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Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:

Anthropic says auto mode will be the default in Claude Code for Pro, Max, Team plans, starting on Aug. 14, claiming it's good enough at catching harmful actions

Hayden Field / The Verge:

A look at "Spiralism", a quasi-spiritual movement that grew in 2025 from human-AI conversations after sycophantic GPT-4o updates and expanded ChatGPT memory

Alexander Osipovich / Wall Street Journal:

A profile of Russia's A7, a payment network that helps Russia bypass Western sanctions, handling ~20% of payments in Russian foreign trade, or $100B+ annually

Hiroko Tabuchi / New York Times:

Amazon is backing a 7.65 GW gas plant for an off-grid TX AI data center, potentially the largest single US emissions source, at odds with its 2040 net-zero goal

Bloomberg:

South Korea's AI-driven chip industry boom is reordering the country's society, changing expectations around fairness, careers, and even culture and dating

Zusha Elinson / Wall Street Journal:

How Amazon and Gilroy, California, quietly negotiated a $2B data center project that AWS applied to build in 2020, without any public meetings or votes

New York Times:

A profile of Tatyana Kim, founder of Russia's largest online retailer Wildberries, which has lost an estimated third of its warehouse space to Ukrainian attacks

Nikkei Asia:

Analysis: South Korea and Taiwan each surpassed Japan in total exports for the first time in H1 2026, as AI demand drove explosive growth in chip exports

@xcreators:

X announces the Original Content Rewards Program and will discontinue Revenue Sharing on Sep. 7, saying existing Revenue Sharing members can apply for access

The Information:

Nvidia agrees to invest $2B in Lancium, the power infrastructure developer of the Stargate campus in Texas, plus $1B more if it hits certain thresholds

SemiAnalysis:

Analysis: SpaceX is on track to build ~10 GW of compute capacity by 2027's end, with 6 GW-8 GW in 2027 alone, which could drive $300B in annual revenue run-rate

Marcus Mendes / 9to5Mac:

Anthropic announces a feature that allows different Claude Code sessions to message each other with updates and other information, available on macOS and Linux

Financial Times:

Filings: Moonshot restructured its China-based entity from a limited liability company to a joint stock company in its first visible step toward a Hong Kong IPO

Bloomberg:

The US OCC denies Dutch fintech Bunq's application for a national bank charter, citing the need for more clarity on its business plan to expand in the US

Wall Street Journal:

Situational Awareness invested $500M, including $400M this week, into Source Foundry, a startup that plans to develop new AI chip manufacturing tools

Jasper Goodman / Politico:

The Clarity Act faces uncertainty after Senate Republicans delayed a vote until after their August recess, pushing it to September, just weeks before midterms

Bailey Lipschultz / Bloomberg:

Data center operator Switch filed confidentially for a US IPO, and a listing could take place as soon as November; Ben Horowitz is joining its board

Arriana McLymore / Reuters:

Retailers are updating their websites to rank highly in chatbot results, while making sure purchases are done on their own sites to collect customer data

Sara Fischer / Axios:

TMTG interim CEO Kevin McGurn says the company is pulling back from a pair of Crypto.com deals to focus on its media arm and its pending merger with TAE

Grace Kay / The Information:

Cursor told staff on Thursday that SpaceX could complete its $60B acquisition as soon as next week and the Cursor brand name will likely be phased out

Reuters:

The US Treasury sanctions Dubai-based unlicensed crypto exchange Shelbit, alleging it processed millions in crypto for IRGC and other Iran-linked groups

Stevie Bonifield / The Verge:

Microsoft plans to end support for Manifest V2 extensions in Edge starting this month, following Google Chrome, and for enterprise users in early 2027

Rahul Raj / EU-Startups:

Munich-based NavVis, which provides enterprises with spatial data on factories, plants, buildings, and more, raised an $85M Series D led by The Jordan Company

The Information:

Legal AI startup Harvey is in talks to raise $500M+ at a $15.5B valuation, up from $11B in March, and is generating $350M+ in annualized revenue

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Cloudflare debuts Kitesurf, a cloud-hosted browser for AI agents built on top of its Workers serverless service, available for free while in beta in Browser Run

Axios:

OpenAI says it has expanded safety testing around its upcoming model Astra as it "cannot rule out" critical cyber capabilities, potentially delaying its launch

Maria Armental / Wall Street Journal:

Singapore-based Multiplier, which acquires accounting firms to boost their growth with AI tools, raised a $35M Series B led by TheGP at a $300M valuation

Brian Steinberg / Variety:

Nielsen agrees to acquire and take digital media monitor DoubleVerify private in an all-cash deal with a ~$2.15B enterprise value, expected to close by Q1 2027

Mars W. Mosqueda Jr / DealStreetAsia:

Singapore-based AI infrastructure startup Acrab raised a $130M Series B, bringing its total funding to more than $480M

Nat Ives / Wall Street Journal:

Ad measurement company VideoAmp cut ~20% of its staff this week, citing that "AI is a major platform shift"; sources: 50 to 60 were laid off, including the CTO

Anthropic:

Anthropic updates Claude Fable 5's biology safeguards to reduce false positives, cutting biology-related "fallbacks" by ~85% in testing across product surfaces

Black Hat on YouTube:

At Black Hat, OpenAI reconstructs the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident and examines its implications for AI security, cyber resilience, and alignment

Deborah Sophia / Reuters:

Take-Two reports Q1 bookings down 3% YoY to $1.39B, vs. $1.38B est., forecasts Q2 and FY 2027 bookings below est., and highlights excitement for GTA VI's launch

Allie Garfinkle / Fortune:

Livestream shopping app Whatnot raised a $545M Series G led by Iconiq, Lightspeed, and Avra at a $20B valuation, up from an $11.5B valuation in October 2025

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:

Athens-based Omilia, which builds self-learning AI agents that work across different customer contact points, raised a $67M Series B led by Expedition Growth

Mackenzie Hawkins / Bloomberg:

The US Commerce Department's BIS is reviewing how Chinese AI companies access Nvidia chips overseas, including by legally renting foreign data centers

Reuters:

The White House imposes price floors and a 15% tariff on products made from polysilicon, the raw material used in chips that is primarily produced by China

Nic Fildes / Financial Times:

Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes says he will buy $250M of company shares after strong Q4 results dispelled some fears that AI threatens its business model

Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg:

SK Hynix plans a $38B chipmaking expansion in South Korea, including building a ~$24.7B DRAM facility in Yongin and a ~$13.3B NAND fabrication plant in Cheongju

SemiAnalysis:

Analysis: Google DeepMind has lost frontier-model momentum amid leadership and RL talent departures, with Google Cloud emerging as a winner with more compute

Bloomberg:

Up to five people tied to US Cyber Command died by suicide from early June to early July 2026, prompting it to flag a potential suicide cluster

Yuliya Chernova / Wall Street Journal:

Filing: ex-a16z partner Bryan Kim is forming venture firm Mido Capital; sources: he plans to raise ~$100M for a fund backing early-stage AI and other startups

Financial Times:

ByteDance is pretraining an AI model with up to 10T parameters, roughly 3x larger than Kimi K3 and larger than the 8T estimate for Anthropic's Mythos 5

Bloomberg:

An addendum to the bipartisan Clarity Act would force President Trump to divest from crypto businesses, letting him defer paying taxes on the gains

Nichiket Sunil / Reuters:

Sydney-based AI data center company Firmus raised $2B in funding from Coatue, Nvidia, and others at a $10.5B post-money valuation, up from $5.5B in April

Ram Iyer / TechCrunch:

Naïve, which provides infrastructure for AI agents to handle most business operations, raised a $28.5M Series A led by Nexus, bringing its total funding to $32M

Reuters:

Alibaba plans to ask heavy commercial users of its next Qwen open model for a share of revenue; Moonshot's Kimi K3 requires up to a 30% revenue share

Will Knight / Wired:

Security researchers claim that Kimi K3 went outside of its sandbox during defensive cybersecurity tests, but did not hack anything after accessing the internet

Casey Newton / Platformer:

Q&A with Replit CEO Amjad Masad on why "vibe coding" is never about coding, the SaaSpocalypse, the "self-driving company", a CEO is a glorified router, and more

Iain Martin / Forbes:

A profile of DDN, a managed data storage company whose annual revenue is expected to grow from $300M pre-AI boom to $1B by year's end, fueled by AI partnerships

KOB 4:

New Mexico trial: a judge orders Meta to pay $567M and make changes for underage users after finding its platforms helped create a public nuisance harming teens

Bloomberg:

Alphabet raises $25B in an investment-grade bond sale; sources say it attracted ~$115B of peak demand and that Alphabet plans to issue US debt twice per year

Reinhardt Krause / Investor's Business ...:

Twilio reports Q2 revenue up 22% YoY to $1.5B, above $1.43B est., and forecasts Q3 revenue above estimates; TWLO jumps 16%+ after hours

The Information:

Canva cut its revenue growth forecast as popular new AI features drove up costs, forced it to slow their rollout, and more Canva users moved to ChatGPT

Angela Palumbo / Barron's Online:

Cloudflare reports Q2 revenue up 36% YoY to $696.1M, above $665M est., and forecasts Q3 revenue above estimates; NET jumps 17%+ after hours

Koyena Das / Reuters:

Instacart reports Q2 revenue up 14% YoY to $1.04B, GTV up 14% to $10.35B, above est., forecasts Q3 GTV and core profit above est.; CART jumps 8%+ after hours

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Roku reports Q2 revenue up 22% YoY to $1.35B vs. $1.3B est., net income of $164.2M, ad revenue up 25% to $673M, and subscription revenue up 26% to $548M

Kelly Cloonan / Wall Street Journal:

Lyft reports Q2 revenue up 16% YoY to $1.84B, vs. $1.81B est., rides up 12% to 262.4M, and expects Q3 gross bookings growth to slow to 15%-19%

Natalie Lung / Bloomberg:

Airbnb reports Q2 revenue up 17% YoY to $3.6B, Nights and Seats Booked up 10% to 148.3M, above est., lifts 2026 revenue forecast; ABNB jumps 10%+ after hours

Tobias Mann / The Register:

AMD acquires Toronto-based Taalas, which integrates model weights directly into silicon to boost inference performance, for an undisclosed sum

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:

OpenAI's new device, slated for 2027, is a hockey puck-sized smart speaker with moving parts that help give it personality, likely costing $300+

Lara O'Reilly / Business Insider:

Gravity, which places text-based ads within AI chatbots, raised a $30.5M Series A co-led by Lightspeed and Committed, taking its total funding to $38.5M

Anna Tong / Forbes:

Docs: US data labeling companies, like Surge AI and Mercor, that sell training datasets to US AI labs and the government are also selling them to Chinese labs

Brody Ford / Bloomberg:

Figma CEO Dylan Field forfeits ~$46M in stock awards to revive investor confidence amid AI disruption fears; FIG is down ~77% from its peak more than a year ago

Carl Zimmer / New York Times:

Scientists trained AI on genetic sequences to design viruses not found in nature, yielding 16 viable viruses that can infect bacteria but don't threaten humans

Julia Hornstein / The Information:

Panthalassa, which aims to power data centers in the ocean using energy generated by waves, is raising $225M at a ~$2B valuation, up from $1B in May

Bailey Lipschultz / Bloomberg:

Nscale told potential backers it generated $100M+ in Q2 revenue, up from ~$37M in Q1, and has ~$51B in contracts, ahead of a possible September US IPO

Terrence O'Brien / The Verge:

Suno says it will adopt new audio watermarking tech, fingerprinting tech, transparency tools, and a new download policy to limit the spread of spammy AI music

Reuters:

Google and data: hackers used phone calls, phishing websites, and "meticulous" tactics to target dozens of US PE firms and other businesses over the past month

Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:

OpenAI debuts Agent Plugins, an open standard for bundling skills and MCP servers, and says Amazon, Cursor, Microsoft, and Vercel are on its steering committee

Nate Wolf / Barron's Online:

Western Digital falls 10%+ after issuing guidance that didn't quite match those of Seagate; Q4 revenue rose 44% YoY to $3.75B, above a $3.7B estimate

Victoria Turk / Wired:

Google DeepMind says its WeatherNext model can accurately predict a storm's track and intensity using lower-resolution weather data, and open sources the model

The Information:

Nvidia is considering lower-memory versions of its Rubin Ultra GPU due to potential issues securing enough HBM, and has tested at least three versions

The Information:

Stripe recently entered exclusive talks to buy OpenRouter in a cash-and-stock deal that would value the startup for close to $10B

Mark Bergen / Bloomberg:

Demis Hassabis stepping down as Google DeepMind CEO may weaken the UK tech scene, marking an end for Hassabis' effort to keep his native UK as an AI stronghold

Katherine Hamilton / Wall Street Journal:

Datadog drops 15%+ after forecasting weaker full-year sales due to reduced usage from its largest client, a leading AI company; Q2 revenue rises 36% to $1.12B

Tim Fernholz / TechCrunch:

WindBorne, which deploys weather balloons to collect data for its AI weather forecasting models, raised a $37M Series B at a $250M post-money valuation

Reuters:

SpaceX and Tesla plan to initially invest $16.8B to build Terafab in Grimes County, Texas; combined demand from SpaceX and Tesla is forecast to top 1 TW

Artificial Analysis:

Meta's Muse Spark 1.2 scores 54 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, putting Meta next to SpaceXAI in a tie for third place amongst US labs

Eduardo Baptista / Reuters:

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