Meta has announced the completion of core 2Africa infrastructure, the world’s longest open access subsea cable system.

At 45,000km and first launched in May 2022, 2Africa is one of the world’s largest subsea cable projects. It was built through a consortium comprising global partners led by Meta, with the likes of Bayobab, Center3, CMI, Orange, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone Group and WIOCC. Meta regards 2Africa as a landmark subsea cable system that sets a new standard for global connectivity at unprecedented scale.

The consortium said its shared goal was to develop an open, inclusive network that fosters competition, supports innovation and unlocks new opportunities for millions. Moreover, having an open-access model is intended to ensure that multiple service providers can leverage the infrastructure, accelerating digital transformation and artificial intelligence (AI) adoption across the region.

Recent partners including Bharti Airtel and MainOne (an Equinix Company) collaborated on datacentre integration, further expanding the cable’s impact and reach.

The deployment spanned 50 jurisdictions and nearly six years of work, relying on the active engagement of regulators and policymakers to navigate requirements and keep progress on track.

The network is the first cable to connect East and West Africa in a continuous system and link Africa to the Middle East, South Asia and Europe. With a current reach of 33 countries and still counting, the network is designed to enable connectivity for three billion people across Africa, Europe and Asia – more than 30% of the world’s population.

With a design capacity of up to 180Tbps on key parts of the system, and in addition to supplementing capacity demand in the Middle East, it is also designed to underpin the further growth of 4G, 5G and fixed broadband access, interconnecting Europe, eastward via Egypt, the Middle East via Saudi Arabia, and make 21 landings in 16 countries in Africa.

2Africa is attributed with delivering a step change in international bandwidth for Africa, with technical capacity that far exceeds previous systems. On the West segment, stretching from England to South Africa, and landing in countries such as Senegal, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, DRC and Angola, the cable supports 21 terabits per second (Tbps) per fibre pair, with eight fibre pairs on the trunk.

To gain the required throughput, the cable deployed advanced spatial division multiplexing (SDM) technology, supporting up to 16 fibre pairs per cable. This, says Meta, was double the capacity of older systems and represented the first 16-fibre-pair subsea cable to fully connect Africa. The link incorporated undersea optical wavelength switching, enabling flexible bandwidth management and supporting evolving demands for AI, cloud and high-bandwidth applications.

The cable system also features two independent trunk powering architectures across its West, East, and Mediterranean segments, in order to optimise capacity and providing additional resiliency against electrical faults. Meta added that its Our branching unit switching capability allowed it to optimise for trunk capacity and reliability by utilising routes much further offshore from hazards such as the Congo Canyon turbidity currents, while serving branches to West African nations.

To further ensure the integrity and reach of the cable, the consortium engineered compatible crossing solutions for over 60 oil and gas pipelines.

Observing the potential effect the cable could have, Meta expects that 2Africa could contribute up to $36.9bn to Africa’s GDP within just the first two to three years of operation. It was confident its arrival will boost job creation, entrepreneurship and innovation hubs in connected regions, and said evidence from previous cable landings have shown that fast internet access increases employment rates, improves productivity and supports shifts towards higher-skill occupations.

Corporate AI slop feels inescapable in 2025. From website banner ads to outdoor billboards, images generated by businesses using AI tools surround me. Hell, even the bar down the street posts happy hour flyers with that distinctly hazy, amber glow of some AI graphics.

On Thursday, Google launched Nano Banana Pro, the company’s latest image-generating model. Many of the updates in this release are targeted at corporate adoption, from putting Nano Banana Pro in Google Slides for business presentations to integrating the new model with Google Ads for advertisers globally.

This “Pro” release is an iteration on its Nano Banana model that dropped earlier this year. Nano Banana became a viral sensation after users started posting personalized action figures and other meme-able creations on social media.

Nano Banana Pro builds out the AI tool with a bevy of new abilities, like generating images in 4K resolution. It’s free to try out inside Google’s Gemini app, with paid Google One subscribers getting access to additional generations.

One specific improvement is going to be catnip for corporations in this release: text rendering. From my initial tests generating outputs with text, Nano Banana Pro improves on the wonky lettering and strange misspellings common in many image models, including Google’s past releases.

Google wants the images generated by this new model—text and all—to be more polished and production-ready for business use cases. “Even if you have one letter off it’s very obvious,” says Nicole Brichtova, a product lead for image and video at Google DeepMind. “It’s kind of like having hands with six fingers; it’s the first thing you see.” She says part of the reason Nano Banana Pro is able to generate text more cleanly is the switch to a more powerful underlying model, Gemini 3 Pro.

Stern said text messages obtained by authorities show Li boasting about how his father “had engaged in similar business on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.” Stern alleged the messages also show Li, who works at a hardware distribution company, was aware through news articles he shared that the Nvidia chips were subject to export controls. “He explained that his father had ways to import them,” Stern said, again citing Li’s text messages.

Stern told the court that Li “did admit to various facts” during questioning by federal agents on Wednesday that implicated him.

The defendants face various charges related to violating export control laws and up to 20 years in prison.

Ho and Raymond did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent to LinkedIn accounts purportedly belonging to them. Public defenders for Chen and Li declined to comment.

Nvidia spokesperson John Rizzo said in a statement that “even small sales of older generation products on the secondary market are subject to strict scrutiny and review” and that “trying to cobble together datacenters from smuggled products is a nonstarter, both technically and economically.”

Corvex, an AI cloud computing business Raymond consulted for, said in a statement that it had rescinded a job offer for him to join the company full-time and that it had no connection to the alleged wrongdoing.

Earlier this year, the US Department of Commerce was reportedly considering restricting the sale of advanced chips to Malaysia and Thailand in an effort to curb chip smuggling, but the regulations have yet to be finalized. The Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Magistrate Judge Westmore ordered Li to hire an attorney because she said he had significant equity in a San Leandro, California, home and other assets, making him ineligible for a public defender. The magistrate also set a hearing for Tuesday to decide whether Li is a significant flight risk and should continue to be detained. He holds a US green card and Hong Kong citizenship.

Li, wearing glasses, flipflops, and a black windbreaker, nodded in response to some of Westmore’s statements but did not speak. Kaitlyn Fryzek, his temporary public defender, said Li is planning to marry a US citizen. “His incentive is to stay and get married to his fiancée,” Fryzek said.