xAI introduces Grok 4, trained on its Colossus supercomputer, with multimodal features, faster reasoning, Grok 4 Voice, Grok 4 Code, a new interface, and more
Deeper thinking and greater reasoning is promised — An hour after the live stream was supposed to start last night (July 9) …
UK police arrest four people, a 20-year-old woman and three men aged 17 to 19, in connection to the M&S and Co-op hacks that began in mid-April and caused havoc
Four people have been arrested by police investigating the cyber-attacks that have caused havoc at M&S and the Co-op.
Artificial Analysis benchmarks: Grok 4 is now the leading AI model, a first for xAI; Grok 4's per-token pricing is more expensive than Gemini 2.5 Pro's and o3's
xAI gave us early access to Grok 4 - and the results are in. Grok 4 is now the leading AI model. We have run our full suite of benchmarks and Grok 4 achieves an Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index ...
Elon Musk addresses Grok's antisemitic replies, saying that “Grok was too compliant to user prompts” and “too eager to please and be manipulated, essentially”
Herb Scribner / Axios :
Sources: Meta offered Ruoming Pang a $200M+ pay package over a several-year period, in line with its 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 …
xAI launches Grok 4 Heavy, a “multi-agent version” of Grok 4 that offers increased performance, and unveils SuperGrok Heavy, a $300/month AI subscription plan
Elon Musk's AI company, xAI, late on Wednesday released its latest flagship AI model, Grok 4, and unveiled …
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.
SAG-AFTRA says Hollywood video game voice and motion capture actors signed a new contract with game studios, including AI protections like consent requirements
Hollywood video game voice and motion capture actors signed a new contract with video game studios on Wednesday with a focus …
Sources: OpenAI plans to release an AI web browser that keeps some user interactions in a ChatGPT-like native interface instead of clicking through to websites
OpenAI is close to releasing an AI-powered web browser that will challenge Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) market-dominating Google Chrome …
A researcher says 245 extensions with nearly 909K downloads override security protections to turn browsers into engines that scrape websites for a paid service
Extensions installed on almost 1 million devices have been overriding key security protections to turn browsers into engines …
The EU publishes a voluntary code of practice to help companies follow its AI Act, including requiring developers to provide up-to-date AI feature documentation
The European Union published a code of practice to help companies follow its landmark AI Act that includes copyright protections …
The Allen Institute for AI launches FlexOlmo, an LLM architecture that lets data owners remove their data from an AI model even after it was used for training
A novel approach from the Allen Institute for AI enables data to be removed from an artificial intelligence model even after it has already been used for training.
In an internal Meta essay, an outgoing AI researcher says Meta's “culture of fear”, with performance reviews and rolling layoffs, is like “a metastatic cancer”
Kalley Huang / The Information :
Electricity bills are projected to rise 20%+ in parts of PJM Interconnection's 13-state territory as the largest US power grid is under strain from data centers
America's largest power grid is under strain as data centers and AI chatbots consume power faster than new plants can be built.
A German court rules 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 …
Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act requires all new US border surveillance towers to be “autonomous”, effectively granting Anduril a monopoly on tower contracts
Anduril Industries is a major beneficiary of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which includes a section that essentially grants … Bluesky: @jesspish , @mmasnick , @eff.org , and @sambiddle.com Bluesky: ...
The Internet Watch Foundation identified 1,286 AI-generated videos of child sexual abuse in H1 2025 globally, up from just two in H1 2024
Organizations that track the material are reporting a surge in A.I. images and videos, which are threatening to overwhelm law enforcement.
Mark Zuckerberg's top AI talent hiring blitz seems to be causing a halo effect as other leading scientists join Meta in the race to build “superintelligent” AI
Parmy Olson / Bloomberg :
Sources: Linda Yaccarino told close contacts that some advertisers returning and xAI acquiring X, which effectively demoted her, made it a good time to depart
The X CEO stabilized the social-media company's ad business, but contended with an erratic boss and pressure to move faster
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 …
Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie is launching a biweekly column on Lachlan Cartwright's Breaker, a publication hosted on Substack rival beehiiv
Good day to be the CEO of beehiiv. — ∙ Paid — Good morning everyone. Your song of the summer might be Sabrina Carpenter's Manchild or Morgan Wallen's What I Want. See also Mediagazer
Condé Nast and Hearst sign multiyear agreements with Amazon to license their content for use in Amazon's AI shopping assistant Rufus; the terms are undisclosed
Condé Nast and Hearst have signed multi-year agreements with Amazon to license their content for use in its AI shopping assistant Rufus.
Disney and ITV agree to stream hit shows like The Bear and Love Island on each other's platforms for the first time, from July 16; both will be able to sell ads
Daniel Thomas / Financial Times :
Agora, which offers a white-labeling service that lets companies launch self-branded versions of its stablecoin, AUSD, raised a $50M Series A led by Paradigm
Agora cofounders Joe McGrady, Nick Van Eck, and Drake Evans — COURTESY OF AGORA — On Thursday, Agora became …
Sources: Amazon is weighing another multibillion-dollar investment in Anthropic, as it seeks to position itself ahead of Google, which has also invested $3B+
The tech groups are increasingly tied to each other and act as a bulwark to Microsoft-OpenAI partnership
Sources: Apple is planning to introduce its first Vision Pro upgrade as early as 2025, with an M4 chip and a new strap, and a lighter, cheaper version for 2027
so, advantage: Meta Robert Scoble / @scobleizer : I hear the next Apple Vision Pro is still heavy and expensive, but has a way faster chip, with a lot better hardware for running AI workloads, which m...
Sources: Nvidia plans to launch a Blackwell RTX Pro 6000 version for China, modified to meet President Trump's tightened export controls, as soon as September
Financial Times :
Despite continued technological advances, US emergency alerts often fail to reach those in danger, as alert fatigue leads many people to shut off notifications
Residents increasingly tune out phone messages about floods and fires—if the alerts make it to them at all
PowerLines: US power providers have sought regulatory approval for $29B in consumer rate increases in H1 2025, up 142% YoY, following booming data center demand
Martha Muir / Financial Times :
a16z moves its state of incorporation to Nevada, saying that “Delaware courts can at times appear biased against technology startup founders and their boards”
a16z.com/were-leaving... X: @writeclimbrun : wow. a16z is leaving Delaware for Nevada. the blog post is crazy. https://a16z.com/... @bhorowitz : We are outta Delaware and now in Nevada https://a16z.co...
Source: in a presentation, Microsoft CCO Judson Althoff said AI saved Microsoft $500M+ in 2024 in its call centers and boosted employee and client satisfaction
Oooh someone tell Gordo to do AI Myrtle. [embedded post] @arcendus : Who cares what they said? People lie all the time, especially when it comes to the benefits, capabilities et. al. of AI. — Data...
Riyadh-based food delivery service Jahez agrees to acquire a 77% stake in Qatari e-commerce platform Snoonu for $245M in cash and stock, set to close in H2 2025
Yassmin Jabri / Bloomberg :
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 …
Amazon expands its Now service in India to New Delhi, offering deliveries in as little as 10 minutes, after launching the service in Bengaluru in December 2024
Sankalp Phartiyal / Bloomberg :
TSMC reports Q2 revenue up 39% YoY to ~$32B, beating estimates; in June, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei reassured shareholders that AI chip demand still outstripped supply
Debby Wu / Bloomberg :
AI agent Manus' team relocated its HQ to Singapore in June and started recruiting there, while parent company Butterfly Effect reportedly remains based in China
Hannah Wang / South China Morning Post :
Google launches AI ad tools in India; the country repealing its so-called “Google Tax” has made it more attractive to global tech companies selling online ads
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch :
Sources: LangChain, which helps developers use off-the-shelf AI models to create new apps, raised $100M led by IVP at a $1.1B valuation
Rashi Shrivastava / Forbes :
Israeli VC firm Cyberstarts raised a $300M fund to let its portfolio companies' long-tenured employees with recurring opportunities cash out their vested shares
Kate Clark / Bloomberg :
MaintainX, which makes maintenance and operations software, raised a $150M Series D at a $2.5B valuation, bringing its total funding to $254M
Ateev Bhandari / Reuters :
Nominal, which develops AI agents for ERP systems to automate tasks for finance teams, raised a $20M Series A led by Next47, bringing its total funding to ~$30M
Meir Orbach / CTech :
Sources: Groq has talked with investors about raising $300M to $500M at a $6B post-investment valuation, which would double its $2.8B valuation from August 2024
The Information :
Singapore-based Augmentus, which is developing a no-code interface for factory engineers to deploy autonomous robotic surface finishing systems, raised $11M
Duncan Riley / SiliconANGLE :
Shopify: Revolutionizing Commerce with Winter Edition '26
Over 150+ new features transform how merchants build, design, and grow—with technology that amplifies creative vision.
Email fatigue is real: Here's how smart email tools help you regain control
Picture this: It's Monday morning. You walk into the office feeling energized and ready to take on the week.
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data
Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.