This Week's Top Five Stories in Technology

1. What Will Apple's New COO, Sabih Khan, Bring to the Role?

Apple is restructuring with veteran Sabih Khan promoted from SVP to COO, while outgoing Jeff Williams readies for retirement later in 2025

Apple has announced that Sabih Khan is set to replace Jeff Williams as Chief Operating Officer later this month, with the former SVP completing what was viewed as a "long-planned succession" within the technology giant's executive ranks.

Jeff, who served as COO from 2015, is set to retire later this year but will continue reporting to CEO Tim Cook while overseeing Apple's design team and Apple Watch division. When he retires, the design team will come under the purview of the CEO.

Sabih has been with Apple for three decades, having first joined the firm in 1995.

He first joined Apple's executive team in 2019, when he became the company's Senior Vice President of Operations.

For the past six years, he has overseen Apple's global supply chain, managing product quality and supervising planning, procurement, manufacturing, logistics and product fulfilment functions.

He has also taken charge of Apple's supplier responsibility programmes, which focus on protecting and educating workers at the company's production facilities around the world.

"Sabih is a brilliant strategist who has been one of the central architects of Apple's supply chain," says Tim Cook.

2. Is ‘Velvet Sundown’ AI Hoax a Canary in the Mine for Music?

AI-generated band 'The Velvet Sundown' have caused huge controversy in the music industry, with many calling for Spotify and others to tighten regulations

Conversations around so-called ‘industry plants’ have swirled through the music industry for decades now. 

In the past few years, it’s been the likes of Billie Eilish and Lana Del Rey that have borne the brunt of criticism from cynical music fans, with a vocal minority suggesting that the success of these artists is down to a surreptitious connection they have to the music business.

Never before, though, has a band been totally fabricated using AI — until now.

In June, a folk rock band named The Velvet Sundown first appeared on streaming services and social media, with a carefully curated image and sound. Within weeks the band had accrued millions of listens on Spotify.

Quickly, though, people began to notice something was amiss with the whole project. The band’s press photos, for a start, appeared to be generated by AI, displaying that slight uncanniness so characteristic of Gen AI imagery.

Further cracks in the facade emerged when an individual claiming to be an "adjunct" member revealed that the band had used Suno, a Gen AI platform, to create their music.

The band's social media presence initially denied these claims, but with pressure mounting the team behind the project confessed that the band was indeed nothing more than AI.

3. How Humanoid Robots Have Entered the Industrial Mainstream

Report from Hexagon finds manufacturing companies are accelerating automation investments as AI capabilities transform factory floor operations

Capable of walking through factories, using tools and handling tasks that traditional fixed industrial robots cannot perform, humanoid robots have transformed how companies approach automation. 

Instead of rebuilding production lines around stationary robots, manufacturers can place humanoid machines into their existing operations: particularly useful for companies dealing with worker shortages, particularly in regions where manufacturing faces rising labour costs.

According to Hexagon’s ‘Future of Robotics 2035’ report, the technology centres on collaboration rather than replacement. Interviewing executives from Nvidia, Turner Construction and other companies, the report found that 82% of organisations increased automation investments in the past year.

“This report clearly indicates that the future isn’t going to be a clash of robot vs. human. It’s going to be about robots working with humans,” says Burkhard Boeckem, Chief Technology Officer at Hexagon.

“We believe the most resilient and competitive organisations will be those that treat autonomy as a scaffold for human potential, not a replacement for it.”

4. Why Are Investors Losing Faith in Apple's AI Endeavours?

Apple is facing mounting pressure to acquire AI companies as investors grow frustrated with delayed features, poached execs and US$630bn market value loss

This might be one of the trickiest years in Apple's long and illustrious history.

It remains one of the most influential companies in the global economy, but it has had to deal with a series of tough setbacks in 2025, many of which suggest that it is losing ground to a new generation of businesses.

First there was the fractious run-in with US President Donald Trump over DEI – a saga which threatened to compromise the financial relationship between the iPhone manufacturer and the White House.

Then came Apple's annual conference, the WWDC, where the announcements and launches the company made were widely viewed as underwhelming compared with previous editions.

After that, news emerged of Apple's desire to partner with either Anthropic or OpenAI for its AI reimagining of Siri, which sparked disappointment from the company's AI team.

Perhaps the bitterest pill to swallow has been the loss of Ruoming Pang, Apple's foremost AI executive, who was poached by Meta earlier in July.

The California-based tech giant's travails this year have not been catastrophic. Rather, they have been symptoms of the firm's flatfooted-ness in the AI arms race.

The result has been a US$630bn dive in market value and a 16% fall in shares, which has seen its rival Nvidia leapfrog it to become the world's most valuable company.

Now, it seems as though Apple's investors have had enough: they are demanding progress.

5. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy Bets Big on Company’s AI-Driven Future

In a company-wide memo, CEO Andy Jassy explains why Gen AI will reshape Amazon’s future — impacting everything from shopping to strategy

“Today, in virtually every corner of the company, we’re using Gen AI to make customers' lives better and easier.”

These are the words of Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.

Setting out his AI strategy and forward focus for Amazon, in a letter to employees he says that AI capabilities across the business — including customer experience — that were once just dreams are now “rapidly becoming reality”.

He says: “Technologies like Gen AI are rare — they come about once in a lifetime and completely change what’s possible for customers and businesses.”

With this in mind, he reinforces that Amazon continues to heavily invest in technology, with strong results already clear to see.