Tech News Digest: Saturday, 20 June 2026

Today in tech, we're seeing massive shifts in the AI landscape as governments tighten their grip while corporate heavyweights battle it out over infrastructure costs. From a major British retailer ditching old-school virtualisation to a radical multi-trillion dollar plan for public AI ownership, the stakes for the industry have never been higher.

Tesco Ditches VMware Following Broadcom Dispute

British retail giant Tesco is migrating 40,000 server workloads away from VMware, citing what it calls “abusive conduct” by Broadcom after its acquisition of the platform. This move highlights a growing trend among UK enterprises to seek open-source or alternative cloud solutions to avoid the spiralling costs and licensing headaches of legacy tech giants.

The US Anthropic Ban Might Be Boosting the Brand

The US government has forced Anthropic to pull its newest models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, over national security concerns, but the move appears to be backfiring by giving the models a “forbidden fruit” allure. For UK developers and businesses, this is a stark reminder of how geopolitical tensions can suddenly disrupt access to the cutting-edge software tools we rely on for daily productivity.

OpenAI Recruits Tech and Policy Heavyweights Ahead of IPO

OpenAI is aggressively bulking up its leadership team in preparation for its public listing, poaching Transformer co-inventor Noam Shazeer from Google DeepMind and former policy official Dean Ball. These hires suggest the company is moving away from its research-lab roots to become a political and commercial powerhouse capable of navigating the complex global regulations of 2026.

Bernie Sanders Proposes a $7 Trillion Public AI Plan

US Senator Bernie Sanders has unveiled a massive proposal to give Americans collective control over the AI industry, aiming to prevent a handful of billionaires from monopolising the benefits of automation. While a US-led initiative, a policy of this scale would fundamentally reshape the global tech economy and set a precedent for how the UK and EU handle the wealth generated by machine learning.

The Inference Gold Rush: Baseten Raising $1.5B

AI infrastructure startup Baseten is reportedly closing a massive $1.5 billion funding round at a $13 billion valuation, proving that the market's focus has shifted from training models to actually running them. As companies look for more efficient ways to deploy AI at scale, Baseten is positioning itself as the backbone of the next generation of automated software services.

Enjoy your weekend, and keep an eye on how these global shifts might land on our shores next week.