SMIC’s 40.6 Billion Yuan Switchboard
SMIC agreed to spend 40.6 billion yuan for the remaining 49% of its 12-inch-wafer unit. Chinese companies plan to raise domestic accelerators from 30% to 46% of their budgets over the next 12 months.
OpenAI Turns Mac History Into Agent Memory
OpenAI’s enterprise customer base reportedly grew 32% in July. By August 14, available product reporting described Computer History’s local Mac timeline but did not establish controls for derived memory or managed fleets.
Anthropic Hit $11.5B While Withholding Model 2
In August 2026, Anthropic withheld its stronger internal Model 2 while raising its misalignment assessment, even as Q2 revenue topped $11.5 billion. Frontier model access controls now govern both agent exposure and scarce inference.
Anthropic details Claude's text watermark: it only shows Claude was likely involved, is sparse in code and factual text, and disappears after a full rewrite
Future Claude models will generate text that contains a watermark. This is a way of determining the likelihood that Claude …
Google adds a toggle in Gemini and Flow to remove visible watermarks from AI-generated images, videos, and music; SynthID watermarks and C2PA metadata remain
Google will still embed invisible SynthID and C2PA watermarks into AI-generated images, videos, and music.
Alibaba releases weights for Qwen3.8 models under Apache 2.0 license, including Qwen3.8-27B, which it says beats Qwen3.7-Plus and excels in real-world coding
We promised open weights for Qwen3.8. Now, time to meet them! 🎉 ⚡ Qwen3.8-27B: - A native multimodal dense model. With just 27B parameters, it outperforms Qwen3.7-Plus overall and shines in real-world...
SpaceX closes its $60B acquisition of Cursor, two months after SpaceX formally announced it had agreed to acquire the startup
SpaceX has completed a $60 billion acquisition of artificial intelligence coding startup Cursor, a key part of Elon Musk's bid to gain ground on rivals Anthropic PBC and OpenAI.
Z.ai says GLM-5.3 scores 84.5% on CyberGym, vs. Mythos 5's 83.8%, and its most sensitive cybersecurity functions will only be available to verified users
Chinese AI startup Z.ai said on Friday its open-source GLM-5.3 model had neared Anthropic's restricted Mythos 5 in identifying software …
Sources: Nvidia in talks to invest up to $3B in SoftBank-backed data center developer SB Energy that aims to IPO soon and is behind a huge OpenAI campus in Ohio
Nvidia is in talks to invest as much as $3 billion in SB Energy, the Softbank Group-backed developer of a massive planned Ohio …
Source: OpenAI CFO told investors that enterprise business now generates more revenue than ChatGPT-led consumer business; enterprise customers grew 32% in July
At the end of a week of turmoil in OpenAI's C-suite, finance chief Sarah Friar held a meeting with investors on Friday …
Risk report: Anthropic raises misalignment risk estimate from very low to low and says it doesn't plan to release a stronger internal model called “Model 2”
Anthropic does not plan to release an internal model that appears to be more powerful than top-of-the-line Mythos …
Sources: Anthropic projects 2028 revenue of ~$190B-$200B, vs. a revenue run rate of $47B in May, as bankers and investors price the company ahead of an IPO
As Anthropic prepares for what could be one of the biggest IPOs on record, Wall Street is looking further into the future …
Sources: PayPal is in talks to sell itself to a group including Stripe and Advent, which proposed paying $60.50/share in July; PayPal is seeking a higher price
The fintech startup and private-equity firm Advent offered to buy the struggling payments company in July
Dynatrace agrees to acquire Arize, which specializes in AI observability and the AI development lifecycle, for $915M, including ~$815M in cash
Dynatrace acquired Arize, which specializes in AI observability and the AI development lifecycle, in a deal worth $915 million.
SF-based Vals, which develops evaluations and benchmarks to test AI models on real-world tasks, raised a $40M Series A led by a16z at a $400M valuation
- Vals AI raised $40 million in a Series A round at a $400 million valuation. — Revenue has grown eightfold since 2025 …
Waymo receives approval from the California Public Utilities Commission to expand across 18 counties, including Sacramento and San Diego
Waymo says California regulators have signed off on the biggest expansion of its robotaxi service yet, covering 18 counties from Sonoma down to San Diego.
BCG: enterprise users spent a total of $300M on quantum computing in 2025, outranking the combined spending of research labs and governments for the first time
Many companies are pouring millions into quantum computing programs to gain a competitive edge and prepare for future encryption threats
A look at Unitree's G1 and R1, the humanoid robots behind viral influencer accounts worldwide, as Unitree shipped 5,500+ units in 2025 and readies its China IPO
The Unitree G1 has found online fame as a relatively affordable robot that can charm a crowd. But can it ever hold down a real job?
A Wyoming woman joined a federal suit against xAI alleging her stepfather used Grok to turn one childhood photo of her into 7,000+ CSAM images he traded online
When Jane Doe 4, as she is identified in legal filings, arrived at her parents' house in Wyoming to set up a family party earlier this year …
Alibaba's open-weight models have accumulated 3B+ global downloads in the past six months; Hugging Face: Google had 418M downloads while Meta had 227M in 2026
Alibaba Group Holding's open-weight models have accumulated more than 3 billion global downloads in the past six months …
Source and letter: the US plans to tell 35 partner countries they'll be excluded from the US-led Pax Silica initiative if they also join China's rival framework
The U.S. is preparing to tell dozens of countries they must pick sides in the artificial intelligence race with China …
Point2 Technology, which develops RF-based data center interconnection tech, raised a $136M Series B from LB Investment, Arm, Maverick Silicon, and others
Data center interconnect disruptor Point2 Technology celebrates Series B success — AI data center interconnect specialist Point2 …
The US OCC conditionally approves a bank charter application for Trump family's World Liberty Financial, allowing it to directly issue its USD1 stablecoin
Sources: Mercor and other firms gathering data for AI labs are driving demand to buy or license internal datasets from startups shutting down or being acquired
Eight days after AI agent startup Warmly in late June agreed to be acquired by HubSpot, CEO Maximus Greenwald found an unusual email in his inbox.
Sources: Uber and Rapido discussed merging their India ride-hailing operations in May; talks collapsed after disagreements over the proposed deal's structure
Uber and Rapido discussed merging their India ride-hailing operations in May, sources told us. Talks collapsed after disagreements over the proposed deal's structure.
Shanghai's tech-focused Star 50 index is up 29% in 2026, and its P/E ratio is 150+, above Nasdaq 100's 35, fueled by Beijing's tech push and an investor frenzy
Support from Beijing has helped power 29% gain for Star 50 index this year — Backing from Beijing and an investor frenzy …
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says the US is “not in favor” of Apple buying Chinese memory chips, and there have to be “other solutions to the memory issue”
Effective altruism, hit by the SBF turmoil, is drawing record funding as Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs are set to mint new millionaires wedded to “effective giving”
Expected IPOs for Anthropic and OpenAI are set to mint a new generation of philanthropists wedded to ‘effective giving’
Sources: Nvidia has reworked a deal to finance an OpenAI Ohio data center campus so that it would initially guarantee only half of its planned $250B backstop
OpenAI launches Computer History, an opt-in feature that turns day-to-day computer activity on macOS into memories and a timeline that ChatGPT and Codex can use
France's top court blocks a bill banning social media for under-15s, saying it infringed upon freedom of expression; Macron orders the PM to rework the bill
Investor letter: Thrive's 2022 early-stage $516M fund that invested in OpenAI and SpaceX was worth $3.7B+ as of the end of June, net of fees and other charges
A profile of Camilla Clark, quiet adviser to husband Dario Amodei and behind-the-scenes player at Anthropic; she once pitched a porn startup to Jeffrey Epstein
DeepSeek debuts DeepSeek Harness under the MIT license in developer preview, touting a design where “everything is a plugin” that can be swapped out
A judge orders Kalshi to stop offering most of its prediction market contracts in Washington state, after finding it likely violated state gambling-related laws
Filing: Nvidia has a nearly $21B stake in SpaceX and a $30B stake in Intel; Nvidia invested as much as $2B in xAI in 2025 and $5B in Intel
Nevada granted Tesla a robotaxi permit, but capped the fleet at 10 vehicles, not 5,000 that Tesla sought, banned airport pickups, and ordered other restrictions
Amazon adds a clause in its user agreement that seeks to prevent shoppers from filing class-action lawsuits against it, after removing a similar clause in 2021
How dual-valuation deals became pervasive in the current frenzied AI funding cycle, with prestige VC firms monetizing their brand names by getting better prices
Apple officially opens ad bookings for businesses on Apple Maps ahead of an upcoming full rollout across the US and Canada
Sources: China plans to soon lift a travel ban on Manus founders as the company unwinds its $2B acquisition by Meta; CEO Xiao Hong plans to return to Singapore
Docs: Anthropic told investors it generated $11.5B+ in revenue, with positive adjusted operating income, in Q2, up from $787M in Q2 2025 and $4.73B in Q1 2026
Anthropic PBC is telling prospective investors its second-quarter revenue jumped at least 14-fold versus the same period a year ago …
In Q2, “other income”, mostly from investment gains, at Amazon and Alphabet totaled ~$121B after taxes and made up 66% and 71%, respectively, of profits
Sources: OpenAI's repeated exec reshuffles and departures have frustrated some staff as it prepares for an IPO; it disbanded its “preparedness” team in July
Financial Times: