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Techmeme

Google Images launches a Pinterest-like redesign with a browsable, dynamic gallery of images, and adds a way for users to create AI images in Search (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)

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The European Commission proposes exempting wearable tech from rules requiring removable batteries, clearing a hurdle for Meta's smart glasses, after US pressure (Politico)

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Anthropic announces a new Claude for Teachers initiative, as part of which it will provide K-12 teachers in the US free access to premium Claude features (Zac Hall/9to5Mac)

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Sources: data center operator Switch has hired investment banks for a US IPO that could raise up to $10B and value it at $80B, set for as soon as Q4 (Reuters)

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Hachette, Elsevier, Cengage Learning, and author Scott Turow sue Google for allegedly using millions of copyrighted books and articles to build AI models (A.J. Katz/The Wrap)

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A Trump administration official says a "trivial" number of Nvidia's H200 chips were shipped to China after winning a US license, without offering specifics (Bloomberg)

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Chinese startup DFSX launches an AI chip that it claims uses a fully domestic supply chain and is built on a 14nm process, but says it can rival 4nm chips (Wall Street Journal)

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Velocity, a stablecoin treasury and settlement platform, raised a $38M Series A led by Dragonfly and FirstMark, bringing its total funding to around $50M (Daniel Kuhn/The Block)

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OpenAI strikes a partnership with Kalshi to show FIFA World Cup prediction market data in ChatGPT search results, its first deal with a prediction market (Mike Isaac/New York Times)

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Spotify launches Talk to Spotify, letting users create playlists and more via voice, rolling out in beta to Premium users age 18+ in the US, Ireland, and Sweden (Steve Dent/Engadget)

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Researcher: SpaceXAI's Grok Build CLI uploaded user repos to a Google Cloud Storage bucket; uploads have now stopped and Musk says prior uploads will be deleted (Connor Jones/The Register)

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Filing: Chinese chipmaker CXMT is seeking to raise ~$9.8B in an IPO on Shanghai's chip-heavy STAR Board, pricing 6.69B shares at ~$1.28 each (David Morris/Bloomberg)

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AI startup Reflection says it has signed a $1B+ deal to secure computing capacity from Nebius, including access to Nvidia chips, following a deal with SpaceX (Aditya Soni/Reuters)

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Kalshi launches a forward curve tool for AI compute, using event contracts to track the future rental costs of GPUs, storage, and memory (Katherine Doherty/Bloomberg)

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Seattle-based Brinc Drones, which makes 911 response drones, raised $125M led by Motorola Solutions, bringing its total funding to more than $280M (Todd Bishop/GeekWire)

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Flex, which offers AI-based payment tools, credit, and more to mid-sized companies, raised a $70M Series B1 led by Halo Fund, a source says at a $1.2B valuation (Aditya Soni/Reuters)

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Analysis: xAI has installed far more gas turbines without US permits at Colossus 2 than it has publicly acknowledged, impacting Black neighborhoods the hardest (Reuters)

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Discount airline Frontier partners with SpaceX to offer Wi-Fi for the first time from early 2027, as it targets customers willing to pay more for premium travel (Alison Sider/Wall Street Journal)

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Custom AI chip design startup TYLsemi raised $43M in early-stage funding led by Matter Venture Partners to build modular chips thanks to packaging tech advances (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE)

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Sources and telecom data: a coordinated campaign of SS7 pings was used to track the locations of US personnel during the US-led strikes on Iran in late February (Financial Times)

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AI drug design startup Chai Discovery raised $400M led by Index at a $3.8B valuation, as it pitches its models as AI infrastructure for pharmaceutical companies (Michael J. de la Merced/New York Times)

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The European Commission approves €659M in German state aid to support four first-of-a-kind chip facilities in Germany, saying they will strengthen EU autonomy (Kirsti Knolle/Reuters)

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IBM reports preliminary Q2 revenue up 1% YoY to $17.2B, below $17.9B est., as CEO Arvind Krishna says customers are shifting spending to chips; IBM falls 20%+ (Amy Thomson/Bloomberg)

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New York Governor Kathy Hochul signs a moratorium blocking new environmental permits for data centers over 50MW for up to one year, the first state to do so (Lauren Feiner/The Verge)

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Survey: 57% of US women and 47% of men ages 18 to 29 say they get health and wellness information from influencers; women say they see such content more often (Aaron Smith/Pew Research Center)

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Nikita Bier says X made a "tweak to boost visibility of your posts to your mutuals", or those who users follow back, to avoid replies becoming a "battleground" (Lucas Ropek/TechCrunch)

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Demis Hassabis proposes a US-based Standards Body for "Frontier-class" AI, modeled after FINRA; labs would share models for review up to 30 days before release (Demis Hassabis/@demishassabis)

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Sources: DeepSeek is in preliminary talks with new investors about raising funds at a ~$71B valuation, after raising ~$7B at a ~$52B valuation at the end of May (Zijing Wu/Financial Times)

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A look at AI world models, including how they work, what they can do, and what's still unsettled, as startups led by tech leaders like Yann LeCun raise billions (Samuel Axon/Ars Technica)

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China's smartphone shipments fell 4.3% YoY to 66M units in Q2, the fifth consecutive quarter of decline, amid a memory shortage; Huawei and Apple grew shipments (Kiranjeet Kaur/IDC)

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eMarketer: chatbots like ChatGPT and Google AI Mode will make <$1B in ad revenue in 2026; OpenAI projected $2.5B in ChatGPT ad revenue in 2026 and $100B by 2030 (Trishla Ostwal/Adweek)

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Google agrees to buy 100% of the initial output from the Steel River Energy Center's 1.6GW solar project in Arkansas when it becomes operational in 2029 (Martha Muir/Financial Times)

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Researchers detail "context bombing", where defenders use prompt injections to trigger guardrails of attackers' LLMs, cutting AI hacking success rates by ~90% (Dan Goodin/Ars Technica)

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Sources: Nvidia intensified due diligence and cut its authorized AI chip customers in Singapore, Malaysia, and Japan by 50%+ to prevent China diversions (Zijing Wu/Financial Times)

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In the wake of China's "embodied AI" push, there's an urgency among China's 100+ humanoid startups to launch IPOs; LimX Dynamics raises $200M in a pre-IPO round (Evelyn Cheng/CNBC)

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Singapore-based and Alibaba-backed video generation startup PixVerse says it closed a Series C extension to raise $439M total for the round, valuing it at $2B+ (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)

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Anthropic research based on ~310K anonymized Claude conversations shows how Claude's expressed values and behaviors vary across models and languages (Jason Nelson/Decrypt)

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Sources: Nous Research, the startup behind Hermes, an open-source agent and OpenClaw rival, is raising $75M+ at a $1.5B valuation led by Robot Ventures (TechCrunch)

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Sources: the Trump admin and industry groups discuss streamlining the releases of US open models of equal or lesser capability than leading Chinese open models (Benjamin Guggenheim/Washington Post)

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Apple releases the first public betas of iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27 Golden Gate, watchOS 27, and tvOS 27, marking the new Siri AI's first public launch (Will Shanklin/Engadget)

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Microsoft announces a Windows 11 search overhaul that prioritizes local results, removes promotional web content, and more, rolling out to Windows Insiders (Zac Bowden/Windows Central)

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Q&A with Xinzhou Wu, head of automotive at Nvidia, on Nvidia's chips and AI models for autonomous driving, lidar's usefulness for Level 4 autonomy, and more (Nilay Patel/The Verge)

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Doc: DHS analysts twice dismissed signs of intruders inside the DHS' network, first detected in May, as harmless activity before confirming a breach in June (David DiMolfetta/Nextgov/FCW)

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A coalition of 12 US states led by California files an antitrust lawsuit to block Paramount's WBD merger, alleging it lessens competition in three markets (Gene Maddaus/Variety)

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London-based Valarian, which allows companies to use US cloud providers for AI workloads but retain control of their data, raised a $50M Series A led by NEA (Lily Mae Lazarus/Fortune)

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Seattle-based Augmodo, whose AI-powered "Smartbadges" worn by employees track shelf inventory, raised $21M led by TQ Ventures at a $350M valuation (Kurt Schlosser/GeekWire)

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Gauntlet, which helps institutions and crypto companies allocate their digital assets, raised a $125M Series C from Japanese financial conglomerate SBI Holdings (Ben Weiss/Fortune)

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Global smartphone shipments fell 11% YoY in Q2 to the lowest Q2 levels since 2013 amid the DRAM and NAND shortage; Samsung returns to #1 with a 24% market share (Shilpi Jain/Counterpoint Research)

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Apple's stock is up 16% since June 25, adding ~$650B in market value and pushing shares back to record territory, as investors flee an AI stock selloff to Apple (Ryan Vlastelica/Bloomberg)

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Sources: US officials estimate unauthorized distillation costs US AI labs up to $6B/year; US AI labs told the White House it could become an existential threat (Maggie Eastland/Bloomberg)

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