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Switzerland proposes regulations forcing service providers to collect user IDs and disable encryption, threatening its status as a haven for privacy tech firms (Suzanne Smalley/The Record)

California SB 243, which would mandate safety protocols for AI chatbot companions, passes the State Assembly and Senate and now heads to Governor Newsom's desk (Rebecca Bellan/TechCrunch)

Despite hype and optimistic projections, the humanoid robot industry faces hurdles like battery life, reliability, safety, and low demand for large deployments (Evan Ackerman/IEEE Spectrum)

The US FDA clears hypertension notifications on Apple Watch, and Apple plans to roll out the feature to Series 11, 10, and 9, and Watch Ultra 3 and 2 next week (Chance Miller/9to5Mac)

Sources: OpenAI and Nvidia will pledge billions of dollars in UK data center investments during their trip next week, coinciding with President Trump's UK visit (Bloomberg)

Alibaba releases Qwen3-Next, a new model architecture optimized for long-context understanding, large parameter scale, and better computational efficiency (Crystal Liu/Alizila)

Databricks' head of AI, Naveen Rao, is transitioning to an advisory role; source: his new startup will focus on a next-gen computer to address rising AI costs (Bloomberg)

Source: the clause that rescinds Microsoft's access to OpenAI's most powerful tech if OpenAI develops AGI remains part of their new deal, but has been modified (New York Times)

Winklevosses' crypto exchange Gemini raises $425M in its IPO, selling about 15.2M shares for $28 each after marketing them for $24 to $26 apiece (Bloomberg)

Albania appoints an AI bot named Diella as the minister responsible for managing and awarding all public procurement tenders to combat corruption (Reuters)

OpenAI and Microsoft say they have signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding for the next phase of their partnership, and are working to finalize terms (Ina Fried/Axios)

OpenAI says its nonprofit parent will continue to have oversight over the company and will own an equity stake of more than $100B (Ashley Capoot/CNBC)

Figure's shares closed up 24% at $31.11 in its Nasdaq debut, giving it a ~$6.6B market cap, after the company and some of its backers raised $787.5M in its IPO (Bloomberg)

Adobe reports Q3 revenue up 11% YoY to $5.99B, vs. $5.91B est., Digital Media revenue up 12% to $4.46B, and Digital Experience revenue up 9% to $1.48B (Jordan Novet/CNBC)

Google plans to shut down Tables, a work-tracking tool and competitor to Airtable, in December and directs users to migrate to Google Sheets or AppSheet (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster sue Perplexity, alleging that it unlawfully scraped their websites and redirected their traffic to its AI summaries (Blake Brittain/Reuters)

OpenAI projects $200B in revenue in 2030, with R&D spending hitting ~45% of that, or ~$90B; R&D costs of Alphabet and others are currently 10%-20% of revenue (The Information)

Sources: Winklevoss twins' Gemini has seen its planned US IPO oversubscribed by 20x; in an unusual move, the IPO proceeds will be capped at $425M (Echo Wang/Reuters)

The US DOJ sues Uber, with its civil rights division alleging that Uber discriminates against people with physical disabilities in violation of federal law (Natalie Lung/Bloomberg)

Blockchain lender Figure valued at $7.6 billion as shares jump in Nasdaq debut (Reuters)

GE Vernova plans to sell its Proficy industrial software unit to PE firm TPG for $600M and reinvest the proceeds in grid software (Reuters)

The FTC orders Google, OpenAI, Meta and Instagram, Snap, xAI, and Character.AI to provide information on how their AI chatbots impact children and teens (Leah Nylen/Bloomberg)

F5 plans to acquire CalypsoAI, which helps companies secure their generative AI infrastructure, for $180M; CalypsoAI raised $43.2M (Taylor Soper/GeekWire)

Digital banking group NOBA plans to list on Nasdaq Stockholm in Q3 2025, in a deal expected to value the company at around $3.74B (Reuters)

An iOS support page says AirPods' Live Translation feature won't be available to users in the EU with an EU-region Apple Account, likely due to EU regulations (Tim Hardwick/MacRumors)

AI companies' bet on prediction token-based LLMs may make them vulnerable to disruption by a novel approach, especially as new models face diminishing returns (Parmy Olson/Bloomberg)

How Larry Ellison, briefly the world's richest man, and Oracle CEO Safra Catz capitalized on the AI boom and vaulted Oracle into contention with industry giants (Financial Times)

Vantage Data Centers raised $1.6B from GIC and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority to expand in APAC, including the acquisition of a Malaysian data center campus (Bloomberg)

Atlantic Council: the number of US-based investors in spyware companies nearly tripled in 2024 to 31, compared to just 11 in 2023, topping Israel's 26 investors (Vas Panagiotopoulos/Wired)

Blockchain-based lender Figure and some of its backers raised $787.5M in a Nasdaq IPO, selling 31.5M shares at $25 each, valuing the credit company at ~$5.3B (Bloomberg)

Sensor Tower: in July, Rapido had nearly 50M MAUs on Android in India, above Uber's 30M; Rapido has a nearly 30% share in four-wheeler cabs and Uber has ~50% (Pranav Mukul/The Economic Times)

Ant Group unit Robbyant showcases its first LLM-powered humanoid robot, the R1, at a conference in Shanghai, joining an intensifying effort by Chinese companies (Lulu Yilun Chen/Bloomberg)

Graphic videos of Charlie Kirk's shooting, first posted to X, also spread to Instagram, Threads, YouTube, and Telegram within hours, amassing millions of views (New York Times)

CFTC nominee Brian Quintenz says the Winklevosses asked Trump to pause his confirmation after he refused to make promises "rectifying" a prior Gemini settlement (Declan Harty/Politico)

Koi, which applies a centralized protection layer to enterprise endpoints, raised a $38M Series A led by Battery and Team8, taking its total funding to $48M (Meir Orbach/CTech)

Microsoft releases its first preview of Visual Studio 2026, the first major version update since November 2021, with a new design and deeper AI integration (Tim Anderson/The Register)

Interviews with Tim Cook, Apple VP of Industrial Design Molly Anderson, and others about iPhone Air design choices, cross-body straps, the iPhone Pro, and more (Sam Schube/Wall Street Journal)

Opendoor names Shopify COO Kaz Nejatian as its CEO, following Carrie Wheeler's ouster, and appoints co-founder Keith Rabois as its chairman; OPEN jumps 50%+ (Katherine Hamilton/Wall Street Journal)

Source: Perplexity has secured commitments from investors for $200M in new funding at a $20B valuation, less than two months after raising at an $18B valuation (The Information)

YouTube rolls out multi-language audio after a two-year pilot, saying creators saw 25%+ of watch time coming from views in their video's non-primary language (Lauren Forristal/TechCrunch)

US Senator Ted Cruz introduces a bill that would let AI companies apply for exemptions from federal regulations to help them experiment with new technology (Jody Godoy/Reuters)

Analysis: 13+ datasets used by tech companies without permission to train AI models contain 15.8M+ YouTube videos from 2M+ channels, including 1M how-to videos (Alex Reisner/The Atlantic)

Apple extends free access to satellite connectivity features for an extra year for iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 owners who activated their device before September 9 (Jay Peters/The Verge)

Sources: OpenAI signed a contract with Oracle to purchase $300B in computing power, requiring 4.5 gigawatts of capacity, over roughly five years (Berber Jin/Wall Street Journal)

Klarna's shares closed up 14.55% at $45.82 in its NYSE debut, giving it a $17B+ market value, after the company and some of its backers raised $1.37B in its IPO (Bloomberg)

Bluesky says it will comply with South Dakota and Wyoming age-verification laws, which "currently strikes the right balance", after exiting Mississippi (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

ByteDance launches Seedream 4.0, an AI image model it claims can beat Google's viral "nano banana" model in prompt adherence, alignment, and aesthetics (Vincent Chow/South China Morning Post)

Stability AI launches Stable Audio 2.5, which the company says is "the first audio generation model designed specifically for enterprise-grade sound production" (Sean Michael Kerner/Venturebeat)

Reddit launches free tools for publishers as part of Reddit Pro, to track article performance and get suggestions on which communities to share their stories in (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)

Replit raised $250M led by Prysm, nearly tripling its valuation to $3B; its annualized revenue grew from $2.8M to $150M in the past year and it has 40M users (Shirin Ghaffary/Bloomberg)