Atlassian’s $1.2B Case for Agent Control
As Apple, OpenAI and Anthropic make coding models more interchangeable, Atlassian and Linear are competing to own work context, permissions and approvals. Atlassian’s Q4 cloud revenue reached $1.2B, up 31% year over year.
SanDisk’s $1.165B Flash Pact Runs Through 2034
SanDisk reported fiscal Q3 revenue up 251% to $5.95B after agreeing to pay Kioxia $1.165B for joint-venture access through 2034. Among four cited supply records, theirs alone discloses both cash and a manufacturing end date; customer volume remains undisclosed.
Canva’s $4B Suite Is Losing the First Prompt
Canva entered 2026 with $4B in ARR, but an August report said heavy AI use raised costs and slowed its rollout as users shifted toward ChatGPT. Gemini, Google AI Mode, and Claude now expand Canva’s distribution while moving the first prompt outside the suite.
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.
New Mexico trial: a judge orders Meta to pay $567M and make changes for underage users after finding its platforms helped create a public nuisance harming teens
SANTA FE, N.M. - A Santa Fe judge ordered Meta to pay $567 million, and make changes for the user experience of juvenile accounts …
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.
Sources: OpenAI's new device, slated for 2027, is a hockey puck-sized smart speaker with moving parts that help give it personality and will likely cost $300+
A highly anticipated new device from OpenAI will have a unique look, complete with moving parts that help give it personality …
AMD acquires Toronto-based Taalas, which integrates model weights directly into silicon with the promise to boost inference performance, for an undisclosed sum
Early tech demos show model-specific integrated circuits churning out up to 17,000 tokens a second
Security researchers claim that Kimi K3 went outside of its sandbox during defensive cybersecurity tests, but did not hack anything after accessing the internet
Security researchers say that Kimi K3, an open-weight model from China, wandered off to the internet in an attempt to cheat on a test it was given.
Analysis: Google DeepMind has lost frontier-model momentum amid leadership and RL talent departures, with Google Cloud emerging as a winner with more compute
GCP YoY rev growth >100%, DeepMind's long term failure is Google Cloud's short term gain — On Wednesday, August 5th …
Alphabet raises $25B in an investment-grade bond sale; sources say it attracted ~$115B of peak demand and that Alphabet plans to issue US debt twice per year
Alphabet Inc. sold $25 billion of investment-grade bonds after generous yield payouts helped secure one of the year's largest order books for AI-related debt.
At Black Hat, OpenAI reconstructs the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident and examines its implications for AI security, cyber resilience, and alignment
The ‘Breaking’ News: The OpenAI-Hugging Face Incident - A Technical Reconstruction and Its Implications for AIWhen AI Goes Rogue. The Incident That Changed E...
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 …
Sources: ByteDance is pretraining an AI model with up to 10T parameters, roughly 3x larger than Kimi K3 and larger than the 8T estimate for Anthropic's Mythos 5
TikTok owner training a model three times larger than Moonshot's Kimi K3 — ByteDance is training an AI model that could approach …
Lyft reports Q2 revenue up 16% YoY to $1.84B, vs. $1.81B est., rides up 12% YoY to 262.4M, and projects Q3 gross bookings growth will 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.
SK Hynix plans a $38B chipmaking expansion in South Korea, including building a ~$24.7B DRAM facility in Yongin and a ~$13.3B NAND fabrication plant in Cheongju
SK Hynix Inc. plans a 54 trillion won ($38 billion) expansion of its chipmaking facilities in South Korea, the memory chip maker said in a statement Friday.
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
Roku reports Q2 revenue up 22% YoY to $1.35B, vs. $1.3B est., $164.2M net income, ad revenue up 25% YoY to $673M, and subscription revenue up 26% YoY to $548M
Roku kept its streaming engines blazing in the second quarter of 2026 with earnings that blew past Wall Street estimates.
The Clarity Act faces uncertainty after Senate Republicans delayed a vote until after their August recess, pushing it to September, just weeks before midterms
The cryptocurrency industry's top Washington priority has run into a stinging setback in the U.S. Senate.
Twilio reports Q2 revenue up 22% YoY to $1.5B, above $1.43B est., net income up 4,659% YoY to $1.07B, and forecasts Q3 revenue above estimates; TWLO jumps 30%+
Twilio (TWLO) stock jumped Thursday after the communications software maker reported second-quarter earnings and revenue that topped consensus estimates …
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
Elon Musk's SpaceX <SPCX.O> and Tesla <TSLA.O> will initially invest $16.8 billion to build Terafab, an advanced AI semiconductor complex …
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 30%+
Collaboration software maker Atlassian (TEAM.O) beat Wall Street expectations for fourth-quarter revenue on Thursday …
Sources: an addendum to the bipartisan Clarity Act would force President Trump to divest from crypto businesses, letting him defer paying taxes on the gains
The bipartisan ethics proposal senators have pitched to President Donald Trump to get landmark crypto legislation over the line …
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.
OpenAI says it has expanded safety testing around its upcoming model Astra as it “cannot rule out” critical cyber capabilities, potentially delaying its launch
OpenAI “cannot rule out” that its upcoming model Astra has"critical" cyber capabilities, a designation that has prompted …
Nielsen agrees to acquire and take digital media monitor DoubleVerify private in an all-cash deal with a ~$2.15B enterprise value, expected to close by Q1 2027
Audience-measurement giant Nielsen said it would acquire the digital-media monitor DoubleVerify in an all-cash transaction that takes place …
Take-Two reports Q1 bookings down 3% YoY to $1.39B, vs. $1.38B est., forecasts Q2 and FY 2027 bookings below est., and highlights excitement for GTA VI's launch
Take-Two Interactive (TTWO.O) maintained its annual bookings forecast on Friday, but reiterated the November 19 launch date …
Cloudflare debuts Kitesurf, a cloud-hosted browser for AI agents built on top of its Workers serverless service, available for free while in beta in Browser Run
Cloudflare is the latest company to join the race to build a new web browser. But instead of pitching a Chrome alternative to consumers …
Airbnb reports Q2 revenue up 17% YoY to $3.6B, Nights and Seats Booked up 10% YoY to 148.3M, above est., and lifts its 2026 revenue forecast; ABNB jumps 10%+
Airbnb Inc. boosted its annual revenue forecast for a second time this year after it saw robust global travel demand, particularly in the US and Europe.
Sources: up to five people tied to US Cyber Command died by suicide from early June to early July 2026, prompting it to flag them as a potential suicide cluster
The US military's cyberwarfare unit is scrutinizing an unusually high number of deaths by suicide among personnel over a month-long period this summer …
Instacart reports Q2 revenue up 14% YoY to $1.04B, GTV up 14% YoY to $10.35B, above est., and forecasts Q3 GTV and core profit above est.; CART jumps 10%+
Instacart (CART.O) forecast third-quarter gross transaction value and core profit above analysts' estimates on Thursday …
Anthropic updates Claude Fable 5's biology safeguards to reduce false positives, cutting biology-related “fallbacks” by ~85% in testing across product surfaces
We're making updates to Claude Fable 5's biology safeguards in a way that substantially reduces false positives.
Sydney-based AI data center company Firmus raised $2B in funding from Coatue, Nvidia, and others at a $10.5B post-money valuation, up from $5.5B in April
Firmus said on Friday it had raised $2 billion in equity in its latest funding round to speed up the build-out of AI factories …
Cloudflare reports Q2 revenue up 36% YoY to $696.1M, above $665M est., net loss up 237% YoY to $170M, and forecasts Q3 revenue above estimates; NET jumps 7%+
Choose Barron's as a preferred source of financial news — Key Points — Cloudflare stock was climbing Thursday night after the company reported better …
TMTG interim CEO Kevin McGurn says the company is pulling back from a pair of Crypto.com deals to focus on its media arm and its pending merger with TAE
Truth Social's parent company, Trump Media and Technology Group, is pulling back from a pair of Crypto.com deals as its new leadership looks …
Naïve, which provides infrastructure for AI agents to handle most business operations, raised a $28.5M Series A led by Nexus, bringing its total funding to $32M
Developers detest drudgery. The entire field of programming is proof of how hard people will work to automate away the boring tasks involved in building things.
Retailers are updating their websites to rank highly in chatbot results, while making sure purchases are done on their own sites to collect customer data
As shoppers increasingly turn to ChatGPT and Google's Gemini for product recommendations, retailers are racing to appear in chatbot results …
The White House imposes price floors and a 15% tariff on products made from polysilicon, the raw material used in chips that is primarily produced by China
The White House on Thursday imposed a series of price floors and a 15% tariff on products made from polysilicon, the raw material used …
The US Treasury sanctions Dubai-based unlicensed crypto exchange Shelbit, alleging it processed millions in crypto for IRGC and other Iran-linked groups
The United States on Friday sanctioned an unlicensed multi-state cryptocurrency exchange, alleging it processed millions of dollars …
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
Figma Is Betting on AI's Next Workflow Figma Inc. Chief Executive Officer Dylan Field forfeited about $46 million in company stock awards …
Filing: ex-a16z partner Bryan Kim is forming venture firm Mido Capital; sources: he plans to raise ~$100M for a fund backing early-stage AI and other startups
Bryan Kim, who invested in consumer tech and AI startups at Andreessen, is creating his own firm, Mido Capital Bryan Kim …
Sources: Cursor told staff on Thursday that SpaceX could complete its $60B acquisition as soon as next week and the Cursor brand name will likely be phased out
Cursor told staff at an all-hands meeting on Thursday that SpaceX could complete its $60 billion acquisition of the coding startup …
Microsoft plans to end support for Manifest V2 extensions in Edge starting this month, following Google Chrome, and for enterprise users in early 2027
Microsoft's plan for Edge means that uBlock Origin users are losing one of their browser options.
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
Sources: data center operator Switch filed confidentially for a US IPO, and a listing could take place as soon as November; Ben Horowitz is joining its board
Switch Inc. filed confidentially for a US IPO, according to people familiar with the matter, joining its data center peers …
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
Sources: Situational Awareness invested $500M, including $400M this week, into Source Foundry, a startup that plans to develop new AI chip manufacturing tools
Investment marks the latest known private-company bet by Situational Awareness after quick sale of its stock portfolio.
Sources: legal AI startup Harvey is in talks to raise $500M+ at a $15.5B valuation, up from $11B in March, and is generating $350M+ in annualized revenue
Legal AI startup Harvey is in talks to raise at least $500 million at a $15.5 billion valuation including the investment, a 40% premium to its last valuation five months ago.
Ad measurement company VideoAmp cut ~20% of its staff this week, citing that “AI is a major platform shift”; sources: 50 to 60 were laid off, including the CTO
Plus, Claire's redesigns its ear-piercing experience to compete with trendy studios
Athens-based Omilia, which builds self-learning AI agents that work across different customer contact points, raised a $67M Series B led by Expedition Growth
The customer support industry has seen a massive influx of startups like Sierra, Decagon and Parloa trying to infuse AI …
Sources: Alibaba plans to ask heavy commercial users of its next Qwen open model for a share of revenue; Moonshot's Kimi K3 requires up to a 30% revenue share
Singapore-based Multiplier, which acquires accounting firms to boost their growth with AI tools, raised a $35M Series B led by TheGP at a $300M valuation
The $300 million company raised $35 million and hired former Slack CFO Allen Shim as it pursues an aggressive, acquisition-led expansion
Q&A with Replit CEO Amjad Masad on why “vibe coding” is never about coding, the SaaSpocalypse, the “self-driving company”, a CEO is a glorified router, and more
Disclosure: my fiancé works at Anthropic, whose models Replit uses and which Masad discusses below.
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
Singapore-based AI infrastructure startup Acrab raised a $130M Series B, bringing its total funding to more than $480M
Acrab, a Singapore-headquartered AI infrastructure startup, has announced raising $130 million in a Series B funding round backed by existing investors Vertex Ventures …
Livestream shopping app Whatnot raised a $545M Series G led by Iconiq, Lightspeed, and Avra at a $20B valuation, up from an $11.5B valuation in October 2025
Whatnot, started in a Funko Pop-flooded rental house, is now a $20 billion company. — The live commerce platform exclusively told Fortune …
Sources: the US Commerce Department's BIS is reviewing how Chinese AI companies access Nvidia chips overseas, including by legally renting foreign data centers
A key US agency is reviewing how Chinese AI firms acquire and access Nvidia Corp. chips overseas, following a spate …
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
Munich-based NavVis, which provides enterprises with spatial data on factories, plants, buildings, and more, raised an $85M Series D led by The Jordan Company
Docs: US data labeling companies, like Surge AI and Mercor, that sell AI training datasets to US labs and the government are also selling them to Chinese labs
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
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
A profile of DDN, a managed data storage company whose annual revenue is expected to grow from $300M pre-AI boom to $1B by year's end, fueled by AI partnerships
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
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
Datadog drops 15%+ after forecasting weaker full-year sales due to reduced usage from its largest client, a leading AI company; Q2 revenue rose 36% to $1.12B
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
Sources: Google's AI shakeup is a seismic shift in the works for months and cements Sergey Brin's influence, after execs became frustrated with Demis Hassabis
Financial Times:
Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes says he will buy $250M of company shares after strong Q4 results dispelled some fears that AI threatens its business model
Atlassian's return to profit and 30% share surge have given CEO Mike …Larry Dignan /Constellation Research:Atlassian cites Q4 Teamwork Graph, context boom
Sources: Canva cut its revenue growth forecast as popular new AI features drove up costs, forced it to slow their rollout, and more Canva users moved to ChatGPT
The Information: