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Alibaba says its 2.4T-parameter Qwen3.8-Max tops Kimi K3 on some benchmarks, and plans to release the open weights of Qwen3.8-Max and Qwen3.8-27B next week (Luz Ding/Bloomberg)

Two independent teams used GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra on the same quantum cryptography problem, filing papers 3 hours apart, raising questions about scientific credit (Peter Hall/Scientific American)

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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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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, a fund accounting and operations software provider 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)

US judge refuses xAI's request to stop a Minnesota law banning "nudify" apps, noting the request came only three days before the law was to take effect (NBC News)

Bitcoin hardware wallet Coldcard shipped a faulty firmware build, and hackers are now draining wallets; Galaxy Research estimates $70M+ stolen (Shaurya Malwa/CoinDesk)

Trump Media's new paid data API launches, for "a direct, licensed, real-time feed of the platform's most market-moving Truths"; Dem. senators asked SEC to probe (CJ Haddad/CNBC)

Officials: the scope of cyberattacks on US water systems now includes at least seven states and may be far wider; MN was just the first to publicly report them (New York Times)

A look at the deluge of AI computing power set to come online in the coming years; Epoch AI expects the number of AI chips in use to double every nine months (New York Times)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Cybersecurity experts fault Anthropic and OpenAI for sloppy safeguards and inadequate human oversight after their models broke into outside organizations (Bloomberg)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Roblox shares close down ~27%, its worst-ever daily percentage decline, after forecasting falling bookings and slowing revenue growth; RBLX is down 40%+ YTD (Kit Norton/Barron's Online)

Sources: OpenAI has discovered other instances where AI agents escaped containment; none of the agents were thought to have left OpenAI's network (Reuters)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

OpenAI says its models now have more than 1B active users and are used by more than 2M businesses (Katherine Hamilton/Wall Street Journal)