Sources: Elon Musk plans to commit ~$45M per month to America PAC, a new pro-Trump super PAC; other backers include 8VC's Joe Lonsdale and the Winklevoss twins
Other backers of America PAC include Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale and the Winklevoss twins
A look at Trump VP pick JD Vance's tech ties, like working at Peter Thiel's Mithril Capital and investing in Rumble; Vance advocated for repealing Section 230
Vance has long had connections to Silicon Valley through his former life as a venture capitalist, including to long-time Donald Trump supporter and investor Peter Thiel.
Nullbulge, a hacktivist group critical of AI art, leaks Disney's alleged Slack messages over “how it handles artist contracts” and AI; Disney is investigating
‘Hacktivist’ group critical of AI-generated art says it has obtained swaths of data from Disney's Slack channels, some of which it has published online
Apple launches the first public betas of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, tvOS 18, and watchOS 11, but without any Apple Intelligence features
You can now download the public betas for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, and watchOS 11. Apple's updated operating systems …
After Trump was shot, Elon Musk backed his bid and made 100+ posts stepping up his political speech, entering uncharted territory for a social media leader
The owner of X broke with tradition at other social media companies to support the former president, as he drives political conversation on his site.
UMG, Sony, and other record labels sue Verizon for $2.6B+ over allegations of violating copyright law by continuing to serve customers accused of pirating music
Lawsuit: One user's IP address was identified in 4,450 infringement notices. — Major record labels sued Verizon on Friday …
Apple adds a “Recovered” album to the Photos app in iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia that shows lost or damaged photos and videos still on the device
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac :
Microsoft researchers unveil SpreadsheetLLM, an encoding method designed to enable LLMs to efficiently understand and analyze complex spreadsheet data
Microsoft researchers have unveiled “SpreadsheetLLM,” a new AI model designed to understand and work with spreadsheets, in a significant development for the world of enterprise AI.
The UK CMA opens a formal investigation into Microsoft's Inflection AI investment, and sets a September 11 deadline on whether to open an in-depth investigation
- CMA said it needs to look further at the firm's partnership — Watchdog is taking closer order of Big Tech investment into AI
Sources: Google offered CISPE ~€455M worth of Google Cloud licenses and €14M in cash on condition that CISPE maintain its antitrust complaint against Microsoft
- Cloud group rejected Google package to keep their EU case — CISPE eventually reached antitrust settlement with Microsoft
Investigation: Apple, Nvidia, Anthropic, and others trained their AI on a dataset that contained YouTube video transcripts, including from the WSJ, MrBeast, MIT
Creators claim their videos were used without their knowledge — AI companies are generally secretive about their sources of training data …
Taboola CEO Adam Singolda says the company has struck a deal with Apple to power native advertising in the Apple News and Apple Stocks apps; TBLA jumps ~5%
- Taboola's effort to build trust with Apple across its various teams and stakeholders was “a multiyear process,'” Singolda said.
Kaspersky plans to close its US business and eliminate US-based positions, following the country's ban on the sale of its antivirus tool starting July 20
offices to close by July 20 Sean Lyngaas / CNN : Russian cyber firm Kaspersky to shut down US operations after ban Cynthia B Brumfield / Metacurity : Kaspersky Decamps the US Following Government Ban ...
Sources: Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz have told a16z staff in recent days that they plan to make large donations to PACs supporting Donald Trump's campaign
Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who run one of Silicon Valley's most prominent venture capital firms, have told the firm's employees …
Twitch streamer Ibai Llanos' fourth boxing tournament in Madrid, with matches between influencers, set a record 3.85M+ concurrent viewers at its peak on July 13
Adam Bumas / Wired :
Researchers: hackers have exploited a Squarespace flaw to hijack domains, apparently mostly from crypto businesses, that were migrated from Google Domains
“If you bought Google Workspace via Google Domains, Squarespace is now your authorized reseller,” the help document explains. … BrianKrebs / @briankrebs@infosec.exchange : At least a dozen organizatio...
Vectara, which offers AI “grounded search”, or Retrieval Augmented Generation, tools for enterprises, raised a $25M Series A, following a $28.5M seed in 2023
Vectara, an early pioneer in Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) technology, is raising a $25 million Series …
Xreal Beam Pro hands-on: the $199+ Android companion to Xreal's AR glasses feels a bit underpowered and unfinished, with too many bugs in AR-specific features
it didn't go as expected
Shanghai government website: Huawei is close to finishing building its ~$1.4B chip R&D center in Shanghai, housing ~30K staff and covering 1.6M square meters
Bloomberg :
Bengaluru-based Moving Tech, which develops the open-source ride-sharing app Namma Yatri with a no-commission model, raised an $11M pre-Series A
Manish Singh / TechCrunch :
IDC and Counterpoint say the global smartphone market grew 6.5% and 6% YoY, respectively, in Q2, helped by China's 618 event discounts; iPhone sales stabilized
Bloomberg :
Sources: activist investor Starboard has built a 6.5%+ stake in Match Group and calls for the company to fix margins or pursue sale; MTCH jumps 8%+
Lauren Thomas / Wall Street Journal :
Analysis: Intel's VC arm is one of the most active foreign investors in Chinese AI and chip startups; Intel Capital owns stakes in 43 China-based tech startups
Financial Times :
An Indian court allows insolvency proceedings to begin against edtech startup Byju's, and installs an interim resolution professional to replace Byju Raveendran
Bloomberg :
As the EU's AI Act takes effect in August, critics say the law is undercooked and regulators left out essential details needed to give clarity to businesses
Javier Espinoza / Financial Times :
London-based Huma Therapeutics, which uses AI to help developers make health apps, raised an $80M Series D at a nearly-$1B valuation, for $300M in total funding
Saritha Rai / Bloomberg :
Sources: Index is Wiz's largest outside shareholder, with an 11%+ stake; Sequoia owns 10%+, Insight owns ~9%, Greenoaks owns ~5%, and Cyberstarts owns ~4%
The Information :
Mexican startup OCN, formerly known as OneCarNow, which offers car rentals for gig workers in Mexico and the US, raised a $86M Series A in equity and debt
Huge appreciation to our advisors and investors that have been backing us since day one: …
YouTube Music tests “AI-generated conversational radio”, which lets Premium users in the US create a custom radio station by “describing exactly what they want”
Sources: China's CAC requires AI companies to prepare between 20K and 70K questions designed to test whether their AI models produce safe answers before release
and Risks Strangling It. Government support helps China's generative AI companies gain ground on U.S. competitors, but political controls threaten to weigh them down. @lizalinwsj https://www.wsj.com/....
UK regulators are probing the competitiveness of digital wallets from Apple, Google, PayPal, and others, and risks the wallets pose to consumers and businesses
ASML-funded Eindhoven University faces questions from the US about admitting Chinese students, as the US increasingly seeks to stem China's chipmaking efforts
Kindo, which helps enterprises securely adopt and manage AI tools, raised $20.6M led by Drive Capital, and buys open-source security project WhiteRabbitNeo
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