BIG TECH

Google’s AI glasses deserve the I/O spotlight

At Google I/O on Tuesday, we'll learn where Gemini and Google's AI devices go next, and I have to admit that one announcement is my most anticipated AI product of 2026.  

Google's biggest event of the year kicks off at 10:00 am PT at Shoreline Amphitheatre, right next to the Google campus in Mountain View. The Deep View’s Sabrina Ortiz and I will be on the ground at I/O to evaluate everything Google unveils and talk to the teams working on the products to unpack the details. 

You can tune into the two-hour livestream on YouTube, and you can also follow my updates and commentary in real-time on X/Twitter at x.com/jasonhiner. 

These are the most important developments to track:

• Gemini 4: We’ve all recently learned about Anthropic’s Mythos and OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, new models that claim to be so powerful that they aren’t yet ready to be released to the broader public. If Google is ready to match those capabilities, then I/O is the perfect time to unveil its latest model and share the company’s vision for the future of the technology, especially the balance between advanced capabilities and safety.

• Nano Banana: When Google released its Nano Banana image model in 2025, the realism of its images made every other AI imaging tool look pedestrian. However, OpenAI recently caught up with its new image model. In fact, generating images in ChatGPT is often faster and higher-quality for many queries now. Let's see if Google has its next upgrade ready.

• Agents and coding tools: The past six months in the AI space have been dominated by the rapid advance of coding tools and AI agents, led by projects such as Anthropic’s Claude Code, OpenAI’s Codex, Perplexity’s Personal Computer, and, of course, OpenClaw and its spinoffs. Google has rarely been part of the conversation on agents or coding tools. Will it seek to change that at I/O? 

• Project Aura: Done in partnership between Google and XREAL, think of Project Aura as spatial computing like Apple Vision Pro and Samsung Galaxy XR, but in a much smaller form factor that’s closer to a pair of very thick-framed glasses. Clearly, spatial computing has not been popular with the masses, and I don’t expect this product to change that. But it might offer a glimpse of the capabilities tomorrow’s smart glasses could have once the technologies shrink over time.

• Google AI glasses: Last year at I/O, Google wowed the tech world with its demo of AI glasses with a built-in display. That demo came across as far more functional and useful than the eventual competitor Meta launched last fall, the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses. A lot of that is because Google also has Android and can do much deeper integrations with features like maps, language translation, notifications, and the camera app. And Google’s partnership with affordable glasses brand Warby Parker offers hope that it could deliver the product at a competitive price.

Of all the announcements we’re expecting at Google I/O 2026, the AI glasses are by far the one that I’m most intrigued by. In fact, it’s the AI product I’ve been anticipating the most so far in 2026. The possibility of having a highly functional audio chatbot always at the ready is very interesting. Of course, before making it a daily tool, I would need to understand and trust how Google handles privacy. That's the same for most people I know. The other I/O announcement I’m watching closely is Google’s strategy for agents. We’re seeing a lot of red flags being raised about today’s agents, and Google still has an opportunity to make agents easier and safer to deploy and use. Meanwhile, the whole ecosystem could benefit from another safe, sober approach to agents.

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ENTERPRISE

AI’s ROI problem can't stop the spending spree

The flood of money pouring into the AI sector may seem endless, but experts say the numbers have yet to peak.

On Tuesday, Gartner released a report forecasting AI spending to reach $2.59 trillion in 2026, reflecting a 47% year-over-year increase. The reason for the boost: enterprises are joining in on the spending craze in full force. 

"Up to this point, AI spending has primarily been driven by technology companies and hyperscalers," said John-David Lovelock, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, in the blog post. 

"Enterprises have yet to really flex their spending potential. That is coming, and 2026 will be the inflection year."

Gartner explains that this spending is largely fueled by enterprises adopting agentic automation, which will require not only expanding their current use of GenAI models in existing software applications but also adding new agents. As a result, short-term growth for AI models has increased to 110% in 2026, which alone will add $6 billion in spending. 

While the projections for 2026 still place AI infrastructure as the biggest AI market spend, accounting for more than half at $1,431,509 trillion, other sectors are expected to see tremendous growth, with AI cybersecurity, AI models, and AI Data more than doubling. 

"Through the next several years, the need for capacity will make AI infrastructure, including AI-optimized IaaS, AI-optimized servers, AI network fabric, AI processing semiconductors and devices, the largest segment of the market, accounting for over 45% of spending, which will be driven by vendors," added Lovelock.

This report is important because it speaks to a tension that has dominated enterprise tech conversations: companies aren't seeing clear ROI from AI investments, yet analysts increasingly argue the problem isn't the technology, it's how organizations are deploying it. Lovelock captures this directly: "For this reason, CIOs face challenges in proving the value from AI investments and demonstrating tangible business outcomes. Aligning AI initiatives with strategic business objectives is the essential step for success."

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GOVERNANCE

Report: Cyber attacks skyrocket as LLMs advance

AI’s ability to weed out software vulnerabilities has provided both reinforcements for cybersecurity defenders and ammo for attackers. 

A report published Tuesday by Digital.ai finds that 87% of the apps it tracks with it’s "App Aware" Threat Monitoring tool have experienced attacks in 2026, up from 55% in 2022. The number of attacks has risen steadily in that period, with peaks correlating closely with every major AI model release since ChatGPT launched in November of 2022. 

The attack surface varied across industries and platforms: 

• Financial services apps and automotive apps each faced an attack rate of 91% this year, the highest of any vertical. 

• Medical device apps, meanwhile, saw an attack rate of 86%, facing the highest single-year jump of any vertical at 8%, up from 76% year-over-year.

• As for platforms, iOS apps experienced an attack rate of 86%, whereas Android experienced an attack rate of 89%. In particular, iOS attacks have increased 10% year-over-year. 

The report’s core thesis is that agents have collapsed the cost and skill barrier needed to complete sophisticated cyberattacks. Now, relatively novice hackers can now infiltrate vulnerable platforms with relative ease. Experienced attackers, meanwhile, are able to commit far more complex attacks on higher-value targets with more dangerous consequences. 

And with apps and software shipping faster than ever due to vibe coding, the question is whether this new wave of apps are secure enough when they’re published. An if not, will security teams be forced to react rather than proactively protect, said Derek Holt, CEO of Digital.ai, in a statement. 

“The same AI your developers used to build your app this morning is being used to attack it this afternoon,” Holt said. "The gap between where the attacks are and where the security investment is, is no longer acceptable."

Cybersecurity has come sharply into focus over the past several months as major model providers like Anthropic and OpenAI produce systems capable of completely overhauling the vectors of risk in software engineering. Anthropic, for instance, has witheld its Mythos model from the general public due to concerns that it could pose threats to national security. Both companies have released some version of a tourniquet, with OpenAI’s Daybreak marketed as “frontier AI for cyber defenders,” and Anthropic’s Project Glasswing coalition to secure critical software. But the data in this study points to a clear trend: AI is putting advanced cyber capabilities into the hands of anyone with a laptop, an internet connection and a pulse. And though the data is already pointing to intensifying attacks, at the rate that AI is advancing, we don’t know the extent to which this could worsen. We also don't know whether the measures being taken by major AI firms and others will be enough. At the end of the day, these companies may be selling guns with the safeties on and hoping it will stop the worst possibilities from happening.

LINKS

• Anthropic co-founder to join Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical on AI

• Anthropic to brief the Financial Security Board on flaws exposed by Mythos

• AI software startup Decart hits nearly $4 billion valuation

• Jury sides with OpenAI in Elon Musk lawsuit after three week trial

• More than 60 Trump allies push for administration to vet AI before releases

• OpenAI, Dell partner to bring Codex to hybrid, on-premise enterprises

• Odyssey Starchild-1: A real time multimodal world model that generates both the visuals and sounds of the world. 

• Odyssey Agora-1: A multi-agent world model that allows participants to interact within the same world simulation. 

• Manus Scheduled Tasks 2.0: The Manus platform can now continue tasks, power background applications and offer visibility into previous and upcoming tasks. 

• Composer 2.5: Cursor released an update to its agentic coding tool, now with improved intelligence and behavior over the previous generation.

• Anthropic: Research Engineer, Reward Models Platform

• Nvidia: Developer Advocate – Agentic AI

• LG: Embodied AI Researcher

• OpenAI: Researcher, Alignment Training

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