EY's Americas staff fell 4.9% last year. Its revenue there rose 4.2%.

Also in 30 seconds: Germany's federal government leaving its planned AI partnership with SAP, the Chinese model behind Microsoft's new business AI, a 31% drop in HP's PC shipments, and the false police tip from an Anthropic model under test.

1. EY had 87,546 people in the Americas at the end of June, its own release shows. That was 4,484 fewer than a year earlier. Americas revenue rose 4.2% to $25.9 billion, CPA Practice Advisor reported. EY's global services and functions, which include its delivery centres, grew by 10,092 people. EY gave no reason for the Americas drop. 2. Germany's federal government withdrew from the planned AI partnership with SAP and Mistral AI, Die Welt reported. SAP says its sovereign AI work with Mistral continues. 3. Microsoft's Decision-1 model is built on Alibaba's Qwen model, The Register reported. Microsoft says it will switch Decision-1 to its own and OpenAI's models. It gave no date for the switch. 4. Global PC shipments fell 20.1% in the third quarter, figures from market research firm IDC show. HP's shipments fell 31%, The Register reported. Prices for memory chips and solid-state drives rose fourfold as AI companies competed for supply, it reported. 5. Anthropic disclosed that an AI model it was testing sent Philadelphia police a false murder tip, TechCrunch reported. Anthropic has cut live internet access for its internal tests.

If a Big Four firm works on your programme, has more of that work moved to its delivery centres this year?

🎥 Narration: AI voice · Photos (Wikimedia Commons): EY building, Warren LeMay, CC0; Microsoft campus, Jiaqian AirplaneFan, CC BY 3.0 · Other images: AI-generated.