OpenAI Became Microsoft’s Scaffolding
In 78 days, Microsoft put Mustafa Suleyman on model building, admitted its largest-scale compute gap, and released MAI-Thinking-1. A revised OpenAI contract opened room for a stack designed to compete with frontier labs.
Microsoft debuts MAI-Thinking-1, its first advanced reasoning AI model, trained “from the ground up on clean data, without distillation from third-party models”
MAI-Thinking-1 is one of seven new models announced at Build 2026. … Microsoft announced a bunch of new in-house AI models …
President Trump signs a scaled-back AI EO that seeks to address AI's cybersecurity threats; sources say it imposes less scrutiny on AI than the scrapped version
President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a scaled-back executive order that seeks to address the cybersecurity threats …
Microsoft unveils Project Solara, an Android-based platform for agent-first devices, with concept hardware and pilots planned at Best Buy, Target, and others
[Editor's Note: Agents of Transformation is an independent GeekWire series, underwritten by Accenture, exploring the adoption and impact of AI and agents.
Bitcoin fell as much as 7% over 24 hours to below $67K on June 2 for the first time since April, following Strategy's first BTC sale since 2022; MSTR fell 9.15%
Souring Bitcoin sentiment has triggered almost $1.5 billion in crypto liquidations over the past 24 hours, as the largest digital asset sank back to a two-month low.
Filing: SpaceX aims to raise $75B in its IPO, selling 555.6M shares at $135 each, which would value the company at almost $1.77T
SpaceX is seeking to raise $75 billion in an initial public offering that would be the biggest of all time, as Elon Musk's rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence …
Mustafa Suleyman says Microsoft aims to become “one of the top four labs in the world”, and “the pivotal moment was renegotiating our contract with OpenAI”
At Microsoft's annual Build conference on Tuesday, the company announced a slew of new or expanded AI initiatives …
Google adds a scam-detection feature, built on RCS, to Android 12 and later that verifies whether a call is coming from the caller's actual Android smartphone
Available for Android 12 and later, the anti-scam feature is baked into Google Dialer, which sends a silent “confirmation signal” …
Microsoft announces Scout, an always-on enterprise AI agent built on OpenClaw that appears as a Microsoft Teams contact to automate tasks such as scheduling
Microsoft's OpenClaw-style agent appears in Teams, just like a human colleague, and automates your dull office tasks.
The UK CMA says publishers in the country will be allowed to opt out of Google's AI Overviews search results, giving Google nine months to implement the changes
Online publishers can choose not to appear in the AI Overviews of Google search results n the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced.
Filing: SpaceX aims to raise $75B in its IPO, selling 555.6M shares at $135 each, an unusual move as companies typically set a price range before their roadshow
SpaceX plans to raise $75 billion in its initial public offering by selling 555.6 million shares at a target price of $135 per share …
Microsoft unveils a Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, featuring Nvidia's Arm-based RTX Spark, 128GB of unified memory, and a 100W thermal envelope, for local AI tasks
The Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is designed for local-first AI development. … Microsoft only just announced a new Surface Laptop Ultra …
The US sanctions Nobitex, Iran's largest crypto exchange, accusing it of helping Iran's government and blacklisted state institutions evade Western sanctions
The United States announced sanctions on Iran's biggest cryptocurrency exchange on Tuesday, accusing it of enabling the Iranian government …
Google introduces Gemma 4 12B, a unified, encoder-free open multimodal model that can run locally on devices with 16GB of VRAM or unified memory
While many AI open source model providers are pursuing larger and more powerful models, Google is still giving attention to the smaller, more local side of the market.
Microsoft unveils Majorana 2, a quantum chip that it developed using AI tools for materials science, and says it will have commercial quantum machines by 2029
Microsoft (MSFT.O) on Tuesday unveiled a new quantum computing chip that it redesigned with the help of AI …
Anthropic says it will extend Project Glasswing to organizations in 15+ countries, sources say giving Mythos access to Five Eyes, NATO, Samsung, SK, and others
About 150 organisations will be given advanced cyber security model following requests from around the world
In a report, UK lawmakers call on the government to end a £330M NHS deal with Palantir and disclose more details of a military contract with the company
British members of parliament are calling on the government to end a major deal with Palantir Technologies Inc. and disclose …
Marvell's stock closed up 32.52% on June 2, its biggest one-day gain, after Jensen Huang called the US data center chipmaker the “next trillion-dollar company”
Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang hailed Marvell Technology as the next trillion-dollar firm, sending its shares up 32% on Tuesday.
Internal memo: Meta is scaling back elements of its MCI employee tracking tool, launched in April to help train its AI models, after staff raised concerns
Meta Platforms is scaling back elements of its employee tracking tool after staff raised concerns about the tool, according to an internal memo reviewed by The Information.
OpenAI diverges from Trump's AI EO in a new policy paper, proposing cyber risk evaluations for advanced AI systems be mandatory and led by CAISI, not the NSA
OpenAI's new proposal comes as its CEO Sam Altman descends on Washington for a series of Wednesday meetings with White House officials …
Security firm Calif says it used OpenAI's Codex to discover HTTP/2 Bomb, a remote DoS exploit affecting web servers like Nginx, Apache HTTPD, and Microsoft IIS
Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a remote denial-of-service exploit that affects major web servers, including NGINX …
Palo Alto Networks reports Q3 revenue up 31% YoY to $3B, including $388M from CyberArk and Chronosphere, above $2.94B est., and forecasts Q4 revenue above est.
- Palo Alto Networks topped Wall Street's third-quarter estimates, citing AI advancements
Apple plans to open an Apple Developer Center in Berlin in 2026, its first center in Europe and fifth globally, offering in-person developer access and sessions
In an announcement that is characteristically well-timed before the upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference which kicks off on Monday …
The EU Commission unveils its tech sovereignty package, including the EU's Cloud and AI Development Act, in a bid to reduce its reliance on US tech companies
The European Commission's so-called tech sovereignty plan aims to boost domestic champions rather than shut out American competitors.
The US data center build-out is falling behind schedule; JP Morgan says 60%+ of data center capacity planned for completion in 2027 isn't yet under construction
Google, which is raising a fresh $80 billion, has a strategy for getting around the biggest bottleneck
Meta is alerting Instagram users whose accounts were taken over using Meta AI chatbot; some hackers claim to still be able to exploit Meta AI chatbot
The widespread hacking campaign that relied on simply asking Meta AI's chatbot to take over a victim's Instagram account appears …
Broadcom reports Q2 revenue up 48% YoY to $22.19B, vs. $22.27B est., and forecasts Q3 semiconductor revenue from AI below estimates; AVGO drops 12%+ after hours
Broadcom (AVGO.O) missed Wall Street expectations for second-quarter revenue on Wednesday, as increased competition …
CrowdStrike reports Q1 revenue up 26% YoY to $1.39B, vs. $1.36B est., and forecasts Q2 revenue of about $1.44B, vs. $1.43B est.; CRWD drops 9%+ after hours
CrowdStrike narrowly beat Wall Street's fiscal first-quarter estimates after the bell on Wednesday, but shares slid 10% following the report.
Sensor Tower: ChatGPT becomes the fastest app by far to hit 1B global MAUs; ChatGPT's MAUs are up 62% YoY in Q2 to date and Claude's MAUs are up 640% YoY to 56M
OpenAI's ChatGPT has crossed 1 billion global monthly active app users, becoming the fastest app ever to reach the milestone …
Email: Google asked Google Play app developers to “join a confidential content offer pilot”, offering to pay for codebase access to train its AI coding tools
Google is trying to buy code from some Android developers as part of a “confidential” program.
Microsoft announces seven AI models, including a reasoning one and an “ultra efficient” coding one fine-tuned for GitHub, for businesses and to lower its costs
Frontier models for reasoning and coding... …
Alibaba releases Qwen3.7-Plus, a multimodal proprietary model with a 1M-token context window, costing $2 per 1M tokens, 60% less than the text-only Qwen3.7-Max
However, like its immediate predecessor Qwen3.7-Plus is available only under a “closed” commercial license via proprietary application …
Q&A with labor economist Kathryn Anne Edwards on why much of the AI jobs panic is overblown, why the US should start to plan for AI job loss scenarios, and more
Labor economist Kathryn Anne Edwards isn't worried AI will create a new class of permanently idle Americans …
Amazon announces new visual search features, including displaying AI-generated images of products within its app based on users' search queries
In what may be one of the more questionable uses of AI to date, Amazon announced on Wednesday that it will display AI-generated images …
Microsoft announces developer tools for Windows: a set of Linux-like command line utilities called Coreutils, WSL containers, an Intelligent Terminal, and more
UNIX-style core utilities for Windows.Windows Developer Blog:Build 2026: Furthering Windows as the trusted platform for developmentHamza Usmani /Microsoft:Announcing Intelligent Terminal 0.1Michael La...
Microsoft unveils Microsoft Execution Containers, a Windows-level sandbox for AI agents, and says partners OpenAI, Nvidia, Manus, and Nous Research are using it
Michael Nuñez /VentureBeat:
Google unveils five AI data center water commitments, including becoming water positive by 2030, local infrastructure investments, and transparency about usage
The company promises to replenish more water than it uses by 2030. … In the face of widespread backlash to the AI data center …
The US and other Five Eyes nations warn that China is flooding online job platforms with fake profiles and offers targeting government and military personnel
Nations in the Five Eyes intelligence partnership warned that fake profiles and job offers are targeting military officers, spies …
Leading the Future, the pro-AI super PAC backed by Greg Brockman, appears to be linked to multiple sockpuppet accounts, including a purported anti-AI activist
A Pro-AI Super PAC's Secret Meme Sockpuppets
ESA and YouGov: 212.3M people in the US between the ages of 5 and 90 play video games every week, up 3% from 2025; the average age of players has risen to 37
Two-thirds of Americans play an hour or more of video games per week, according to a new report published Wednesday by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA).
Town, which is developing personalized AI assistants that connect to users' email and calendar, raised a $55M Series A led by a16z
Jean-Denis Gréze's AI assistant is a silver fox who wears a little satchel, and her name is Ivy. — Ivy is Gréze's Townie …
University of Toronto researchers claim to have developed a “worm” powered by open-source AI that exploits known flaws and tailors its attacks for each computer
Researchers at the University of Toronto showed how hackers could use artificial intelligence to create a program …
Wordsmith, whose AI tools help in-house lawyers draft contracts, handle legal questions, and more, raised a $70M Series B, bringing its total funding to $100M
The biggest promise of artificial intelligence in law is not that lawyers will work faster. It's that companies will need fewer of them on the outside.
Europol and international law enforcement agencies dismantle nine organized crime groups and arrest 29 in an illegal streaming crackdown, removing 27,000+ URLs
European and international law enforcement agencies have dismantled nine organized crime groups and arrested 29 suspects in a major crackdown on illegal streaming operations.
Sixteen mathematicians publish the Leiden Declaration on AI and Mathematics to warn of potential threats to the field, such as around accuracy and reliability
How India's ambitions to build and export a sovereign AI template are colliding with structural constraints, including a dependence on foreign AI infrastructure
India hopes to build an AI model for the Global South, but a late start and dependence on foreign AI infrastructure are testing that vision.
GitLab cuts 350 staff, or ~14% of its workforce, pivoting “to be the trusted enterprise platform for software creation in the AI era”, and exits 22 countries
The company will also exit 22 countries, reducing its geographic footprint by about 37% — GitLab is cutting 350 full-time employees …
UnearthInsight: Indian IT companies have spent a record $7.1B on acquisitions since 2025 to gain clients and market share, as AI pricing pressure weakens growth
Indian IT firms are buying smaller companies to boost growth. Acquisitions are happening due to AI's impact on pricing and organic growth.
GitHub unveils a GitHub Copilot desktop app in technical preview, which introduces a new feature called canvases for bidirectional work between users and agents
Mario Rodriguez /The GitHub Blog:
Meta introduces Meta Business Agent, an AI agent that lets businesses on WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger answer customer questions, close sales, and more
For years, WhatsApp has been a communication layer for businesses of all sizes around the world.
Doc: Apple agreed in May to submit the financials of its India business to the country's antitrust body as part of an investigation over alleged market abuses
Apple has agreed to submit the financials of its India business to the country's antitrust body as part of an investigation …
French quantum computing startup Quobly, which is developing silicon-based quantum computers, raised a €115M Series A led by Bpifrance, SEALSQ, and STMicro
Mastercard says it plans to offer on-chain settlement using several regulated USD stablecoins, initially supporting USDC, PYUSD, USDG, USDP, RLUSD, and SoFiUSD
Meta is spinning off Supernatural into an independent company, Supernatural Health, after earlier saying the VR fitness game would stop getting new content
The game is being spun out into an independent company called Supernatural Health. … A few months ago, Meta effectively handed Supernatural …
Digital i: YouTube overtakes Netflix in average daily viewing globally, rising from 87.2 minutes in 2024 to 99.1 in 2025, while Netflix fell from 100.5 to 93.4
Analysts say Alphabet-owned platform's evolution is one of the defining media shifts of the decade
London-based Gigaton, which is developing AI to automate industrial control systems for cement, steel, glass, and chemicals plants, raised a $26M Series A
How Revolut founder Nikolay Storonsky's Elon Musk-style pay packages pushed his fortune to ~$20.4B, making him the UK's richest person, ahead of a planned IPO
CEO Nik Storonsky turned a scrappy startup into a fintech juggernaut — now he has to convince the world that his company is as safe as a bank
Internal documents: Meta is considering tiered pricing for “Hatch”, its planned OpenClaw-like AI agent tool, including a $200-per-month premium subscription
Meta Platforms is considering charging up to $200 a month for its planned consumer version of the OpenClaw AI agent tool …
Nvidia acquired Kumo, which sells predictive AI software to enterprises, a source says for $400M+; PitchBook: Kumo raised $37M at a $250M valuation in 2022
Nvidia has bought Kumo AI, a five-year-old startup that sells predictive AI software to enterprises, for more than $400 million, said a person with knowledge of the deal.
AI music startup Suno raised $400M led by Bond at a $5.4B valuation, up from $2.45B after raising $250M in November 2025, and passed 2M subscribers in February
Suno Inc., a startup that enables people to make music using artificial intelligence, has raised $400 million at a valuation of $5.4 billion.
Microsoft and Mayo Clinic partner for an AI model trained on Mayo's medical data, with plans to build an AI healthcare assistant and AI tools for clinicians
Clare Duffy /CNN:
Terra AI, which develops AI models for mining companies to better map underground resources, raised a $20M Series A led by Khosla Ventures
Mining AI startup Terra AI closed a $20 million Series A led by Khosla Ventures and including the VC arm of mining giant BHP, CEO John Mern tells Axios Pro.
Lassie, whose AI agent helps dental practices automate admin work, raised a $35M Series A led by a16z, a source says, at a ~$250M valuation
Lassie's founders went hands-on, then built an AI agent to help dental practices save dozens of hours of busywork. Now, a16z has signed on.
An analysis of 600+ Elon Musk claims over 15 years finds he met deadlines 19% of the time; he achieved 75% of his 2015 goals on time, but under 50% of 2020 ones
Baidu CFO Henry He says the company plans to spin off and list its chip unit Kunlunxin in Hong Kong and Shanghai in 2026, making it more like a “neutral player”
Plans to spin off and list Kunlunxin Technology in Hong Kong and Shanghai are on track — Baidu expects to list its chip unit …
Israeli startup ZutaCore, which builds direct-to-chip liquid data center cooling systems, raised a $100M Series C from Mitsubishi and more at a $600M valuation
Samsung, Mitsubishi Electric and Carrier back data center infrastructure company from Sderot.
Meta is testing a Series feature, letting select creators make episodic Reels that are placed in a dedicated hub on their profile, using both old and new Reels
Email: the EU Parliament plans to replace Google with the French search engine Qwant as the default search tool on its computers, seeking digital sovereignty
Forage, a payments processor that helps retailers and food-delivery companies accept EBT cards, raised a $40M Series B led by Mouro Capital at a $225M valuation
Forage secures venture funding as it expands food-stamp payment processing despite declining federal enrollment
How startups Westmag, which raised an $11M, a16z-led seed in August 2025, and Atlas are seeking to make actuators, the foundation of hardware, outside of China
OpenAI unveils new Codex plugins for tasks related to public equity investment, banking and sales, and other roles, and plans to integrate Codex into ChatGPT
Google says it is testing a new toggle inside its Search Console with some UK domain owners, letting them decide whether their sites appear in AI search results
The company says opting out won't impact placement in regular searches. — More than three years after it began rolling …
The EU General Court annuls the EU's designation of Meta's Marketplace as a DMA gatekeeper, citing partial evidence, but upholds the designation for Messenger
How OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI startups are pursuing recursive self-improvement, in a bid to build AI that can improve itself with little to no human input
Industry chiefs say technology within their grasp is the key to superintelligence. Safety experts say we're not ready.
Anthropic unveils a Services Track for its Claude Partner Network, a ranking based on what companies built with Claude, and releases a Claude Partner Hub portal
AI giant is solidifying its Claude Partner Network to help demonstrate ‘durability of revenue’ as it nears going public
Google sold $35B in stock in its equity raise this week, up from its planned $30B and taking its total funding to $85B; a source says it contacted ~75 investors
$35 billion — That's how much stock Google parent Alphabet ended up selling this week in underwritten public offerings …
Perplexity unveils a Computer feature that splits tasks across local models and cloud-based models, to keep private data on-device and maximize token efficiency
Uber limits all employees to $1,500 in monthly token spending per AI coding tool “to responsibly encourage agentic AI adoption and experimentation at scale”
Apoha, which is developing a “Liquid State Intelligence” data layer to measure molecules in the real world, emerges from stealth with $36M led by Singular
Supercell, King, and Sybo say the EU's Digital Fairness Act, which requires pop-ups showing virtual currencies' real-world values, could make games “unplayable”
Makers of ‘Clash of Clans’, ‘Candy Crush Saga’ and ‘Subway Surfers’ warn EU proposals could throttle rare tech success
Boston-based software monitoring startup Coralogix raised a $200M Series F at a $1.6B post-money valuation, up from $1B+ after a $115M Series E in June 2025
Barcelona-based HR software startup Factorial raised a $150M Series D led by General Catalyst at a $2.5B valuation to expand AI agents and grow in Germany
Israeli data security startup Cyera raised $300M at a $12B valuation, after raising $400M at a $9B valuation in January
Source: a CoreWeave-tied data center raised $900M via five-year junk bonds, priced at par to yield 7.5%, as the sector increasingly turns to high-yield bonds
Collate, whose AI tools automate paperwork for life sciences companies, raised $95M led by Redpoint at a ~$1B valuation, bringing its total funding to $125M
In this week's edition of InnovationRx, we look at cancer breakthroughs from the ASCO conference, Clear's move into healthcare, Harrison.ai's U.S. expansion, and more.
Google selling $10B of equity to Berkshire is fascinating and functions as a signal that AI demand is high, in a world where the most cash buys the most compute
Sources: DeepSeek is set to raise ~$7.4B in its first funding round from investors, including Tencent and CATL, at a valuation of between ~$52B and ~$59B
AI market research platform AlphaSense raised $350M from Vitruvian, Accenture, and others at a $7.5B valuation, up from $4B in 2024, ahead of a possible IPO
Firm raises $350 million from investors including Accenture and JPMorgan's asset-management unit.
Oxford Quantum Circuits, a UK-based startup building and deploying quantum computers, has raised a $350M Series C led by Bullhound Capital
An interview with Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman on Microsoft's models catching up to the state of the art from months ago, refusing to distill AI, and more
Reed Albergotti /Semafor:
Current and former Meta employees detail Alexandr Wang's efforts to revive Meta's AI edge; Muse Spark has good visual understanding but trails rivals in coding
Hannah Murphy /Financial Times:
Thrive Capital spinoff Thrive Holdings commits $1B to acquire local accounting firms through its subsidiary, Current, and use AI to automate their workflows
Layup Parts, which aims to digitize the composite manufacturing supply chain for aerospace, defense, and motorsports, raised a $42M Series A led by Marlinspike
Analysis: 10 Trump officials, including special envoy Steve Witkoff, reported holding stakes in SpaceX or xAI collectively worth $9.9M+, ahead of SpaceX's IPO
SpaceX's initial public offering will likely make President Donald Trump's already wealthy administration even richer.
Analysis: 10 Trump officials, including special envoy Steve Witkoff, reported holding stakes in SpaceX or xAI collectively worth $9.9M+, ahead of SpaceX's IPO
@bloomberg.com $SPCX — www.bloomberg.com/news/article... [image]
The EU's Cloud and AI Development Act aims to triple data center capacity in five to seven years; the Chips Act 2.0 recommends allowing direct EU investments
Gian Volpicelli /Bloomberg:
Nearly 40% of Alphabet's planned ~$85B in equity offerings for AI will go toward covering tax obligations tied to employee equity awards, amid the AI talent war
Cory Weinberg /The Information:NEW