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Sources detail the troubled development of Tencent's ambitious, GTA-like game Last Sentinel, which has burned hundreds of millions of dollars over six years (Jason Schreier/Bloomberg)
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg : Sources detail the troubled development of Tencent's ambitious, GTA-like game Last Sentinel, which has burned hundreds of millions of dollars over six years — Lightspeed's Last Sentinel…
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A look at the US open-weight AI model ecosystem, as VCs question the revenue potential of open-weight startups like Arcee, Reflection AI, and Poolside (Wall Street Journal)
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Robinhood's prediction markets revenue surged 10x+ YoY to $156M in Q2, topping stock and crypto for the first time as speculators shift to real-world event bets (Yueqi Yang/The Information)
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Four US states rolled back or paused data center tax incentives, and nine others are weighing repeal measures, potentially adding 7% or more to equipment costs (Ann Davis Vaughan/The Information)
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LLMs are moving from generating artifacts to creating hyper-custom worlds on demand, but still lack the ability to natively perceive and audit what they create (Andrej Karpathy/@karpathy)
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Researchers used AI-assisted code to undetectably tamper with data from computerized scans of physical DNA evidence produced by widely used crime-lab machines (Mariah Timms/Wall Street Journal)
Mariah Timms / Wall Street Journal : Researchers used AI-assisted code to undetectably tamper with data from…
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Experts say US law is unprepared for rogue AI agents and models, as recent OpenAI and Anthropic incidents raise questions over legal liability and repercussions (Lily Hay Newman/Wired)
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Thoughts on Apple Upgrade; sources: MacBook Air is now facing shortages too; Apple wants to turn its future glasses and headsets into health and fitness devices (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)
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As Taiwanese server makers expand in Mexico, the country has become the second-largest supplier of servers to the US, behind Taiwan, with $46.9B in YTD sales (Financial Times)
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A profile of Jacob Tsimerman, who won the Fields Medal last week and is taking a leave from the University of Toronto to join OpenAI and work on AI safety (Ben Cohen/Wall Street Journal)
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Chinese VC firms are rushing to raise new funds after three years of record-low fundraising, amid renewed enthusiasm for China's tech, AI, and robotics sectors (Eleanor Olcott/Financial Times)
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LemonEdge, which provides fund accounting and operations tech for the private markets sector, raised a $21M Series A led by Blackstone Innovations Investments (FinTech Global)
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Malaysia shuts down Network School, Balaji Srinivasan's techno-utopian project, over licensing issues; Srinivasan says he is opening a new campus in Kazakhstan (Wall Street Journal)
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Apple introduced a cap and a 30-day cool-off period on bug report submissions, citing a deluge of AI-assisted reports; researchers can request higher quotas (Financial Times)
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An investigation reveals Dubai-based unlicensed crypto exchange Shelbit has processed at least $4B as part of Iran's sanctions-evasion operation since May 2024 (Reuters)
Reuters : An investigation reveals Dubai-based unlicensed crypto exchange Shelbit has processed at least $4B as part…
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OpenAI says an internal version of Astra, its next big model, produced results for 10 problems in math, quantum complexity, and theoretical computer science (OpenAI)
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This year's Defcon badges include Baochip-1x, an open source chip whose security is verifiable and that can also be used as a hardware security token (Kim Zetter/Wired)
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At the UN AI for Good summit, a big Chinese delegation argued Chinese open-source AI models are the future for most of the world, while US presence was muted (J.D. Capelouto/Semafor)
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Inside Larry Ellison's debt-fueled push to turn Oracle into an AI juggernaut by aligning with Trump, backing Project Stargate, and partnering with OpenAI (New York Times)
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Toronto-based Terminal, whose API connects insurance products and commercial fleet software with telematics data, raised a $20M Series A led by Battery Ventures (Alex Riehl/BetaKit)
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Tel Aviv-based Bloom Security, which develops endpoint security tools for monitoring AI agents, extensions, and more, emerges from stealth with a $20M seed (Chris Metinko/Axios)
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Foundational Industries, which aims to build AI-run factories for physical products, starting with custom data center rack enclosures, raised a $25M seed (Lily Mae Lazarus/Fortune)
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Harmony, which offers AI-powered enterprise software for handling tasks such as employee onboarding and software access, raised a $34M seed led by Lightspeed (Geoff Weiss/Business Insider)
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ThreatLocker raised a $190M Series F led by Elephant as it looks to extend its zero-trust enterprise security platform to protect against AI-related risks (Kyle Alspach/CRN)
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ProphetX, a CFTC-designated sports prediction market that is also building a B2B business to sell its exchange infrastructure to other companies, raised $35M (Ryan Lawler/Axios)
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Sources detail how OpenAI fell behind Anthropic in revenue growth and valuation after prioritizing consumer chatbots and flashy side projects over coding tools (Berber Jin/Wall Street Journal)
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A US judge largely denies Perplexity and three data scraper firms' bid to dismiss Reddit's lawsuit over claims of copyright law violations under DMCA (Ashley Belanger/Ars Technica)
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Sensor Tower: India's mobile app market generated a record $345M in consumer spending in Q2, up 35% YoY; ChatGPT ranked No. 1 by downloads and No. 2 by revenue (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch : Sensor Tower: India's mobile app market generated a record $345M in consumer spending in…
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Cybersecurity experts fault Anthropic and OpenAI for sloppy safeguards and inadequate human oversight after their models broke into outside organizations (Bloomberg)
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The FTC clears quantum computing company IonQ's $1.8B acquisition of chipmaker SkyWater after the FTC's two members disagreed at first on imposing conditions (Jody Godoy/Reuters)
Jody Godoy / Reuters : The FTC clears quantum computing company IonQ's $1.8B acquisition of chipmaker SkyWater after…
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Sources: OpenAI demoed a new "Astra" AI model family to US policymakers and regulators this week, touting its improved abilities to complete long-running tasks (The Information)
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Filing: Amazon has completed its $50B investment in OpenAI; source: OpenAI received the final tranche this week, taking Amazon's position to roughly 5% (Financial Times)
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Amazon shares closed up 15.32% on Friday, the biggest one-day jump since April 2012, after the company reported accelerating AWS revenue (Spencer Soper/Bloomberg)
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Roblox shares close down ~27%, its worst-ever daily percentage decline, after the company forecasted declining bookings and slowing revenue growth (Kit Norton/Barron's Online)
Kit Norton / Barron's Online : Roblox shares close down ~27%, its worst-ever daily percentage decline, after the…
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Sources: OpenAI has discovered other instances where AI agents escaped containment; none of the agents were thought to have left OpenAI's network (Reuters)
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FBI and EPA say water and wastewater utilities in at least seven states reported cyberattacks this week, with some causing flooding and other operational issues (James Rundle/Wall Street Journal)
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Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signs the Children's Social Media Safety Act, a bill designed to limit children's access to "addictive" social media algorithms (Ben Szalinski/Capitol News Illinois)
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An in-depth account of the past two days inside Situational Awareness, as Aschenbrenner assured investors he would focus on changes to his portfolio management (Wall Street Journal)
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Google rolls back an image generation tool in Google Earth to add "stronger guardrails" after concerns arose it can be used to create deepfake satellite imagery (Geoff Brumfiel/NPR)
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Index Ventures has raised $2B in new capital: a $900M venture vehicle, $400M for seed financing, and an addition of $700M to a 2024 $1.5B growth fund (Mark Bergen/Bloomberg)
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Snap says its recommendation systems will be adjusted so only videos created by real people, not AI-generated ones, are eligible for Spotlight recommendations (Lauren Forristal/TechCrunch)
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Sources: NXP is in talks to buy Ambarella, which has a market cap of ~$3.3B and makes image-processing chips for security cameras and self-driving cars (Oliver Barnes/Financial Times)
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OpenAI says its models now have more than 1B active users and are used by more than 2M businesses (Katherine Hamilton/Wall Street Journal)
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Trump says he does not think Iran is behind a cyberattack on Minnesota water systems: "I think I blame it on Minnesota because they're grossly incompetent" (Reuters)
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Filing: Microsoft's product R&D roles declined for the second straight year as the company's total FY2026 headcount fell for the first time since 2016 (Todd Bishop/GeekWire)
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SpaceXAI says it will remove 69 gas turbines used to power the Colossus data centers near Memphis by July 2027, as it moves to a 1.2 GW natural gas power plant (Tim De Chant/TechCrunch)
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South Korea plans to inject ~$14B into its sovereign wealth fund for strategic investments in AI, data centers, and infrastructure, after a rout in tech stocks (Haram Lim/Bloomberg)
Haram Lim / Bloomberg : South Korea plans to inject ~$14B into its sovereign wealth fund for strategic investments in…
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AI-generated images, video, audio, and text on matters of public interest designed to look authentic must be labeled in the EU under the AI Act from August 2 (Jennifer Rankin/The Guardian)
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MediaTek says its board has approved a discretionary $5B financing budget to support long-term growth, including its expansion into AI chips for data centers (Wen-Yee Lee/Reuters)
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