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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)

Sources: open-source orchestration platform developer Temporal is in talks to raise ~$500M at a $12B+ valuation, up from $5B after raising $300M in February (Bloomberg)

Rillet, which is developing an AI-native accounting platform, raised a $100M Series C at a $1B valuation led by Iconiq, bringing its total funding to $200M+ (Nick Lichtenberg/Fortune)

Cerebras unveils CS-4, a server rack powered by three WSE-3 Turbo chips and built around its new Nexus architecture, with first shipments starting in Q3 2026 (Max A. Cherney/Reuters)

Survey: 52% of Americans say they are more concerned than excited about increased AI use in daily life, up from 37% in 2021, including 55% of those under 30 (Pew Research Center)

Anthropic details two experiments showing how Claude can accelerate protein design and analytical chemistry, and says it plans an access program for scientists (Anthropic)

Sources: OpenAI's Q2 sales grew 18% QoQ to $6.7B as its losses widened from $9.3B to $12.3B; Anthropic's sales grew 2x+ to $11.6B, with a small operating profit (Wall Street Journal)

Z.ai's GLM-5.3 with max reasoning scores 60 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, on par with Kimi K3 but below Opus 5 at 63 and Fable 5 at 62 (@artificialanlys)

Internal memo: ICE bars its employees from wearing Meta's AI glasses, saying they "could unintentionally capture, record, or transmit sensitive information" (New York Times)

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro signs an executive order imposing new requirements on data center projects, including getting approval from local officials (Allan Smith/NBC News)

In opening arguments, US state AGs said Meta intentionally sought to addict children to Facebook and Instagram in pursuit of profit; Meta rejected the claims (Reuters)

Sam Altman says OpenAI's decision to pace its AI development was caused by a collection of research observations showing "various degrees of misalignment" (Alex Heath/Time)

Sources: Anthropic prepares to give its co-founders shares with extra voting power to help insulate them from outside pressure; Amodei owns ~2% of Anthropic (The Information)

The US SEC proposes exempting certain digital asset offerings from securities registration statements, with exemptions for offerings up to $5M and $75M (Bloomberg)

VC funding in physical AI companies totaled $47.4B across 521 deals in H1, up 80% from H1 2025, and more than the $41.9B invested from 2022 to 2024 (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)

OpenAI changed safety practices and paused RL training for two weeks after the Hugging Face breach and evidence Astra may have met a critical cyber threshold (Ina Fried/Axios)

Comcast is rolling out Wi-Fi motion sensing to its Xfinity XB7 and newer gateways, a free opt-in feature that enables its routers to detect movement at home (Jennifer Pattison Tuohy/The Verge)

Sources: Anthropic's revolving credit facility is set to surpass its ~$10B target as banks compete for roles on the upcoming IPO; Anthropic could limit the size (Bloomberg)

The EU says it "welcomes Apple's changes"; Apple will reduce its fees in the EU, charging 26% for apps with IAP, 20% for alt payments, and 15% for link-outs (Bloomberg)

Apple unveils new EU business terms from October 1, resolving disputes with the EU, including a new 5% Core Technology Commission and App Store commission tiers (Apple)