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Matthew King / MIT Technology Review: A look at US-backed NVD, as its parent org NIST scrambles to hire contractors to help clear a backlog of 25K+ vulnerabilities, ~10x the previous high in 2017 — Every day, billions of people trust digital systems to run everything from communication to commerce to critical infrastructure.
M.G. Siegler / Spyglass: OpenAI's failed Windsurf deal signals broader M&A challenges for OpenAI until it renegotiates its deal with Microsoft — In our current M&A environment in the AI space, there are but two types of deals: ‘hackquisitions’ and ‘hackquihires’. At first, they seemed like they were the same deal …
Simon Alvarez / Teslarati: Tesla rolls out Grok to some vehicles with an AMD infotainment chip; Grok comes pre-installed on new vehicles and cannot issue commands to the vehicle itself — All new Tesla vehicles delivered on or after July 12, 2025, will include Grok AI out of the box
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat: Moonshot's Kimi K2 uses a 1T-parameter MoE architecture with 32B active parameters and outperforms models like GPT-4.1 and DeepSeek-V3 on key benchmarks — Moonshot AI, the Chinese artificial intelligence startup behind the popular Kimi chatbot, released an open-source language model on Friday …
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch: xAI apologizes for Grok's “horrific behavior” when it wrote antisemitic posts on July 8, and blames “an update to a code path upstream of the Grok bot” — In a series of posts on X, the AI chatbot Grok apologized for what it admitted was “horrific behavior.”
Zack Abrams / The Block: Pump.fun raised $500M via a sale of PUMP tokens, which sold out in 12 minutes; it offered 12.5% of its total token supply at a fully diluted valuation of $4B — - Memecoin launchpad Pump.fun raised $600 million through its public sale of PUMP tokens, which fully sold out in just 12 minutes.
Scharon Harding / Ars Technica: Belkin's move to brick Wemo devices highlights how little accountability IoT companies face when abandoning connected products customers paid for — In a somewhat anticipated move, Belkin is killing most of its smart home products. On January 31, the company will stop supporting the majority …
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica: Stanford study: LLMs struggle to respond appropriately to questions about delusions, suicide, and OCD, but AI could play valuable supportive roles to therapists — When Stanford University researchers asked ChatGPT whether it would be willing to work closely with someone who had schizophrenia …
Cecilia D'Anastasio / Bloomberg: Studios like Do Big are buying Roblox games for $1M+ in a thriving secondary market; Naavik: seven of the 15 highest-earning games in June have been acquired — Game service spawns a busy after market for the most-popular titles … It sold a few months later for more than $3 million.
SemiAnalysis: A look at Meta's revamped GenAI strategy, as Mark Zuckerberg poaches top AI talent for the Superintelligence team with a typical offer of $200M over four years — Meta's shocking purchase of 49% of Scale AI at a ~$30B valuation shows that money is of no concern for the $100B annual cashflow ad machine.
Zach Vallese / CNBC: A New Hampshire court rejected TikTok's request to dismiss the state AG's suit accusing the company of using manipulative design features aimed at kids — A judge this week rejected TikTok's attempt to dismiss a lawsuit by the state of New Hampshire accusing it of using manipulative design features aimed at children and teens.
The Economic Times: Analysis: YC picked just four Indian startups in 2024 vs. 66 in 2021, amid a growing trend of startups shifting their parent entities to India for domestic IPOs — Y Combinator's selection of Indian startups has decreased significantly. This decline is attributed to factors …
Tripp Mickle / New York Times: Nvidia's rise after ChatGPT's release is reminiscent of dot-com era titans like Cisco and Juniper; Cisco's share price grew over 1000x between 1990 and 2000 — The A.I. chip maker reached the landmark before Apple and Microsoft, as its value rose more than tenfold after ChatGPT's release in late 2022.
Natalia Kniazhevich / Bloomberg: PitchBook: 27 VC-backed companies went public in the US in the first half of 2025, the smallest number in at least 10 years, raising a total of $44.4B — Venture capital-backed companies are on track for the fewest US initial public offerings in a decade, according to data provider PitchBook …
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch: Sam Altman announces another delay for OpenAI's open-weight model, for further safety testing; the model was slated to be released next week — OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Friday the company is delaying the release of its open model, which was already pushed back a month earlier in this summer.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch: Google will have a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, but will not be taking a stake in the company — OpenAI's deal to acquire the viral AI coding startup Windsurf fell apart on Friday, according to The Verge. — In a shocking twist, Google DeepMind …
The Information: Sources: OpenAI and Windsurf talks ended after Windsurf raised concerns over how its tech would fit into OpenAI's agreement to share tech with Microsoft — OpenAI has ended discussions to buy Windsurf, the maker of a popular artificial intelligence coding assistant formerly known as Codeium.
Hayden Field / The Verge: Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and some of Windsurf's R&D employees to focus on agentic coding efforts at DeepMind — Key researchers from the AI coding startup are also heading to Google. … OpenAI's deal to buy Windsurf is off …
Allie Garfinkle / Fortune: The exclusivity period on OpenAI's $3B offer to acquire coding startup Windsurf has expired — The exclusivity period on OpenAI's $3 billion offer to acquire coding startup Windsurf has expired, an OpenAI spokesperson told Fortune. — The expiration of the exclusivity period means …
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Jio Platforms debuts JioPC, a cloud PC service offered via its set-top box; Counterpoint: 70% of Indian households have a TV, but only 15% of them own a PC — Jio Platforms, the digital arm of Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries, has launched a virtual desktop service for set-top box users.
Gregorio Sorgi / Politico: The European Commission drops plans to impose a digital tax on tech giants in its upcoming 2028-2034 budget proposal, amid ongoing EU-US trade negotiations — BRUSSELS ― The European Commission has dropped plans to levy a tax on digital companies, a move that hands victory to Donald Trump …
Financial Times: Sources: xAI prepares a new fundraising round, its third in two months, targeting a valuation of $170B to $200B, up 10x from its May 2024 valuation of $18B — Grok chatbot maker in early talks with investors to boost its value as much as 10 times from last year
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC: Justin Sun says he is buying another $100M worth of $TRUMP, doubling his total known stake of digital coins tied to President Trump — Crypto billionaire Justin Sun is buying another $100 million worth of $TRUMP, doubling his total known stake of digital coins tied to President Donald Trump.
Bloomberg: Sources: JPMorgan Chase told fintech companies it will start charging fees for access to customers' account data, which could drastically reshape the industry — The largest US bank has sent pricing sheets to data aggregators — which connect banks and fintechs — outlining the new charges …
Ben Weiss / Fortune: Sources: Zerohash, which provides crypto and stablecoin infrastructure, is raising ~$100M at a ~$1B valuation, up from $340M when it raised a Series D in 2022 — Stablecoin startups have raised tens of millions over the past year amid a regulatory push and crypto boom. — Stablecoin fever is still running hot.
Ange Lavoipierre / ABC: At the end of June, Australia quietly introduced rules forcing search engine companies such as Google and Microsoft to check the ages of logged-in users — In short: — Search engines are in line for the same age assurance technology behind the teen social media ban.
Tony Stubblebine / The Coach Life: Medium CEO says the company has been profitable since August 2024 and details its financial turnaround after losing $2.6M per month in 2022 — Medium's recap, financial turnaround, and difficult path back to health. — · — Just now — I'm gonna write the wonky post of Medium's turnaround.
Juro Osawa / The Information: Source: Butterfly Effect, the startup behind Manus, has shut down its entire China-based team to minimize geopolitical risks associated with its ties to China — The startup behind Manus, an artificial intelligence agent that went viral earlier this year and got financial backing from Benchmark …
Dominic Preston / The Verge: HMD says it will “scale back” US operations, citing “a challenging geopolitical and economic environment”, and appears to have stopped US sales of Nokia devices — Even Barbie couldn't save it. … HMD Global, the company best known for licensing the Nokia brand …
Reuters: Chinese startup Moonshot AI releases Kimi K2, an open-weight model that the company says has enhanced coding capabilities and excels at general agent tasks — Chinese artificial intelligence startup Moonshot AI released a new open-source AI model on Friday, joining a wave of similar releases …
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google: Belkin announces it is ending support for its Wemo devices and app on January 31, 2026; a limited number of devices will continue to function via HomeKit — If your home has any of Belkin's Wemo products, the connected devices will cease to operate in early 2026.
Kirk Ogunrinde / Bloomberg: Florida AG's office launches an investigation into Robinhood for “falsely promoting” its trading platform as the “least expensive way to purchase crypto” — The Menlo Park, California-based firm is “falsely promoting” its trading platform as the …
Emma Roth / The Verge: Bluesky rolls out age verification in the UK to comply with the Online Safety Act; users under 18 or those opting out of verification will get limited access — The UK's Online Safety Act requires platforms with adult content to implement age verification by July 25th.
Tim De Chant / TechCrunch: LGND, which uses vector embeddings to analyze geospatial data and has an enterprise app to query it, raised a $9M seed led by Javelin Venture Partners — The Earth is awash in data about itself. Every day, satellites capture around 100 terabytes of imagery. — But making sense of it isn't always easy.
Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News: iCapital, which makes tools for wealth managers to invest in alternative assets, raised $820M+ at a $7.5B+ valuation, bringing its total funding to $1.5B+ — iCapital, a fintech platform for alternative investments and investors, has raised more than $820 million in a funding round that takes …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources: Apple is planning M5 MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs, a new Mac external monitor, new low-end iPads and M4 iPad Airs, and an iPhone 17e for H1 2026 — Apple Inc. is planning an ambitious pipeline of new products for release during the first half of 2026, including a new low-end iPhone, multiple iPads and upgraded Macs.
Sarah Wynn / The Block: The US Senate confirms Jonathan Gould to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency; Gould was previously the chief legal officer at Bitfury — - Jonathan Gould was previously chief legal officer at Bitfury and, before that, was senior deputy comptroller and chief counsel at the OCC.
Kate Clark / Bloomberg: Harmonic, a startup co-founded by Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev that aims to build AI better at math than humans, raised a $100M Series B at a $875M valuation — Harmonic AI, an artificial intelligence startup co-founded by Robinhood Markets Inc. Chief Executive Officer Vlad Tenev …
Brunella Tipismana Urbano / Bloomberg: Memo: Indeed and Glassdoor, both owned by Recruit, will cut ~1,300 US jobs amid an AI-focused consolidation; Glassdoor's operations will be merged into Indeed — The cuts will mostly affect people in the US, especially within teams including research and development and people and sustainability …
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: YouTube will remove its Trending page and Trending Now list in favor of category-specific charts, says it better aligns with the way content is discovered now — YouTube is removing its Trending page and Trending Now list in favor of category-specific charts, the company announced on Thursday.
Alex Welch / The Wrap: A judge rules Don Lemon's lawsuit against Elon Musk and X can proceed to trial, after Musk canceled a $1.5M/year exclusive X content deal with Lemon in 2024 — “Musk is subject to the legal process, just like everyone else,” the journalist's lawyer says of the axed X content deal
Hayden Field / The Verge: Sources: some AI researchers rejected Meta's offers to stay at jobs that align with their values; far fewer defected from Anthropic and DeepMind than OpenAI — Month after month, message after message, the AI engineer was hearing from Meta recruiters. The recruiters were pestering …
Duncan Riley / SiliconANGLE: Foundation EGI, an “engineering general intelligence” startup that builds custom LLMs for engineering tasks, raised a $23M Series A led by Translink Capital — “Engineering general intelligence” platform startup Foundation EGI revealed today that it has raised $23 million …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Google adds image-to-video generation to Veo 3 in the Gemini app for Pro and Ultra subscribers, and says users have created 40M+ videos since Veo 3's May launch — Google said on Thursday it's adding an image-to-video generation feature to its Veo 3 AI video generator through its Gemini app.
Mike Corder / Associated Press: A Rotterdam court sentences a Russian to three years in prison for breaching international sanctions by sharing sensitive ASML info with someone in Russia — A 43-year-old Russian was convicted Thursday of breaching international sanctions by sharing sensitive information …
Bloomberg: Sources: Meta offered Ruoming Pang a $200M+ pay package over a several-year period in line with Meta's other major AI hires; Apple didn't try to match the offer — Meta hired Ruoming Pang, who ran Apple's AI models team, with a pay package in the hundreds of millions over a several-year period …
Suzanne Smalley / The Record: A German court ruled Meta's tracking pixels embedded in third-party websites and apps violate the EU's GDPR, ordering it to pay €5,000 to a German Facebook user — A German court has ruled that Meta must pay €5,000 ($5,900) to a German Facebook user who sued the platform …
Kate Clark / Bloomberg: Israeli VC firm Cyberstarts has raised a $300M fund to allow long-time employees at some of its portfolio companies to cash out their vested shares — Cyberstarts is launching a fund designed to give portfolio companies an edge in retaining talent — Cyberstarts, the Israeli venture …
Andreessen Horowitz: a16z moves its state of incorporation to Nevada, saying Delaware's Court of Chancery “can at times appear biased against technology startup founders” — It used to be a no-brainer: start a company, incorporate in Delaware. That is no longer the case due to recent actions …
Kalley Huang / The Information: In an internal Meta essay, an outgoing AI researcher says a “culture of fear”, with performance reviews and layoffs, is spreading like “a metastatic cancer” — Over the past month, Meta Platforms has overhauled its stumbling efforts in artificial intelligence by making …
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