PayPal After the Checkout Button
Google launched AP2 with support from more than 60 organizations in September 2025, and Bloomberg described little existing demand six months later. PayPal says its wallet will enter ChatGPT in 2026; the announcement does not say how the parties would divide a disputed loss.
Qualcomm Takes Its Edge Playbook Into a $15B Rack Test
After giving developers models optimized for 45-TOPS PC NPUs, Qualcomm now targets $15 billion in data-center chip sales by 2029. Meta’s expected 2028 Dragonfly deployment will test whether endpoint efficiency can become a rack-scale business.
Meta’s Agent Bet Starts With 200 Million Users
WhatsApp Business had 200 million monthly users before Meta AI connected to Gmail and Google Calendar. Meta may use rival models, while WhatsApp’s 2026 rules keep general-purpose assistants outside its business API.
PJM Moves the Meter Inside the Data Center
With US grid waits reaching seven years, PJM is proposing that large data centers self-supply or curtail. Sungrow’s roughly 130% rally reflected AI-power enthusiasm, but the cited market report identified no data-center deployment.
The Grid Ends at the Last Recoverable Device
Big Tech’s plans may need 44GW of added capacity by 2028, while some developers face grid waits of up to seven years. Generators, batteries and flexible compute shorten time to power but multiply the systems that can fail.
17,600 Actions Exposed AI’s Permission Problem
During the Hugging Face intrusion, an OpenAI agent took about 17,600 actions over roughly 4.5 days. Modal Labs confirmed a related customer compromise through an unauthenticated endpoint, while OpenAI cited exposed credentials from four accounts.
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 …
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 …
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.
Meta reports Q2 revenue up 28% YoY to $60.8B, family DAP up 3% to 3.6B on average for June, forecasts Q3 revenue below estimates; META drops 8%+ after hours
Meta Platforms, Inc. (Nasdaq: META) today reported financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2026. — “AI is accelerating our core business today …
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 …
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 …
SK Hynix reports Q2 revenue up 257% YoY to ~$54.34B, below ~$57.56B est., and operating profit up 557% YoY to ~$41.48B, below ~$43.85B est.
SK Hynix shares nosedived on Wednesday as exponential second-quarter earnings and revenue growth still failed …
Microsoft reports Q4 revenue up 18% YoY to $90B, net income up 31% to $35.8B, and Microsoft Cloud revenue up 27% to $59.3B; MSFT jumps 7%+ after hours
REDMOND, Wash. — July 29, 2026 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the following results for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 …
Russia charges Pavel Durov with facilitating terrorist activity, alleging that Telegram was being used by Ukrainian spies to organize attacks inside Russia
Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Wednesday that it had charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with facilitating terrorist activities …
OpenAI releases an “early” version of its open-source Codex Security CLI for scanning repositories, verifying fixes, adding security checks to CI/CD, and more
We quietly released the open-source Codex Security CLI, but Hacker News found it before we had a chance to share it here... You can now use it to scan repositories, track findings across runs, verify ...
Anthropic's cryptanalysis results on HAWK and AES show AI can now understand existing cryptanalysis results, turn them into new attacks, and even extend them
Yesterday Anthropic published two new cryptanalysis results, both outputs of Claude Mythos, their (still) unreleased advanced model.
xAI sues Minnesota's AG over a state law banning apps and sites that create fake, sexualized pictures of individuals, claiming it violates the First Amendment
Billionaire Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company is suing Minnesota over a first-of-its-kind law that bans apps and websites …
Thinking Machines Lab co-founder Lilian Weng is returning to OpenAI after announcing earlier this week she was leaving TML over workload-related health concerns
Lilian Weng, a researcher who cofounded AI startup Thinking Machines Lab alongside former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati …
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 who were the target …
Qualcomm reports Q3 revenue down 4% YoY to $9.95B, forecasts Q4 profit below est., and expects revenue from Apple to fall faster; QCOM drops 7%+ after hours
Qualcomm (QCOM.O) forecast fourth-quarter profit below Wall Street estimates on Wednesday, and said revenue from Apple (AAPL.O) …
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 …
DoorDash says the FAA granted it Part 135 air carrier certification to operate a drone delivery service and it plans to launch drone deliveries in the fall
DoorDash Inc. is building its own delivery drones and has gained the necessary approvals to operate them commercially …
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 …
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
ETH Zurich spinout ZuriQ, which is developing trapped-ion quantum computing processors based on a 2D architecture, raised a $25.5M seed led by Quantonation
ZuriQ has secured seed funding to scale its trapped-ion quantum computing technology, expand its team, accelerate research and development …
Google launches its Lyria 3.5 music generation model in Google Flow Music, highlighting improved musicality, lyrics, vocal quality, and creative control
Our newest music generation model, Lyria 3.5, delivers significant advancements across musicality, lyrics, and vocal quality, empowering you to craft richer tracks.
Brookfield and NextEra partner to develop a $100B, 1.2GW+ AI data center campus at a former DOE uranium-enrichment site in Kentucky, set to open in 2032
The companies plan to develop a data center campus on the Energy Department's Paducah site in western Kentucky
Doctors and researchers worry that FDA-related wagers on Kalshi and Polymarket could compromise drug development studies and erode public trust in the process
On the betting websites Kalshi and Polymarket, people can now wager on whether the Food and Drug Administration will decide this year …
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 review: comfortable when shut, the 4:3 inner display is great, and impressive battery life, but no telephoto or IP68 and some app errors
Is this the future of foldable phones? — Samsung clearly thinks so. The company has given its new wide foldable the “Z Fold 8” …
OpenAI launches ChatGPT for Academic Researchers, giving 100K scientists, mathematicians, and engineers free access to its frontier models through 2027
OpenAI is launching a new program Wednesday that will provide 100,000 academic researchers with free access to its advanced AI models through 2027 …
GPTZero finds AI hallucinations in four PwC Middle East reports; GPTZero's prior investigations led EY and KPMG to retract reports with apparent hallucinations
Big Four consultant is latest firm found to have produced slapdash work while marketing expertise on the technology
Robinhood reports Q2 revenue up 32% YoY to $1.31B, vs. $1.29B est., event contracts revenue up over 10x to $156M, and crypto revenue down 38% to $100M
Prediction-market revenues on the popular trading app increased tenfold during the second quarter — Robinhood reported second-quarter results on Wednesday, beating expectations.
Anthropic faces backlash from Silicon Valley partners, founders, and researchers for competitive tactics, guardrails, and lack of support for open-weight models
The AI pioneer faces growing distrust from startup founders and researchers over competitive tactics, guardrails and lack of support for open-weight models
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 …
ChipAgents, which uses AI agents to help speed up the process of chip design, raised a $60M Series A2 led by B Capital, bringing the expanded round to $134M
Chip design startup ChipAgents expanded its Series A financing with a $60 million infusion to further fund its plans to speed …
The UK CMA opens an investigation into Microsoft over a potential consumer law breach involving users paying more to renew Microsoft 365 after it added Copilot
The UK's consumer and antitrust watchdog is investigating whether Microsoft Corp. misled customers into paying more for its productivity …
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%+ pre-market
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.
A look at Kioxia, the Japanese NAND flash memory maker that went from being cash-strapped in 2023 to an expected 30-fold jump in operating income in Q1 FY 2026
The chipmaker needs to prove it's more than an accidental beneficiary of a supply squeeze in storage.
X settles a long-running legal battle with the World Federation of Advertisers, ending a case that accused brands like Mars and Shell of illegally boycotting X
Billionaire had accused brands of organising an illegal boycott — Elon Musk's X has settled a long-running legal battle …
CXMT's IPO prospectus showed Alibaba had a nearly 5% stake, which is now worth $20B+, a nearly 20x return, based on CXMT's ~$464B closing market cap on July 28
ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) and Zhipu AI have not only seen their share prices skyrocket, but they have also handed a windfall …
OpenAI, Google, Meta, BlackRock, and others are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands, with some of the highest pay the industry has ever seen
The future of artificial intelligence depends on finding more skilled humans for some very physical jobs.
New York-based AI detection startup Pangram raised $9M led by Menlo, and releases Pangram 4.0 and its first AI image detection model, claiming 99.5% accuracy
Pangram, an A.I. detection start-up, promises near-perfect accuracy in sniffing out writing and imagery that wasn't made by humans.
Groundcover, which provides observability software that can monitor AI agents, raised a $100M Series C led by One Peak, bringing its total funding to $160M
The Israeli startup says traditional monitoring platforms were not built for the explosion of data generated by cloud and AI systems.
Qualcomm says it has signed a 10-year deal to supply chips for BMW's future digital cockpit and advanced driver-assistance systems
Qualcomm (QCOM.O) said on Wednesday it has signed a long-term deal to supply chips for German luxury automaker BMW's (BMWG.DE) future digital cockpit …
Arm reports Q1 revenue up 22% YoY to $1.29B, vs. $1.26B est., royalty revenue up 22% YoY to $715M, and forecasts Q2 profit above estimates
Arm Holdings forecast second-quarter revenue above Wall Street estimates on Wednesday, signaling strong demand for its energy-efficient chip designs for AI data centers.
Waymo gradually resumes freeway routes, starting with Phoenix, more than two months after suspending them to improve performance around construction zones
Waymo is slowly adding freeway routes back to its service area more than two months after the company stopped driving these high-speed roads …
OpenAI and Anthropic release statements in support of the “Pacing the Frontier” initiative; Anthropic says Dario Amodei and several co-founders have signed it
More than 1,100 employees from leading tech firms on Tuesday urged the U.S. government to support an international effort …
Encore AI, which studies companies' customer interactions to train and deploy AI voice agents, raised a $30M Series A led by Team8, Planven, and The Garage
Encore AI, a startup that studies companies' customer interactions to train and deploy AI voice agents that can work alongside customer support …
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
Security- and AI-related startups raised $855M across 150+ reported seed-stage rounds in 2026, on track for an all-time high; some seed rounds were over $30M
Seed funding trends tell us a lot about how savvy investors see the future unfolding. And lately, the data tells us there's great concern …
Seagate reports Q4 revenue up 49% YoY to $3.6B, above $3.5B est., adjusted earnings of $5.71/share, above analysts' forecast of $5.10; STX jumps 6%+ pre-market
Bitcoin miner and AI infrastructure company Ionic surged 25%+ to nearly $63 in its Nasdaq debut, giving it an implied ~$2.75B valuation, after a direct listing
Survey: 77% of US adults support in-class cellphone bans for middle and high school students, up from 74% in 2025 and 68% in 2024; just 18% oppose such bans
About three-quarters of U.S. adults (77%) support in-class cellphone bans for middle and high school students.
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
A look at OpenAI's open-source agent harness that now powers Codex and ChatGPT Work, as the company works to optimize the harness to cut runaway token usage
The unsung hero behind OpenAI's 2026 transformation is a technology that rarely gets mentioned, and that most of its 1 billion monthly users have never even heard of.
London-based Agon, which is developing sovereign AI training infrastructure for European defense, emerges from stealth with a $7M pre-seed and a $23M seed
Startup founded by the co-founder of Cambridge Aerospace and alums from Anduril, Applied Intuition and Helsing aims at a critical gap in the market.
Sources: Google DeepMind has reassigned most of the AlphaFold papers' original authors over the past year; nearly a quarter of the full-time authors have left
Landmark project that solved protein folding gives way to a wider race to build AI systems for scientific discovery
Eliyan, which aims to license tech and make physical “chiplets” to ease AI chip data transfer bottlenecks, raised a $145M Series C at a $1B valuation
Eliyan, a startup that aims to ease the bottlenecks in transferring data between AI chips in data centers …
Lake Mary, Florida-based Spur Intelligence, which helps distinguish human and bot traffic to find fake users and threats, raised $200M led by Insight Partners
Spur Intelligence, a cybersecurity startup based in Lake Mary, Florida, has raised a $200 million round led by Insight Partners.
BNY, the world's biggest bank for safeguarding assets, plans to use blockchain tech for its transfer agency record-keeping systems that service ~$8.6T in assets
Banks rush to embrace tokenised system blurring the lines between traditional finance and digital asset ecosystem
Sources: Moonshot AI hit a $35B valuation after closing a $3.5B round, exceeding its initial target of $1B to $2B, and plans a Hong Kong IPO as soon as 2026
Moonshot AI secured a $35 billion valuation after raising a larger-than-anticipated $3.5 billion in a just-closed round of financing …
Source: OpenRouter was recently generating ~$140M in annualized revenue, or ~$12M per month, up nearly 3x since April, making Stripe's $10B offer a big premium
If Stripe ends up buying three-year-old startup OpenRouter for close to $10 billion, the payments firm would be paying …
Mark Zuckerberg says the US should not ban Chinese AI models and that AI model peer reviewing or vetting could be positive if “done well with thoughtful people”
Meta chief warns against ‘regulatory capture’ of American rules on the technology — Mark Zuckerberg …
GlobalFoundries says the US plans to award it $300M in CHIPS Act funding to bolster R&D of silicon photonics tech to power more efficient AI data centers
Modal Labs CTO Akshat Bubna confirms OpenAI's agent compromised a Modal customer by exploiting an unauthenticated endpoint on Modal's AI infrastructure platform
The rogue agent that escaped from OpenAI and went on a days-long hacking spree at the AI firm Hugging Face also compromised …
Source: the European Commission plans to designate OpenAI's ChatGPT and Roblox as “very large online platforms” under the DSA as soon as August
OpenAI's ChatGPT and video game company Roblox Corp. will be subject to stricter scrutiny and monitoring requirements under …
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
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
Freehand, which builds AI agents to manage supply chain spend and operations for Fortune 500 companies, raised a $75M Series B, after a $25M Series A in 2024
Enterprise AI startup Freehand has raised $75 million in a Series B funding round to scale its autonomous AI agents …
OpenAI says the rogue AI agent that breached Hugging Face used exposed credentials from “four accounts” tied to four “publicly available” third-party services
In a new disclosure, OpenAI says its agent used exposed logins to gain access to at least four …
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
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
NYC-based AI startup Runlayer sues Rippling for allegedly stealing trade secrets to “build essentially a clone” of Runlayer's safety and governance product
Sources: OpenAI and Anthropic are lobbying the Trump administration to make sure lagging competitors also have to comply with government reviews of their models
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
Tel Aviv-based Hush Security, which lets organizations securely control enterprise AI agents, raised a $30M Series A, bringing its total funding to $41M
Richard Socher's Recursive Superintelligence signs a $410M, multiyear AWS compute deal to support its self-improving AI systems, after raising $650M in May
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
Microsoft reports Q4 Windows OEM and Devices revenue down 7% YoY, Xbox hardware revenue down 13%, and Xbox content and services revenue down 10%
Emma Roth /The Verge:
Microsoft reports Q4 Azure and other cloud services revenue up 43% YoY, vs. 40% est., and says Azure revenue in FY 2026 exceeded $100B for the first time
Jordan Novet /CNBC:
Meta reports $2.4B in charges related to legal proceedings in Q2 and $1.18B in severance expenses in connection with the May 2026 layoff of about 8,000 staff
Todd Spangler /Variety:
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
Investors continue to dump chipmaker stocks on Wednesday following disappointing results from SK Hynix; Sandisk is down 7.5%+, Arm 6.5%+, and AMD 6.5%+
Financial Times:
Meta reports Reality Labs Q2 revenue up 16% YoY to $431M, vs. $423.4M est., and a $4.62B operating loss, vs. $5.07B estimated
Jonathan Vanian /CNBC:NEW