Technology

Orion, which has developed an AI platform to replace data loss prevention tools, raised a $32M Series A led by Norwest, bringing its total funding to $38M (Meir Orbach/CTech)

Orion, which has developed an AI platform to replace da...

Meir Orbach / CTech: Orion, which has developed an AI platform to replace data l...

Sources: HP CEO Enrique Lores leaving to become PayPal CEO blindsided HP, whose board rushed to launch a CEO search process; Lores had worked for HP since 1989 (Rohan Goswami/Semafor)

Sources: HP CEO Enrique Lores leaving to become PayPal ...

Rohan Goswami / Semafor: Sources: HP CEO Enrique Lores leaving to become PayPal ...

If assumptions hold, SpaceX&xAI could own a full stack of capabilities, from launch to orbital bandwidth to frontier AI models, and offer AI on demand anywhere (Eric Berger/Ars Technica)

If assumptions hold, SpaceX&xAI could own a full stack ...

Eric Berger / Ars Technica: If assumptions hold, SpaceX-xAI could own a full sta...

In a memo to employees, xAI said both companies will maintain their separate branding and the joint venture is continuing to prepare for a possible IPO in 2026 (Grace Kay/Business Insider)

In a memo to employees, xAI said both companies will ma...

Grace Kay / Business Insider: In a memo to employees, xAI said both companies wi...

Leaked email: as part of the xAI&SpaceX deal, xAI shares will be converted into 0.1433 shares of SpaceX stock, and employees will have the option to cash out (Wall Street Journal)

Leaked email: as part of the xAI&SpaceX deal, xAI share...

Wall Street Journal: Leaked email: as part of the xAI-SpaceX deal, xAI shares wi...

Inside Elon Musk's bet to hook X users that turned Grok into a porn generator; sources say xAI's AI safety team was just two or three people for most of 2025 (Washington Post)

Inside Elon Musk's bet to hook X users that turned Grok...

Washington Post: Inside Elon Musk's bet to hook X users that turned Grok into a ...

How Kontigo, a crypto startup from YC S24 that raised $20M+, helped move money in and out of Venezuela and now faces cutoffs from banks and payment networks (Ben Foldy/Wall Street Journal)

How Kontigo, a crypto startup from YC S24 that raised $...

Ben Foldy / Wall Street Journal: How Kontigo, a crypto startup from YC S24 that ...

xAI rolls out Grok Imagine 1.0, which it says can generate 720p 10&second videos with better audio, and says Imagine generated 1.245B videos in the past 30 days (@xai)

xAI rolls out Grok Imagine 1.0, which it says can gener...

@xai: xAI rolls out Grok Imagine 1.0, which it says can generate 720p 10-second ...

SpaceX and Tesla are feeling the gravitational pull toward xAI, as Elon Musk looks to use his empire to fund xAI's ravenous appetite for cash and compute (Bloomberg)

SpaceX and Tesla are feeling the gravitational pull tow...

Bloomberg: SpaceX and Tesla are feeling the gravitational pull toward xAI, as El...

Survey of 100 companies in the Global 2000 on AI use: 78% of CIOs use OpenAI models in production vs. 44% for Anthropic, but Anthropic's gains are impressive (a16z)

Survey of 100 companies in the Global 2000 on AI use: 7...

a16z: Survey of 100 companies in the Global 2000 on AI use: 78% of CIOs use Open...

Oracle says it plans to raise $45B to $50B in 2026 to build additional capacity for its cloud infrastructure through a combination of debt and equity sales (Vincent Lee/Bloomberg)

Oracle says it plans to raise $45B to $50B in 2026 to b...

Vincent Lee / Bloomberg: Oracle says it plans to raise $45B to $50B in 2026 to b...

Anthropic positions itself as the AI sector's superego, but it's caught between the pressures to be safe, fast, and rigorous while being commercially successful (Matteo Wong/The Atlantic)

Anthropic positions itself as the AI sector's superego,...

Matteo Wong / The Atlantic: Anthropic positions itself as the AI sector's supere...

Chinese government funding is backing traditional Chinese medicine providers to adopt AI for drug discovery, clinical diagnostics, acupuncture robots, and more (Nicole Fan/Rest of World)

Chinese government funding is backing traditional Chine...

Nicole Fan / Rest of World: Chinese government funding is backing traditional Ch...

A look at China's "genius class" system that selects ~100K gifted teens annually for elite science&focused schooling; its alumni include many top tech founders (Financial Times)

A look at China's "genius class" system that selects ~1...

Financial Times: A look at China's “genius class” system that selects ~100K gift...

Bitcoin has fallen to ~$78K, down ~7% in 24 hours, over 12% in the past week, and down ~37% since its ATH in Oct. 2025; Ethereum dropped ~18% in the past week (Bloomberg)

Bitcoin has fallen to ~$78K, down ~7% in 24 hours, over...

Bloomberg: Bitcoin has fallen to ~$78K, down ~7% in 24 hours, over 12% in the pa...

An interview with Nvidia's senior VP of hardware engineering, Andrew Bell, on continuing to provide Shield Android TV software updates a decade after its launch (Ryan Whitwam/Ars Technica)

An interview with Nvidia's senior VP of hardware engine...

Ryan Whitwam / Ars Technica: An interview with Nvidia's senior VP of hardware en...

Sources: Waymo nears a $16B round, valuing it at $110B; Alphabet will contribute $12B+, with a16z, Dragoneer, Mubadala, Sequoia, and DST Global participating (Financial Times)

Sources: Waymo nears a $16B round, valuing it at $110B;...

Financial Times: Sources: Waymo nears a $16B round, valuing it at $110B; Alphabe...

Q&A with Gokul Rajaram, investor and a former product leader at Google, Meta, and others, on AI changing product development, building ad businesses, and more (Patrick O'Shaughnessy/Invest Like The Best on YouTube)

Q&A with Gokul Rajaram, investor and a former produ...

Patrick O'Shaughnessy / Invest Like The Best on YouTube: Q&A with Gokul Rajaram,...

Ant Group reports 30M MAUs for its AI health chatbot Ant Afu, which integrates appointments, test analysis, and insurance payments within Alipay's ecosystem (Viola Zhou/Rest of World)

Ant Group reports 30M MAUs for its AI health chatbot An...

Viola Zhou / Rest of World: Ant Group reports 30M MAUs for its AI health chatbot...

Global Net: three Chinese firms ranked among the world's top 20 chipmaking equipment manufacturers in 2025, up from one in 2022, with Naura Tech rising to fifth (Fumie Yaku/Nikkei Asia)

Global Net: three Chinese firms ranked among the world'...

Fumie Yaku / Nikkei Asia: Global Net: three Chinese firms ranked among the world...

Sources: OnlyFans is in talks to sell a nearly 60% stake to Architect Capital in a deal that values the company at around $5.5B, including debt (Wall Street Journal)

Sources: OnlyFans is in talks to sell a nearly 60% stak...

Wall Street Journal: Sources: OnlyFans is in talks to sell a nearly 60% stake to...

Anthropic details how NASA engineers used Claude to plot out the route for Perseverance rover to navigate a ~400 meter path on the Martian surface (Anthropic)

Anthropic details how NASA engineers used Claude to plo...

Anthropic: Anthropic details how NASA engineers used Claude to plot out the rout...

Sources: Apple lost at least four more AI researchers in recent weeks, two of whom went to Meta and one to DeepMind; a top Siri executive left for DeepMind (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

Sources: Apple lost at least four more AI researchers i...

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources: Apple lost at least four more AI researchers i...

The US government finalized forfeiture of $400M+ tied to Helix crypto mixer last week; Helix operator Larry Dean Harmon was sentenced to three years in 2024 (Vince Dioquino/Decrypt)

The US government finalized forfeiture of $400M+ tied t...

Vince Dioquino / Decrypt: The US government finalized forfeiture of $400M+ tied ...

Google's experience in India has become a proving ground to scale AI in education, as the country accounts for the highest global usage of Gemini for learning (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)

Google's experience in India has become a proving groun...

Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Google's experience in India has become a proving gr...

Filing: Chinese AI chipmaker Axera, which focuses on AI inference SoCs for on&device and edge computing, aims to raise up to ~$379.2M in a Hong Kong IPO (Reuters)

Filing: Chinese AI chipmaker Axera, which focuses on AI...

Reuters: Filing: Chinese AI chipmaker Axera, which focuses on AI inference SoCs ...

Appfigures: Sora's app downloads dropped 32% month&over&month in December and 45% in January to 1.2M; consumer spending on the app fell 32% MoM as of January (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

Appfigures: Sora's app downloads dropped 32% month&over...

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Appfigures: Sora's app downloads dropped 32% month-ove...

Social media app UpScrolled hits #1 on Apple's US app store following allegations that TikTok suppresses anti&ICE videos; its founder says it crossed 1M users (Conor Murray/Forbes)

Social media app UpScrolled hits #1 on Apple's US app s...

Conor Murray / Forbes: Social media app UpScrolled hits #1 on Apple's US app sto...

Source: SpaceX and xAI are in talks to merge ahead of a planned IPO this year; under the proposed deal, shares of xAI would be exchanged for shares in SpaceX (Reuters)

Source: SpaceX and xAI are in talks to merge ahead of a...

Reuters: Source: SpaceX and xAI are in talks to merge ahead of a planned IPO thi...

Meta & Microsoft earnings reports underline huge AI spending, raise profitability questions

Meta & Microsoft earnings reports underline huge AI...

Both Meta Platforms and Microsoft shared their latest quarterly results on Wedne...

Letter: Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the US House Select Committee on China, says Nvidia helped DeepSeek hone AI models later used by the Chinese military (Stephen Nellis/Reuters)

Letter: Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the US House Sele...

Stephen Nellis / Reuters: Letter: Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the US House Sel...

Job listings show that DeepSeek hopes to broaden its AI offerings with a search engine capable of supporting multiple languages and more emphasis on agents (Saritha Rai/Bloomberg)

Job listings show that DeepSeek hopes to broaden its AI...

Saritha Rai / Bloomberg: Job listings show that DeepSeek hopes to broaden its AI...

US&based AI startup Arcee releases Trinity Large, a 400B&parameter open&weight model that it says compares to Meta's Llama 4 Maverick 400B on some benchmarks (Julie Bort/TechCrunch)

US&based AI startup Arcee releases Trinity Large, a 400...

Julie Bort / TechCrunch: US-based AI startup Arcee releases Trinity Large, a 400...

German police search Deutsche Bank offices in money&laundering probe

German police search Deutsche Bank offices in money&lau...

German police searched Deutsche Bank's Frankfurt headquarters and its Berlin off...

Google DeepMind researchers unveil AlphaGenome, an AI model trained on molecular data to predict 11 different genomic processes, such as gene splicing (Carl Zimmer/New York Times)

Google DeepMind researchers unveil AlphaGenome, an AI m...

Carl Zimmer / New York Times: Google DeepMind researchers unveil AlphaGenome, an...

Slice, which uses AI agents to encode tax policies and legal rules across 60+ countries, raised a $25M Series A led by Insight, taking its total funding to $32M (Mary Ann Azevedo/This Week in Fintech)

Slice, which uses AI agents to encode tax policies and ...

Mary Ann Azevedo / This Week in Fintech: Slice, which uses AI agents to encode t...

Adaptive6, which treats cloud cost inefficiencies as security vulnerabilities to help companies cut bills, raised a $28M Series A, for $44M in total funding (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE)

Adaptive6, which treats cloud cost inefficiencies as se...

Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE: Adaptive6, which treats cloud cost inefficiencies ...

Sensitive agricultural products excluded from EU&India trade deal

Sensitive agricultural products excluded from EU&India ...

The EU and India have hailed their new free trade agreement as "the mother of al...

Memo: Tim Cook told employees that he is "heartbroken by the events in Minneapolis" and calls for a "deescalation" (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

Memo: Tim Cook told employees that he is "heartbroken b...

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Memo: Tim Cook told employees that he is “heartbroken b...

Amazon appears to mistakenly alert some AWS employees about planned layoffs in an email invite to a Wednesday "Project Dawn" meeting about company efficiency (Business Insider)

Amazon appears to mistakenly alert some AWS employees a...

Business Insider: Amazon appears to mistakenly alert some AWS employees about pl...

Internal documents from 2025: Microsoft expects its annual water consumption to reach 28B liters by 2030, up from 7.9B liters in 2020 and 10.4B liters in 2024 (New York Times)

Internal documents from 2025: Microsoft expects its ann...

New York Times: Internal documents from 2025: Microsoft expects its annual water...

Sensitive agricultural products excluded from EU & India trade deal

Sensitive agricultural products excluded from EU & Indi...

The EU and India have hailed their new free trade agreement as "the mother of al...

What's in the India&EU trade deal?

What's in the India&EU trade deal?

After the presidents of the EU Commission and EU Council signed a free trade dea...

Montreal&based Vention raised a $110M Series D to scale its physical AI platform into manufacturing plants worldwide, taking its total raised to ~$216M (Madison McLauchlan/BetaKit)

Montreal&based Vention raised a $110M Series D to scale...

Madison McLauchlan / BetaKit: Montreal-based Vention raised a $110M Series D to ...

Amazon agrees to pay a $309M settlement and return $600M to users in a US class action lawsuit over allegedly incorrectly denied refunds since September 2017 (Mike Scarcella/Reuters)

Amazon agrees to pay a $309M settlement and return $600...

Mike Scarcella / Reuters: Amazon agrees to pay a $309M settlement and return $60...

Abu Dhabi's top tech university MBZUAI launches K2 Think, a new model it says is capable of advanced reasoning, as part of the UAE's push into "sovereign" AI (Tim Bradshaw/Financial Times)

Abu Dhabi's top tech university MBZUAI launches K2 Thin...

Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times: Abu Dhabi's top tech university MBZUAI launches ...

The US Army signs a $5.6B, 10&year contract with Salesforce to speed up outdated practices; as part of the deal, military recruiters will get access to Slack (Wall Street Journal)

The US Army signs a $5.6B, 10&year contract with Salesf...

Wall Street Journal: The US Army signs a $5.6B, 10-year contract with Salesforce...

Khosla Ventures' Vinod Khosla and Ethan Choi disavow Keith Rabois' comments on an ICE shooting; Rabois said the man killed by agents was committing a "felony" (Julie Bort/TechCrunch)

Khosla Ventures' Vinod Khosla and Ethan Choi disavow Ke...

Julie Bort / TechCrunch: Khosla Ventures' Vinod Khosla and Ethan Choi disavow Ke...

YC updated its website to remove Canada from its list of approved jurisdictions for incorporation, leaving the US, Cayman Islands, and Singapore as options (Murad Hemmadi/The Logic)

YC updated its website to remove Canada from its list o...

Murad Hemmadi / The Logic: YC updated its website to remove Canada from its list...

France set to fast&track under&15s social media ban

France set to fast&track under&15s social media ban

French President Emmanuel Macron wants to fast-track legislation to ban social m...

3
4
5
6
7

Weather, 25 August

+21

High: +22^° Low: +13^°

Humidity: 74%

Wind: NE - 10 KPH

Stockholm Weather

+15

High: +16^° Low: +9^°

Humidity: 72%

Wind: SSW - 24 KPH

California Weather

+31

High: +32^° Low: +23^°

Humidity: 61%

Wind: SSE - 13 KPH

+20

High: +23^° Low: +14^°

Humidity: 58%

Wind: NNE - 17 KPH

Cape Town Weather

+17

High: +19^° Low: +12^°

Humidity: 68%

Wind: N - 16 KPH

Toronto Weather

+30

High: +32^° Low: +24^°

Humidity: 61%

Wind: WSW - 25 KPH

+11

High: +15^° Low: +9^°

Humidity: 71%

Wind: WSW - 19 KPH

Karachi Weather

+30

High: +30^° Low: +26^°

Humidity: 67%

Wind: W - 40 KPH