Seven Inches of Trust
Apple is reportedly targeting 2026 for a 7-inch hub with facial recognition, a new Apple TV, and a refreshed HomePod mini. Matter turns compatibility into shared infrastructure, putting identity-aware permissions at the center of the smart-home contest.
An Agentic Receipt Needs Three Names
Three months after scaling back ChatGPT checkout, OpenAI partnered with Visa to let agents buy with user permission. Visa’s stablecoin platform targets roughly 15,000 institutions and 200M+ merchants.
The $5B Cluster Nvidia Doesn’t Need to Own
SpaceX absorbed xAI while Nvidia reportedly committed $5 billion to independent SSI, enough to expand its compute tenfold. GPU finance, developer interfaces and repository trust determine how that capacity becomes usable power.
Oracle Ties Up to 2.8 GW to Bloom’s Upside
Oracle’s Bloom Energy arrangement covers up to 2.8 GW and includes a warrant to purchase $400 million of Bloom stock. Reports of seven-year grid waits explain the schedule pressure, but disclosed terms do not establish a minimum purchase or delivery calendar.
Cursor’s 3× Tier Tests the IDE Margin Moat
Cursor priced Composer 2 at $0.50 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens, with a faster version at 3×. Moonshot supplied Kimi K2.5 and Fireworks AI served it, but public evidence does not reveal Cursor’s task-level costs or margins.
Hut 8’s $50 Billion Megawatt Test
Hut 8 has confirmed two 15-year AI capacity leases worth about $7 billion and more than $9.8 billion. A separate report tied Nvidia to leases worth up to $50 billion, but Hut 8 has not named the tenant.
Dario Amodei says Anthropic has “never” backed an open-weights model ban, lists reasons top chips shouldn't be sold to China, and calls for global model testing
Over the last few days there has been a lot of discussion about open-weights models, especially those from China.
Apple releases 26.6 updates for iOS, macOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS with a huge number of security fixes; macOS Tahoe 26.6 alone addresses 155 CVEs
Following the release of iOS 26.6, iPadOS 26.6, and related software updates, Apple has detailed a huge number of security fixes included in today's new OS versions.
Moonshot AI releases Kimi K3's weights under the “Kimi K3 License”, letting users download, tweak, and host the world's largest open-weight model to date
Moonshot AI has made its Kimi K3 model available for public download, expanding its reach and influence in the global open software community …
X rolls out X Money to US Premium and Premium+ subscribers, which includes a deposit account with up to a 6% APY, free P2P transfers on X, and a Visa debit card
X has officially launched X Money, which includes Apple Wallet support, moving the service beyond its invite-only beta and beginning a rollout today.
Microsoft introduces MAI-Cyber-1-Flash, an AI model trained for cybersecurity, and launches Project Perception, an agentic security system that patches flaws
As some executives fret over the safety of new A.I. systems, protecting against them could be a big business for tech companies.
Claude chats appeared in Google and Bing results, despite Anthropic's robots.txt instructing not to crawl them, likely because the pages lacked a “noindex” tag
The screwup shows how tricky it can be to stop web crawlers from making ostensibly private conversations with AI chatbots entirely too public.
Nvidia forms the Open Secure AI Alliance, a coalition including CrowdStrike, Hugging Face, and Dell to develop and share tools for AI safety and cybersecurity
Nvidia (NVDA.O) said on Monday it had formed a coalition with other companies to develop and share tools for AI safety and cybersecurity …
Apple launches Apple Upgrade, a new US leasing program in partnership with Klarna that replaces the iPhone Upgrade Program, starting at $17.99/month for iPhones
Apple today launched Apple Upgrade, a new U.S. leasing program for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch.
Sources: Nvidia commits to invest $5B in Ilya Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence; SSI had previously raised ~$3B in funding and had a $32B valuation in 2025
Nvidia Corp. has committed to invest $5 billion in Ilya Sutskever's artificial intelligence startup Safe Superintelligence Inc. …
Sources: Moonshot is seeking access to more Nvidia Blackwell chips to prepare for Kimi K4's development, after training K3 on Nvidia chips, including Blackwell
Beijing-based startup Moonshot AI, flush from the breakout success of its recently released model, Kimi K3 …
South Korea's KOSPI drops 11%+, led by chip stocks, amid concerns over China's chipmaking progress and the AI spending boom; Samsung falls 11%+ and SK Hynix 12%
A selloff in semiconductor stocks deepened Tuesday, as signs of China's progress in advanced chipmaking weighed on global rivals …
Sources: a Chinese state-backed company has begun manufacturing DUV machines, a key step in Beijing's drive to reduce its reliance on foreign chipmaking tech
A Chinese state-backed company has begun manufacturing one of the key pieces of equipment used in chip manufacturing for the first time …
Over 1,100 staffers from AI companies, including John Schulman and OpenAI's Jakub Pachocki, sign a letter requesting the US government to “pace” AI development
More than 1,100 staffers across top artificial intelligence firms have signed a petition that calls on the US government …
Hugging Face publishes a timeline of the OpenAI agent intrusion, including how the agent took ~17.6K actions, and details using GLM-5.2 to analyze the attack
This post walks through how the intrusion actually worked: the two initial-access vectors, how the agent pivoted and moved laterally …
A profile of Justin Sun, who made his fortune in the early phase of crypto, advised the Trump family's WLF, and sued WLF, alleging fraud and breach of contract
Justin Sun was already one of the richest people in the world, having made his fortune in the no-rules early phase of the crypto industry …
Anthropic says Claude Mythos Preview was able to break a weaker version of AES and orchestrated another improved attack against the cryptographic system HAWK
Claude Mythos Preview discovered new attacks in testing against weakened cryptographic algorithms, which protect online financial transactions, private communications and more.
Core Scientific and AMD announce a deal under which AMD will secure 500+ MW of US data center capacity starting in 2027, with the ability to scale up to 2.5 GW
Quick Take — AMD will secure more than 500 megawatts of Core Scientific data-center capacity beginning in 2027 …
The US National Vulnerabilities Database has recorded 45,207 software security flaws so far in 2026, on pace to roughly double the tally of flaws found in 2025
The number of software security flaws discovered in popular technology products in 2026 is on pace to roughly double the tally …
Mark Zuckerberg argues that superintelligence should be widely distributed as a tool that empowers everyone, rather than centralized in a few institutions
The history of democracy and economics has proved that centralized power stifles human potential. — We are fortunate to live at an incredible moment in history.
Microsoft resolves a “major outage” affecting Xbox's Account & Profile, Store & Subscriptions, and Apps & Mobile services that lasted around 10 hours
NBCU and YouTube sign a multiyear deal to add all Peacock content, including the NFL, the NBA, and Universal films, to YouTube Premium in the US from early 2027
Sources: Taiwan detained an Nvidia employee as part of a probe into the alleged smuggling of AI chips into China, after searching his home and office on July 24
Taiwanese prosecutors detained an Nvidia Corp. employee as part of a probe into the alleged smuggling of AI chips into China …
Meta and BlackRock form a strategic venture to develop a 1GW data center campus in El Paso, Texas, set to cost ~$14B and bring capacity online starting in 2028
Meta and BlackRock announce a venture to finance the development and operation of a data center campus in El Paso, Texas
Sources: Apple is preparing to debut a smart home hub with a 7" square display and facial recognition tech, a new Apple TV, and a refreshed HomePod mini in 2026
Apple Inc., after spending years as a laggard in the smart home market, is preparing a dramatic new push into the category with fresh devices and software.
AI Forensics: seven out of the nine top AI image models on Hugging Face edited an image of a clothed woman into a topless one using a simple six-word prompt
Researchers tested top image editing models on Hugging Face and found they could easily create explicit deepfakes …
Framework Laptop 13 Pro review: very good Intel Core Ultra X7 performance, excellent build quality and keyboard, but expensive because of high RAM prices
ChatGPT now refuses direct requests to copy an author's style and instead offers to capture the overall “feeling”, amid book authors' lawsuits against OpenAI
Several digital-asset treasury firms have pivoted to AI amid a slump in crypto prices, but their poor stock performance suggests the strategy is not working
The implosion of the once-hot market for cryptocurrency treasury stocks is prompting a number of firms to pivot to artificial intelligence in an attempt to win back investors.
A federal judge issues a preliminary injunction blocking Minnesota from enforcing a newly enacted law that banned prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket
Q&A with Sam Altman on the Hugging Face breach, the race for compute, distillation, open source, the concentration of power, robotics, OpenAI's future, and more
Sam Altman joins us for a wide-ranging conversation about OpenAI's next chapter, the race for compute, and what happens as artificial intelligence becomes mo...
eBay and former executives agree to pay a nearly $56M settlement to resolve a 2021 civil case over the 2019 stalking and harassment of two e-commerce bloggers
EBay and several former executives have agreed to pay nearly $56 million in a settlement with a Massachusetts couple …
Corning's stock closed down 12.1% after weak Q3 guidance, as production limits on its AI connectivity products squeeze its growth; Q2 sales rose 17% to $4.74B
Corning issued disappointing third-quarter sales guidance, as growth is being squeezed by production limits on its booming AI connectivity products …
Data security startup Cyera, founded in 2021, agrees to acquire Oasis Security, which was founded in 2022 and provides non-human identity security, for $1B
The $1 billion acquisition deal aims to bring capabilities for non-human identity security to the Cyera data security platform.
How Chinese platforms like ActID and New Claw are paying people to license their likeness for AI-generated dramas and ads, often using vague licensing terms
New platforms are paying people to license their likeness for AI-generated dramas and ads, creating a new marketplace for biometric identity.
The Agentic AI Foundation updates MCP with a fully stateless architecture, a hardened authentication model, a formal 12-month deprecation policy, and more
The Model Context Protocol, the open standard that has quietly become the connective tissue between AI agents and the world's software …
PayPal reports Q2 revenue up 5% YoY to $8.68B, above $8.47B est., transaction margin dollars up 1% YoY to $3.9B, and a $1.1B profit, down from $1.26B in Q2 2025
Second-quarter revenue rose 5% to $8.68 billion — PayPal bumped up its profitability guidance and reported revenue growth …
CXMT's IPO delivers a windfall for Hefei, an eastern China inland industrial city, with the government sitting on 5,000%+ paper gains after its early investment
Funds run by local government make gains of 5,000% from chipmaker's blockbuster listing — A blockbuster IPO by CXMT has delivered …
July 16 letter: the US EPA says power plants providing electricity only to data centers and not to the public grid wouldn't be subject to federal pollution laws
Power sources providing electricity only to data centers and not the public grid may not be subject to federal pollution laws …
Memo: Visa is cutting ~2,600 jobs, or ~7% of staff, primarily affecting tech and product teams; source: Visa plans to reinvest in stablecoin and other offerings
Visa Inc. is eliminating about 2,600 jobs as Chief Executive Officer Ryan McInerney seeks to make the firm more efficient …
Fish Audio, which offers AI voice models for creators and enterprises and generates $21M in ARR, raised a $52M seed led by Coreline Ventures and Capital Today
The market for AI-generated voice models is massive. Creative use cases require AI voice models to be more expressive …
Coursera is investing $100M in LearnVector, a new AI education company founded by Andrew Ng that aims to build AI agents that function as personal tutors
Coursera is putting $100 million into LearnVector, a new AI education company founded by Andrew Ng, a pioneer in AI and Coursera's chairman …
Cadence reports Q2 revenue up 24.2% YoY to $1.58B and raises its annual revenue forecast to between $6.26B and $6.34B vs. $6.21B est.; CDNS up 4%+ after hours
UK startup Dwelly, which buys real estate businesses and adds AI to handle maintenance, contracts, and other tasks, raised $95M in equity and $75M in debt
British startup Dwelly has raised $170 million to buy more real estate businesses and inject artificial intelligence into their operations.
French carrier Orange and infrastructure investor Morrison agree to create a data center platform in France targeting 400 MW, backed by a €3B investment program
Amazon files an FCC application to deploy a constellation of up to 5,105 satellites starting in 2028 to provide direct-to-device voice and data connectivity
European police say Binance's April 2025 policy asking law enforcement to route certain requests to foreign government agencies hinders criminal investigations
Investigators in Europe said that the cryptocurrency giant Binance had made it more difficult to track down scammers and solve other crimes.
Tel Aviv-based Act Security, whose platform reduces the access surface across cloud infrastructure, emerges from stealth with a $40M Series A and a $20M seed
Cloud-focused Act Security has raised $60 million and emerged from stealth, CEO Jonathan Langer tells Axios Pro exclusively.
Cursor introduces Cursor Start, a ~$7 monthly subscription exclusive to India, its third-largest market, priced below its standard $20 Pro monthly subscription
Baidu begins testing its purpose-built Apollo Go RT6 robotaxis with human safety operators in outer London; Baidu plans to offer the taxis on Lyft's Freenow
Filing: Shein says its US business is under FTC investigation and it is “cooperating”, without giving specifics, as the company prepares for an IPO in Hong Kong
Shein's U.S. business is under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, the fast fashion giant revealed …
CXMT's stock closed up 466% in its Shanghai debut, giving the Hefei-based memory chipmaker a ~$487B market cap, making it the most valuable China-listed company
The US FCC bans importing Chinese humanoid robots and power inverters to protect the US AI buildout from national security threats and to reshore key industries
The Trump administration on Tuesday unveiled bans that target imports of new Chinese robots and power inverters, seeking to protect …
Nvidia says it made a “substantial” investment in Safe Superintelligence, which will get access to Nvidia GPUs to up computing power by an “order of magnitude”
Nvidia is at the very center of the AI revolution.Stephanie Palazzolo /The Information:Nvidia Makes Multibillion Dollar Investment in Ilya Sutskever's Safe SuperintelligenceStrictlyVC:Nvidia in Talks ...
GrubMarket, which connects wholesalers and distributors to grocers and other food buyers, confidentially files for a US IPO; it was valued at $4.5B in February
GrubMarket, a food supply chain and delivery group, has confidentially filed for a U.S. initial public offering, it said on Tuesday.
NXP reports Q2 revenue up 19% YoY to $3.5B, vs. $3.46B est., as it struggled to impress investors with a generally upbeat Q3 forecast; NXPI down 5%+ after hours
NXP Semiconductors NV struggled to impress investors with a generally upbeat forecast for the current period, the latest sign of deepening concern about the chip sector.
Microsoft says MAI-Cyber-1-Flash and multiagent vulnerability remediation harness MDASH “deliver world-class performance at 50% of the cost of leading models”
Today we're announcing MAI-Cyber-1-Flash inside of MDASH, our multi-agent vulnerability identification and remediation harness.
Bitcoin miner and AI infrastructure company Ionic Digital surged more than 25% to nearly $63 in its Nasdaq debut, giving it an implied valuation of ~$2.75B
Quick Take — Ionic Digital was formed from Celsius Mining's assets and later took direct control of its sites from Hut 8.
NYC-based AI startup Runlayer sues Rippling for allegedly stealing trade secrets to “build essentially a clone” of Runlayer's safety and governance product
A New York-based AI startup is suing Rippling - a Silicon Valley software giant that got a $3 million tax break from Gov. Kathy Hochul …
Seagate reports Q4 revenue up 49% YoY to $3.6B, vs. $3.5B est., adjusted earnings of $5.71 a share, above analysts' forecast of $5.10; STX jumps 6%+ after hours
Choose Barron's as a preferred source of financial news — Key Points — Seagate Technology stock jumped …
Richard Socher's Recursive Superintelligence signs a $410M, multiyear AWS compute deal to support its self-improving AI systems, after raising $650M in May
On Tuesday, the AI company Recursive Superintelligence announced a $400 million compute deal with Amazon Web Services.
Antares, which is developing reactors with 1 MW of capacity for US military bases, raised $370M in equity and $100M in debt co-led by Paradigm and Caffeinated
Sources: OpenAI and Anthropic are lobbying the Trump administration to make sure lagging competitors also have to comply with government reviews of their models
OpenAI and Anthropic are arch enemies whose leaders can't stand each other. But the two foes have formed an unholy alliance …
ASML shares fall 7%+ after a report that a Chinese state-backed company has begun manufacturing DUV machines; Applied Materials fell 6.5%+ and Lam Research 7%+
Sarah Jacob /Bloomberg:
How TikTok, Reels, and Amazon storefronts enabled microinfluencers with less than 100K followers to earn middle-class salaries via brand and affiliate deals
Sources: Amazon overhauls its AI strategy, deprecating most of its flagship Nova AI models, as it shifts resources to its Frontier Model Research initiative
Source: Sam Altman will meet with senior US officials, lawmakers, and economists in Washington, DC, this week to preview OpenAI's upcoming family of AI models
and as the deadline for the AI EO nears. latest w @SophiaCai99Tibo /@thsottiaux:Turns out GPT-5.6 Sol and friends are absolutely amazing at performance and efficiency improvements. Good time to brush ...
Mate, which is developing a platform to allow AI agents to detect, respond to, and proactively hunt threats, raised a $35M Series A led by Canaan Partners
OpenAI and Anthropic release statements in support of the “Pacing the Frontier” initiative; Anthropic says Dario Amodei and several co-founders have signed it
Anhata Rooprai /Reuters:NEW
ESA satellite images show damage to two Amazon data centers in Bahrain, supporting Iran's claims last week that it struck the sites; Amazon declined to comment
Apple overtakes Nvidia to become the world's most valuable publicly traded company, two years after it lost the crown, closing at a $4.95T market cap on Monday
The company slipped by the chipmaker Nvidia, amid growing concern about costs associated with the artificial intelligence boom.
Enigma, which runs large-scale experiments exploring how humans interact with robots, emerges from stealth with a $70M seed led by Index Ventures and Ribbit
China warns it will take “all necessary measures” if the US sanctions Chinese AI companies over allegations they improperly used US models to train their models
Tel Aviv-based Hush Security, which lets organizations securely control enterprise AI agents, raised a $30M Series A, bringing its total funding to $41M
Ionut Arghire /SecurityWeek:
LSEG data: prices for credit default swaps, a closely watched gauge of risk, tied to Oracle, SpaceX, Alphabet, Nvidia, and others rise sharply to record highs
Financial Times:
Sources: Nvidia signs leases worth up to $50B for Hut 8's planned 1GW data center in Texas, hosting hundreds of thousands of chips; Hut 8 didn't name its client
Financial Times:
Way Security, which uses AI-driven automation and agentic workflows to help deploy IAM systems, raised a $20M seed from Insight Partners and Glilot Capital
Sources: the OpenAI agent that breached Hugging Face also compromised a customer at AI infrastructure company Modal Labs
Reuters:NEW