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Applied AI·August 6, 2026·1 min read

Google is expanding its Gemini-powered Ask Maps feature in English to 130+ countries and adds agentic food ordering, hotel booking, and attraction searching

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Gemini-powered Ask Maps turning search into end-to-end food ordering and hotel booking across 130+ countries is Google pushing agentic flows directly into a high-intent surface. Local businesses and travel players should assume more transactions will be intermediated by Google’s agent layer — and tune inventory, offers, and data quality for machine, not human, consumption.

Applied AI

OpenAI signs a 20-year, 10GW data center deal in Ohio with SoftBank's SB Energy; Nvidia agrees to backstop a portion of the value of the completed data center

A 20-year, 10 GW data center commitment in Ohio — with Nvidia backstopping part of the value — turns AI compute into long-dated energy infrastructure, not just cloud spend. If you’re building on frontier models, your real dependency is now regional power and transmission; start mapping where your workloads sit relative to these emerging hubs.