OpenAI shifts cloud partnership from Microsoft to Amazon; China blocks Meta's Manus acquisition; J&J uses AI to halve drug development lead generation time

OpenAI is now offering its latest AI models and coding agent Codex on Amazon's cloud services platform, after renegotiating exclusivity terms with Microsoft that had previously limited OpenAI's model distribution.

China moved to block Meta's $2 billion acquisition of AI startup Manus on Monday, as Beijing has tightened scrutiny of U.S. investment in domestic startups developing frontier technologies. Manus has relocated to Singapore to bypass Beijing's restrictions.

Johnson & Johnson said it is using AI to halve the time it takes to generate drug development leads by screening the 'potential universe' for promising chemical compounds or biologics. J&J has already accelerated the development process for two compounds — one in oncology and another in immunology — though an executive stated it is not yet possible to discover new products outright using AI alone.

DeepSeek unveiled a new AI model tailored for Huawei's Ascend 950 chips; the pro version of DeepSeek's V4 model outperforms other open-source models, trailing only behind Google's closed-source Gemini-Pro-3.1. ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba are reaching out to Huawei about new chip orders.