What's up: Meta aims to fully automate ad creation; Apple challenge EU order; It's Waymo's world. 

Good morning, CIOs. A growing crop of AI startups is looking beyond the white-collar market and toward home-services operators like electricians, plumbers, roofers and HVAC specialists.

Case in point: San Francisco-based Netic today announced it raised $20 million. Netic sells an AI-based platform that helps home-services firms automatically reach out to clients and take calls and messages on their behalf. 

Expect more such startups to pop up, boosted by private-equity firms looking to inject automation into their portfolio companies, the WSJ's Belle Lin reports.

Netic’s customers are mostly private-equity-owned home-services companies, as well as some larger owner-operated firms, the startup said.

Asheem Chandna, an investor at venture-capital firm Greylock who served as lead investor in Netic’s seed round, said home-services businesses often have “underutilized capacity,” or staff who aren’t being put to work most efficiently.

The point of AI, then, is to optimize the pairing of technicians with customers when they need help, and to reach them before they do, Chandna said. Read the story.

The Trump administration is moving its spending review beyond consulting firms to now scrutinize contracts at value-added resellers, businesses that piece together technology products and services. WSJ reports that the General Services Administration last week contacted 10 technology providers, including Dell and IT firm CDW, asking them to justify their work and find areas to cut costs.

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U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta on Friday questioned how far he should go to limit Google’s monopoly in internet search, including putting curbs on how it competes in artificial intelligence. Mehta’s query came during closing arguments in the final phase of the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Google, WSJ reports.

Europe is not only falling behind in creating global technology companies, but its workers are becoming slightly less productive than their American counterparts, WSJ reports.

Apple has filed an appeal against an order from the European Union’s antitrust watchdog specifying how it needs to make its iOS operating system more compatible with rival tech companies’ products, WSJ reports. 

Samsung is talking with AI search company Perplexity about incorporating its technology into upcoming devices, Bloomberg reports. 

Meta Platforms aims to enable brands to fully create and target ads using artificial intelligence by the end of next year, WSJ reports. Also getting the AI treatment: Evaluating new software features for privacy and other risks. NPR reports that Meta plans to automate up to 90% of such reviews. 

Psychedelic integration is a burgeoning practice across Silicon Valley that helps tech workers make sober sense of their trips on  ayahuasca, psilocybin and other drugs, WSJ reports. 

Google’s driverless-taxi company just cracked 10 million rides. If you haven’t taken one, you will soon, says WSJ Columnist Ben Cohen.

Ukraine launched audacious drone attacks on four military airports inside Russia, destroying more than 40 warplanes in the biggest blow of the war against Moscow’s long-range bomber fleet. (WSJ)

Eight people were injured Sunday in downtown Boulder, Colo., in an incendiary attack the FBI is investigating as an act of terror against a group advocating for the release of hostages in Gaza. (WSJ)

Homeland Security’s controversial “Sanctuary Jurisdictions” list disappeared from its website during the weekend as the agency fights criticism from red and blue states over the criteria used to create it. (WSJ)

The WSJ CIO Journal Team is Steven Rosenbush, Isabelle Bousquette and Belle Lin.

The editor, Tom Loftus, can be reached at thomas.loftus@wsj.com.