Sony Music Warned 700 AI Firms, Then Backed Stability AI
By August 2026, Sony Music and Warner Chappell were suing Anthropic over tens of thousands of songs while Sony Music, UMG, and Warner backed Stability AI’s $76 million round. Catalog permission had become both a legal claim and a model input.
Reddit’s Second Product Reached 10% of Revenue
Reddit now sells its community archive as data infrastructure alongside ads. Its Google deal was reportedly worth about $60 million annually; Google and OpenAI licensing later represented roughly 10% of revenue.
Anthropic releases Claude Fable 5.1, which is generally available, and Mythos 5.1, for trusted partners and with cybersecurity and life sciences safeguards
We're introducing Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1. They're the world's most advanced models for coding and knowledge work …
OpenAI says it plans to publicly release a version of Astra “soon” but will give access to “its most advanced cyber capabilities” only to testers and partners
The company will give select partners early access to its Astra AI model—so they have time to shore up their defenses.
Apple updates Apple Maps to show Lake America for US users, continue to show Lake Ontario for Canadian users, and both globally, following President Trump's EO
Apple Inc. renamed Lake Ontario “Lake America” on its maps service, following a similar move by Alphabet Inc.'s Google, in the wake of an order from US President Donald Trump.
Google rolls out its September Android Drop, with remembered items in Find Hub, “Guided vision” in Gemini Live, Motion Assist to ease motion sickness, and more
Let's be frank: Some of Google's recent Android feature Drops have been duds, offering little more than an expansion of Gemini summaries and chat functions.
Fei-Fei Li's World Labs unveils Atlas, a multimodal world model that generates image/video frames with pixel-perfect camera control and reconstructs them in 3D
World models generate, reconstruct, and simulate any possible world. They understand how worlds appear, behave …
Meta launches Muse Voice Transcribe, MSL's first real-time audio perception model, with streaming automatic speech recognition, trained with 70+ languages
Experience Muse Voice Transcribe in real time … We're excited to introduce Muse Voice Transcribe, the first real …
Dell reports Q2 revenue up 58% YoY to $46.97B, above $44.92B est., and forecasts $192B in FY 2027 revenue, above $172.67B est.; DELL jumps 4%+
Dell Technologies shares moved 9% higher in extended trading on Tuesday after the computer maker reported results and a forecast that easily cleared Wall Street expectations.
Google releases Gemini 3.8 Flash, three weeks after Gemini 3.7 Flash, for an introductory price of $0.75/1M input and $3.75/1M output tokens until December 31
After the last model release three weeks ago, Google today is rolling out Gemini 3.8 Flash. This marks the third Flash update in three months.
John Ternus takes over as Apple CEO and Tim Cook becomes executive chair; sources say Laura Legros, an Apple hardware VP who retired in 2022, has rejoined Apple
Big technology and management changes are greeting John Ternus, whose long-serving predecessor, Tim Cook, will stay on as executive chair.
Meta rolls out Muse Spark 1.3 in Muse Code and Meta Model API, saying it significantly improves coding and agentic performance, at the same price as Spark 1.2
Meta on Wednesday released Muse Spark 1.3, an update it says significantly improves performance in coding and agentic tasks.
Acer unveils the Swift Blade 14, an ultralight laptop weighing 1.76lbs with Intel Wildcat Lake processors, and the Swift Air 16, both set to launch in December
The half-inch thin laptop is joined by a new, much larger Swift Air 16 — both with Intel Wildcat Lake.
Palo Alto Networks reports Q4 revenue up 34% YoY to $3.41B, above $3.35B est., and acquires Console, which uses AI agents to resolve IT support tickets
Palo Alto Networks surpassed fiscal fourth-quarter estimates as mounting artificial intelligence risks boost demand for its cybersecurity tools.
Filing: Apple says John Ternus will get a ~$58M compensation package in FY 2027, including a $3M base salary, while Tim Cook's will get ~$47M as executive chair
Apple Inc. said that new Chief Executive Officer John Ternus will get a compensation package worth about $58 million in fiscal 2027 …
IPO filing: SB Energy says it has 8.8GW of data center capacity contracted or under construction across Texas and Ohio and a $430B data center segment backlog
SB Energy Inc., a data center firm backed by SoftBank Group Corp., filed for a US initial public offering to fund …
Acer unveils its fourth-generation Vero 16 with modular elements like removable bottom covers, hinges, and port covers, replaceable batteries and SSDs, and more
The company also unveils the sleekest Swift yet and a Swift Air update at IFA 2026. — Acer is a brand closely associated …
Sources: Google plans to release Gemini 3.8 Flash as soon as Wednesday; Gemini 4 has done well on pre-training evals, but still needs to complete post-training
Internal tests of Gemini 3.8 Flash show progress in an area where the company has lagged behind Anthropic and OpenAI.
Google launches Google Pics, a creative design suite powered by Gemini and Nano Banana to compete with Canva and Adobe Express, available as a Workspace app
This new image generation and editing app is bringing graphic design to Google Workspace.
Q&A with METR researcher Ajeya Cotra on investigating the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident, AI agents involved in the hack deciding not to notify humans, and more
“This might be the clearest warning shot we ever get.” — Ajeya Cotra is a researcher at METR, where she works on threat modeling …
Nvidia says it will launch DLSS 5 on September 3 on RTX 50-series desktop and laptop GPUs and through GeForce Now, following a divisive announcement in March
DLSS 5 is almost here, but only for NBA 2K27, and only officially for 50-series RTX GPUs.
Anthropic launches Enterprise Frontier Safeguards, which let businesses control how their data is reviewed, stored, and managed, after pushback from customers
Anthropic on Tuesday announced it will walk back a controversial data retention policy after “a lot of feedback” from its business customers …
Fermi Explorer Mission plans to launch a spacecraft to Alpha Centauri, the Sun's nearest star system, by 2029, using a trajectory discovered by PSI's AI system
A nonprofit organization called the Fermi Explorer Mission announced today that it intends to launch a spacecraft to our nearest star system by the end of 2029.
Starman Optical buys a majority stake in GoPro for $285M in cash, a 29.5% premium to its last close; GoPro hit a $4B market cap on its first trading day in 2014
Action camera maker GoPro (GPRO.O) said on Tuesday it is being acquired by Starman Optical in an all-cash deal valued at $285 million.
OpenAI launches a ChatGPT Health integration with Epic's EHR system and a Healthcare Public Data plug-in that can fetch info from sources like RxNorm and PubMed
OpenAI said today that it is integrating ChatGPT Health with Epic's electronic health record (EHR) system, which holds data …
The Trump administration files a brief supporting OpenAI in its dispute with The New York Times, saying training LLMs on copyrighted works is generally fair use
The Trump administration has filed a brief supporting OpenAI in its dispute with the New York Times (NYT.N) and several other newspapers …
The US says some G20 members signed on to avoid writing new regulations for AI, and instead focus on writing rules for “novel” situations that involve the tech
The U.S. pressed G20 members on Tuesday to take a hands-off approach to AI regulation and avoid creating new rules …
MongoDB reports Q2 revenue up 30% YoY to $771.8M, above $735M est., and Atlas revenue up ~29% YoY, below hedge funds' expectations of 30.5%-31%; MDB drops 10%+
McCormick's Rebound Is Starting to Look Seasoned — Sea Limited Is an E-Commerce Winner. This Chart Screams It. — 0&
Memo: Alexandr Wang says Meta is switching from Google Chat to Slack for internal communications as Slack is the “strongest platform available today for agents”
- Meta is migrating to Slack for internal communications, a memo from AI chief Alexandr Wang says.
MrBeast, whose YouTube channel hit 500M subscribers in June, will put Gemini, Google Health, and the Fitbit Air in his videos as part of a multiyear Google deal
One of YouTube's biggest creators has a new deal to promote Gemini and Google Health.
A US federal judge rules that Google does not have to sell off its ad exchange and instead must make its ad tech tools work with those operated by rivals
Alphabet Inc.'s Google doesn't have to sell off its advertising exchange and instead must make its ad tech tools work with those operated by rivals …
OpenAI is facing new lawsuits from witnesses and victims of the February mass shooting in a Canadian town; the suspect talked gun violence with ChatGPT for days
New lawsuits add to list of cases in which the chatbot maker faces questions about the safety of its products
Sources: Palo Alto Networks paid $500M in cash and stock to acquire agentic IT support startup Console; PitchBook: Console was valued at $157M before the sale
Palo Alto Networks paid $500 million in cash and stock to acquire Console, a two-year-old startup that uses AI agents to automate routine …
Broadcom reports Q3 revenue up 86% YoY to $29.59B, vs. $29.36B est., AI semiconductor revenue up 221% to $16.7B, and forecasts Q4 revenue below estimates
Broadcom shares dropped 5% in extended trading on Wednesday after the chipmaker issued disappointing guidance for the current quarter.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says “we trust Anthropic” as they are “back on the right side” with the administration and that “they've done what we asked”
- “They've done what we asked. … - “Really excited for our conversation …
HPE reports Q3 revenue up 34% YoY to $12.2B, vs. $11.9B est., forecasts FY 2026 and FY 2027 sales growth above est., signs a $3.5B server deal with a cloud firm
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. boosted its sales outlook for this fiscal year and next, saying artificial intelligence workloads …
SciFin, which helps revenue teams converge context across disconnected systems to understand business needs, raised a $44M seed co-led by Altimeter and Madrona
SciFin Tech Inc., a company that helps revenue teams converge context across disconnected systems to understand business needs, launched today with $44 million in seed funding.
Sources: AfterQuery, which sells complex reasoning data vetted by humans to AI labs, has hit a valuation of $3.2B, up from $300M in April, and is profitable
Twenty three year-old Spencer Mateega pivoted his YC startup into the fastest unicorn in the accelerator's history, fueling …
Huskeys, which uses agentic AI to help companies block AI-driven attacks, raised a $27M Series A led by Blackstone Innovations Investments at a $100M+ valuation
The company, valued at more than $100 million, uses agentic AI to block threats — Blackstone is placing an early bet on Huskeys …
Snowflake reports Q2 revenue up 35% YoY to $1.55B, vs. $1.48B est., and forecasts Q3 and FY 2027 product revenue above estimates; SNOW jumps 20%+ after hours
Companies looking to build AI tools on top of their data are turning to Snowflake, driving robust revenue growth
Dyson unveils the $499 CameraJet, an AI-powered toothbrush with a 100K-pixel macro lens that scans at 28 images per second and is trained on nearly 470K images
Sources: Thoma Bravo-backed Proofpoint is in talks to acquire cybersecurity company Varonis; Varonis rose 10.4% on Wednesday, giving it a market value of ~$5.4B
Thoma Bravo-backed Proofpoint Inc. is in talks to acquire cybersecurity company Varonis Systems Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.
A look at the current state of humanoid robotics and challenges like generalization and completing long tasks, which may take years or even decades to overcome
A deep dive into the current state of humanoid robotics. — Today's Robot Week article is sponsored by 80,000 Hours …
X says US payouts for its Original Content Rewards and Subscriptions will now be handled through X Money
Elon Musk's social network X on Wednesday said that starting today, all of its U.S. creator payouts will be handled through X Money, the app's payments service.
Dell unveils the student-focused Dell 14S, with Intel Wildcat Lake chips and starting with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, in a bid to rival the MacBook Neo
Sources: AI coding startup Cognition is raising ~$1B at a ~$47B valuation, up from $26B in May; a source says Cognition had nearly $10B in investor interest
Artificial intelligence coding startup Cognition AI Inc. is set to close a new round of funding that would vault its valuation to about $47 billion, according to people familiar with the efforts.
The FBI is investigating Nexus, a new ID theft service on the dark web claiming to sell digital scans of 153M+ drivers licenses from people in the US and Canada
A new identity theft service launched on the dark web this week is selling digital scans of more than 153 million drivers licenses from people in the United States and Canada.Forums:Hacker Newsandr/ne...
A look at Kioxia's expansion to Kitakami, Japan, which helped stall the city's demographic decline and is a test of Japan's ~$640B AI and chips investment plan
Japan is betting $640 billion on AI and chips. But this struggling city shows the limits of that investment.
Austin-based HiddenLayer, which makes security tools to protect AI models, agents, and workflows, raised a $100M Series B led by Delta-v Capital
When AI security startup HiddenLayer raised its $50 million Series A three years ago, one of the big questions in the space was whether …
Robotics startup Lyte, founded by former Apple Face ID engineers, raised $165M led by Maverick Silicon at a $1.6B valuation, taking its total funding to $272M
Lyte, a fast-growing robotics and artificial intelligence startup from top members of Apple Inc.'s Face ID team …
Elon University: 27% of Americans say they use AI chatbots like ChatGPT for personal, emotional, or social queries, rising to nearly 40% among adults under 50
More than a quarter of U.S. adults turn to chatbots for personal or emotional discussions, including for entertainment or social advice, a new survey found.
Filing: OpenAI denies Apple's allegations of trade secret theft, saying “this dispute is a mess of Apple's own making, and it is trying to blame everyone else”
Conveo, which uses AI to conduct customer interviews in 15 languages and analyzes transcripts for market insights, raised a $50M Series A led by DST Global
Conveo, which helps big brands understand market trends, raised a $50 million Series A led by DST Global, Conveo CEO Dieter De Mesmaeker tells Axios Pro exclusively.
Thyme Care, which focuses on filling cancer treatment gaps via a virtual navigation platform, raised a $125M Series E at a $2B+ valuation, up from $1B+ in 2025
Despite recent advancements in oncology, the branch of medicine focused on the study, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer …
Adobe launches Adobe for Slack, making 70+ creative and productivity tools, including Firefly, Express, Photoshop, and Premiere, available via Slackbot prompts
Customers can now use Adobe's apps like Firefly, Adobe Express, Photoshop, Premiere, Acrobat, InDesign, Illustrator, Stock, Lightroom …
Uber is shutting down services in Nigeria and Uganda from September 2 after a global review of its operations; it launched in Nigeria in 2014 and Uganda in 2016
US ride-hailing giant Uber Technologies Inc. is shutting down its services in Nigeria and Uganda from September 2, following a global review of its operations.
JioStar launches JioHotstar internationally without live sports, replacing Hotstar in the UK, Canada, and Singapore, and says JioHotstar has 500M+ MAUs in India
A consortium of 21 banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs, says it will establish a company and launch its stablecoin venture in H1 2027
Mozilla launches built-in ad blocking for Firefox on iOS, using Apple's WebKit Content Blocker and the EasyList filter to block third-party ads and trackers
Letter: OpenAI told two House Democrats that its engineers are developing “automated shutdown capabilities” for AI systems
OpenAI told two House Democrats that its engineers are developing “automated shutdown capabilities” for AI systems, according to a company letter reviewed by Reuters …
Memo: Uber is cutting ~3,300 jobs, or 10% of its staff globally, to reduce management layers and reallocate spending into ridesharing, delivery, and robotaxis
Uber Technologies Inc. is cutting about 3,300 roles, or 10% of its staff globally, in a massive restructuring aimed …
The US Army awards $192M in contracts to Palantir and Anduril to produce eight TITAN AI-powered mobile ground stations, to be delivered over the next 18 months
Watch out, world. The US Army's kill chain is going mobile. — On Tuesday, the Army awarded two contracts worth a combined $192M …
LLM Token Expenditure Index: average cost per million tokens has fallen to 97 cents, part of a sharp months-long decline since hitting a high of $2.07 on May 28
Wafer, which makes AI agents that optimize open-source models for a business's workload, raised a $40M Series A, a source says at a $200M+ valuation
Anthropic says Fable 5.1 will cost ~25% less than Fable 5 “for typical workloads” because of cheaper cache reads and up to ~45% less “for highly agentic work”
Zac Hall /9to5Mac:
Sonos opens its platform to third-party AI assistants, upgrades Sonos 27voice assistant with an in-house LLM, and plans to let users create their own AI agents
AI power infrastructure company SB Energy, which is backed by SoftBank, OpenAI, and Nvidia, files for an IPO, and says it is “substantially dependent” on OpenAI
CJ Haddad /CNBC:
NYC's Department of Education adopts a policy barring public school students from using AI until high school, banning companion chatbots in all grades, and more
Waymo starts offering driverless rides to customers in San Diego, Tampa, and Denver; Amazon's Zoox says it will start testing in Houston and San Diego
A look at South Korea's sovereign AI efforts, including its planned $919B AI infrastructure investment and Nvidia's expanded ties with Samsung and SK Hynix
Korea hosts a Squid Games, National AI Tournament, the best non-Chinese open source model gets eliminated, why Nvidia needs open source, implications for Hynix and Samsung
Valencia-based iPronics raised $125M co-led by Maverick Silicon and Light Street Capital, with participation from Nvidia, to develop an optical circuit switch
Valencia, Spain-based startup iPronics said Tuesday that it has raised $125 million in venture capital with participation from Nvidia …
Survey: 53% of US adults say they spend too much time on their smartphone and 36% say about the right amount; 70% of ages 18 to 29 report spending too much time
Between scrolling, notifications, and messages, smartphones can be hard to put down. Just over half of U.S. adults say they spend …
Wonderful, which helps enterprises deploy AI, raised a $550M Series C led by Insight at a $5B valuation; investors also paid $170M to buy shares from employees
Anthropic prices Fable 5.1 at $10/1M input tokens and $50/1M output tokens, the same as Fable 5's pricing, but cuts cache read pricing by 75% to $0.25/1M tokens
Frederic Lardinois /The New Stack:
Acer unveils the Predator Atlas 7, a 7" handheld with an Intel Arc G3 Extreme CPU, shipping in November, and the Project DualPlay Mini, an 8" concept device
concept shown alongside Predator Atlas 7 handheld sporting Intel's Arc G-series chipKyle Barr /Gizmodo:Acer's Smaller Intel-Based Gaming Handheld Has Sky-High AmbitionsLori Grunin /CNET:Acer Shows Off...
Source: OpenAI's Astra model uses “recurrent depth”, a technique that improves cost and performance but obscures the AI's reasoning, making it harder to monitor
OpenAI says its forthcoming AI model Astra marks a step up in capabilities such as coding and operating applications on a computer.
Muse Spark 1.3 with max reasoning, in limited preview for partners, scores 62 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, behind only Fable 5.1 and Opus 5
@artificialanlys:
Anthropic says Fable 5.1 sets a new standard for coding, knowledge work, and long-running problem-solving tasks, and can fix the root causes of software issues
It's only the first day of September 2026, but the month and fall season are already off to the races in AI land …
New Jersey-based Aitan, which offers “robotic sovereignty as a service” and “edge AI weapon systems”, emerges from stealth with $41M led by Deep33 and Dell
Claude Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1 are Anthropic's first models to watermark text outputs; a detection API is available to eligible groups as required under EU law
Ben Patterson /PCWorld:
Air Security, which builds a security service for extensions and other tools installed on AI agents, emerges from stealth with $50M led by Sequoia and Greenoaks
Memo: Savvy Games Group CEO Brian Ward, who oversaw the Saudi Arabian government's $38B investment in the video game industry since 2021, is stepping down
Empirik, which uses AI to predict and prevent IT outages by analyzing system changes and their effects, raised a $21M seed and spins out from Sequoia Capital
A look at Snap's Specs AR glasses bet; sources: Evan Spiegel wore them for an interview against internal advice, while the planned outside funding never came
The OpenAI-Hugging Face incident is an early example of “rogue AI”, and may presage truly “self-sovereign” agents and swarms of agents without a human “owner”
The OpenAI-Hugging Face Incident is an early example of an AI system that has “gone rogue.”Joshua Achiam /@jachiam0:There is a fact about the future that I feel many people are not facing for reasons ...
PSI, which aims to use AI “to industrialize the discovery of new physics” including cracking interstellar travel, emerges from stealth with a $58M seed
Sabrina Ortiz /The Deep View:
Aslan, which offers AI agents for the FBI and wider intelligence community that can pose as analysts and undercover spies in online forums, raised $20.8M
Frontier AI labs are stepping up biological risk testing, which is harder than cybersecurity testing, where capabilities can be tested in digital environments
John Deere is testing JD, an AI assistant for farmers, to help with best practices and find trends based on farmers' “field, machine, and operational data”
The EU General Court dismisses Opera's challenge against the European Commission's decision in 2024 to exempt Microsoft Edge from DMA gatekeeper regulations
DataAgent, which is developing AI agents that autonomously fix failures inside companies' own cloud infrastructure, emerges from stealth with a $10M pre-seed
OpenAI says Astra is its first model to reach its “Critical” cyber threshold and warns safeguards may mistakenly flag legitimate activity as cyber misuse
Ina Fried /Axios:
Mark Zuckerberg says Meta's Watermelon model and Muse Spark open weights are “coming soon”
Muse Spark 1.3 is rolling out today with frontier performance almost too cheap to meter. This is the biggest jump we've made so far on coding and agentic work. Try it in Muse Code and our API. Next up...
Google launches Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber for partners in its new Fairwind Program and says Gemini 3.8 Flash beats Claude Opus 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol on some benchmarks
Our newest Gemini models deliver next-generation intelligence for agentic workflows and cybersecurity.