AI Insights

Senate scraps ban on state AI regulation

Published

6 days ago

July 1, 2025

A proposal to deter states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade was soundly defeated in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, thwarting attempts to insert the measure into President Donald Trump’s big bill of tax breaks and spending cuts.

The Senate voted 99-1 to strike the AI provision from the legislation after weeks of criticism from both Republican and Democratic governors and state officials.

Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey said in a statement that the vote “sent a clear message that Congress will not sell out our kids and local communities in order to pad the pockets of Big Tech billionaires.”

Originally proposed as a 10-year ban on states doing anything to regulate AI, lawmakers later tied it to federal funding so that only states that backed off on AI regulations would be able to get subsidies for broadband internet or AI infrastructure.

Markey’s office claims the measure would force states to “make an impossible choice.”

On Beacon Hill, the Legislature and Gov. Maura Healey included $100 million in a 2024 economic development law to create a Massachusetts AI Hub, which Healey’s office said would “facilitate the application of artificial intelligence across the state’s ecosystem.”

Healey says she’s currently “less focused on regulation of AI.”

“What I’m focused on is leaning into the investments that we’re making here on AI,” Healey said last week. “I’ve said that I want Massachusetts to be a global hub for applied AI, using AI to help us more quickly solve problems, whether it’s curing diseases and developing treatments, or figuring out the energy strategy and how to build greater resilience. I’ve also used AI in government. We’re going to continue to do just that.”

Markey is sponsoring the Artificial Intelligence Civil Rights Act, which his office says would “put strict guardrails on companies’ use of algorithms for consequential decisions, ensure algorithms are tested before and after deployment, help eliminate and prevent bias.”

A last-ditch Republican effort to save the AI provision would have reduced the time frame to five years and sought to exempt some favored AI laws, such as those protecting children or country music performers from harmful AI tools.

But that effort was abandoned when Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, teamed up with Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington on Monday night to introduce an amendment to strike the entire proposal.

Blackburn said on the floor that “it is frustrating” that Congress has been unable to legislate on emerging technology, including online privacy and AI-generated “deepfakes” that impersonate an artist’s voice or visual likeness. “But you know who has passed it? It is our states,” Blackburn said. “They’re the ones that are protecting children in the virtual space. They’re the ones that are out there protecting our entertainers — name, image, likeness — broadcasters, podcasters, authors.”

Voting on the amendment happened after 4 a.m. Tuesday as part of an overnight session as Republican leaders sought to secure support for the tax cut bill while fending off other proposed amendments, mostly from Democrats trying to defeat the package.

Proponents of an AI moratorium had argued that a patchwork of state and local AI laws is hindering progress in the AI industry and the ability of U.S. firms to compete with China.

Some prominent tech leaders welcomed the idea after Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who leads the Senate Commerce committee, floated it at a hearing in May.

But state and local lawmakers and AI safety advocates argued that the rule is a gift to an industry that wants to avoid accountability for its products. Led by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a majority of GOP governors sent a letter to Congress opposing it.

Sanders, who was White House press secretary in Trump’s first term, credited Blackburn for “leading the charge” to defend states’ rights to regulate AI.

“This is a monumental win for Republican Governors, President Trump’s one, big beautiful bill, and the American people,” Sanders wrote on X on Tuesday.

Also appealing to lawmakers to strike the provision was a group of parents of children who have died as a result of online harms.

Cruz over the weekend tried to broker a last-ditch compromise with Blackburn to save the provision. Changes included language designed to protect Tennessee’s so-called ELVIS Act, championed by the country music industry to restrict AI tools from replicating an artist’s voice without their consent. Cruz said it could have “passed easily” had Blackburn not backed out. Blackburn said Tuesday there were “problems with the language” of the amendment.

“When I spoke to President Trump last night, he said it was a terrific agreement,” Cruz said. “The agreement protected kids and protected the rights of creative artists. But outside interests opposed that deal.”

Cruz withdrew the compromise amendment and blamed a number of people and entities he said “hated the moratorium,” including China, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a teachers union leader and “transgender groups and radical left-wing groups who want to use blue state regulations to mandate woke AI.”

He didn’t mention the broad group of Republican state legislators, attorneys general and governors who also opposed it. Critics say Cruz’s proposal, while carving out some exemptions, would have affected states’ enforcement of any AI rules if they were found to create an “undue or disproportionate burden” on AI systems.

“The proposed ban that has now been removed would have stopped states from protecting their residents while offering nothing in return at the federal level,” Jim Steyer, founder and CEO of children’s advocacy group Common Sense Media, wrote in a statement. “In the end, 99 senators voted to strip the language out when just hours earlier it looked like the moratorium might have survived.”

Information from the State House News Service was used in this report.

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AI Insights

Roche’s Chugai Breaks Into Aging via Potential $1B+ Deal With AI Outfit Gero

Published

28 minutes ago

July 7, 2025

The Editors

Tokyo-based Chugai Pharmaceutical is joining with the AI-driven biotech Gero, in a research collaboration on age-related diseases potentially worth more than $1 billion.

The collaboration will see Chugai, majority owned by Roche, creating novel antibody drug candidates using its in-house engineering capabilities. The targets sought by those antibodies will be discovered using Gero’s AI target discovery platform, which serves as predictive models of human health trained on longitudinal medical records. Chugai will get exclusive worldwide rights to any drug candidates made in the collaboration.

Under terms of the deal, Chugai will make an undisclosed upfront payment and put up approximately $250 million if certain unannounced development or sales milestones are reached. If Chugai successfully launches a product, the company will pay Gero additional royalties, which could push the total value of the deal to above $1 billion, according to an email sent to BioSpace from a Chugai representative.

Though the companies did not announce any specific indications they will be targeting in the collaboration, Singapore-based Gero’s stated cause is to eliminate the “root causes of age-related diseases.”

“Our AI platform is built to identify therapeutic targets that drive multiple age-related diseases and potentially aging itself,” Gero CEO Peter Fedichev said in a statement. “In this collaboration, we aim to translate those insights into therapeutics that can help restore the lost function. This partnership with Chugai is an important step toward achieving Gero’s mission: to meaningfully target the biological processes of human aging.”

Gero previously inked a deal with Pfizer in January 2023 to apply its AI technology platform to discover targets in fibrotic diseases. Financial terms of that deal were not disclosed, only that Gero would receive an upfront payment and be eligible to receive discovery milestone payments. Gero appears to still be in its early stages, having raised a $6 million series A round in 2023. The company does not have a published drug pipeline on its website.

Chugai, for its part, has partnered with AI companies since late last decade, making it an early entrant into the biopharma-AI space. In 2018 Chugai linked up with the deep learning company Preferred Networks, paying the latter about $5 million (¥‎700 million) for access to its platform. More recently, Chugai partnered with SoftBank in January to use generative AI to accelerate drug development, with the aim of streamlining personnel and costs associated with clinical trials.

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AI Insights

Ascendion Wins Gold as the Artificial Intelligence Service Provider of the Year in 2025 Globee® Awards

Published

39 minutes ago

July 7, 2025

The Editors

Awarded Gold for excellence in real-world AI implementation and measurable enterprise outcomes
Recognized for agentic AI innovation through ASCENDION AAVA platform, accelerating software delivery and unlocking business value at scale
Validated as a category leader in operationalizing AI across enterprise ecosystems—from generative and ethical AI to machine learning and NLP—delivering productivity, transparency, and transformation

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., July 7, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Ascendion, a leader in AI-powered software engineering, has been awarded Gold as the Artificial Intelligence Service Provider of the Year in the 2025 Globee® Awards for Artificial Intelligence. This prestigious honor recognizes Ascendion’s bold leadership in delivering practical, enterprise-grade AI solutions that drive measurable business outcomes across industries.

Ascendion Wins Gold as the Artificial Intelligence Service Provider of the year in 2025 Globee® Awards

The Globee® Awards for Artificial Intelligence celebrate breakthrough achievements across the full spectrum of AI technologies including machine learning, natural language processing, generative AI, and ethical AI. Winners are recognized for setting new standards in transforming industries, enhancing user experiences, and solving real-world problems with artificial intelligence (AI).

“This recognition validates more than our AI capabilities. It confirms the bold vision that drives Ascendion,” said Karthik Krishnamurthy, Chief Executive Officer, Ascendion. “We’ve been engineering the future with AI long before it became a buzzword. Today, our clients aren’t chasing trends; they’re building what’s next with us. This award proves that when you combine powerful AI platforms, cutting-edge technology, and the relentless pursuit of meaningful outcomes, transformation moves from promise to fact. That’s Engineering to the Power of AI in action.”

Ascendion earned this recognition by driving real-world impact with its ASCENDION AAVA platform and agentic AI capabilities, transforming enterprise software development and delivery. This strategic approach enables clients to modernize engineering workflows, reduce technical debt, increase transparency, and rapidly turn AI innovation into scalable, market-ready solutions. Across industries like banking and financial services, healthcare and life sciences, retail and consumer goods, high-tech, and more, Ascendion is committed to helping clients move beyond experimentation to build AI-first systems that deliver real results.

“The 2025 winners reflect the innovation and forward-thinking mindset needed to lead in AI today,” said San Madan, President of the Globee® Awards. “With organizations across the globe engaging in data-driven evaluations, this recognition truly reflects broad industry endorsement and validation.”

About Ascendion

Ascendion is a leading provider of AI-powered software engineering solutions that help businesses innovate faster, smarter, and with greater impact. We partner with over 400 Global 2000 clients across North America, APAC, and Europe to tackle complex challenges in applied AI, cloud, data, experience design, and workforce transformation. Powered by +11,000 experts, a bold culture, and our proprietary Engineering to the Power of AI (EngineeringAI) approach, we deliver outcomes that build trust, unlock value, and accelerate growth. Headquartered in New Jersey, with 40+ global offices, Ascendion combines scale, agility, and ingenuity to engineer what’s next. Learn more at https://ascendion.com.

Engineering to the Power of AI™, AAVA™, EngineeringAI, Engineering to Elevate Life™, DataAI, ExperienceAI, Platform EngineeringAI, Product EngineeringAI, and Quality EngineeringAI are trademarks or service marks of Ascendion®. AAVA™ is pending registration. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

About the Globee® Awards
The Globee® Awards present recognition in ten programs and competitions, including the Globee® Awards for Achievement, Globee® Awards for Artificial Intelligence, Globee® Awards for Business, Globee® Awards for Excellence, Globee® Awards for Cybersecurity, Globee® Awards for Disruptors, Globee® Awards for Impact. Globee® Awards for Innovation (also known as Golden Bridge Awards®), Globee® Awards for Leadership, and the Globee® Awards for Technology. To learn more about the Globee Awards, please visit the website: https://globeeawards.com.

SOURCE Ascendion

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AI Insights

Overcoming the Traps that Prevent Growth in Uncertain Times

Published

1 hour ago

July 7, 2025

Rachel DuRose

An executive’s guide on developing a momentum-building game plan when the future is foggy. by Rachel DuRose

July 7, 2025

Today, with uncertainty a seemingly permanent condition, executives need to weave adaptability, resilience, and clarity into their operating plans. The best executives will implement strategies that don’t just sustain their businesses; they enable growth.

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