Google’s Late Gemini Switch Stops at Connected Cars
Google will begin replacing Assistant on Android and Wear OS on September 4 after missing its 2025 goal, while connected cars keep Assistant. The Information reported Gemini API calls rising from about 35 billion to 85 billion as Google left the car transition unexplained.
Hugging Face’s 17,600-Action Control Gap
A model hub built for reuse now connects artifacts to credentials, compute and deployment. In 2026, Hugging Face disclosed roughly 17,600 agent actions and lateral movement during a cybersecurity evaluation.
SpaceX reports Q2 revenue up 92% YoY to $7.8B, vs. $6.81B est., AI operating loss of $1.26B, vs. $2.39B est., and says Q3 and Q4 capex will remain similar to Q2
SpaceX stock fell after the company disclosed higher-than-expected spending on its artificial intelligence business …
The UK AISI says it observed 17 cases of Mythos 5 and two cases of GPT-5.6 Sol trying to hack people and organizations during a routine cyber evaluation in July
The U.K. AI Security Institute said it observed nearly 20 instances of Anthropic and OpenAI's most advanced models trying …
Sources: the US' AI framework excludes open models and defines a covered frontier model as closed source with SOTA capabilities and national security risks
The White House is excluding open models from its framework to test advanced AI capabilities, sources familiar with the matter told Axios.
Demis Hassabis is stepping down as CEO of Google DeepMind to be the unit's chairman and will add the title of Alphabet chief scientist; GOOG drops 3%+
Demis Hassabis is leaving his role as CEO of Google DeepMind to be the unit's Chairman. Chief scientist Jeff Dean and another Google AI executive …
Samsung previews zHBM, which vertically stacks HBM atop AI accelerators, and zNAND-O, built on V-NAND, and unveils the industry's first V10 BV-NAND architecture
Samsung Electronics Co. offered a glimpse of its most advanced memory hardware, touting improved performance and power efficiency …
Cloudflare announces Cloudflare Wallets so users can pay for APIs and content via stablecoins, with the ability to create Virtual Wallets for agentic shopping
The field of agentic commerce—a term that describes the use of bots for online buying and selling—is evolving fast.
EA says its $55B acquisition by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners has closed, taking the company private; the deal includes $20B in debt financing
The massive deal has closed. The massive deal has closed. … Electronic Arts has officially become a private company.
AMD reports Q2 revenue up 50% YoY to $11.5B, above $11.3B est., Data Center revenue up 107% YoY to $6.7B, and projects Q3 revenue below some est.; AMD drops 5%+
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. tumbled in early trading after giving an underwhelming sales outlook, a sign shareholders expected …
Innolight falls after a report said the US plans to restrict imports of new Chinese data center optical transceivers; 62% of its Q1 revenue came from the US
Shares of Chinese optical module makers such as Zhongji Innolight (300308.SZ) slumped on Wednesday after a Reuters report …
Mysk: Apple's Private Relay tool can leak users' IP addresses due to issues in Apple's WebKit browser engine, also affecting OnionBrowser, a Tor browser for iOS
Researchers found a group of issues that mean Private Relay isn't actually protecting users' real IP addresses.
Researchers: ChainDrop, a Shai-Hulud-based worm, has compromised 1,300+ npm packages, like Keyv, Cacheable, and flat-cache, with a combined 2B monthly downloads
Self-propagating malware named ‘ChainDrop’ has compromised more than 1,300 packages with a combined 2 billion monthly downloads on the Node Package Manager (npm) registry.
Reddit expands its test of Rules Hub, a suite of tools that rely on LLMs to help moderators manage their communities, and plans a full launch later this year
It's also planning big changes for developers and old Reddit. … Reddit is enlisting AI to help moderate new subreddits — and eventually the rest of site.
Meta releases Muse Code in beta, a terminal coding agent powered by Muse Spark 1.2, a coding-focused model priced at $1.25/1M input and $4.25/1M output tokens
Meta is rolling out its first coding agent called Muse Code as the company tries to challenge leading AI labs Anthropic and OpenAI.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says the company plans to spend $10B+ “over the coming years” to deploy 120K driverless vehicles, aiming to be in 15+ cities in 2026
Chief Dara Khosrowshahi lauds strong bookings and record cash flow as company seeks to fund costly AV push
An internal TikTok doc shows it withheld a safeguarded algorithm from 10% of US users, including a 16-year-old who was fed self-harm content and died by suicide
A confidential document says an algorithm adjustment was kept from many users “by design,” as part of an experiment to measure engagement.
Sources: possible cyberattacks targeting water and wastewater utilities have now been reported in at least 12 US states, and Iran is the prime suspect
So far, there's been no widespread disruptions to water supplies or treatment. — Luke Barr, Jack Date, Katherine Faulders, Josh Margolin, and Aaron Katersky
Nikita Bier says he will step back from leading product for X and continue as an adviser
Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to pass the torch and demote myself to my natural state: a poster. I'll be stepping back from leading product for 𝕏 and will continue on as an advisor. Serving the X co...
Coupang reports Q2 revenue up 4% YoY to $8.9B and a $556M operating loss, above $361M est., mainly due to South Korea's record ~$409M data breach fine in June
Coupang Inc. reported a larger-than-expected loss, underscoring the damage from a massive personal data leak that resulted …
Match reports Q2 revenue down 1% YoY to $853M, vs. $856.6M est., ~13.3M total paying users, vs. 13.4M est., and forecasts Q3 revenue below est.; MTCH drops 5%+
Match Group Inc. gave a revenue forecast for the current quarter that narrowly missed analysts' estimates …
A US appeals court overturns a ruling that had temporarily barred Perplexity from using its agentic shopping tools on Amazon's platform
A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday overturned a ruling that had temporarily barred Perplexity from using its AI-powered agentic shopping tools on Amazon's (AMZN.O) platform.
Pinterest reports Q2 revenue up 18% YoY to $1.18B, above $1.15B est., MAUs up 11% YoY to 640M, and forecasts Q3 revenue in line with est.; PINS drops 5%+
Pinterest shares fell 7% in extended trading on Tuesday after the company reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue but issued lukewarm sales guidance.
How Reddit moderators are battling AI-powered astroturfing ad campaigns that exploit the platform's trustworthiness to promote skincare, indie music, and more
Earlier this year, a Reddit user had asked members of a skincare-focused subreddit if anyone had tried a specific hypochlorous acid spray, a product often used for acne.
Elon Musk says SpaceX has decided to “build exclusively on Nvidia because we think the Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture”
SpaceX says it's ready to be a one-chip supplier company. — On SpaceX's highly anticipated earnings call on Wednesday …
Disney announces a global deal with TikTok to bring “thoughtfully curated” fan-created short-form videos based on Disney's IP to Disney+'s vertical feed Verts
Disney said it would allow “thoughtfully curated” fan-created videos, using clips from its library, to appear on the streaming service.
Shopify reports Q2 revenue up 34% YoY to $3.58B, above $3.45B est., GMV up 32% YoY to $115.57B, and forecasts Q3 revenue growth above est.; SHOP jumps 19%+
Canada's Shopify (SHOP.TO), projected current-quarter revenue growth above Wall Street estimates on Wednesday …
Pavel Durov says an extortionist planted “illegal porn in a public chat” to get the app pulled from the App Store and manipulated Apple into “overreacting”
Sources: Samsung and SK Hynix are evaluating chipmaking equipment from China's AMEC for possible use at their Chinese factories, as they hedge against US curbs
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are evaluating chipmaking equipment from China's Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment (AMEC) …
Source: Muse Spark 1.1 model breached a company's systems during cybersecurity testing; Meta says evaluation partner Irregular caused a sandbox misconfiguration
A Meta Platforms artificial intelligence model accessed the internet during cybersecurity testing and hacked into another company …
Study: Palantir's European units made €440.5M in 2024 revenue but reported far smaller profit margins than its US operations, helping cut its European tax bills
A new study finds that Palantir, which boasts of high profit margins in the U.S., barely scrapes a margin in Europe, which helps slash its tax bill.
Sources: the White House doesn't plan to publicly release its voluntary AI model framework and only give details to the companies that are part of the process
The White House does not plan to publicly release its new framework for evaluating advanced AI models, three sources familiar with the discussions told Axios.
Faye, which offers travel insurance services and uses AI to help resolve claims, raised a $50M Series C led by Madrona, taking its total funding to $100M
Travel protection startup Faye raised a $50 million Series C led by Madrona, CEO Elad Schaffer tells Axios Pro exclusively.
Hark, founded by Figure AI CEO Brett Adcock, previews Handoff, a computer use agent it says outperforms GPT-5.4 and Opus 4.8, and plans for a summer release
Hark, a startup that raised $700 million in Series A funding in May, today launched its agent Hark Handoff, which can use a browser efficiently to complete tasks.
Sandisk and SK Hynix announce the High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) open specification that enables up to 512GB memory modules with 0.4 TB/s to 3.0 TB/s bandwidth
Anton Shilov /Tom's Hardware:
DoorDash reports Q2 marketplace gross order value up 36% YoY to $33.08B, vs. $32.08B est., and forecasts Q3 marketplace GOV and adjusted EBITDA above estimates
DoorDash (DASH.O) on Wednesday forecast third-quarter gross order value and core profit above Wall Street estimates after topping results …
Circle reports Q2 revenue up 7% YoY to $701M, vs. $712M est., net income of $48M, vs. $43M est., and ~$73.4B USDC circulation on June 30; CRCL is down 20%+ YTD
Circle Internet Group Inc. reported second-quarter revenue that missed Wall Street expectations after circulation …
Mistral releases Shieldstral, a 3B-parameter multimodal safety classifier that it says matches models up to 7x its size on text safety, under Apache 2.0
Etsy says it will cut ~220 employees, or ~12% of its workforce, mostly in product and engineering, and reports Q2 revenue up 6% YoY to $668.3M, vs. $649.1M est.
Etsy said Wednesday it's laying off about 220 employees, or roughly 12% of its workforce, as the online marketplace looks …
Amazon's Zoox will start charging for rides in Las Vegas from August 10, marking the launch of its commercial operations after offering free rides since 2025
Nearly a year ago, Zoox opened its robotaxi service to the public in Las Vegas. Now, it is ready to start charging for those rides.
Sources: the FCC is drafting a restriction on US imports of new models of Chinese data center optical transceivers, set to take effect upon publication in 2026
White House wants to impose restrictions in 2026, China says it will respond if necessaryPolitico:Data center builders are losing the messaging warThe Hill:Kids' safety advocates hope for age verifica...
At the 2026 International Congress of Mathematicians, 20+ mathematicians reflect on how AI advances are transforming their work and field; many are optimistic
Sandisk reports Q4 revenue up 372% YoY to $8.97B, vs. $8.48B est., and forecasts Q1 revenue below estimates; SNDK drops 5%+ after hours
The midpoint of the company's revenue forecast was below what analysts had been modeling — Sandisk's stock was falling on Wednesday afternoon.
New Jersey files an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, alleging it abuses its dominance to impose low pay and poor conditions on independent delivery drivers
Filing: Microsoft recorded $24.1B in revenue from OpenAI during the year ended in June, suggesting OpenAI accounted for more than half of Microsoft's AI sales
Microsoft Corp. generates most of its artificial intelligence revenue from OpenAI, according to new disclosures from the company.
FanDuel parent Flutter says CEO Peter Jackson is stepping down, replaced by President Dan Taylor, and lowers its profit outlook as its US business struggles
The parent company of FanDuel says CEO Peter Jackson is being replaced by Dan Taylor, the company's president
Jeff Dean and three other Google execs are leaving to launch Discovery Loop, which will seek AI-powered breakthroughs in drug discovery, chip design, and more
Jeff Dean and other high-profile Google executives have founded Discovery Loop, a startup that will seek AI-powered breakthroughs …
Source: Yunfeng Capital, a PE firm co-founded by Jack Ma, invested ~$30M in AI insurance tech startup Corgi; Corgi CEO says the firm “did not invest in us”
Jack is back. — Chinese billionaire Jack Ma's private equity firm secretly led the latest funding round for Corgi …
Anthropic confirms it is building an in-house silicon team to design custom chips for Claude, co-designing hardware and models and using a “multi-chip approach”
Anthropic is building a team to design its own in-house AI chips as it faces surging demand for its models.
Binance affiliates are suing RedotPay's founders for allegedly diverting 470K+ users to a competing product in a “fraudulent scheme”, claiming $472.8M in losses
Dubai-based vehicle fleet management startup Moove raised $250M led by Abu Dhabi's Mubadala at a $2.1B valuation to build autonomous vehicle “nests” for docking
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell says the company aims to build out ground-based infrastructure to complement its satellite network for “a true mobile service”
SpaceX says Q2 capex rose to $18.4B from $2.8B in Q2 2025, including $15.8B for its AI segment, $1.2B for space, and $1.4B for connectivity; SPCX drops 10%+
‘Market Missing the Point’Forums:r/technology:SpaceX stock drops another 7% as $15.8 billion AI capex tops estimates — The company has yet to turn a profit, reporting a net loss of $541 million for th...
Sources: Anthropic agreed to a six-year, $10B deal for computing capacity in Norway from Nvidia-backed AI cloud startup Volta Infra and bitcoin miner Bitdeer
SpaceX reports Q2 connectivity revenue, including Starlink, up 66% YoY to $4.29B, vs. $3.83B est., and Starlink subscribers up 100% YoY to 12M, vs. 12.19M est.
Todd Bishop /GeekWire:
Nvidia makes Alpamayo 2 Super, its frontier open reasoning model for robotaxis and AVs, available for commercial use under the OpenMDW-1.1 license
Sources: ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming told employees at an AI team all-hands in July that the company won't use model distillation to accelerate capabilities
ByteDance won't resort to distillation as a shortcut to advancing its AI model capabilities, even if that means …
Google says it will begin removing Google Assistant from Android and Wear OS devices on September 4, replaced by Gemini; Assistant will remain on connected cars
OpenAI says one of its models exploited a website's security after third-party AI security lab Irregular mistakenly gave it internet access during evaluations
The DOJ secures a $3.2M settlement from OpenAI to resolve allegations it discriminated against US workers by preferring workers with temporary employment visas
Anthropic names Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, an ex-California Supreme Court justice and a special assistant in Obama's WH, as its first global affairs chief
Uber and Wayve say Wayve received London private hire vehicle licenses for supervised robotaxis ahead of a full rollout; Waymo plans to offer robotaxis in 2026
House panel report: US telcos connected their systems to data centers in a way that exposed them to vulnerabilities, potentially enabling the Salt Typhoon hacks
Internal email: Microsoft introduces token budget limits for employees' AI use, saying “tokenmaxxing is not what we are optimizing for”
Sources: Google is in talks with AI coding agent startup Mechanize on a possible deal, potentially worth $1.5B+, to hire some of its talent and license its tech
Google wants its AI to get better at coding. It might have found a shortcut. — The tech giant has been in discussions …
Ambrook, which offers accounting software, raised a $30M Series B led by Lachy Groom as it expands beyond farming into trucking, construction, and real estate
The AI frenzy has divided the VC market, as the gap between top and bottom performers has more than doubled for 2024 funds compared to funds from 2017 to 2021
Sources: the US is preparing to set a price floor and impose tariffs on polysilicon, a material critical to chips, later this month, in a bid to counter China
A profile of livestream shopping app Whatnot, which added 20M accounts in 2025, facilitated the sale of ~$8B in goods, and is set for $1B+ in revenue in 2026
Europe's established tech groups SAP, Capgemini, Sopra Steria, and OVHcloud report stronger AI demand, as enterprises shift from experimentation to deployment
Sources: Polymarket is in early talks with prospective investors to raise ~$1B at a $20B+ valuation, up from $15B in April 2026 and $9B in October 2025
SpaceX reports Q2 revenue from its AI segment up 247% YoY to $2.56B, above $2.18B est., $100B of cash and marketable securities, and a $47.5B order backlog
Nathan Bomey /Axios:
Uber reports Q2 revenue up 12% YoY to $14.19B, below $14.24B est., Gross Bookings up 24% to $58B, and forecasts Q3 adjusted EPS below estimates; UBER drops 6%+
Lora Kolodny /CNBC:
Analysis: in 2026 so far, US police arrested at least 37 people in connection to data center protests and intervened to prevent confrontations in 12 more cases
Oligo, which offers runtime security tools, raised $60M from Ballistic Ventures, Canon Capital, and others, bringing its total funding to $140M
Meta is offering a cheaper Muse Spark 1.2 “contributor” tier priced at $0.10/1M input and $0.20/1M output tokens in exchange for using user prompts for training
The company, pressed by investors to generate revenue from AI, says its offering will cost less than popular alternatives
The UK Competition Appeal Tribunal rejects Google's bid to block a class action alleging it overcharged businesses for search ads and abused its dominance
How Pringles maker Kellanova is using AI and a partnership with Siemens to improve production of the chip in Europe, including making digital twins of its dough
Discovery Loop, co-founded by Jeff Dean, is backed by seed funding from Radical Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and others; Google also has a stake in the company
Jeff Dean, who for years was one of Google's most important executives, is leading the new artificial intelligence company with the backing of Google.
Duolingo reports Q2 revenue up 18% YoY to $298.5M, paid subscribers up 17% to 12.7M, below est., forecasts Q3 revenue below est.; DUOL drops 11%+ after hours
Q2 Highlights User Metrics Q2 2025 Q2 2026 Daily Active Users 47.7M …
Developers in Africa are increasingly choosing Chinese open-source AI models over US models, saying they are downloadable, easier to customize, and much cheaper
New York Times:NEW
eBay reports Q2 revenue up 15% YoY to $3.13B, vs. $3.02B est., GMV up 15% to $22.4B, and forecasts Q3 revenue above estimates
Reuters:NEW
Salesforce appoints Miguel Milano, its chief revenue officer, as COO; Chief Operating and Financial Officer Robin Washington will keep her title
Google says Chief AI Architect and Google DeepMind CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu will lead Google DeepMind as SVP, reporting to Sundar Pichai
Alphabet Inc.'s Google is losing some of its most prominent AI veterans in a seismic overhaul that is casting doubt over leadership of a critical area of growth right as competition intensifies.