Prophesee’s €130M Has No Cited Deployment Proof
Prophesee’s September 2022 Series C brought reported funding to about €130M. In the articles cited here through August 6, 2026, no later report names a customer deployment or production benchmark, while Sony, Qualcomm, Axelera, and Nvidia improved the surrounding edge-vision stack.
Claude Code Makes Anthropic’s 1 Million TPUs Matter
In 2026, Anthropic secured access to 1 million Google TPUs and 1GW of capacity while Claude Code pushed capacity, silicon, pricing, and security into one operating loop.
Discovery Loop Spun Out; Google Kept a Stake
On August 5, 2026, The New York Times reported that Jeff Dean and three other Google executives launched Discovery Loop with venture backing and a Google stake. Across Discovery Loop, Periodic Labs, and Lila Sciences, investors have funded teams and experimental capacity before the cited reporting established repeatable discovery.
Google’s Mechanize Talks Put $1.5B+ on Coding-Agent Control
Reports dated August 5 and 6 put Google’s Mechanize talks above $1.5 billion. Four major coding agents have already faced sandbox-boundary bypass findings.
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.
Demis Hassabis is stepping down as Google DeepMind's CEO to be the unit's chair and will add Alphabet chief scientist to his title; GOOG closes down 4%+
Demis Hassabis is leaving his role as CEO of Google DeepMind to be the unit's chairman. Chief scientist Jeff Dean and several Google AI colleagues …
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 …
Sources: OpenAI's new device, slated for 2027, is a hockey puck-sized smart speaker with moving parts that help give it personality, likely costing $300+
A highly anticipated new device from OpenAI will have a unique look, complete with moving parts that help give it personality …
Rockstar says it will show an “extended look” at Grand Theft Auto VI on August 27, premiering on Netflix at 3pm ET before streaming on YouTube at 9pm ET
The preview will stream on both Netflix and YouTube. … We'll be getting an in-depth preview of Grand Theft Auto VI very soon …
OpenAI says the Hugging Face breach involved AI agents creating an internal message board, unnoticed by humans, where they shared exploits and planned the hacks
At the Black Hat security conference, the AI giant revealed new details about how its agents went rogue, hacked several other companies …
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.
DoorDash reports Q2 marketplace gross order value up 36% YoY to $33.08B, above $32.08B est., and forecasts Q3 marketplace GOV and adjusted EBITDA above est.
DoorDash (DASH.O) on Wednesday forecast third-quarter gross order value and core profit above Wall Street estimates after topping results …
Nikita Bier steps down as X's head of product after starting the role in July 2025, saying “running this app is a 24/7 job”, and will continue as an adviser
Nikita Bier has stepped down as head of product at X, Elon Musk's social media platform, after a little more than a year in the role.
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 …
Canadian national Connor Moucka pleads guilty in the US to participating in the 2024 Snowflake hacks involving data theft from 165+ companies, including AT&T
A Canadian national is facing decades in prison for participating in the hacking of data storage platform Snowflake.
eBay reports Q2 revenue up 15% YoY to $3.13B, above $3.02B est., GMV up 15% to $22.4B, and forecasts Q3 revenue above est. and GMV growth of between 10% and 12%
EBay (EBAY.O) forecast third-quarter revenue above Wall Street estimates on Wednesday, leaning on its push into authenticated luxury goods …
OpenAI updates the default model for free users to GPT-5.6 Luna, adds unlimited text chats for free users, rolls out an improved GPT-5.6 Sol version, and more
OpenAI on Thursday announced a series of changes that will upgrade ChatGPT for both paid and free users.
Analysis: Grokipedia appears not to have updated any articles since April 24, when it stopped processing human-suggested edits; xAI launched it in October 2025
A halt in Grokipedia's edit pipeline offers a case study in how an AI-generated reference system governs its own content.
Cloudflare open sources a new version of Cloudflare OS, a browser-accessible AI agentic workspace for enterprises that lets employees build custom micro-apps
Cloudflare Inc. today announced the launch of Cloudflare OS, an open-source artificial intelligence agentic workspace available through …
How Trump's push for data centers is driving a boom in gas power plants, and a look at Meta's El Paso data center, which will have 813 gas-burning generators
In March, a developer working on a Meta data center in El Paso applied to power the site with a gas-burning plant large enough to supply electricity to 300,000 homes.
Sandisk reports Q4 revenue up 372% YoY to $8.97B, above $8.5B est., data center revenue of $2.97B, and forecasts Q1 revenue below est.; SNDK drops 5%+
The midpoint of the company's revenue forecast was below what analysts had been modeling — Sandisk's stock was falling on Wednesday afternoon.
Block reports Q2 revenue up 9% YoY to $6.62B, above $6.49B est., Cash App gross profit up 31% to $1.97B, and raises its FY 2026 gross profit forecast
Block (XYZ.N) raised its full-year gross profit forecast on Wednesday after delivering market-beating second-quarter results …
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 estimates; SHOP jumps 17%
Canada's Shopify projected current-quarter revenue growth above Wall Street estimates on Wednesday, signaling the company's AI efforts …
OpenAI files a motion to dismiss Apple's lawsuit accusing OpenAI of stealing trade secrets, saying Apple's allegations are meritless and workers acted lawfully
OpenAI is asking a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Apple Inc. accusing the artificial intelligence company of stealing trade secrets …
Filing: Microsoft recorded $24.1B in revenue from OpenAI during the year to June 2026, suggesting OpenAI accounted for 50% to ~70% of Microsoft's AI sales
Microsoft Corp. generates most of its artificial intelligence revenue from OpenAI, according to new disclosures from the company.
Suno says it will adopt new audio watermarking tech, fingerprinting tech, transparency tools, and a new download policy to limit the spread of spammy AI music
The company is changing its download policy and rolling out new watermarking technology. … Suno announced plans to implement …
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.
Twilio reports Q2 revenue up 22% YoY to $1.5B, above $1.43B est., and forecasts Q3 revenue above estimates; TWLO jumps 16%+ after hours
Twilio (TWLO) stock jumped Thursday after the communications software maker reported second-quarter earnings and revenue that topped consensus estimates …
A researcher with access to North Korean hackers' servers says their operations have impacted 1,640 companies across 57 countries over the past 22 months
For nearly two years, researcher Vangelis Stykas has maintained access to North Korean hackers' servers.
Scientists trained AI on genetic sequences to design viruses not found in nature, yielding 16 viable viruses that can infect bacteria but don't threaten humans
Scientists trained artificial intelligence on libraries of DNA and then asked the model to create recipes for viral genomes.
Filing: DeepSeek invested ~$20.8M in Unitree Robotics' Shanghai IPO, 2.31% of the allocated shares, and agreed to jointly develop AI models for humanoid robots
Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek has invested 140.8 million yuan ($20.8 million) in robot maker Unitree (688836.SS) and agreed …
TikTok's US entity says it is closing its Nashville office, which held some of its content moderation team; filing: TikTok laid off 250 employees at the office
The office was home to members of the app's content moderation team. — TikTok's U.S. joint venture said on Wednesday …
AppLovin reports Q2 revenue up 53% YoY to $1.92B, below $1.94B est., and forecasts Q3 revenue within estimates; APP drops 18%+ and is down 45% YTD
The shortcomings in the latest quarter came down to timing — AppLovin's profit and revenue growth continued in the latest quarter …
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 …
Google DeepMind says its WeatherNext model can accurately predict a storm's track and intensity using lower-resolution weather data, and open sources the model
Its WeatherNext model, which will be open-sourced, can accurately predict both a storm's track and intensity using lower-resolution weather data.
SpaceX and Tesla plan to initially invest $16.8B to build Terafab in Grimes County, Texas; combined demand from SpaceX and Tesla is forecast to top 1 TW
SpaceX (SPCX.O) and Tesla (TSLA.O) will initially invest $16.8 billion to build Terafab, Elon Musk's planned advanced AI chip manufacturing complex …
Figma reports Q2 revenue up 48% YoY to $370.1M, vs. $351.6M est., and lifts annual revenue forecast but keeps profit outlook intact; FIG drops 15%+
Figma (FIG.N) on Wednesday reported a sharp rise in costs and a decline in profit margins as the design software company ramps up AI investments …
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 5%
Google is expanding its Gemini-powered Ask Maps feature in English to 130+ countries and adds agentic food ordering, hotel booking, and attraction searching
ZDNET's key takeaways — Google expanded Ask Google capabilities. — Users can more easily order food, book hotels, and find attractions.
A look at Sequoia's revamped strategy under new stewards Alfred Lin and Pat Grady, including bold AI bets; sources: Sequoia recently closed $10B in new funding
Alfred Lin and Pat Grady are repositioning the 54-year-old firm for a world dominated by artificial intelligence.
Google and data: hackers used phone calls, phishing websites, and “meticulous” tactics to target dozens of US PE firms and other businesses over the past month
Ransom-seeking hackers who use phone calls to compromise their victims targeted dozens of prominent U.S. financial institutions …
DeepSeek says it plans to implement substantial price increases across its AI services; V4 Flash currently costs $0.14/1M input and $0.28/1M output tokens
DeepSeek plans to implement a significant price increase across its AI services, an unusual shift from the disruptive Chinese player that has put pressure on US and domestic rivals.
Western Digital falls 13% after issuing guidance that didn't quite match Seagate's; Q4 revenue rose 44% YoY to $3.75B, above a $3.7B estimate
Choose Barron's as a preferred source of financial news — Key Points — Western Digital stock tumbled Thursday …
Lyft reports Q2 revenue up 16% YoY to $1.84B, vs. $1.81B est., rides up 12% to 262.4M, and expects Q3 gross bookings growth to slow to 15%-19%
The company's gross bookings rose 23% to $5.5 billion in the latest quarter — Lyft's second-quarter bookings rose, boosted by overall demand, particularly for its premium rides.
Figma CEO Dylan Field forfeits ~$46M in stock awards to revive investor confidence amid AI disruption fears; FIG is down ~77% from its peak more than a year ago
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Defense tech company Hadrian raised a $1.37B Series D at an $8B valuation to expand its factories and Opus software platform, after a $260M Series C in 2025
Hadrian, the factory builder and defense manufacturer, raised $1.37 billion in venture capital and is now valued just shy of $8 billion.
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
Wall Street Journal:
OpenAI debuts Agent Plugins, an open standard for bundling skills and MCP servers, and says Amazon, Cursor, Microsoft, and Vercel are on its steering committee
Datadog drops 15%+ after forecasting weaker full-year sales due to reduced usage from its largest client, a leading AI company; Q2 revenue rises 36% to $1.12B
The data-security company still posted growth in the second quarter, but shared a full-year sales outlook that was below Wall Street estimates
Elon Musk says SpaceX has decided to “build exclusively on Nvidia because we think the Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture”
Atlassian reports Q4 revenue up 28% YoY to $1.77B, vs. $1.66B est., cloud revenue up 31% to $1.2B, forecasts Q1 revenue above est.; TEAM jumps 31%+ after hours
Collaboration software maker Atlassian (TEAM.O) beat Wall Street expectations for fourth-quarter revenue on Thursday …
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 startup
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.
Google says Google Chief AI Architect and Google DeepMind CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu will lead Google DeepMind as its SVP, reporting to Sundar Pichai
Gravity, which places text-based ads within AI chatbots, raised a $30.5M Series A co-led by Lightspeed and Committed, taking its total funding to $38.5M
Zach Oldham, cofounder of the adtech startup Gravity, thinks AI ads will eventually become the world's largest advertising channel.
Sources: Demis Hassabis had been drifting away from Google DeepMind CEO day-to-day duties for at least a year and struggled to get satisfaction out of the role
Why the Google DeepMind shakeup matters less than it looks, except for one change.BMI:Google reshuffles AI leadership; Demis Hassabis becomes Alphabet chief scientistAgence France-Presse:Google-parent...
WindBorne, which deploys weather balloons to collect data for its AI weather forecasting models, raised a $37M Series B at a $250M post-money valuation
The new deep learning techniques behind LLMs have also given us weather simulations that can run on laptops instead of supercomputers, changing meteorology.
Docs: US data labeling companies, like Surge AI and Mercor, that sell training datasets to US AI labs and the government are also selling them to Chinese labs
The same Silicon Valley startups supplying OpenAI, Anthropic and the U.S. government are also selling AI training datasets …
Chainalysis: criminals have stolen $30M+ in violent attacks from crypto holders in H1 2026 and France is the primary hotspot with 30 publicly known cases YTD
Quick Take — Violent criminals have robbed crypto holders of more than $30 million through mid-2026, putting the year on pace …
Cloudflare reports Q2 revenue up 36% YoY to $696.1M, above $665M est., and forecasts Q3 revenue above estimates; NET jumps 17%+ after hours
Choose Barron's as a preferred source of financial news — Key Points — Cloudflare stock was climbing Thursday night after the company reported better …
Sources: Stripe recently entered exclusive talks to buy OpenRouter in a cash-and-stock deal that would value the startup for close to $10B
Stripe recently entered exclusive talks to buy OpenRouter in a cash-and-stock deal that would value the startup for close to $10 billion, according to people with knowledge of the discussion.
Instacart reports Q2 revenue up 14% YoY to $1.04B, GTV up 14% to $10.35B, above est., forecasts Q3 GTV and core profit above est.; CART jumps 8%+ after hours
Instacart (CART.O) forecast third-quarter gross transaction value and core profit above analysts' estimates on Thursday …
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”
SoftBank reports Q1 net profit down 18% YoY to ~$2.2B, above ~$761M est., an ~$8.2B gain on its Intel stake, and Vision Fund up $1.7B due to its ByteDance stake
Sapiom, which helps businesses build, ship, and scale AI agents and lower token costs, raised a $35M Series A led by Dragonfly, taking its total funding to $50M
Sources: Nvidia is considering lower-memory versions of its Rubin Ultra GPU due to potential issues securing enough HBM, and has tested at least three versions
Nvidia is weighing a radical step to deal with a shortage of advanced high-bandwidth memory chips: using less of it than planned …
AMD acquires Toronto-based Taalas, which integrates model weights directly into silicon to boost inference performance, for an undisclosed sum
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
Filing: Hangzhou-based Unitree Robotics prices its Shanghai IPO at ~$22/share, aiming to sell 40.4M shares to raise $904M; Unitree shipped 5,500+ robots in 2025
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
China launches a formal national security review of Palo Alto Networks products sold in the Chinese market, citing a need to protect critical infrastructure
Sources: DeepSeek has resumed its funding round, seeking $8B at a $74B valuation, after pausing talks following the leak of Liang Wenfeng's remarks to investors
DeepSeek has resumed its second funding round, seeking close to $8 billion, with Monolith Management in talks to contribute, according to people familiar with the matter.
Ooredoo, Nvidia, Nokia, and Indosat launch Zankore, Indonesia's first dedicated AI compute and neocloud platform; Ooredoo, which owns a 49% stake, commits $800M
Nintendo reports Q1 revenue down 10% YoY to ~$3.3B, above $2.8B est., net income up 54% YoY to ~$933M, vs. ~$495M est., and Switch 2 sales down 34% YoY to 3.82M
Meta's Muse Spark 1.2 scores 54 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, putting Meta next to SpaceXAI in a tie for third place amongst US labs
Artificial Analysis:
Airbnb reports Q2 revenue up 17% YoY to $3.6B, Nights and Seats Booked up 10% to 148.3M, above est., lifts 2026 revenue forecast; ABNB jumps 10%+ after hours
Sources: Panthalassa, which aims to power data centers in the ocean using energy generated by waves, is raising $225M at a ~$2B valuation, up from $1B in May
AI data centers need boatloads of power, a need that's set off a flood of investment into startups harnessing nuclear or solar energy to run the servers.
Roku reports Q2 revenue up 22% YoY to $1.35B vs. $1.3B est., net income of $164.2M, ad revenue up 25% to $673M, and subscription revenue up 26% to $548M
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
Sources: Nscale told potential backers it generated $100M+ in Q2 revenue, up from ~$37M in Q1, and has ~$51B in contracts, ahead of a possible September US IPO
Nscale is telling prospective investors it has about $51 billion of total contracted revenue ahead of a US initial public offering …
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
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
Duolingo reports Q2 revenue up 18% YoY to $298.5M, paid subscribers up 17% to 12.7M, below est., and forecasts Q3 revenue below est.; DUOL drops 11%+
Developers in Africa are increasingly choosing Chinese open-source AI models over US models, saying they are downloadable, easier to customize, and much cheaper
Lumilens, which is building data center optical-interconnection tech to replace wires with light, raised $700M at a $5.5B valuation, for $900M in total funding
Sources: some Google researchers have grown frustrated over AI compute access for ambitious projects while Google Cloud sells TPUs to customers like Anthropic
MacKenzie Sigalos /CNBC:
Demis Hassabis stepping down as Google DeepMind CEO may weaken the UK tech scene, marking an end for Hassabis' effort to keep his native UK as an AI stronghold
For years, Demis Hassabis was the only executive to oversee a US technology giant's artificial intelligence development from outside the country.
An interview with TMTG interim CEO Kevin McGurn on the paid API for high-speed access to Truth Social posts, the pending $6B TMTG-TAE merger, and more
Salesforce appoints Miguel Milano, its chief revenue officer, as COO; Chief Operating and Financial Officer Robin Washington will keep her title
Google centralizes its AI leadership at Mountain View in a bid to catch its rivals; Sebastian Borgeaud, who led a major AI coding effort, moved from the UK
PitchBook: AI voice startups raised $7B in Q1 2026, up from $1B in Q1 2025, as OpenAI and Google bet on voice as the main interface for next-gen AI agents
Sources detail Intel's turnaround under Lip-Bu Tan as AI demand for CPUs boosts business; Intel's deal to make Arm's AI data center chip fell through in 2024
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
Sources: Canva slashed revenue growth forecast as heavy use of new AI features drove up costs and slowed their rollout, while more Canva users turned to ChatGPT
The Information:
Filing: OpenAI says “Apple should not be permitted to use a baseless and pretextual lawsuit to make up for its” market shortcomings and failures to integrate AI
Megan Morrone /Axios: