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Sources: YouTube is offering top creators millions to post videos exclusively on YouTube for a period and will penalize those that post to Netflix concurrently (Lucas Shaw/Bloomberg)

Former Meta engineering director Arturo Béjar testifies that Mark Zuckerberg prioritized growth and engagement over child safety on Facebook and Instagram (Reuters)

Google announces new study tools, including a student hub, notebooks, and interactive 3D visualizations in Gemini, plus student offers for Google AI plans (Amanda Caswell/Tom's Guide)

Letter: Stripe told investors January 1 marked the "beginning of the singularity", a major inflection point in long-term trends, and H1 revenue rose 41% YoY (Axios)

Sources: SpaceX approached Cognition about a potential acquisition, but Cognition didn't engage; Cognition CEO Scott Wu says the company is "not for sale" (Bloomberg)

Sources: OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told employees at an all-hands that OpenAI "will be a public company in 2027", or sooner if "our business continues to inflect" (CNBC)

Sources: AI chip startup Fractile is in talks to raise ~$600M at a $6.5B pre-money valuation, up from ~$1B in May, and has an initial ~$250M deal with Anthropic (Bloomberg)

Source: Nvidia has discussed an investment in Mercor as part of a round valuing the startup at $20B; Nvidia paid Mercor tens of millions of dollars last quarter (The Information)

Stripe agrees to acquire New York-based OpenRouter; a source says Stripe is paying $7.5B, with $1.5B going to the startup's founders and $6B to its investors (Erin Griffith/New York Times)

The US FTC says businesses must disclose when they use personalized pricing and it will "deploy enforcement resources" against companies that do not disclose it (Dave Michaels/Wall Street Journal)

Stripe Agrees to Buy AI Firm OpenRouter; No Terms Disclosed (Bloomberg)

Meta launches a Mac app for Meta AI and says Meta AI can now work directly with Instagram and Facebook accounts, Meta ad campaigns, and Google Workspace (Emma Roth/The Verge)

OpenAI is testing Private Safety Processing, a new technique to identify misuse patterns while preserving zero data retention protections, with early customers (Ina Fried/Axios)

The US CFTC bans former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang from trading for five years, as part of a settlement over their roles at FTX (Nicola M White/Bloomberg)

Nielsen rolls out changes to make its ratings more accurate, including using data from smartwatch-like devices worn by its panelists without requiring logins (Loree Seitz/The Wrap)

Google Pixel 11 review: a great design, fantastic camera features, and some Pro phone specs, but few gen-to-gen hardware improvements and it's expensive at $899 (Cameron Faulkner/The Verge)

Pixel 11 Pro review: Magic Capture can be useful, Rambler might be Google's best feature in years, but the gaming performance is subpar and HiLight is useless (Julian Chokkattu/Wired)

Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold review: a tougher body, an IP68 rating, and a decent triple rear camera, but an iterative hardware upgrade with a dated-looking design (Dominic Preston/The Verge)

Google Pixel Watch 5 review: improved GPS is good, gesture controls are great, but it's $50 more expensive and the new health features haven't rolled out yet (Victoria Song/The Verge)

Memo: the GOP asks AI companies to stem the public backlash against data centers, saying the issue could kill its chances of holding a vital Senate seat in Ohio (Alex Isenstadt/Axios)

Rivian spinout Also, which is developing autonomous driving tech, raised a $150M Series D led by Prysm Capital, after announcing a $200M round in March 2026 (Kirsten Korosec/TechCrunch)

Network Bio, which is developing an AI foundation model from datasets of patient tissue and blood samples created by pooling access to biobanks, raised $50M (Brian Gormley/Wall Street Journal)

Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal's Bengaluru-based fintech Navi raised $100M from Prosus, its first institutional funding, sources say at a ~$1.3B valuation (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)

Amazon makes its AI-powered Alexa+ free on all compatible Fire TV devices in the US, automatically upgrading users even if they don't subscribe to Prime (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

Sources: Veeda, which is developing world models and is led by ex-Nvidia VP of AI Research Sanja Fidler, raised a $90M+ seed and is backed by Khosla and Radical (Murad Hemmadi/The Logic)

Sources: Nvidia is working as a matchmaker to connect companies holding its GPUs with Nordic data center operators that have available capacity to deploy them (Kai Nicol-Schwarz/CNBC)

A hacker known as Cyberleek leaks two GTA VI gameplay clips and the full map in protest of Rockstar Games' digital-only release; Rockstar issues DMCA takedowns (Jowi Morales/Tom's Hardware)

Marvell and Google expand their chip development deal, and Marvell grants Google a warrant to buy up to nearly 59M shares at $206.58 each, totaling up to $12.2B (Dana Wollman/Bloomberg)

Cybersecurity data company Prevalent AI raised $22M from Integrity Growth Partners, marking the nine-year-old startup's first-ever outside capital raise (Duncan Riley/SiliconANGLE)

Amazon appears to have leaked Jason Statham's new film Mutiny, streaming it in full on Prime Video in the US, two days before it is supposed to hit theaters (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)

Reconstructed code from Flock's login pages reveals OS Investigate, a new AI system that integrates license plate scans, arrest records, case files, and more (Wired)

UK-based automotive dealership software maker Pinewood agrees to a £545M cash takeover by US private equity firm Ridgeview, after an Apax takeover fell through (Financial Times)

Amazon plans to expand Prime Air drone deliveries to cities in at least five more US states in the coming months, including Chicago and Atlanta by 2026's end (Matt Day/Bloomberg)

OpenAI expands its ad pilot program across 31 European markets, including Germany, France, Spain, and Italy; the pilot launched in the US, the UK, and others (Trishla Ostwal/Adweek)

SMR startup Oklo is currently building its reactor in Idaho, a step towards supplying Meta with power; there are an estimated 22 active US reactor projects (Jennifer Hiller/Wall Street Journal)

Kuaishou reports Q2 revenue flat at ~$5.2B, meeting est., net income down 36% YoY to ~$467M, the biggest drop since 2021, and Kling AI sales up 200% (Rachel Yeo/Bloomberg)

Google Cloud is deploying context-creating AI agents within its tools to automate tasks handled by forward-deployed engineers; Google is hiring hundreds of FDEs (Kevin McLaughlin/The Information)

WiseTech says Australian antitrust authorities raided its office, seeking documents and data as part of an alleged competition law breach probe; WTC falls 8%+ (Angus Whitley/Bloomberg)

Sources: Samsung raises prices for advanced 4nm and 5nm chipmaking services by up to 15% for new orders in July, driven by AI demand and TSMC's tight capacity (Reuters)

Filing: SK Hynix plans a ~$29B share buyback, repurchasing and canceling up to 24M treasury shares, in a bid to calm worries about the durability of AI spending (Denny Thomas/Bloomberg)

US tech companies are offering community investments, guaranteed jobs, and hosting open houses to address concerns and win public support for AI data centers (Wall Street Journal)

AI evaluation lab Irregular's report on its role in hacking incidents involving OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta models faces criticism over unanswered questions (Alexander Martin/The Record)

Nvidia, with quarterly free cash flow up 18x over the past three years to $48.5B, is using its balance sheet and credit rating to build an AI capital moat (Ari Levy/CNBC)

Block releases Berd, a desktop app it built to give its employees a single environment for working with AI agents across different models, under Apache 2.0 (Carl Franzen/VentureBeat)

FDM CCS Insight: ~134M travel eSIMs will be used in 2026, up from 101.8M in 2025, challenging established carriers that make 3% to 5% of revenue from roaming (Kieran Smith/Financial Times)

Z.ai prices GLM-5.3 API access at $1.40/1M input tokens and $4.40/1M output tokens, unchanged from GLM-5.2; Kimi K3 costs $3/1M input and $15/1M output tokens (Carl Franzen/VentureBeat)

Austin-based Smack Technologies, which is developing AI decision-making tools for the US military, raised a $61M Series B led by Costanoa and First In (Mike Stone/Reuters)

OpenAI says new monitoring and security safeguards will add 20% compute overhead to monitored inference workloads; costs will not be passed on to customers (Thomas Claburn/The Register)

Sources: Beijing allowed ByteDance and Tencent to each receive about 10,000 Nvidia H200 chips at their mainland China facilities in recent weeks (Zijing Wu/Financial Times)

Hangzhou-based humanoid robot maker Unitree's stock surges 460% in its Shanghai trading debut, giving it a ~$50B market cap, after raising ~$904M in its IPO (Bloomberg)