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Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 5, saying it nears Opus 4.8 performance at lower prices and is substantially better than Sonnet 4.6 for agentic work (Anthropic)

A study of 22K US companies shows those spending most heavily on AI are adding workers faster than peers, but most gains are among tech companies and startups (Financial Times)

Source: OpenAI engineers earlier this month told some colleagues they had figured out a way to more than halve the cost of inference (Stephanie Palazzolo/The Information)

Anthropic launches Claude Science, an AI workbench that uses existing Claude models like Opus 4.8 to integrate 60+ scientific databases and specialized toolkits (Rebecca Bellan/TechCrunch)

Ottawa-based Dominion Dynamics, which is building software, sensors, and drones to autonomously monitor the Arctic, raised a CA$139M Series A led by Georgian (Josh Scott/BetaKit)

Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, Coinbase, and 140+ companies join Open Standard to launch Open USD, a stablecoin that shares earnings from its reserves (Kyle Baird/The Block)

Schneider Electric agrees to buy industrial AI company Cognite in a $3.1B all-cash deal, and plans to combine Cognite with its industrial software company Aveva (Frank Connelly/Bloomberg)

SCOTUS agrees to hear Apple's appeal of a 2025 contempt ruling in its Epic case after a district judge found Apple violated an order to make App Store changes (Mike Scarcella/Reuters)

Google launches Nano Banana 2 Lite, a low cost text-to-image model that delivers outputs in four seconds, and rolls out Gemini Omni Flash to developers (The Keyword)

Filings: Microsoft's Ireland hub generated $47B in pretax profits for FY 2025, or 38.1% of its global total; new EU rules require country-by-country reporting (Wall Street Journal)

MDOTM, which makes AI software for asset and wealth managers, raised $27M led by Expedition Growth Capital, bringing its total funding to $36.5M (Ryan Lawler/Axios)

Cybersecurity company Aikido Security acquires Root, which has raised about $37.6M and develops an AI platform for securing open-source components (Duncan Riley/SiliconANGLE)

AWS launches an internal organization for AI-focused forward-deployed engineers, backed by $1B in resources, following OpenAI and others in launching FDE teams (Russell Brandom/TechCrunch)

AI inference startup Etched raised $800M from investors including Jane Street and a TSMC-linked venture firm, and says it has signed sales contracts worth $1B (Dina Bass/Bloomberg)

Cyber unicorn Aikido acquires Israeli startup Root for $70-$100 million (Meir Orbach/CTech)

The DOD seeks to recruit engineers experienced in frontier AI, machine learning and automation, and data systems, to embed them "down to the unit level" (John Harney/Bloomberg)

An Indonesian court sentences Gojek co-founder and ex-education minister Nadiem Makarim to 10 years in prison for power abuses over a Chromebook contract (New York Times)

Q&A with Grindr CEO George Arison on turning Grindr into an "AI-native company", "impos[ing]" AI on staff, facing "opposition", using AI as a CEO, and more (Jordyn Holman/New York Times)

How Spain's LaLiga uses nationwide IP blocking to combat illegal sports streams, impacting an estimated 550K+ domains, putting it in conflict with Cloudflare (Bloomberg)

As OpenAI and Anthropic prepare to go public, San Francisco tech workers making six figures say they cannot compete with the new AI elite and may have to leave (Emmy Martin/New York Times)

Meituan open-sources LongCat-2.0, a 1.6T-parameter model that it says was trained on a 50K-chip cluster of domestic Chinese processors, without giving details (Reuters)

AI and vibe coding fuel a surge in game releases; ATTN Economy says 181K mobile games launched in six months to May, up 118% on iOS and 73% on Android YoY (Orlando Crowcroft/Financial Times)

The UK CMA proposes requiring Apple and Google to relax UK developer payment "steering" rules, and Apple to open NFC; Google says it "already made the changes" (Sam Tabahriti/Reuters)

Hotels, tour operators, and travel agencies rush to launch proprietary online tools and loyalty schemes to fend off future competition from AI travel agents (Stephanie Stacey/Financial Times)

AI may help transform air traffic control by processing vast amounts of data, spotting collision risks early, and easing staff shortages as air travel grows (Peter Campbell/Financial Times)

Dubai- and London-based 1001, which uses AI to improve aviation, port, and energy infrastructure efficiency in the Gulf, raised $30M led by Lux Capital (Matthew Martin/Semafor)

US political campaign managers and consultants are using AI to analyze voter data, create campaign materials, and more; survey: 87% of campaigners use AI daily (Stuart A. Thompson/New York Times)

Five Chinese tech and advanced manufacturing companies launch Hong Kong listings, seeking to raise up to $5.6B, led by Apple supplier Luxshare's $3.15B offering (Reuters)

Sources: Chinese smartphone makers like Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo told suppliers they will again cut 2026 shipment targets, with Xiaomi cutting 30% to ~95M units (Nikkei Asia)

Source: the Trump administration has talked with SpaceX about donating shares to Trump Accounts, which provide children with tax-advantaged savings accounts (Semafor)

Nebex, a fintech startup aiming to act as a broker platform connecting US space tech suppliers, foreign governments, and investors, raised a $30M seed led by GV (Bloomberg)

Australia's ACCC sues Amazon for allegedly introducing ads to Prime Video under unfair contract terms and forcing existing subscribers to pay more to avoid them (Peter Vercoe/Bloomberg)

OpenAI teases a device it is launching in partnership with keyboard maker Work Louder on July 15, saying "Your favorite Codex shortcuts are getting an upgrade" (Emma Roth/The Verge)

Sources: AI video startup Higgsfield is in talks to raise $300M to $500M at a $5B pre-money valuation, more than 4x its valuation in a January 2026 round (The Information)

The UK FCA unveils the updated version of its crypto regulatory framework, after softening proposed rules that critics said risked holding the UK back (Financial Times)

AI coding startup 8090 raised a $135M Series A led by Salesforce Ventures; founder Chamath Palihapitiya announces that he will lead the company as CEO (Julie Bort/TechCrunch)

The US DOD appoints Marc Andreessen to its Defense Policy Board, a committee that gives strategic advice to the US defense secretary and other top officials (Nick Wadhams/Bloomberg)

AI leaderboard provider Arena says it hit $100M in annualized run-rate revenue eight months after launching AI Evaluations, which offers performance analytics (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)

Google says the Gemini app now offers personalized Nano Banana image generation, previously limited to Plus, Pro, and Ultra users, to eligible US users for free (Lauren Forristal/TechCrunch)

Sources: hundreds of Meta contractors posed as minors to probe how competitor chatbots responded to prompts involving suicide, sex, and other high-risk subjects (Wired)

Tidal adopts an AI policy that blocks wholly AI-generated music from earning royalties and removes AI-generated music that impersonates artists (Murray Stassen/Music Business Worldwide)

Digital Realty says it plans to acquire a majority stake in three fully leased Northern Virginia data centers from Blackstone-managed funds in a $7.8B deal (Jaspreet Singh/Reuters)

Source: Taiwanese authorities raided Super Micro's Taiwan office as part of a probe into the alleged smuggling of Nvidia chips to China; SMCI closed down 8.1% (Debby Wu/Bloomberg)

As a new law bars DOD from working with companies whose lobbyists also represent blacklisted entities, DC lobbying firms drop companies like Alibaba and Tencent (Bloomberg)

Waymo and Uber quietly ended their partnership in Phoenix in May; Uber says it is readying the launch of a separate autonomous vehicle partnership in the city (Sean O'Kane/TechCrunch)

Sources: component and supplier lists, and photos of iPhone 18 Pro models, are among files a ransomware group stole from Apple's Indian supplier Tata (Reuters)

Baz releases Baz Planner, which uses four specialized AI agents to analyze code at the planning stage, and extends its seed funding by $9M to $17M (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE)

California strikes a deal with Anthropic to expand the use of Claude products across state agencies and local governments at a 50% discount (Christine Mui/Politico)

In Q2, there were thirteen $1B+ US venture-backed startup exits, either through acquisition or IPO, the most exits since the 2021 market peak (Joanna Glasner/Crunchbase News)

Quantifind, whose AI products help banks combat financial crimes such as money laundering, raised $200M led by Summit Partners (Laura Kreutzer/Wall Street Journal)