Demand for AI continues to grow, but more AI doesn't mean better returns
Businesses are underestimating costs as they go from pilot to production
Seat- and consumption-based pricing both have their places, it seems
Businesses are at risk of confusing generic AI adoption within their workforces with actual meaningful value, Oracle's Head of AI Strategy Hammad Hussain warns, with many of its customers now struggling to manage increasingly unpredictable AI costs.
We already know that three in five businesses agree unpredictable billing hikes cause them more strain than a higher but flatter baseline cost, thanks to a recent Splunk study, but it seems cloud vendors already know this too.
Speaking with a group of journalists at Oracle's recent AI World event, Hussain explained that while demand for AI continue to grow, businesses need to focus more on measurable outcomes than just adopting AI for the sake of it.
AI adoption does not equal value
"One of the fatal mistakes that clients can do... is they might perceive usage as value," Hussain said. "And that's not the case."
Companies should consider whether they're creating more experiences, more efficiencies, more products, and so one – rather than just whether they're using more AI, at the risk of doing so blindly.
This all comes as they struggle to maintain a sort of balancing act between investing enough in AI to make a meaningful impact on business outcomes while still maintaining cost visibility and control. It's that second element that many are now struggling with.
In fact, even the largest enterprises and early AI adopters who have experienced considerable success are looking at ways to scale back costs and only spend on the AI that's necessary.
Unpredictable costs are now becoming a major focus
Multiple studies have already uncovered the impact that unpredictable costs are having on AI consumers, and this follows a period of transition from flat, seat-based models to variable, consumption-based pricing as AI vendors themselves look to make the economics work.
Hussain warned that many customers risk underestimating the financial implications of rolling out tools on a bigger scale. "The production economics is quite different from pilot economics," he added.
Looking ahead, Hussain implied that a hybrid approach is emerging as a 'best of both worlds' scenario. Companies can still use the latest and most advanced frontier models to handle their biggest workloads, but some of the lighter work might just need conventional CPUs without the expense of GPUs and advanced AI altogether.
Somewhere in the middle seems to be a new solution that we're only really starting to see at scale this year – leaning on open-weight models.
"One way of [balancing costs and impact] is also using dedicated AI clusters, where they pay fixed amounts for a cluster, which might have open-weight models, so they're not paying per tokens."
Hussain explained that having access to a pre-defined set of compute resources and a slightly less advanced model gives companies a space to throw their less demanding work for a cheaper – but importantly, more predictable – price.
Unlike accessing a third-party model through an API, running an open-weight model on their own dedicated infrastructure allows organizations to process certain workloads without incurring extra costs for tokens.
Of course, they'll still need to pay for the underlying compute infrastructure, but it offers a far more predictable and budgeting-friendly cost.
Oracle's AI Strategy Head doesn't expect consumption-based pricing to disappear altogether. The pendulum has already swung from seats to tokens, but he now sees it swinging back to settle somewhere in the middle, where organizations will mostly be given the opportunity to choose which pricing strategy fits their needs best.
"We started off with fixed pricing," Hussain shared. "But then we realized that some are heavy users and some are low users."
More AI doesn't mean higher or quicker ROI
But regardless of how customers choose to pay for their AI, Hussain argues that the real measure of success should be the returns those investments actually make, and more isn't always better.
Defining AI ROI has been an unresolved topic for years, now, but Hussain offered a glimpse into some of the calculations companies can make to both determine whether they're been a success, but also to help guide their strategies initially.
On the upper side of a fraction-like equation Hussain detailed were benefit and adoption – AI investments need to create some sort of benefit, whether that's unlocking more productivity, driving more revenue or something else – but workers also need to adopt the new AI. "Benefit multiplied by zero is zero," he warned.
But then you've got the balancing act on the bottom half of that fraction – cost. Direct costs that stem from buying AI and compute, but also indirect costs relating to upgrading infrastructure and training employees.
Our discussion also revealed that only around 20% of organizations capture 75% of the value, and Hussain thinks he knows why.
"The thing which separates that 20% from the rest of the 80% is the fact that they can rewire their business, or they're truly reimagining their business using AI."
The future might not be so clear, but the underlying message is – personalization is key, and emerging hybrid approaches probably hold at least some of the keys to that.
That's hybrid in terms of how much workload actually needs to be handled by AI in the first place, but also hybrid in the way that consumers actually pay for their compute.
Ultimately, with AI costs becoming harder to predict, the most successful adopters will become the ones who find the most effective ways to turn investments into ROI – not just the ones that have the biggest budgets and the most extensive AI portfolios.
It's the largest cryptocurrency theft in history: hackers from North Korea allegedly swiped $6.36 billion in funds from Binance in the space of just 20 minutes, which has left customers reeling and the financial industry in shock.
The heist raises all kinds of questions about how this was allowed to happen, what might happen next, and whether Binance customers are going to get any of their stolen money back.
Even if you never owned any cryptocurrency before, there are bigger questions too — like what this means for global financial stability, and what the aftershocks might be for everyone outside the Binance world.
Looking for a quick five-minute primer on the Binance hack? We've been speaking to industry experts to get some answers...
1. What actually happened?
(Image credit: Getty Images / Dan Kitwood)
The basics are now pretty clear — $6.36 billion in cryptocurrency was stolen from the Binance exchange in the space of just 20 minutes. Security analysts are pointing the blame at North Korea's TraderTraitor hacking group, which has a history of this kind of heist. What's less clear is exactly how the hackers got access. Early reports identified a Binance employee's compromised laptop as a potential way in, though it now seems there's more to the story.
"A compromised laptop may explain where an attack started, but it does not, on its own, explain how billions of dollars could leave an exchange," Pieter Arntz, researcher at cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes, told TechRadar. "The real question is what allowed that initial foothold to become access to withdrawal systems — and which safeguards failed to stop unauthorized transactions."
"According to blockchain analysts, the attacker spent at least a day and a half preparing, including testing their tools on public blockchains where anyone could see," Ben Bernstein, manager of cybersecurity advisors at Huntress, told TechRadar. "Then most of the $6.3 billion left Binance's wallets in about 20 minutes. That's common in attacks we investigate. The attacker does most of the work long before anything is stolen."
2. Will anyone get their money back?
Binance says customers will be refunded (Image credit: Shutterstock / Diego Ioppolo)
Binance has promised to reimburse customer losses through its backup and emergency funds, but in the meantime we're seeing deposits and withdrawals frozen on the platform while the hack is investigated. It's a warning that even the largest and most sophisticated exchanges can still be vulnerable.
"Binance says it'll cover every cent," Nigel Green, CEO of the deVere Group, said in a press statement. "I hope so. The emergency fund is around $1.2 billion and the gap is several times bigger, so the rest has to come from the company’s own balance sheet. The market will want to see the numbers, and the new proof of reserves can’t come soon enough."
"Long term holders have just been reminded, very expensively, why keys kept offline matter. Crypto has spent years pushing back against heavy regulation, and plenty of those arguments were fair. This one's harder to argue with. Platforms holding billions of other people's money need enforceable security standards. I expect regulators in the US, Europe and Asia will likely move faster after this week," he added.
In the meantime, the US Secret Service has said in a statement that it's "working around the clock" with partners in the private sector "to identify, freeze, trace, and recover funds" that have been stolen from Binance.
3. What follow-up scams might appear?
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Whether you're a Binance customer or not, you need to keep your wits about you over the next few days. It's likely that scams trying to literally cash in on the hack will start appearing — perhaps warning you that you need to quickly claim refunds, lock your account against a particular threat, or go through a bogus verification process.
"Criminals routinely use major breaches as a hook for phishing campaigns," Dray Agha, senior manager for tactical response at Huntress, told TechRadar. "Consumers should be highly suspicious of any emails or messages claiming to be from Binance offering urgent account recovery steps. You must only check your account status through the official application or website rather than clicking links in unsolicited messages."
According to the team at Huntress, you should watch out for social media posts, emails, and text messages that use the Binance hack as a hook — perhaps a fake news story suggesting that now's the time to buy crypto, while prices are down.
As always, think twice about following links or entering sensitive information into online forms and portals you're not familiar with.
4. How does this affect the average consumer?
The hack shouldn't give you any financial surprises (Image credit: Getty Images)
If you don't own any cryptocurrency, the good news is that you're largely going to be unaffected by what's happened here. There's not going to be a stock market crash, or a run on the banks, or a global recession — not because of this hack, at least. However, it's always worth weighing up your own personal privacy and security setup.
"If you don't own crypto, the direct impact on you is small," Ben Bernstein from Huntress told us. "Your bank account and your card are not affected by this. The bigger takeaway for consumers is that attackers often get in by targeting people rather than technology, through a convincing email, a fake login page or a phone call from someone posing as IT support," he said.
"That makes security awareness everyone's job, at home and at work. If you pause before you click a link, approve a login or share a code, you're making it harder for an attacker, whether they're after your savings or your employer's systems," he added.
5. What does this mean for the future of money?
(Image credit: Getty Images / Dan Kitwood)
This clearly raises a lot of questions about the safety of cryptocurrency and the exchanges that it sits on — and of course it's far from the first crypto heist we've seen. In the longer term, it may lead to less confidence in crypto as a whole, but the experts we spoke to don't think it will bring the industry down. What will be important is making sure the risks of this happening again are minimized as much as possible.
"Despite the scale of the theft, this is not a threat to global financial stability," Feike Hacquebord, Principal Threat Researcher at TrendAI, told TechRadar. "Around half of the stolen funds have already been frozen, while the regulated banking system is well equipped to absorb a shock of this size. This is a major crisis for Binance, not a crisis for the global financial system."
"The change I’d like to see, for crypto firms, banks and every other business, is working on the assumption that someone will get in eventually," Ben Bernstein told us. "Keeping attackers out matters, but it isn't enough on its own. Companies also need someone watching around the clock, especially for logins and account activity that don't look right, so they can find and remove an intruder before the money starts moving," he added.
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Long before anyone trained a model on customer da...
Long before anyone trained a model on customer data, the marketing data business worked out the terms for pooling it. Catalog retailers in the 1990s joined data cooperatives that combined their transaction histories so each member could find new buyers, and the arrangements held together because the rules were blunt.
A retailer contributed data to receive modeled prospects; no member got a rival's customer file; and a company that stopped contributing stopped receiving. Card fraud consortia run on similar give-to-get terms. Nobody would call these systems elegant, but every participant understood the trade.
Software vendors building AI features are now running into the same question, usually without the rules. Traditional software sat on top of a customer's data and operated on it. AI products learn from data, and on a multi-tenant platform, that learning rarely stays within a single account.
One company's records can sharpen the enrichment, lead scoring, and recommendations delivered to thousands of others. A vendor can improve its product for every customer by relying on the work of a few, and most contracts say nothing about whether that trade is fair. The customer still owns its data in any legal sense.
Ownership alone doesn't answer who benefits.
Users push back on sharing hard-earned data
HubSpot learned how touchy the question has become when it announced plans to pool enrichment data across customer accounts, including business contact details, employer information, and email deliverability signals, to improve prospect records platform-wide.
Every account was in by default. Within days, the company dropped the plan and promised that any future enrichment feature built on customer data would be opt-in. HubSpot had stated clearly that core CRM records would never be shared without permission, so privacy in the usual sense wasn't what upset the sales and RevOps teams, who pushed back. Their concern was harder to answer. Years of work spent cleaning and enriching their own contact data were about to improve the prospecting tools available to every other customer, competitors included, and nobody had asked what they would get for it. The product terms that allowed the change had been updated nearly two years before most customers heard about them.
AI creates accidental data companies
Plenty of software companies adding AI tools have never had to think this way. They are becoming data companies one model at a time, often without deciding to. Whether a customer's information feeds a shared model is often determined by a product team working toward a launch date rather than by anyone who owns the commercial relationship, and the answer is expressed in terms few buyers read.
McKinsey's 2026 survey on AI trust found that only about 30% of organizations have reached a mature level in AI strategy, governance, and controls. Pooled training data tends to fall between legal, product, and sales, with no single team feeling responsible for explaining it.
The need for strong exit clauses
Buyers will force the issue long before regulators do. Security certifications and uptime guarantees became standard contract language over the past decade because enough customers asked for them that vendors stopped arguing, and AI data terms are heading down the same road. Procurement teams are starting to ask whether their data trains or enriches models used by other customers, whether participation is opt-in, and whether it can be switched off later without losing core features. The more demanding buyers want to know what a contributing customer receives that a non-contributor doesn't.
Exit terms will be the hardest part to write. A customer can cancel a contract and demand its records back, but data that has already shaped a production model can't be cleanly pulled out again. Retraining is expensive, and removing one customer's influence from a live model remains an unsolved problem for most vendors. A vendor can honestly say it deleted every record a customer ever uploaded and still be running a model those records helped build. Contracts written for storage assumed that deleting data ended its use. Contracts written for AI will have to say plainly what persists after a customer leaves, and whether the customer agreed to it when it signed.
Opt-in consent answers part of the question. A checkbox tells a vendor it may use the data, but it says nothing about the return, and a customer who opts in for nothing in particular has made a poor bargain, even if it's a legal one. The old cooperatives signed up members because members could see exactly what they were getting.
Vendors that explain their data economics before customers ask will have an easier time at every renewal. The explanation belongs in the product and in the contract, and it should cover which customer data feeds shared models, what those models produce, and what contributors get back. Security questionnaires were once a formality, until buyers made them a condition of the sale. Pooled data terms are on the same schedule, and vendors that write clear ones now will set the standard that the rest of the market will follow.
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The Celebrity Traitors season 2 Finale is out ton...
The Celebrity Traitors season 2 Finale is out tonight, and it's starting to get really, really tense.
After a tense round table saw Kenny use his double vote to banish Joanne, the traitors struck again. They left viewers baffled when they elected to kill Sharon over Michael, a decision that might prove costly.
Michael seems to have been possessed by the spirit of Sherlock Holmes now as, after weeks of him throwing out countless incorrect theories, he's correctly identified Maya and Kenny as being suspicious.
He was really piling the pressure on Maya at the round table when, under the slightest bit of heat, James Acaster cracked and confessed to his treachery.
With the faithful hot on the trail of the traitors now, who will win?
The finale airs October 30 at 8pm BST. Here's how you can watch The Celebrity Traitors online from anywhere with a VPN (75% off) and potentially for free.
Yes. Faithfuls (and everybody else) in the UK can watch The Celebrity Traitors FREE of charge on BBC One and the channel's BBC iPlayer streaming platform and app. Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, episode 5, episode 6 , episode 7 along with episodes 8 & 9 are streaming now; Episode 10 — the finale — airs on Fri, Oct 30.
Season 2 of Celebrity Traitors streams for free in UK on BBC iPlayer. The streaming service doesn’t require an account or subscription – merely a TV licence. Stream and watch away.
If you're keen to watch The Celebrity Traitors S2 but you're away from home and access to the show is geo-blocked, you can always use a VPN to access it (assuming you're not breaching any broadcaster T&Cs, of course). You may be surprised by how simple it is to do.
Use one of the best VPNs to watch The Celebrity Traitors 2026 (season 2) from anywhere:
Not having a VPN is like leaving your front door wide open in a busy city – anyone can walk right in and take a peek.
TechRadar regularly reviews all the biggest and best VPN providers and NordVPN is our #1 choice.
✅ 75% Off Today ✅ 3 Extra Months Free ✅ Unlocks BBC iPlayer
Get NordVPN and stream The Celebrity Traitors for free.View Deal
Using a VPN is incredibly simple:
1. Install the VPN of your choice. As we've said, NordVPN is our favorite.
2. Choose the location you wish to connect to in the VPN app. For instance, if you're visiting the US and want to view your usual UK service, you'd select a UK-based server from the list.
3. Binge the backstabbing. Head to your usual local streaming service and watch Traitors.
*SPOILERS*
In case you missed the first eight episodes, here's a quick rundown to get you up to date.
The two original Traitors were Richard E. Grant and Maya Jama. they decided to go with two very different styles of game play... Maya Jama played the game as you're meant to, while Richard E. Grant immediately told everyone he was a traitor. Unsurprisingly, he was voted out at the first Round Table.
The Traitors have since been recruiting, meaning that the line-up of backstabbers now includes James Acaster and Prof. Hannah Fry.
Those among the dead include Bella Ramsey, of The Last Of Us fame and Amol Rajan, of Amal Rajan fame.
After successfully voting out a traitor in the first round table, the faithfuls banished two of their own; Julie Hesmondhalgh and Myha'la.
Rob Beckett was murdered after a tense game of hide-and-seek, but the faithful got their revenge by banishing Traitor Prof. Hannah Fry.
Youtuber King Kenny took her place in the turret, and immediately got into the spirit of treachery. He has none of the hangups that James Acaster has about murdering, and so far seems as though he was born to be a traitor.
The traitors murdered Ross in plain sight by boring him to death, spraying 'poisonous perfume' and then making him yawn. Ross' death caused confusion, and threw a lot of suspicion onto Leigh-Anne, who didn't help her case by sporting some very villainous gloves at the round table.
It was Jerry, though, who was banished in the end. A comment made by Michael Sheen about having 'the strongest possible group of faithfuls' was what seem to put paid to Jerry's time in the castle.
Episode 8 saw Miranda murdered, which to be quite honest has ruined it for us, she was 70% of why we were still watching.
Joanne was banished at the round table by Kenny with his double-dagger. Following that, the traitors inexplicably chose to murder Sharon rather than Michael, and now Michael is really onto them.
In a completely unexpected twist, James Acaster held his hands up and openly admitted that he had been recruited as a traitor.
Read on as we explain how to watch the final episode ofThe Celebrity Traitors 2026 from anywhere – as well as the spinoff Celebrity Traitors: Uncloaked, and the final on Friday, October 30.
Can I watch The Celebrity Traitors UK in the US?
The Celebrity Traitors (2026) will arrive on Peacock in "Q4 2026", which is not a surprise – NBC/Peacock is home to all things The Traitors. The US release date is due to be announced shortly.
If you're a UK resident who is currently across the pond, a VPN will help you tune in to your BBC. NordVPN is our recommended provider, and you can find out why with our in-depth NordVPN review.
Can I watch The Celebrity Traitors 2 in Canada?
In Canada, subscription service Crave is streaming all 6 previous episodes of The Celebrity Traitors season 2. Viewers can also chose between French and English.
Crave plans start from CA$11.99 a month and offers classic HBO series, on-demand movies and Crave originals alongside TV shows such as The Traitors Canada season 4.
Visiting Canada from the UK?Use a VPN to watch The Celebrity Traitors season 2 online – plus all the other content you'd normally stream at home.
Can I watch The Celebrity Traitors season 2 in the UK?
The Celebrity Traitors continues tonight, Friday 30 October 2026 at 8pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
The series airs two nights a week on Thursday and Friday evenings at 8pm.
Visiting the UK? from IrelandUse a VPN to access your usual The Celebrity Traitors on iPlayer.
Can I watch The Celebrity Traitors 2 in Australia?
The Celebrity Traitors season two is available in Australia for free on 10.
Fans can catch up on the first 8 episodes, as well as watch new episodes at exactly the same time as they air in the UK. All you need is a 10 account, and they're completely free.
Outside Australia? NordVPN will help you gain access to free 10 streams while you're out of the country.
Can I watch The Celebrity Traitors 2 in New Zealand?
For Kiwi viewers, The Celebrity Traitors UK season 2 will stream on ThreeNow starting October 4 – three days after it starts in the UK on BBC iPlayer.
Visiting New Zealand? Grab this VPN (75% off) now to watch all your usual British streaming services when traveling.
Missed the first 6 episodes?
First of all, sorry for the spoilers. However, there's good news! You can catch up with the first 9 episodes of The Celebrity Traitors for free via BBC iPlayer (as long as you've been faithful and paid your license fee).
Not in the UK? Have no fear. You can access your iPlayer from anywhere in the world with a VPN.
The Celebrity Traitors series 2 (2026) – Need to Know
Who is in The Celebrity Traitors 2 cast?
Amol Rajan — journalist and broadcaster ❌
Bella Ramsey — actor (The Last of Us, Game of Thrones)❌
James Acaster — comedian and podcaster 🔪
James Blunt — singer-songwriter
Jerry Hall — model and actor❌
Joanne McNally — comedian❌
Joe Lycett — comedian ❌
Julie Hesmondhalgh — actor (Coronation Street)❌
King Kenny — YouTuber/content creator 🔪
Leigh-Anne Pinnock — singer, formerly of Little Mix
Maya Jama — presenter 🔪
Michael Sheen — actor
Miranda Hart — comedian, actor and author ❌
Myha’la — actor (Industry)❌
Professor Hannah Fry — mathematician and broadcaster❌
Richard E. Grant — actor❌
Rob Beckett — comedian❌
Romesh Ranganathan — comedian
Ross Kemp — actor and presenter❌
Sebastian Croft — actor (Heartstopper)
Sharon Rooney — actor (My Mad Fat Diary)❌
The Celebrity Traitors 2 trailer
How many episodes of The Celebrity Traitors season 2 are there?
There will be 10 episodes in The Celebrity Traitors series 2 – one more than season one, which had nine.
It continues Friday, 30 October 2026 at 8pm BST on BBC One and BBC iPlayer, with the FINAL EPISODE.
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In recent weeks, we have seen eye-watering amount...
In recent weeks, we have seen eye-watering amounts of personal data exposed by criminal actors, in an attempt to either extort organizations for ransom payments or sell the information for financial gain.
In the UK, three major airports suffered data breaches that exposed information relating to nearly nine million people. In the fintech sector, Revolut mistakenly disclosed a wealth of customer data to scammers impersonating government officials.
While in North America, hackers reportedly offered scans of nearly 153 million US and Canadian driving licenses for sale on the dark web.
These incidents highlight the risks and vulnerabilities organizations face when they accumulate and retain large volumes of valuable personal data.
Beyond the obvious need for greater internet security and protection against AI related attacks or synthetic identities, it raises one other fundamental question: do companies really need to collect and retain so much personal data?
More data, more risk
Identity checks can typically involve companies collecting names, dates of birth, addresses, document scans and facial images. That data is then stored, and may be copied across different suppliers and systems in the hope that existing security protocols stay robust.
As a result, organizations may unintentionally be creating honeypots. If breached, this data could be used to facilitate a variety of illicit activities such as fraud, impersonation and social engineering. The more information an organization collects, the more places it is creating data exposure risks.
Data accumulation thus significantly increases a company’s security risk. As data’s value increases, breaches are becoming more lucrative for attackers and more catastrophic for businesses. As AI tools continue to become commoditized and easier to use, breaches may become even more frequent unless we find new ways to verify legitimate information without a person’s entire underlying dataset being at risk.
Verification doesn’t require lots of data
Many of the free online services we use everyday are at risk from disruption because they fundamentally ask for too much data. These services do not need to know 10+ pieces of personal information about an individual - yet, because this is still collected, the internet’s overall business model is vulnerable.
Authentication primitives that preserve privacy can offer a way forward, helping to protect the future of the internet. They enable people to access free content and services without revealing unnecessary personal details. For example, an age-gated service may only need proof that someone is above a minimum age requirement, or a government service may only need confirmation of residency.
All of these core aspects can be verified without needing to access and store someone’s full dataset. The only necessity is asking the right questions at the right time – in a way that ensures what needs to be verified is in fact legitimate.
Data minimization can therefore become a security control and risk mitigation tool. The less information a service collects and retains, the smaller the attack surface for illicit actors. By asking only for the information needed at a particular moment, organizations can attest what matters without creating an unnecessary, high-risk store of personal data.
Prove the fact: keep the details private
Modern zero-knowledge cryptography can help address this challenge. It enables individuals to optionally store digital credentials via information from physical, chip-enabled ID cards or government digital identities like mobile driver’s licenses through an app, without making it accessible to third parties.
An individual can then use their digital ID to prove things like age, nationality and unique document ownership without revealing their identity or giving that data to a third party. Zero-knowledge cryptography can verify these claims while keeping the original information private.
When proof generation takes place on the individual’s device, sensitive information can remain local while the receiving service gets the proof it needs. Holding less reusable identity data can limit what an attacker obtains if that service is breached.
Preserving privacy: why this matters
Beyond the security benefits outlined, reducing data retention will also become essential as AI makes it harder for us to distinguish what’s real, and what data to trust. At the same time, advances in computing power could mean that private data encrypted well today could be harvested and decrypted easily in a post-quantum future.
Zero-knowledge proofs are not the finished article, but this should form a key part of a broader shift to cryptographic systems that is going to be fundamental to how we verify real information it can trust, and prepares companies for threats that were barely conceivable a decade ago.
In a world where both personal data is becoming more valuable, harder to trust and secure, holding less will become one of the most essential security measures.
This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.
The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/pro/perspectives-how-to-submit
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Planet Zoo 2 is the sequel to 2020’s zoo-buildin...
Planet Zoo 2 is the sequel to 2020’s zoo-building management sim. And it’s crammed with more animals, scenery items, and game modes than ever, so you can really let your creativity run wild.
Building zoos is my happy place. Life is stressful, the cost of living is shocking, and politics is so absurd I often feel like I’m being doped with increasing levels of satire to make the world’s first irony-immune man. Playing games like Planet Zoo 2 lets me spend time in a simpler world, where I can spend five hours tweaking the placement of ferns and rocks to make simulated siamangs happy.
As a result, I’ve spent a lot of time playing the original Planet Zoo. More than a lot, actually. Over 1,100 hours. That’s more than 45 days straight — a fact that makes me feel slightly queasy about my priorities in life. I’ve spent more time experiencing its highs and dealing with its limitations than I’ve spent with my extended family. So, naturally, as soon as I heard Planet Zoo 2 was in development, I knew I had to be the person to put it through its paces.
With the addition of aquariums, aviaries, wildlife reserves and more besides, I couldn’t wait to get my teeth into the new game and see what it was capable of. Even if it meant jettisoning a thousand hours of work, binning my old zoo and starting building from scratch, I was eager to see how all the new tools and content upgraded play. So are the two games birds of a feather, or is Planet Zoo 2 of a different stripe entirely?
Wings, fins and fur
(Image credit: Frontier Developments)
Best bit
(Image credit: Frontier Developments)
Without a doubt, aquariums are my favorite new feature. Not only can you add a fantastic variety of undersea beasties, but you can also decorate tanks with rich-looking reefs, with everything from fronds of seaweed to brightly colored corals.
As a bit (okay, a lot) of a Planet Zoo nerd, when Planet Zoo 2 was announced, I had plenty of things on my mental wishlist of upgrades I’d like to see. But top of my list were the addition of both flying birds and fish, two types of critters that felt conspicuous in their absence from the huge roster of DLCs released for the original game. So honestly, it was pretty pleasing to see both of these kinds of exhibits included when previews of the game dropped.
Flat out my favorite addition has been aquariums. These new piscine enclosures are as pretty as a picture. Aquariums feel really versatile, whether you want huge open-air tanks or to build a wall of fish into your restaurant. Walkthrough tunnels make creating immersive exhibits a breeze, and the need to filter habitats separately depending on whether they require fresh, brackish, or salty water adds an extra layer of — excuse the pun — depth.
Underwater decorations also look fantastic, allowing you to create really richly colored coral reefs and rafts of seaweed and grasses. But naturally, the animals in Planet Zoo are the stars of the show, and there’s a huge variety of sea life on offer to populate your tanks, whether you’re looking for sharks, rays, turtles or schools of fish. Wisely, Frontier has steered away from including many sea mammals like whales and dolphins — a sensible decision in light of the increasing attention that’s been paid to the ethics of keeping highly intelligent, social mammals in small tanks — but the game does include manatees, and there’s still huge potential here for semi-aquatic mammals like seals and walruses.
(Image credit: Frontier Developments)
Leading up to Planet Zoo 2’s release, I was particularly excited about the addition of flying birds, as this adds a whole new dimension to your habitats compared to flightless fowl like ostriches and emus. While aviaries — essentially roof support poles and netting sitting over a classic habitat — don’t feel quite as fresh an experience as creating aquariums, I can still see how I’ll be able to use them to create stunning enclosures. And the variety of feathered friends already on offer is decent, adding everything from toucans to brightly colored long-tailed parakeets.
In fact, animals in general have had a definite glow-up in Planet Zoo 2. Not only have the earliest, lower-definition critters from the base game, like lions and African elephants, received new meshes to bring them in line with sleeker-looking critters from later expansion packs, but fauna in general looks stunning in this game.
There’s also a really solid variety of animals on offer at launch, from gila monsters to giant pandas. Don’t get me wrong: some of my personal favorites from the original game and expansions still aren’t here. Frankly, any zoo that doesn’t have fennec foxes in it is not a zoo I want to spend time in. But all the classics are here, with just enough funky additions — Goodfellow’s tree-kangaroo, anyone? — that I’m already pretty jazzed about additions that might be coming up with future updates.
All told, the variety offered by Planet Zoo 2 makes creating diverse, vibrant zoos feel easier than ever.
Management material
(Image credit: Frontier Developments)
Given that Frontier Developments has launched two more park management games — Planet Coaster 2 and Jurassic World Evolution 3 — in the almost seven years since the OG Planet Zoo’s release, its core gameplay loop has inevitably evolved.
First off, career mode feels the most well-rounded it’s been in a Planet game to date. While you’ve always been able to dip in and out of individual missions on the map to complete objectives and pick up bronze, silver, and gold medals, the progression between them feels increasingly organic.
Functioning as an extended tutorial, career mode leads you through a variety of maps and scenarios throughout the world. As you complete bronze medals at each zoo, you’ll learn new mechanisms and unlock new accreditation tiers, in turn granting you access to higher tiers of animals. While this does mean your progression is somewhat locked to missions, the non-linear connection between maps made me feel much freer to pop in and out of maps than past games.
A big part of this is down to the addition of wildlife reserves. Releasing animals was a relatively shallow mechanic in Planet Zoo — enabling you to offload unneeded creatures in return for dollars or Conservation Points — in its sequel, this has been spun out into a sub-game in its own right.
Wildlife reserves’ core gameplay loop is pretty straightforward. When you arrive in a new reserve, you’ll create ecosystems for released animals by painting one in the landscape, clearing any invasive plant species, and balancing the terrain and plant requirements. Once it’s ready, you’ll be required to release animals from your zoos of the compatible type, balancing the ecosystem, and place research items like camera traps and acoustic monitors to unlock higher levels of research in your zoos.
I’ll be honest here: wildlife reserves are the area that I feel both sound like the most transformative on paper and yet haven’t fully clicked for me in practice. Part of this is because they rely heavily on my least favorite tool: the terrain painter — more on that shortly.
(Image credit: Frontier Developments)
But it’s also just because these mechanics feel relatively shallow. These reserves don’t really require much ongoing management, and given there’s not much more detailed interplay among the flora and fauna once it’s placed, you can basically just set and forget these areas. As a result, I often found myself just rushing to establish ecosystems and dump the required animals in them so I could return to meatier zoo management. I’m hoping that the more I play with them, the more I’ll find to love about these freer locations, but so far they’ve stood out the least to me.
One other factor that's occasionally caused me slight discomfort is the presence of bugs. No, I'm not talking about those tarantula exhibits: at release, there have definitely been some odd issues creeping in.
I've encountered nothing game-breaking, just slightly hinky behavior here and there. At one point, items I was meticulously placing using the advanced move tools would randomly jump to a different position once I clicked place. Meanwhile, I've experienced several well-documented issues where animals ghost through their bars or get boxed up en masse inside their habitats for no clear reason. Fair play to Frontier Developments, though: they promised to patch these issues pretty quickly and, at the time of publishing, I think all of these issues have been fixed.
If you're wanting a freer experience than career mode can offer, Planet Zoo 2 still has all the other game modes you loved from the original. Franchise mode lets you focus on building your global zoo network from scratch as always, adding the ability to create your own wildlife reserves to help you feel like you’re really contributing to global conservation.
But hands-down my favorite gameplay mode is still Sandbox. I’m a bit prone to hyperfixating on small details — I know: the dude with 1,100 hours in the game is a bit obsessive. You don’t say. And that’s why I love this mode. Being able to concentrate on tweaking every last detail and focusing on building the most realistic zoo I can without needing to sweat about profitability or management just speaks to the creative part of my brain.
And, on that front, Planet Zoo 2 is better than ever.
Build baby, build
(Image credit: Frontier Developments)
Given I’m talking about a game crammed with gorgeous wildlife, brand new habitats and new game modes, I’ll admit this makes me sound tiresomely dull. But honestly, what’s gotten me most excited about Planet Zoo 2 is the part that should be the most boring: logistics upgrades.
Rather than management sims, I’ve always felt like the Planet games are fantastically creative park design tools with a fun game on the side. And these tools have been refined across the board.
Let’s start with the placement tools. Not gonna lie, on release the placement tools in Planet Zoo were so rigid I can honestly understand if many people rarely dug into creating detailed scenery. Fortunately, these have been significantly improved — they feel more fluid, while the scale tools from Planet Coaster 2 and mirroring tools have been added, giving each decorative item significantly more versatility and making it much easier to create organic-looking areas like rockfaces.
Frustrating memories of trying to select scenery items in Planet Zoo — with their utterly random-seeming hitboxes — still haunt me to this day, particularly as deselecting items felt super awkward. In its sequel, these tools have been overhauled, not only making it easier to select and deselect items even on controller but also providing a range of toggles that allow you to restrict selection to certain types of objects, from nature objects to pathing.
While creating pathing used to involve an exasperating degree of trial and error in the original, pathing tools have had significant improvements here. Alongside the original’s straight and curved pathing options, upgrades from Planet Coaster 2 and the Jurassic World Evolution series have been introduced, like stamp and draw tools. This makes it trivial to introduce more organic-looking paths than ever and even super-precise circular courtyards and viewing areas.
(Image credit: Frontier Developments)
All of these features contribute to making buildings and decorative items feel far easier and more fluid. But it’s not only placing man-made structures that has been improved. I’d argue that one of the hardest areas of creating your dream zoo in Planet Zoo used to be making natural scenery look organic. A significant proportion of that monumental playtime I clocked in the first game came from meticulously placing bushes piece by piece to make scenery look suitably wild.
Fortunately, Frontier has introduced the scenery brushes first created for Planet Coaster 2 into this game, enabling you to quickly paint scenery across your landscape. Not only does it come with a wide array of pre-created options, but you can also make up your own using any combination of scenery you’d like. While the end result can be slightly random-looking and the brushes still don’t get tight enough for creating really dense-looking foliage, this massively speeds up initial placement and allows you to then manually shift and complement the items for significantly faster decoration.
Similarly, terrain brushes have also had loads of new options added, with attract, repel, and curl brushes adding good variety to the existing toolset available. Terrain painting also comes with a significantly wider array of options, with not only lots of sub-terrain types — such as wild grass, long grass, forest floor or scree — but also brush presets that blend combos of the above.
Sadly, these terrain painting tools are the ones that I feel most lukewarm about. While they should add an enormous amount of extra variety to your landscapes, in practice I found them quite hard to blend subtly, with the intensity slider never quite going low enough to reduce hard borders between terrain types. You can achieve a similar effect by rapidly clicking to feather the brushes, but this is one of the few areas where I feel the tools at your disposal could do with some more refining.
Still, though, the impact of the tool and brush improvements has made the game feel far more fluid in action. They’re all tiny QoL upgrades in isolation, but they’re huge in aggregate. It takes Planet Zoo from a game that’s almost notoriously fiddly and rigid to something that feels more approachable for people who don’t have 1,000 hours to learn all of its tricks.
Should you play Planet Zoo 2?
(Image credit: Frontier Developments)
Play it if…
You want a whole new world of aquatic and avian critters Aquariums and aviaries add a whole host of flexible new habitats to bring your zoos to life. Watching turtles and toucans explore their new homes is still a magical experience.
You want the best park design tools to date Honestly, I can’t think of a single clunky tool from the OG Planet Zoo that hasn’t had a QoL improvement here. They’re more usable, flexible, and creative than ever before.
Don’t play it if…
You want to fill a quick 15 minutes Preset buildings make playing Planet Zoo 2 much quicker, but creating things from scratch can take a long time. If you want to design your own zoo piece by piece, be prepared to invest some serious time.
You want a whole new game Planet Zoo 2 builds on its predecessor, so it’s more evolution than revolution. You’ll see some duplicate items and animals, but the range is still staggering, feeling much larger than in the original.
Accessibility features
There’s a small range of accessibility features available here. For those with visual impairments, you can scale the in-game font from 60% to 100% and the UI from 70% to 100%. Meanwhile, Planet Zoo 2 caters to most forms of color blindness, allowing you to change the color of subtitles, as well as the positive, warning, and negative UI feedback colors.
How I reviewed Planet Zoo 2
(Image credit: Frontier Developments)
Given its lengthy career mode and how long it can take to build custom enclosures, I wanted to make sure I had a broad experience of the game, so I played Planet Zoo 2 for over 75 hours. While I was reviewing the PC version, I made sure to try it out on a variety of devices, including my desktop gaming PC, the Asus ProArt P16 RTX Spark, and my Steam Deck. I also tried playing it with the SteelSeries Aeon Pro controller to ensure it was as playable on controller as it is on mouse and keyboard.
When in-game, I tried to test out as wide a variety of content as possible. I played a significant chunk of the campaign, started several franchise zoos, and began building my own zoo in sandbox mode. I built aquariums, aviaries, and traditional habitats, as well as other scenery items. And I completed multiple research levels in different wildlife reserves.
As for my own experience, not only do I have that ludicrous 1,100-hour playtime in the original Planet Zoo game, but I’ve been playing management sim games ever since the OG, Theme Park, back in 1994. I’ve been gaming across a wide variety of platforms for at least 35 years and now play principally on my PC, Steam Deck, Nintendo Switch 2, and Xbox Series X.
First reviewed: October 2026
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Any personal information posted on the web remain...
Any personal information posted on the web remains there for a long time and can reach far-flung corners. That name, email address, and location can be aggregated by people-finder sites (or data brokers) and sold to subscribers.
These data broker sites pose privacy risks, but there’s a way to protect yourself online. You can use platforms like Malwarebytes’ Personal Data Remover to scan sites for your data, then send deletion requests if found. Malwarebytes facilitates the deletion requests, so there isn’t much to worry about.
Malwarebytes is an all-in-one cybersecurity software suite and is mostly known for its antivirus app. However, it offers other valuable tools, including the Personal Data Remover (if the name didn't give it away, it's a data removal service).
I’m reviewing this tool to help you decide whether it’s worth adopting. Read on to learn about its pros, cons, pricing, support, ease of use, and other essential factors.
Malwarebytes Personal Data Remover: Plans and pricing
Malwarebytes doesn’t offer the Personal Data Remover as a separate tool. Rather, it’s offered as part of the Ultimate plan but you can scan for free by clicking here.
The Ultimate plan costs $280 per year, but it’s discounted 50% to $140 on the first year. It unlocks access to the Personal Data Remover and complete antivirus protection, a VPN, and identity protection for 3 devices.
For $400 per year, discounted to $200 on the first year, the Ultimate bundle can be extended to 10 devices for family use.
There are less costly Malwarebytes bundles (Standard for $60 per year and Plus for $80 per year), but none of them include the Personal Data Remover. It seems that if you want access to the Data Remover, you’ll also need to adopt Malwarebytes’ antivirus and VPN apps, which is a major drawback. I’d prefer if the Data Remover were offered as a standalone tool, which I could use alongside other VPN and antivirus tools.
(Image credit: Malwarebytes )
Malwarebytes offers a 14-day free trial of its Ultimate plan, allowing you to test its features before making a final decision. Who knows, you could choose to adopt Malwarebytes as your all-in-one cybersecurity suite after a free trial. There’s also a 60-day money-back guarantee if you aren’t satisfied after paying.
Malwarebytes Personal Data Remover: Setup
Firstly, I should note that Malwarebytes’ Personal Data Remover is only offered to U.S. residents. Non-U.S. residents can use the free Digital Footprint Scanner, which scans your email address against known data breaches and alerts you if any associated account was compromised. However, this Digital Footprint Scanner can’t scan people-finder sites and send deletion requests like the Personal Data Remover.
Malwarebytes’ setup follows a straightforward pattern. First, you’ll activate your subscription (or free trial) on the website. After this step, sign in to Malwarebytes and head to the Secure Hub page. This page provides an overview of all Malwarebytes services available under your subscription.
On the Secure Hub page, look for Personal Data Remover and click “Activate Now”. Once activated, enter your personal details (first and last name, state, city, etc.) to begin a search. Submit the details, and Malwarebytes will run a deep scan across people-finder sites for this data.
The scan can take anywhere from a few hours to several days, depending on how many people-finder sites your data gets discovered on. Once the scan is complete, you’ll be alerted by email to take further action.
Malwarebytes’ scan covers over 100 popular people-finder sites that aggregate data on U.S. residents. This coverage is lower than I encountered on rival platforms, but quantity isn’t all that matters. Malwarebytes makes it clear that its Personal Data Remover is designed for U.S. residents and doesn’t offer global coverage. It focuses on the sites that host U.S.-centric data.
After the scan, you’ll see a list of all sites found to host your personal data. Then, you can initiate deletion requests right from the dashboard. Malwarebytes sends automated deletion requests, and you can track the progress of each request.
However, it doesn’t support manually drafted requests, which is a disadvantage. For websites where automated requests won’t suffice, it does offer to guide you through the site’s manual opt-out process, but that’s no substitute for sending manual requests directly to a site.
I’ve reviewed various data removal platforms that draft deletion request letters where automated requests aren’t enough, and the lack of this service on Malwarebytes is a major drawback.
I’ll rate Malwarebytes’ Personal Data Remover as a decent service, but there’s a lot that could be improved on. The lack of manual requests and non-U.S. coverage are major drawbacks. Malwarebytes is more of an antivirus and VPN software suite, and the data removal service seems like an add-on.
It’s suitable if you already use Malwarebytes as your cybersecurity suite and don’t want to pay extra for a data removal service, but I wouldn't pick the data removal platform as a first choice.
Malwarebytes Personal Data Remover: Ease of use
I didn’t encounter issues when navigating Malwarebytes’ Personal Data Remover and other features. The signup process was smooth, and so was inputting my personal data, initiating a scan, and getting alerted about the scan results. After initiating removal requests, I tracked the progress of each request conveniently from my dashboard. Malwarebytes has a user-friendly interface that makes using its tools very convenient.
(Image credit: Malwarebytes )
Malwarebytes Personal Data Remover: Security and privacy
Malwarebytes’ Personal Data Remover doesn’t rank high over various options I’ve tested. Its data removal features are decent, but rival platforms like DeleteMe offer much more.
However, when considering Malwarebytes’ complete cybersecurity suite, it proves invaluable for your online privacy. Under a single subscription, you'll get a VPN to encrypt your browsing activities and hide info from third parties, an antivirus tool to guard against malware attacks, and a platform for removing your data from U.S.-centric people-finder sites.
Identity protection (with insurance) is also offered under the Ultimate bundle, completing the toolkit needed to stay safe online.
Malwarebytes Personal Data Remover: Support
Paid subscribers get extensive support resources from Malwarebytes, starting with the official cybersecurity help center. This help center features in-depth guides about data removal and all other Malwarebytes features.
It also contains guides on routine cybersecurity topics like password management, identifying deepfakes and phishing attempts, spoofing, and more.
If you need direct help, Malwarebytes offers email and live chat support. During my live chat support experience I first got connected to a chatbot, but after requesting human support, I was quickly connected to a real support agent.
Malwarebytes Personal Data Remover: Competition
Incogni and DeleteMe are two major competitors to Malwarebytes’ Personal Data Remover. They improve on the Malwarebytes limitations I mentioned earlier, offering much broader broker coverage and manual deletion requests. You’ll get more data scrubbed when using Incogni and DeleteMe, particularly as a U.S. resident.
On the other hand, Incogni and DeleteMe don’t offer the various complementary features you’ll find on Malwarebytes. They’re focused primarily on data removal, while Malwarebytes is more of a complete cybersecurity software suite.
Malwarebytes Personal Data Remover: Final verdict
I recommend Malwarebytes more as a complete cybersecurity suite than as a data removal platform. It frankly isn’t my top choice for a data removal service, but considering the other security features accessible through a Malwarebytes subscription, it proves valuable.
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Imagine a NASCAR team where leadership decides th...
Imagine a NASCAR team where leadership decides the winner is the car that burns the most fuel. The crew chief tunes every engine to run rich and wasteful. Drivers ride the gas and the brake at once. The telemetry shows record fuel consumption. The car finishes dead last.
For a stretch this year, wasteful consumption metrics drove AI measurement programs. Companies stood up internal leaderboards ranking employees by how many tokens they burned. A Meta employee built one, crowned the top "token legends," then quietly took it after the numbers leaked externally. By spring the trend had a name: tokenmaxxing.
By the start of summer the inevitable backlash arrived, with companies like Uber acknowledging they’d already spent their entire AI budget for the year in a matter of months.
More recently, the inevitable swing toward using the minimal number of AI tokens (tokenminning) leads to the same problem. If leadership defines winning as using the least amount of fuel, the winning car would never leave the starting line.
Burning or saving tokens should never be the end goal. The objective is shipping more products, at higher quality, with the same or fewer people. The job of a leader is to define the most strategic path toward the finish line, and based on that definition, build metrics that support it.
Why leaderboards miss the mark
A vanity metric is any number that looks great on a slide, leaderboard or dashboard but doesn't change how you run your business. In the AI space, even highly technical and complex metrics can become vanity metrics.
Here’s a couple I’ve seen lately, each a different way to look busy GPU utilization rates that brag about how much raw compute you’ve hoarded, regardless of whether it's solving real problems. AI features shipped per quarter, where leadership slaps a sparkle-emoji text summarizer on every legacy product to pad the release notes.
Metrics like these can feel rigorous, but they're detached from the end work itself. When leaders don’t relate metrics to end goals, engineers may race toward the nearest countable item.
The missing race map
Work completed only matters if it’s the right work. When leadership celebrates "95% adoption" of GitHub Copilot because the licenses are deployed, they can mistake superficial access for deep engagement. They assume productivity is skyrocketing. They're measuring who adopted the tool, not who is effectively using it to improve outcomes.
Developers might be generating more code faster, but if the tool isn't deeply integrated into a refined process, PR sizes inflate and the bottleneck simply shifts to human code review. Cycle time stays stagnant, or worse, bug rates go up because humans are rubber-stamping AI hallucinations.
Close the disconnect: tie depth of use directly to outcomes and business goals. If you have 95% "adoption" but your cycle time hasn't dropped by 30% or your rework hasn't decreased, you don't have high use. You just have an expensive new software distribution.
How to set the finish line
A single number rarely tells a story. If I can produce twice as much code but it takes twice as long to ship, I haven't gained efficiency. I've created more work. The right question isn't how much AI you're using — it's whether the work is actually getting better.
For engineering teams with more established workflows, start with the outcome you want to move, then use a framework like DORA or SPACE to check whether you got there. The framework is the instrument, not the goal. DORA tracks the health of your delivery pipeline — how often you deploy, how long changes take, how quickly you recover from failures, how often changes cause incidents.
SPACE tracks the full picture of developer productivity across five dimensions, including outcomes and satisfaction. Neither was designed for AI, which is exactly why they're useful: they’ll help you measure whether AI made the work better, not whether AI got used.
Pair one of those frameworks against your AI tool usage and your business outcomes like cycle time, rework rate, cost per change. A 25% increase in AI adoption that correlates with a drop in delivery stability isn't a win. The 2025 DORA report found that's exactly what many teams got when they deployed AI into underprepared systems. The tools amplified what was already there. Good engineering foundations got better, fragile ones got more fragile.
For roles outside engineering — marketing, finance, operations — build from first principles. Start with one outcome you're already trying to move: response time, pipeline conversion, forecast accuracy. Establish the finish line before AI enters the workflow. Measure toward that same outcome after. If it moved, figure out whether AI caused it and whether you can repeat it. If it didn't, you've learned something too. Picture a support team that wants to cut first-response time.
They baseline it at nine hours, then let agents draft replies with an AI assistant. Two months later response time is down to three hours, and reopen rates haven’t budged — so the speed isn’t costing them quality. That’s an outcome they can name, measure and repeat. It never needed a leaderboard.
Keeping the finish line in sight
The goal of a metric is to manage toward an outcome. If you're doing more work on the metric than on the outcome, you're upside down. You're looking at the gas tank, not the finish line. So before you stand up your next AI metric, ask one question: what outcome would move if this number did? If you can’t name it, you’re not measuring progress — you’re watching the fuel gauge. Define the finish line first; everything else is just telemetry.
This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.
The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/pro/perspectives-how-to-submit
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25,000 Dutch government jobs will be cut by 2035,...
25,000 Dutch government jobs will be cut by 2035, new plans say
The Netherlands is looking to save €3.5 billion by 2035
Selling off buildings, simplifying rules, and smaller desks will also contribute to the savings
The Dutch government has announced plans to phase out 25,000 jobs by 2035 in an effort to increase efficiency with the end goal of saving €3.5 billion ($3.9 billion), amounting to about 16% of the government’s total workforce.
According to plans laid out by Dutch State Secretary for Kingdom Relations and Effective Government Eric van der Burg, the cuts will save €900 million ($1 billion) by 2027 while AI will deliver increased productivity to take up the additional workload.
"We cannot keep doing what we did," Van der Burg said. "That is why we are going to make sharp choices for a central government that really works: simpler, smarter and smaller."
Smaller desks and AI part of savings plans
The plans hope to deliver a 20% productivity boost by using AI to increase efficiency, while simultaneously reducing the total government workload by simplifying rules. To that end, the Dutch government also has a plan in place to scrap or simplify at least 500 rules a year.
But AI isn’t the only way the government is looking to reduce costs. New rules will see pairs of employees sharing a single desk, surplus buildings sold off, and IT systems standardized.
While police and defense jobs are not being affected by the cuts, permanent advisory councils and advisory committees are not. The government will release new targets for the number of advisory bodies later this year, with current numbers sitting at 28 and 150 respectively.
According to Bloomberg several motions - albeit voluntary motions - to increase productivity using AI have already been passed. These motions are a catalyst for the resulting job and spending cuts, according to Van der Burg.
The Dutch government has seen a record number of central government officials, peaking at 160,000 by the end of 2025 - a rise of 41% since 2018 according to Bloomberg.
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