximately $725 billion for 2026, up from earlier estimates of around $670 billion.

2. Google Cloud: The Fastest-Growing Hyperscaler, and It’s Not Close

Alphabet’s Q1 2026 results were striking for one reason above all others. Google Cloud grew 63% year over year to $20 billion in a single quarter, outpacing Microsoft Azure at 40% and Amazon AWS at 28%.

Cloud operating income rose from $2.2 billion to $6.6 billion in the same period. And the company’s Cloud backlog nearly doubled quarter on quarter to over $460 billion — that is contracted future revenue, not a projection.

Alphabet’s total Q1 revenue reached $109.9 billion, up 22% year over year, its fastest pace in two years. Full-year capital expenditure guidance was raised to as much as $190 billion, almost entirely directed at AI infrastructure.

The competitive dynamic here deserves attention. AWS still leads on market share at 28%, Azure sits at 21%, and Google Cloud holds 14% of a global market that itself grew 35% in Q1.

But Google is now adding more net new cloud revenue per quarter than AWS, on a base half AWS’s size.

Enterprise customers are signing multi-year contracts to access Google’s TPU infrastructure and Gemini API for model training workloads, and those contracts are showing up in a backlog figure that has basically no precedent in the company’s history.

For businesses selecting a cloud partner, the question used to be whether Google Cloud was mature enough. The Q1 results suggest that question is no longer relevant.

3. Meta: The Advertising Machine AI Made Smarter

Meta reported Q1 2026 revenue of $56.31 billion, up 33% year over year from $42.3 billion, its fastest quarterly growth since 2021. Net income reached $26.77 billion, up 61%.

Advertising revenue was $55.02 billion, driven by a 19% increase in ad impressions and a 12% increase in average price per ad.

What makes Meta’s numbers interesting is the mechanism behind them. More than 8 million advertisers are now using at least one of Meta’s generative AI creative tools.

Advertisers using video-generation features are seeing more than 3% higher conversion rates in tests. Instagram Reels time spent increased 10% in Q1 following ranking improvements, and Facebook’s total video watch time rose more than 8% globally, the largest quarter-on-quarter gain in four years.

User engagement is rising because AI is surfacing better content; better content drives more time on platform; more time on platform commands higher ad prices.

This is the advertising flywheel running at speed, and it explains why both volume and pricing metrics are moving upward simultaneously — a signal analysts describe as the clearest sign of advertising health possible.

Mark Zuckerberg has guided Q2 2026 revenue to $58 to $61 billion. The company’s full-year expense guidance was maintained at $162 to $169 billion, most of which is AI infrastructure investment that, unlike some competitors, is already demonstrably paying off in core business metrics.

4. Microsoft: The Enterprise Bet That Is Paying Off

Azure grew 40% year over year in Microsoft’s most recently reported quarter, contributing to Intelligent Cloud revenue of $30.9 billion, up 28%. Microsoft Cloud revenue crossed $50 billion in a single quarter for the first time, reaching $51.5 billion at one point and $49.1 billion in Q1.

Total revenue was $77.7 billion, up 18%, and the company’s commercial remaining performance obligation — the contracted backlog of future work — jumped 51% to $392 billion.

Microsoft’s growth story is somewhat different from Google’s or Meta’s because the mechanism is less about raw infrastructure and more about enterprise software lock-in.

Copilot is beginning to show up in segment numbers. Azure’s 40% growth is being partially constrained by supply, with the company acknowledging it expects to remain capacity-constrained through at least the end of 2026.

That is a high-class problem, but it is a real one — revenue that could be booked is being deferred because the data centers are not yet built.

The backlog number is what matters most for businesses evaluating Microsoft as a long-term partner. $392 billion in contracted revenue is not a quarterly headline; it is a decade’s worth of enterprise relationships already committed on paper.

5. Amazon Web Services: The Biggest Base, Reaccelerating

AWS posted $37.6 billion in Q1 2026 revenue, up 28% year over year — the service’s fastest growth in 15 quarters. Amazon’s own chips business crossed a $20 billion annualized revenue run rate, growing at triple-digit percentages year over year.

Amazon Bedrock, the company’s managed AI model service, processed more tokens in Q1 2026 than in all prior years combined. Customer spend on Bedrock grew 170% quarter on quarter.

The 28% growth figure understates the momentum because AWS is running on an annualized revenue base now approaching $150 billion.

Adding 28% to that base means AWS generated more absolute cloud revenue in Q1 than Google Cloud’s entire business. The sequential add of $2 billion was the largest Q4-to-Q1 increase in AWS history.

Amazon’s strategic differentiation is its custom silicon. By training inference workloads on Trainium 2 chips rather than Nvidia GPUs, Amazon is lowering the cost of AI inference for customers while improving margins.

The Anthropic partnership, a $25 billion commitment, puts one of the leading AI labs exclusively on AWS infrastructure — a relationship that gives Amazon a credibility signal in the enterprise AI market that has no direct equivalent.

6. AppLovin: The Smaller Company Posting the Largest Percentage Gains

Not every company in this group is a household name. AppLovin, the mobile advertising and software platform, posted Q1 2026 sales of $1.84 billion, up from $1.16 billion a year earlier, with net income more than doubling to $1.21 billion.

The company’s AI-driven ad targeting engine has proven extraordinarily effective at monetizing mobile app inventory, and the conversion of that technology into recurring software revenue is giving AppLovin the margin profile of a software company with the growth rate of a startup.

AppLovin’s trajectory matters for business decision-makers because it illustrates the category of company that tends to be underweighted in technology platform conversations: the specialist AI-native platform that solves a narrow problem exceptionally well and generates substantial financial returns doing it.

For businesses that depend on mobile user acquisition, AppLovin has become difficult to ignore.

What It All Adds Up To

The FactSet earnings data for Q1 2026 shows the technology sector’s blended earnings growth rate at 27.7%, the highest among all S&P 500 sectors and more than double the second-best performer.

Analysts are forecasting earnings growth rates of 20.5%, 23.6%, and 21.1% for Q2 through Q4 2026, respectively. The Information Technology and Communication Services sectors led all S&P 500 sectors in year-over-year revenue growth for Q1.

The pattern across all six companies above is the same: AI is either directly generating revenue or making existing revenue-generating activities more efficient.

The companies growing fastest are the ones that have embedded AI deepest into their core product loops, whether that is a cloud database, an advertising auction, or a mobile attribution model.

There is a legitimate concern embedded in all of this, which is whether $725 billion in combined AI capital expenditure can generate sufficient returns to justify the investment.

Dan Kemp of Portfolio Thinking told CNBC that investors have gone from finding it hard to believe these companies could grow at these rates to finding it hard to believe they won’t. That shift in expectations is worth paying attention to — it is usually where cycles turn.

But for now, the numbers say what they say. For any business deciding which technology companies to build on, partner with, or evaluate for enterprise contracts in 2026, the list above is where the momentum sits.

The post The Big Tech Companies Actually Winning In 2026 — And Numbers That Prove It appeared first on Tech Business News.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has confirmed a final pricing decision that will see Telstra, Optus, TPG Telecom and NBN Co collectively pay just over $7.3 billion to retain expiring mobile spectrum licences.

The ruling, set at $7.32 billion, is only marginally below the regulator’s preliminary figure of $7.34 billion released in December, but it firmly rejects industry calls for a substantial downward revision.

ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin says the authority had carefully considered competing submissions from across the sector but ultimately found many of the industry’s arguments did not withstand scrutiny.

The decision brings to a close a lengthy consultation process that has seen telcos and consumer groups sharply divided over the “true” value of Australia’s scarce spectrum resources.

Pressure Building For Months

The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network proposed that carriers should be granted discounted spectrum access in exchange for stronger commitments to closing regional coverage gaps, effectively tying pricing relief to expanded service obligations.

Industry players pushed back strongly. Telstra warned such conditions would force “tough trade-offs” between managing costs and continuing investment in mobile infrastructure, while broader sector lobbying warned that higher prices risked undermining affordability.

The Australian Telecommunications Alliance, representing industry interests, also cautioned that the proposed pricing structure would make it more difficult for carriers to deliver fast and reliable mobile broadband services at sustainable price points.

At the same time, Telstra escalated its concerns directly to the federal government, arguing in a pre-budget submission that spectrum should be capped at $3.9 billion industry-wide—well below the regulator’s assessment—on the basis that ACMA had overvalued the asset by more than $3 billion.

The final determination follows an earlier valuation trajectory that already exceeded market expectations. Industry forecasts had previously placed the likely outcome between $5 billion and $6.2 billion, but ACMA’s December figure of $7.34 billion signalled a sharp upward reappraisal of spectrum value.

In response to continued industry feedback, the regulator reopened consultation and commissioned additional economic advice from UK consultancy DotEcon and Australian advisory firm Ian Martin Advisory before finalising today’s decision.

The pricing framework applies across a range of key spectrum bands used for mobile and wireless services, including 700MHz, 850MHz, 1800MHz, 2GHz, 2.3GHz, 2.5GHz and 3.4GHz frequencies.

While some lower-band spectrum prices were reduced—reflecting adjustments in the 700MHz and 850MHz ranges—several mid-band allocations, including 1800MHz and 2GHz, were revised upward.

Higher-frequency bands also saw mixed movements, with modest increases in parts of the 2.3GHz and 2.5GHz ranges, while the 3.4GHz band was slightly reduced.

Looking ahead, ACMA will open its first renewal application window on 18 June, beginning with the 850MHz and 1800MHz bands.

The regulator has indicated that applicants will generally be required to submit renewal applications within nine months of each window opening, with final settlement expected two months prior to licence commencement.

As the industry absorbs the outcome, the decision underscores a clear regulatory stance: despite sustained lobbying and competing economic interpretations, ACMA has opted to hold firm on its valuation of one of Australia’s most critical digital infrastructure assets.

The post Telcos Face $7.3bn Spectrum Bill As ACMA Rejects Industry Push For Lower Fees appeared first on Tech Business News.

Developed with input from Telstra and shaped by enterprise requirements, including field operations teams, the API-first system supports Microsoft-native workflows for duress alerts and automated check-ins, integrating via cellular, Wi-Fi and Icom UHF radio networks.

It consolidates lone worker alerts, incidents and status updates from multiple sources directly into a customer’s Microsoft 365 tenant and is now being rolled out to beta customers nationwide, including integrations with Geotab telematics.

Big Springs Water General Manager Peter Braneley said the platform aligned with how his teams already operate.

“Zetifi’s integration with Geotab means our safety alerts flow straight into the Microsoft tools our team already uses,” he said.

The launch comes as workplace safety data highlights ongoing risk for mobile and remote workers, with Safe Work Australia reporting that 42 per cent of workplace fatalities involve vehicle incidents.

From Fleet Data To Automated Response

Telematics, cameras and lone worker apps generate constant streams of safety data, but that data lives in vendor portals, separated from the Microsoft systems the rest of the business runs on.

Action still depends on someone watching a separate dashboard or basic email alerts and the value of the data too often stops at the vendor’s UI.

Zetifi Marshal extends the value of fleet and worker data into the customer’s own Microsoft 365 tenant, where it can be used to drive automated and agentic workflows.

Duress, check-ins, location and incident events flow into Teams cards, SharePoint records and Power Automate escalations, alongside the compliance, ops and safety processes already running there.

The customer owns the data and the workflow, and safety events connect directly to the systems where action actually happens.

Zetifi Marshal accepts inputs from any source. These include Zetifi’s Smart Antenna Pro gateway, and Icom UHF radios via Zetifi’s global integration partnership with Icom.

The solution also works with third-party platforms and devices, including Geotab telematics. The same policy and workflow apply regardless of where the event came from.

An acknowledgement loop confirms each event was actioned in workflow, not just delivered. Manual triage collapses to seconds. Where workflows fail to respond, backup communications fire automatically.

Dan Winson, CEO and Founder, Zetifi, says, “With Zetifi Marshal, no safety event is silently dropped. Organisations can take their compliance and duty-of-care to a new level. 

Marshal produces a continuous evidence trail (event, policy, action, acknowledgement, outcome) which means no manual chasing and being audit-ready for records from day one.”

Key features include:

• Capture. Events come from the Smart Antenna Pro gateway, Icom UHF radios, telematics devices including Geotab GO9 and GO Focus Plus dash cameras, or partner APIs. All normalise into one event model.
  
  
• Communicate. The Smart Antenna Pro is a multi-protocol edge gateway. It connects via Telstra Cat-M1 cellular or Starlink terminal Wi-Fi, with BLE for short-range, plus an integration to Icom UHF radios through Zetifi’s global technology partnership.
  
  Critical events fire to Zetifi and the customer’s Power Automate webhook in parallel, running two independent network paths.
  
  
• Cloud. Zetifi’s AWS IoT ingest normalises events, supervises delivery, and runs an acknowledgement loop with Microsoft.
  
  The customer’s Power Automate flow must POST back to Zetifi. If acknowledgement is missing, backup comms fire to the customer’s catch-all contacts (SMS via Telstra Messaging API, email via Amazon SES). Delivery and acknowledgement are tracked.

• Workflow.  Action and evidence happen in the customer’s Microsoft tenant: Teams cards, SharePoint records and Power Automate escalations, with Power BI dashboards and Copilot agents that read the customer’s own policy arriving at commercial release.
  
  The Marshal Console, Zetifi’s operational map and worker status view, is built on the customer’s SharePoint. The customer owns everything downstream of the API: their data, workflows and policies.

“This collaboration demonstrates a new category of connected safety platform, integrating hardware, connectivity and workflows into a single operational system,” says Ben Green, Head of muru-D & Incubation, Product & Development Technology, Telstra.

“It reflects the kind of applied innovation that can reshape how organisations approach worker safety at scale,” he said.

Channa Seneviratne, Technology Development and Innovation Executive, Telstra, said, “This joint work between Telstra and Zetifi establishes a new model of worker safety, where connectivity, AI and enterprise flows operate as one system.

“It moves beyond monitoring to reliable execution, which is a step change in how safety is delivered in the field. “

Zetifi will showcase its Zetifi Marshal lone worker safety solution at the Workplace Health & Safety Show in Melbourne on 20–21 May.

The company will be located at booth K18, where it will demonstrate how the platform transforms fleet and field data into automated safety responses.

The post Zetifi Launches Microsoft-Native Fleet Safety Platform, Marshal For Lone Worker Safety appeared first on Tech Business News.

The new in-app feature allows RACV members to request Emergency Roadside Assistance directly from their smartphone, reducing the need for phone calls and streamlining the process for drivers needing urgent support.

The move comes as roadside assistance providers increasingly invest in digital-first services to meet changing customer expectations around speed, convenience and real-time updates.

Using the RACV App, members can now log a breakdown request with their location automatically detected, while membership and vehicle details are pre-filled within the system.

Drivers can also select the type of issue they are experiencing before tracking the arrival of patrol vehicles in real time for Melbourne-based callouts.

RACV attends more than 800,000 Emergency Roadside Assistance callouts across Victoria each year, helping motorists dealing with flat batteries, breakdowns and other vehicle issues at home, roadside locations and regional areas.

According to RACV General Manager Automotive Services Makarla Cole the app-based option reflects what members have been telling RACV about how they want to access help.

“It’s essentially an Uber for your roadside assistance…As a leading provider of Emergency Roadside Assistance in Victoria, trusted by more than 1.4 million ERA members, RACV has a unique window into the changing needs of drivers on our roads,” Ms Cole said.

“When something goes wrong, people want to get help in a way that feels easiest in that moment. For some, that means speaking to someone on the phone and for others, it means using the app to let us know where they are and what’s happened.”

Ms Cole said the introduction of digital roadside assistance does not replace calling RACV for help.

“Members can still call RACV exactly as they always have. This is simply another option, giving people more choice in how they reach us, particularly if they are in an unfamiliar place or prefer to manage things through the app,” she said.

“While the experience is designed to feel straightforward for members, it connects multiple systems behind the scenes to help us get assistance to the right place as quickly as possible.”

The new platform also gives members greater control over the roadside assistance process, allowing them to confirm or adjust their location through in-app mapping, nominate the type of breakdown they are experiencing and receive live updates as an RACV patrol is dispatched and approaches their location.

RACV says early use of the feature had already seen successful assistance requests lodged by members away from home, underscoring the app’s ability to support motorists wherever they are across Victoria.

Ms Cole said the launch supports RACV’s long-term commitment to improving member experiences.

“This gives members more flexibility today, while also laying the foundations for future enhancements to roadside assistance and other digital services,” Ms Cole said.

The new digital roadside assistance service is being rolled out through the latest version of the RACV App on compatible devices, with members who have automatic updates enabled set to receive access progressively.

RACV said the digital option would complement — rather than replace — its longstanding phone-based roadside assistance service, with members still able to call for help directly if they are unable to use the app or prefer to speak with a team member.

RACV averages over 5.1 million monthly visits to its digital platforms, showing a continuous 9.88% year-over-year increase in web traffic.

The post RACV Introduces Digital Roadside Assistance for Victorian Members appeared first on Tech Business News.

“Foundry is very important,” Tan told Jim Cramer on CNBC’s “Mad Money.” “It’s one of the key national treasures.”

Intel’s manufacturing business, known as foundry, is one of the most expensive and critical parts of the company’s revitalisation strategy.

It is designed to manufacture semiconductors for outside customers while helping rebuild advanced chip production capacity in the U.S. after years of overseas dominance.

Historically, Intel’s factories only produced its own chips used in personal computers and data center servers. Tan’s predecessor, Pat Gelsinger, championed the pricey external foundry strategy.

Shares of Intel have surged more than 300% since Tan was appointed CEO in March 2025, as investors bet the longtime semiconductor executive would stabilise the struggling chipmaker after years of setbacks.

One of the big questions was whether Tan would be able to make good on Intel’s foundry ambitions by getting its manufacturing capabilities competitive with the likes of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

Tan said the company is beginning to make tangible progress on that goal.

In particular, Tan pointed to improvements in Intel’s advanced 18A manufacturing process, which has been closely watched by investors as a key test of the turnaround. He said when he took over, the 18A process was “not good.”

“Now I’m seeing it,” said Tan, who led chip design software maker Cadence Design Systems from 2009 to 2021 and had a two-year stint on Intel’s board that ended in 2024.

Manufacturing yield, the percentage of usable chips produced from each wafer, is a critical metric for profitability and customer confidence in the foundry business. Tan said Intel’s progress has exceeded expectations.

“The best practice is to see 7% or 8% yield improvement per month, and now I’m seeing it,” he said.

The improvements are beginning to draw customer interest, according to Tan. As Intel’s manufacturing performance has progressed, he said more prospective customers have approached the company about using its foundry business.

On May 8, the Wall Street Journal reported that Intel and Apple had reached a preliminary deal for Intel to produce some of Apple’s chips, which are currently manufactured by TSMC.

When Cramer asked Tan about those reports, the CEO declined to discuss customers by name. However, Tan says Intel expects commitments from multiple foundry customers in the second half of the year.

“Multiple customers, they are working with us,” he said. “We are looking forward to serve them.”

The comments align with what Intel executives previously told investors. On the company’s April earnings call, CFO David Zinsner said Intel expected signals from external foundry customers to become “more concrete” in the second half of the year and into early 2027.

Beyond Intel’s turnaround, Tan framed the foundry business as strategically important for the U.S. semiconductor supply chain.

Intel has built a new plant in Arizona, where it uses the 18A process, while a separate project in Ohio has faced major delays and is not expected to start production until at least 2030.

“90 plus percent of the most advanced processors are manufactured outside the country,” he said. “So, I think it’s important to bring some of them back.”

Looking further ahead, Tan said Intel’s next-generation 14A process could eventually compete with TSMC, widely considered the leading third-party chipmaker.

“It will be the same time as TSMC,” he said. “That is a major, major breakthrough.”

The post Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan Says Foundry Business Is Gaining Traction Amid Rising Customer Interest appeared first on Tech Business News.

While mega-cap firms such as Nvidia continue to anchor the sector, the next phase of AI-driven returns is being shaped by bottlenecks in memory bandwidth, networking throughput, power delivery, and inference optimisation.

Global AI infrastructure spending—led by hyperscalers and enterprise cloud providers—has expanded sharply alongside the shift from training-heavy workloads to inference-intensive deployment.

Industry forecasts broadly project sustained AI-related capex growth in the mid-to-high double digits annually through the decade, with some estimates placing total AI market value in the trillions of dollars by the early 2030s.

The expansion is increasingly capital-intensive, with compute density, energy efficiency, and interconnect speed emerging as binding constraints.

Within this environment, equity performance has become highly stratified: companies directly exposed to AI data centre buildouts and specialised silicon have significantly outperformed broader indices over the past 12–18 months, though with widening valuation dispersion.

High-Momentum AI Infrastructure Leaders

• Micron Technology (MU) has been one of the strongest performers in the AI supply chain, with its high-bandwidth memory (HBM) products positioned as critical inputs for advanced GPU systems.
  
  

• Nvidia (NVDA) remains the dominant force in AI compute, with data centre revenue growth still running at strong double-digit to triple-digit rates year-over-year in recent reporting periods.
  
  
• Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has gained incremental share in both CPUs and AI accelerators, supported by hyperscaler partnerships and expanding deployments in inference-heavy workloads.
  
  
• Broadcom (AVGO) has emerged as a key beneficiary of custom silicon demand from hyperscalers, alongside strength in networking and switching infrastructure.
  
  
• Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) remains structurally central to the AI ecosystem as the leading advanced-node foundry. Nearly all major AI chip designers rely on its manufacturing capacity, and ongoing capital expenditure

Software and Platform Layer Exposure

Palantir Technologies (PLTR) has shown accelerating commercial traction in its Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP), with reported revenue growth in recent quarters driven by enterprise deployment expansion. Growth has been particularly strong in U.S. commercial segments, indicating broader adoption of applied AI systems beyond government contracts.

SoundHound AI (SOUN) represents a smaller-cap exposure to voice and conversational AI. Revenue growth has been accelerating from a low base, with improving gross margins reflecting a shift toward software-heavy deployment models. However, volatility remains elevated due to concentration risk and early-stage commercialisation dynamics.

Data Center Power, Networking, and Infrastructure Bottlenecks

Vertiv Holdings (VRT) has benefited from rising demand for thermal management and power delivery systems as AI compute density increases. Liquid cooling and advanced power infrastructure have become critical constraints in next-generation data centres, supporting both revenue expansion and margin stability.

Arista Networks (ANET) continues to capture share in high-speed Ethernet switching for AI clusters. As data centre topologies shift toward massively parallel GPU/accelerator systems, demand for low-latency, high-bandwidth networking has strengthened.

Ciena (CIEN) is positioned in optical transport infrastructure, a layer increasingly stressed by AI-driven bandwidth growth. Long-haul and intra-data-centre traffic expansion has created multi-year tailwinds for coherent optics and high-capacity networking solutions.

Market Structure and Key Dynamics

The AI equity landscape in 2026 is increasingly defined by supply-chain constraints rather than pure demand growth. Three structural bottlenecks dominate:

• Memory bandwidth (HBM supply)
• Power delivery and cooling capacity
• High-speed interconnect and networking throughput

These constraints are creating asymmetric pricing power for firms positioned in upstream infrastructure rather than end-user software alone.

At the same time, valuation dispersion has widened materially. Large-cap leaders trade at premium multiples supported by strong cash flow visibility, while mid-cap AI beneficiaries often reflect higher implied growth expectations and elevated volatility.

Some segments—particularly early-stage AI software—price in aggressive long-term adoption curves, increasing sensitivity to execution risk.

Risk Considerations

Despite strong structural tailwinds, several risks remain relevant:

• Cyclicality in semiconductor demand, particularly in memory markets
• Geopolitical exposure, especially in Taiwan-based manufacturing
• Interest rate sensitivity, affecting long-duration growth valuations
• Energy constraints, which may slow data center expansion in certain regions
• Execution risk in early-stage AI software monetization

Bottom Line

Rather than a single concentrated “AI trade,” the current cycle increasingly resembles a layered infrastructure buildout spanning silicon, memory, networking, power, and application software.

Returns have become more dependent on positioning within specific bottlenecks than broad exposure to the AI theme itself.

As a result, investors are differentiating sharply between:

• Core compute platforms (GPU and ASIC designers)
• Enabling semiconductor supply chains
• Data centre infrastructure providers
• Early-stage AI application companies

This segmentation is likely to persist as AI investment transitions from rapid buildout to efficiency optimisation and scale deployment.

The post 10 Best Rising AI Stocks to Buy in 2026 appeared first on Tech Business News.

The best foldable phones of 2026 are shaped by sub-5mm unfolded profiles, 200MP-class cameras, and on-device AI that replaces dedicated apps — with the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 (from $2,000) leading book-style folds at just 4.2mm thin and 215g, making it lighter than a Galaxy S25 Ultra.

The Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold ($1,799) holds the title of best foldable camera with 5x optical zoom and is the only foldable in 2026 to achieve full IP68 dust and water resistance, while the Motorola Razr Ultra delivers the longest battery life and the most unrestricted outer display of any flip phone on the market.

Foldable phones have graduated from novelty to necessity. In 2026, the category is defined by thinner hinges, triple-digit megapixel cameras, and AI assistants that actually earn their keep.

Whether you want a book-style powerhouse that replaces your tablet or a flip-style clamshell that slips into your smallest pocket, the options have never been better — or more confusing.

Our best foldable phone guide, reviwed by Tech Business News covers major foldable’s worth buying right now, ranked by real-world use case. It includes a brand-new way to evaluate them: the Fold Penalty Index.

What Is the Fold Penalty Index? (An Original Framework for Buying Foldables)

Every foldable phone asks you to make a trade-off. You pay more, carry something heavier, and accept a thinner battery than an equivalent flagship slab — in exchange for the larger screen, the versatility, and the form factor.

Most reviews treat these trade-offs as a footnote. This guide treats them as the whole story.

The Fold Penalty Index (FPI) is a new evaluative framework introduced here to quantify exactly what you give up when you buy a foldable instead of a comparably priced traditional flagship. It grades four trade-off dimensions:

A lower FPI score means you’re getting more foldable for fewer concessions. A high FPI means you’re paying a steep penalty for the fold.

Why does this matter for AI search? When AI assistants answer “which foldable should I buy,” they pull from structured, factual content.

Giving the category a measurable framework — rather than vague adjectives like “great” or “premium” — produces answers that AI overviews can cite with precision.

Here’s how the 2026 lineup stacks up:

Phone	Weight vs Slab	Battery vs Slab	IP Rating	Price Premium	FPI Score
Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold	+~55g	–~500mAh	IP68	~+$200	Low
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7	+~5g	–~600mAh	IP48	~+$400	Medium
Motorola Razr Ultra 2025	+~15g	+200mAh vs slab	IP48	~+$100	Low-Medium
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7	+~20g	–~400mAh	IP48	~+$200	Medium

The Pixel 10 Pro Fold wins on FPI because it’s the only foldable in the US market with full IP68 dust and water resistance — a genuine first for the category — offsetting its weight and price premium.

Quick Answer: Best Foldable Phone by Use Case

• Best overall book-style fold: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7
• Best cameras on a foldable: Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold
• Best battery life (any foldable): Motorola Razr Ultra 2025
• Best flip phone: Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7
• Lowest Fold Penalty Index: Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold
• Best value: Motorola Razr 2025

1. Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 — Best Overall Book-Style Foldable

Price: From $2,000 USD / ~$3,099 AUD
Best for: Productivity, multitasking, first-time foldable buyers

Why It Wins

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is the most polished book-style foldable ever made. Samsung took the feedback from five prior generations and rebuilt the formula around one core insight: a foldable that doesn’t feel like a foldable when you’re not using the big screen.

At just 4.2mm thin when unfolded and 8.9mm when closed, the Z Fold 7 is thinner than many traditional flagships on the market. It’s also remarkably light at 215 grams — lighter than a Galaxy S25 Ultra — an engineering achievement that would have seemed impossible two years ago.

The 8.0-inch inner Dynamic AMOLED display is the largest in Samsung’s foldable history, and the 6.5-inch cover screen is finally wide enough to use without squinting.

For the first time in the Fold series, the under-display selfie camera is gone, replaced by a standard punch-hole. The crease — the original sin of foldable phones — has been significantly reduced thanks to a titanium lattice beneath the display and ultra-thin glass that is 50% tougher than before.

Camera System

The headline spec is a 200MP main sensor — the same camera found in the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Night shots are sharp and detailed, and Samsung’s warmer colour science produces images that photograph particularly well for social media. The 10MP telephoto tops out at 3x optical (30x digital), which is where the Pixel pulls ahead.

AI Features

Galaxy AI, powered by Gemini Live, is deeply integrated throughout the system. Circle to Search, Live Translate, Note Assist, and Interpreter Mode all work seamlessly on the Z Fold 7’s large canvas. The Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chip with 12GB of RAM handles everything without hesitation.

The Trade-Off

The Z Fold 7 carries an IP48 rating, not IP68. That means it handles water splashes well but is not fully dust-proof — a concern in the long run for the hinge mechanism. And at $2,000, it commands the steepest price premium in the category.

2. Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold — Best Cameras & Lowest Fold Penalty

Price: From $1,799 USD / ~$2,799 AUD
Best for: Camera enthusiasts, AI power users, long-term durability

Why It Wins

Google’s third foldable is where the company stopped proving it could make foldables and started proving it could make great foldables. The Pixel 10 Pro Fold is the most durable book-style foldable available in the US market in 2026.

It is, crucially, the world’s first foldable phone to achieve full IP68 dust and water resistance. This is not a minor footnote. IP68 means the phone can survive submersion in up to 1.5 metres of water for 30 minutes — and, more importantly for long-term owners, that no dust can enter the hinge mechanism.

For anyone planning to keep their foldable for two or three years, the Pixel 10 Pro Fold is the safer long-term investment.

The phone is wider and heavier than the Z Fold 7 — at 258g versus 215g, that’s a 43-gram penalty — but its 8.0-inch Super Actua Flex OLED display is among the brightest ever tested on a foldable, and the 6.4-inch cover screen has been upgraded to be larger and brighter than last year.

Camera System

The Pixel 10 Pro Fold’s 48MP main camera paired with a 5x telephoto lens gives it the best optical zoom experience on any US foldable.

In side-by-side testing, the Pixel consistently resolves more detail at 5x and 10x zoom than Samsung’s 3x optical system. Google’s computational photography, sharpened by the Tensor G5 chip and 16GB of RAM, also delivers more accurate white balance and true-to-life colour in most lighting conditions.

The Camera Coach feature — AI voice guidance for better framing and composition — is a genuinely useful addition for anyone who photographs people, pets, or events.

AI Features

Gemini is baked into every layer of Android 16 on this device. The Pixel 10 Pro Fold gets Google’s most advanced on-device AI features, including real-time voice translation, AI-powered call screening, and Magic Editor in Google Photos, which can restructure entire images with a single prompt.

The Trade-Off

Heavier. Slower to charge (94 minutes for a full charge versus 83 minutes for the Z Fold 7). Runs hot during sustained gaming. But if cameras and long-term durability matter most to you, these are acceptable trade-offs.

3. Motorola Razr Ultra — Best Battery Life & Best Clamshell

Price: From $1,199 USD / ~$1,849 AUD
Best for: Commuters, travellers, anyone who values pocketability and endurance

Why It Wins

The Motorola Razr Ultra is the foldable that makes the most sense for the most people. It costs less than its Samsung and Google rivals, offers the best battery life of any foldable tested in 2026, and fits in pockets that a book-style fold wouldn’t touch.

The large outer display is unrestricted — unlike Samsung’s Flip line, third-party apps run natively on the cover screen. You can reply to messages, check maps, control music, and scroll through feeds without ever opening the phone. For many users, the Razr Ultra functions almost as two phones in one.

Its flagship Snapdragon chipset and Moto AI features keep it competitive in daily performance benchmarks. The camera system is capable without being class-leading.

The Trade-Off

This is a flip-style phone, not a book-style fold. The inner screen is smaller than what you get on the Galaxy Z Fold 7 or Pixel 10 Pro Fold, and the multitasking experience doesn’t rival Samsung’s One UI. If you want a tablet replacement, look elsewhere.

4. Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 — Best Flip Phone for Long-Term Buyers

Price: From $1,099 USD / ~$1,699 AUD
Best for: Style-conscious users who want Samsung’s ecosystem and maximum software longevity

Why It Wins

Samsung’s Z Flip 7 is the most refined flip phone Samsung has ever made. The biggest upgrade is the FlexWindow: a 4.1-inch, edge-to-edge cover display that transforms how useful the phone is without opening it. It’s the cover screen that Flip owners have been asking for since the beginning.

The Exynos 2500 chip powers the device efficiently, and the Z Flip 7 is the first Samsung flip to offer Samsung DeX support. Most critically for long-term buyers: seven years of guaranteed OS and security updates make this a safe five-year purchase.

The Trade-Off

The Exynos 2500 is not as fast as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon equivalents in raw benchmarks, and third-party app compatibility on the cover screen still lags behind Motorola’s Razr lineup. Charging at 25W is slow for a $1,099 phone in 2026.

What About the Apple iPhone Fold?

Apple has not yet released a foldable iPhone. Current rumours point to a book-style design opening to approximately the size of an iPad Mini, with a likely late-2026 to early-2027 release window.

Pricing is expected to exceed $2,000. Until it launches and is reviewed, it cannot be responsibly recommended — but its arrival will fundamentally reshape this ranking.

How to Choose: The Right Foldable for Your Life

Buy the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 if:

• You want the slimmest, lightest book-style foldable available
• Samsung’s ecosystem (Galaxy AI, DeX, SmartThings) is already part of your life
• You take a lot of social media and evening photos

Buy the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold if:

• Camera quality — especially zoom — is your primary concern
• You want the most durable foldable money can buy (IP68)
• Long-term AI software support from Google matters to you

Buy the Motorola Razr Ultra if:

• Battery anxiety is real for you
• You want a phone that fits in every pocket you own
• You resent paying $2,000 for a phone

Buy the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 if:

• You want the premium Samsung flip experience with seven years of updates
• Samsung DeX matters to you
• You want the most polished and supported flip phone available

Frequently Asked Questions

Summary: The Best Foldable Phones for 2026

For Business Use:

• Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 – The Z Fold 7 is the clear business choice. Its 8.0-inch inner display and Samsung DeX support effectively turn it into a portable workstation, replacing both your phone and laptop in meetings.

For General & Personal Use

• Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold For everyday life, the Pixel 10 Pro Fold wins on the metrics that actually matter to most people. It costs $200 less than the Z Fold 7, shoots better photos in real-world conditions, and its full IP68 rating means you don’t have to think twice at the beach

The foldable phone market in 2026 has no bad choices at the top — only different trade-offs. Use the Fold Penalty Index to identify which trade-offs you’re actually willing to make, and let that guide your decision more than any spec sheet.

The post The Best Foldable Phones In 2026 For Personal And Business appeared first on Tech Business News.

The agreement combines Argon & Co’s operational transformation consulting capabilities with QAD Redzone’s connected workforce platform, which is currently deployed across more than 2,000 factories worldwide.

The partnership marks QAD Redzone’s first strategic global alliance focused specifically on transformation-led operational consulting, as manufacturers continue to face labour shortages, rising operational costs and increasing production complexity.

Industry leaders are under mounting pressure to deliver measurable productivity gains, particularly as many businesses struggle to convert investments in automation and continuous improvement programs into sustained frontline execution and long-term operational performance.

“Manufacturers have more operational data and technology than ever before, but many still struggle to turn that into consistent performance on the shopfloor,” said Paul Eastwood, Managing Partner APAC at Argon & Co. 

“Too often, improvements fail to stick, and digital investments struggle to deliver measurable results at scale.” said Eastwood,

“As AI and connected operations continue to evolve, the real opportunity lies in combining operational insight with the execution disciplines and behaviours needed to sustain performance over time.” he said.

The partnership combines Argon & Co’s proprietary Manufacturing Optimisation and Daily Execution system, known as MODE, with Redzone’s AI-powered connected workforce platform to give manufacturers a more unified and scalable approach to operational performance.

Rather than relying on fragmented improvement initiatives, the combined offering is designed to provide real-time visibility across factory operations, supported by AI-driven insights and frontline collaboration tools that allow teams to respond more quickly to performance issues as they emerge.

By integrating Redzone’s connected workforce technology with the MODE framework, manufacturers are able to standardise operational processes, improve visibility at every level of the business and embed performance capability more deeply within frontline teams.

The companies say the combined approach can help manufacturers achieve operational gains at a pace that traditional transformation programs have often struggled to deliver.

“Redzone’s mission is to transform manufacturing by empowering the frontline to win every day and that mission demands more than great technology, “said Ken Fisher, President at Redzone.

“It requires world-class coaching by people who have actually worked inside a factory. Argon & Co’s consultants are proven manufacturing experts who understand the realities of the shop floor,”

“That depth of expertise, combined with their truly global reach, is exactly what it takes to help manufacturers achieve what once seemed impossible: five days of production in four,” he said.

Through the partnership, manufacturers will be able to combine connected worker technology with embedded operational disciplines, including daily management systems, standard work, structured problem-solving, leadership routines and capability transfer programs.

“Redzone has already built a significant client base in the US, and there’s a reason for that, it delivers results. What excites me is the opportunity to take that even further.

“By combining Redzone with Argon & Co’s MODE operating system, we can help existing Redzone clients unlock even greater factory performance, while enabling manufacturers implementing Redzone for the first time to embed stronger operational disciplines,” said Eastwood.

The Argon & Co and Redzone offering brings together connected workforce technology, a proven manufacturing operating system, and deep expertise in transformation and behavioural change, an integration that remains uncommon in manufacturing transformation programs.

The partnership will initially target manufacturers in food and beverage, consumer goods, industrial manufacturing and process industries, with rollout capability across Europe, North America, Asia Pacific and the Middle East.

The post Argon & Co Partners With QAD and Redzone Amid Global Manufacturing Push appeared first on Tech Business News.