Alibaba launches open-source AI coding model, touted as its most advanced to date
The model is designed for high-performance software development and touted as its most advanced AI coding model to date.
The model excels in agentic AI coding tasks, from generating new codes and managing complex coding workflows, according to the statement.
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150 jobs cut in brutal pre-recorded video
An Australian tech company has brutally axed 150 jobs in an early morning meeting, with the majority to be replaced with artificial intelligence. Atlassian has announced it is axing 150 jobs in a brutal prerecorded video from billionaire chief executive and co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes. Mr Cannon-Brookes sent the video around to impacted staff on Wednesday morning about their roles, with the majority of these jobs set to be replaced by AI. In a video titled 'Restructuring the CSS Team: A Difficult Decision for Our Future', Mr Cannon-Brookes didn't officially announce who was leaving, but instead made staff wait 15 minutes to receive an email about their future employment. Impacted staff members had their laptops immediately blocked. Staff that have lost their jobs are expected to receive six-months pay. While one of Atlassian co-founders was axing roles, the other appeared on ABC Breakfast spruiking the benefits of AI, encouraging corporates and the government to embrace it as quickly as possible. Scott Farquhar said: 'AI is going to change Australia. 'Firstly, most people don't think about where their water or power comes from and people don't think about where AI comes from or where the AI they use on their phone comes from every day,' he told the ABC. 'There is a huge boom in creating data centres for the region and, beyond that, there is a huge boom in using AI for everyday life.' Mr Farquhar went on to tell viewers every company should be embracing AI. 'Every person should be using AI daily for as many things as they can,' he said. 'Like any new technology, it will feel awkward to start with, but every business person, every business leader, every government leader and every bureaucrat should be using it.' He also called for governments to more broadly use AI to deliver basic services. Back in April 2024, Mr Farquhar announced his resignation as joint chief executive before officially stepping down in September 2024. The Australian says the reason behind the sudden culling of 150 roles was due to a situation in which Atlassian's customer service team became a victim of the business's broader success. Larger clients had moved to the cloud reducing the volume of complex support tasks required at the Atlassian. Future issues would be treated in part with AI. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data
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Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. You're reading Entrepreneur United Kingdom, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. There are stories of founders being accepted by YC with prototypes that they built in a matter of weeks. This would have been impossible just a couple of years ago. When I started my career in Silicon Valley 20 years ago this would have seemed like the stuff of science fiction. Anything that allows founders and developers to build faster is good news for the start-up ecosystem. It encourages more innovation, faster testing and unlocks the potential of founders who don't have technical backgrounds. However, AI is not yet capable of producing truly production-grade software. And some founders are realising that too late. We know this because the big AI companies themselves are telling us. If AI was building production-grade software, then why are OpenAI and Meta offering $100m salaries to the best software developers in the world? So where exactly does AI help start-ups, and when does it start to trip them up? Inception AI software builders are excellent at building prototypes and software that can stand up to early testing. For the first time, solo founders can build software that can attract users in days. When start-ups are still in the days of going from 0 to 1, they should embrace AI to support with ideation, prototyping and QA testing. These are all vital elements of the early days of a startup. Most importantly, AI has taken down the barriers for non-technical founders to get to proof of concept and market fit with software companies. I hope this will lead to an explosion in entrepreneurial innovation with new ideas and companies coming online in the next few months and years. Early-stage However, from my perspective, any start-up that is relying on software built purely by AI beyond pre-seed stage is going to run into difficulties. Even when startups are still early-stage companies, investors and customers alike will be looking for metrics that AI generated products can't yet deliver. The truth is that AI is great for basic tasks, but complex infrastructure and projects still require expert developers to implement. So founders who have raced to a new prototype and have loudly talked about how they have built a new software company by themselves will start to face questions they can't answer about security, about how their software integrates with larger systems and about how their product or platform scales. So as start-ups grow, they still need to invest in strong teams of developers and engineers. The latest research suggests that AI tools are saving developers an average of just under 4 hours a week. That isn't nothing - that's a 10% increase in productivity. But it isn't quite as game-changing as the AI companies would have us believe. The biggest thing is to fight for talent. Developer talent will become more expensive. Scale-up growth stage For later stage tech companies, AI will be improving the efficiency of individuals and teams, but it hasn't re-written the rule book for how they operate. Klarna was a high profile example of what can go wrong when later stage tech companies swap developers for AI. Less than a year later, they were backtracking and trying to rehire everyone they had let go because the quality of AI agents wasn't good enough. Beyond the actual technology itself, the single biggest change for growth stage companies will be the race for engineering talent. AI has made simple coding tasks very simple which has created a very challenging environment for junior developers and coders. But it has also increased the demand for experienced, highly skilled engineers. Developers who know how to build complex infrastructure, integrate agentic flows where required and leverage new AI technologies whilst maintaining the rigour and discipline of classic engineering will become gold-dust. More and more scale up companies will be competing for world-class engineering talent and will need to invest in individuals and consultancies who can deliver that work for them. What comes next The caveat to this advice is that everything can, and will change. The new generation of LLMs will bring new innovations and breakthroughs, and AI software builders are improving all the time. Production-grade software built by AI will become a reality in the next few years. So the impact on productivity will continue to improve with time. However, many of the fundamentals for software companies remain the same, especially if you are operating in a highly regulated or complex industry. Founders forget that at their peril.
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With no passengers and no planes, Pakistan's newest and most expensive airport is a bit of a mystery. Entirely financed by China to the tune of $240 million, it's anyone's guess when New Gwadar International Airport will open for business. Located in the coastal city of Gwadar and completed in October 2024, the airport is a stark contrast to the impoverished, restive southwestern Balochistan province around it. For the past decade, China has poured money into Balochistan and Gwadar as part of a multibillion dollar project that connects its western Xinjiang province with the Arabian Sea, called the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor or CPEC. Authorities have hailed it as transformational but there's scant evidence of change in Gwadar. The city isn't connected to the national grid — electricity comes from neighboring Iran or solar panels — and there isn't enough clean water. An airport with a 400,000 passenger capacity isn't a priority for the city's 90,000 people. 'This airport is not for Pakistan or Gwadar,' said Azeem Khalid, an international relations expert who specializes in Pakistan-China ties. 'It is for China, so they can have secure access for their citizens to Gwadar and Balochistan.' CPEC has catalyzed a decadeslong insurgency in resource-rich and strategically located Balochistan. Separatists, aggrieved by what they say is state exploitation at the expense of locals, are fighting for independence — targeting both Pakistani troops and Chinese workers in the province and elsewhere. Members of Pakistan's ethnic Baloch minority say they face discrimination by the government and are denied opportunities available elsewhere in the country, charges the government denies. Pakistan, keen to protect China's investments, has stepped up its military footprint in Gwadar to combat dissent. The city is a jumble of checkpoints, barbed wire, troops, barricades, and watchtowers. Roads close at any given time, several days a week, to permit the safe passage of Chinese workers and Pakistani VIPs. Intelligence officers monitor journalists visiting Gwadar. The city's fish market is deemed too sensitive for coverage. Many local residents are frazzled. 'Nobody used to ask where we are going, what we are doing, and what is your name,' said 76-year-old Gwadar native Khuda Bakhsh Hashim. 'We used to enjoy all-night picnics in the mountains or rural areas." 'We are asked to prove our identity, who we are, where we have come from,' he added. "We are residents. Those who ask should identify themselves as to who they are.' Hashim recalled memories, warm like the winter sunshine, of when Gwadar was part of Oman, not Pakistan, and was a stop for passenger ships heading to Mumbai. People didn't go to bed hungry and men found work easily, he said. There was always something to eat and no shortage of drinking water. But Gwadar's water has dried up because of drought and unchecked exploitation. So has the work. The government says CPEC has created some 2,000 local jobs but it's not clear whom they mean by 'local' — Baloch residents or Pakistanis from elsewhere in the country. Authorities did not elaborate. Gwadar is humble but charming, the food excellent and the locals chatty and welcoming with strangers. It gets busy during public holidays, especially the beaches. Still, there is a perception that it's dangerous or difficult to visit — only one commercial route operates out of Gwadar's domestic airport, three times a week to Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, located at the other end of Pakistan's Arabian Sea coastline. There are no direct flights to Balochistan's provincial capital of Quetta, hundreds of miles inland, or the national capital of Islamabad, even further north. A scenic coastal highway has few facilities. Since the Baloch insurgency first erupted five decades ago, thousands have gone missing in the province — anyone who speaks up against exploitation or oppression can be detained, suspected of connections with armed groups, the locals say. People are on edge; activists claim there are forced disappearances and torture, which the government denies. Hashim wants CPEC to succeed so that locals, especially young people, find jobs, hope and purpose. But that hasn't happened. 'When someone has something to eat, then why would he choose to go on the wrong path," he said. 'It is not a good thing to upset people.' Militant violence declined in Balochistan after a 2014 government counterinsurgency and plateaued toward the end of that decade, according to Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies. Attacks picked up after 2021 and have climbed steadily since. Militant groups, especially the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army, were emboldened by the Pakistani Taliban ending a ceasefire with the government in November 2022. Security concerns delayed the inauguration of the international airport. There were fears the area's mountains — and their proximity to the airport — could be the ideal launchpad for an attack. Instead, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his Chinese counterpart Li Qiang hosted a virtual ceremony. The inaugural flight was off limits to the media and public. Abdul Ghafoor Hoth, district president of the Balochistan Awami Party, said not a single resident of Gwadar was hired to work at the airport, "not even as a watchman.' 'Forget the other jobs, how many Baloch people are at this port that was built for CPEC,' he asked. In December, Hoth organized daily protests over living conditions in Gwadar. The protests stopped 47 days later, once authorities pledged to meet the locals' demands, including better access to electricity and water. No progress has been made on implementing those demands since then. Without local labor, goods or services, there can be no trickle-down benefit from CPEC, said international relations expert Khalid. As Chinese money came to Gwadar, so did a heavy-handed security apparatus that created barriers and deepened mistrust. 'The Pakistani government is not willing to give anything to the Baloch people, and the Baloch are not willing to take anything from the government,' said Khalid.
