Tootfinder

Venice AI, which offers access to 200 AI models while allowing users to retain their privacy, raised a $65M Series A led by Dragonfly at a $1B valuation (Ram Iyer/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/01/venice…

Venice AI becomes a unicorn with $65M Series A as its privacy-first AI platform takes off | TechCrunch
Venice AI is already profitable, with annualized run-rate revenues of over $70 million, CEO Erik Voorhees said.

Open source game engine Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions: 'We can't trust heavy users of AI to understand their code enough to fix it'
At risk of drowning in AI slop code, @… is firming up its contribution requirements.
🎮

Open source game engine Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions: 'We can’t trust heavy users of AI to understand their code enough to fix it'
At risk of drowning in AI slop code, Godot is firming up its contribution requirements.

The Information is launching AI Deep Dive, a weekly live show hosted by AI reporter Rocket Drew, on September 14, as part of a broader video push (Sara Fischer/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2026/09/01/the-information-ai-live-show

The Information bets bigger on video with new AI show
"AI Deep Dive" will be hosted by The Information's AI reporter Rocket Drew.

Al wat ouder (2024) maar fijn paper over AI & Software engineering/coding. Zowel voor "believers" als totale sceptici 🙂
"tl;dr: Chill, y'all: AI Will Not Devour SE"
https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.00764

tl;dr: Chill, y'all: AI Will Not Devour SE
Social media provide a steady diet of dire warnings that artificial intelligence (AI) will make software engineering (SE) irrelevant or obsolete. To the contrary, the engineering discipline of software is rich and robust; it encompasses the full scope of software design, development, deployment, and practical use; and it has regularly assimilated radical new offerings from AI. Current AI innovations such as machine learning, large language models (LLMs) and generative AI will offer new opportun…

Shall I tell you the secret to "AI security"? It's actually really simple. You heard that AIs can hallucinate, right? Well... that's the secret. Treat an AI like that. It's unreliable. You cannot trust it. That obviously means your AI should not decide whether or not to delete your data. Or whether or not to reset a user's password without authentication.
Pretty much all AI security issues can be traced back to that.

"By introducing an AI image generator as a Google Earth feature, Google risked undermining public trust in Google Earth as a reliable reference for providing authentic imagery of the real world, Ess said. It could have also handed an additional excuse to government officials or anyone who wants to deny genuine satellite photos by claiming they were modified or generated entirely by AI tools."
#GoogleEarth

In April, GitHub announced that it was moving subscribers from
request-based billing to a
usage-based model for its AI-powered Copilot service.
As that new pricing model goes into effect today,
many GitHub Copilot users are reporting some extreme sticker shock
as they realize just how quickly their previous “normal” usage is burning through their newly limited monthly allotment of AI credits.
Across social media and forums,
many Copilot users are sha…

AI costs how much? GitHub Copilot users react to new usage-based pricing system.
Some report burning through their whole monthly "AI credit" allotment in a single day.

KI-Sicherheitsinstitut kommt nach Berlin: Deutschland zieht bei AI Safety nach
BSI und Bundesnetzagentur bilden den Nukleus für das AISI Deutschland. „KI muss kontrollierbar bleiben“, lautet das Motto für das neue Institut.

KI-Sicherheitsinstitut kommt nach Berlin: Deutschland zieht bei AI Safety nach
BSI und Bundesnetzagentur bilden den Nukleus für das AISI Deutschland. „KI muss kontrollierbar bleiben“, lautet das Motto für das neue Institut.

Bin über den AI Compass gestolpert (und wurde zutreffend als "The Sceptic" einsortiert).
https://blog.till-westermayer.de/2026/07/kurz-wie-halten-sies-mit-ai/

Kurz: Wie halten Sie's mit AI?
Mit einem gewissen Erstaunen fällt mir immer wieder auf, dass ich doch weiterhin mit recht skeptischem Blick auf AI/KI/LLMs schaue. Erstaunen, weil ich durchaus wahrnehme, dass diese Modelle so etwas wie "instant intelligence" liefern. Wie auch immer sie das machen, und was auch immer das über mensc

GitHub Copilot's new pricing model went into effect today, and many noted sticker shock with some saying a few hours of AI usage ate big chunks of monthly caps (Kyle Orland/Ars Technica)
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/06/ai-

AI costs how much? GitHub Copilot users react to new usage-based pricing system.
Some report burning through their whole monthly "AI credit" allotment in a single day.

This will distract consciousness researchers from working on human suffering? Denying qualia are real isn't helpful either https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/sophisticated-ai-suffering The more sophisticated

Hackers Simply Asked #MetaAI to Give Them Access to High-Profile #Instagram Accounts. It Worked

"J.P. Morgan, modeling what the buildout would need to earn to clear a ten percent return on current capital expenditure, arrived at roughly six hundred fifty billion dollars per year in AI-sector revenue — the equivalent of thirty-five dollars per month, in perpetuity, from every iPhone user on earth. The current run-rate is about twenty-five billion. The gap is twenty-six-fold. "

Seems like a pretty good update from Tidal. AI music is getting out of hand on that platform. We'll see if they have it in them to get this done.
#music #tidal #ai

“…this is the first AI film to demonstrate that AI can now sustain character consistency, world coherence, and narrative arc across a complete feature,” is roughly equivalent to “we made a car that actually has wheels and can take you somewhere.”
And it wasn’t in the festival, it just screening in the same town.
🤦‍♂️
1st quote source:

First AI-made Feature Film Premieres at Cannes on Higgsfield | Alex Mashrabov posted on the topic | LinkedIn
We just showcased the trailer of our first 95-minute feature film made entirely on Higgsfield in Cannes. Hell Grind is a 95-minute sci-fi heist directed by Aitore Zholdaskali and co-written with Adilkhan Yerzhanov, a two-time Cannes Official Programme filmmaker. A team of 15 professional directors, DPs, and editors made it on Higgsfield in 14 days for under $500K. The traditional comparable production cost is around $50M. But beyond the numbers, this is the first AI film to demonstrate that …

https://www.dezeen.com/2026/07/31/decoy-font-ai-mixfont/

Decoy Font protects messages from being read by AI
One message for humans and another for artificial intelligence is contained in the letters of Decoy Font, made by the company Mixfont for those who want to avoid having their data scraped.

#Latency #Patterns for Faster AI Applications
https://generativeprogrammer.com/p/lat

AI startup Mirage streamed a 24-hour "live" AI news show on X on August 11, which cost ~$50K in tokens, featuring realistic avatars that struggled to converse (Alex Konrad/Upstarts Media)
https://www.upstartsmedia.com/p/the-good-bad-ugly-of-24-hour-ai-news

Video Startup Mirage's 24-Hour Experiment Shows Limits Of AI News
Video AI startup Mirage's CEO Gaurav Misra says it's close to producing an AI-generated news channel. A recent Upstarts Media experiment shows it's a long way from valuable.

Hvor er det dog befriende at se sådan en video på DR - endelig bliver den udbredte skepsis over for “AI” repræsenteret:
https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/viden/teknologi/reels/dr-vaert-naegter-bruge-ai-det-er-elendigt

DR-vært nægter at bruge AI: 'Det er elendigt'
Den tidligere CEO for Google Eric Schmidt blev buhet af under en dimissiontale på University of Arizona, da han lovpriste kunstig intelligens og dens muligheder i fremtiden. Og reaktionen fra de studerende forstår radio- og podcastvært på DR Marie Hobitz godt. Hun har aktivt valgt ikke at bruge kunstig intelligens, når hun kan undgå det. Det skyldes både den enorme klimabelastning, som det kræver at drive datacentrene, men også at hun har mere tiltro til menneskers evner end kunstig in…

Amazon Web Services (AWS), said customers using its EC2 Capacity Blocks for Machine Learning service will face hourly price increases of around 20% from July.
https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2026/aws-

AWS raises AI cloud compute prices again as memory shortage deepens
Amazon has increased the price of renting some of its most sought-after AI cloud computing services.

Podcast: The AI Tokenpocalypse Is Here https://www.404media.co/podcast-the-ai-tokenpocalypse-is-here/

Zoveel vragen en verzuchtingen bij dit bericht...
#AI

Van Mistral naar Microsoft: Copilot blijft voorlopig pilot bij UWV
Het gaat om een tijdelijke en beperkte pilot, benadrukt minister Vijlbrief in antwoord op vragen van D66. ‘Die past binnen de rijksbrede kaders voor verantwoord gebruik van generatieve AI met de kanttekening dat er geen open of Europees AI-model voorhanden is.’

I have just read someone that thinks that he found a Candidate Theory of Everything and solved the black hole information paradox... by using an AI tool (Claude, but it is irrelevant, to be honest), in 1 week.
If you want to waste your time search for "I Used AI to Produce a Candidate Theory of Everything". But please do not use this to mock the guy.
The overconfidence created by these tools is terrifying.
A related paper, that is not that guy's paper:

AI advice suppresses people's willingness to say "I don't know", even when the advice is wrong and accuracy is incentivized
Knowing when to say "I don't know" is fundamental to human judgment, yet AI assistants offer a fluent answer to almost any question. In five experiments (N = 3,132; four preregistered, one direct replication), participants answered difficult questions and could always decline to respond. We engineered the questions so that AI advice was wrong, separating AI use from its accuracy. Merely having access to AI nearly eliminated participants' willingness to suspend judgment, and this held whether th…

AI startup Mirage streamed a 24-hour "live" AI news show on X on August 11, which cost ~$50K in tokens, featuring realistic avatars that struggled to converse (Alex Konrad/Upstarts Media)
https://www.upstartsmedia.com/p/the-good-bad-ugly-of-24-hour-ai-news

Video Startup Mirage's 24-Hour Experiment Shows Limits Of AI News
Video AI startup Mirage's CEO Gaurav Misra says it's close to producing an AI-generated news channel. A recent Upstarts Media experiment shows it's a long way from valuable.

Metacurity aims to kill infosec news overload, so don't miss today's issue for a quick scan of the critical developments from across thousands of sources you should know, including
--Apple faces supply chain leak as AI threats accelerate security updates,
--Meta secretly benchmarked rival chatbots with fake teen accounts,
--S.Ct. curbs warrantless geofence searches,
--Google warns EU competition rules could weaken security,
--Russia shifts influence opera…

Apple faces supply chain leak as AI threats accelerate security updates
Meta secretly benchmarked rival chatbots with fake teen accounts, S.Ct. curbs warrantless geofence searches, Google warns EU competition rules could weaken security, Russia shifts influence operations toward the West, Amazon settles identity theft records case for $2.25m, much more

John Deere is testing JD, an AI assistant for farmers, to help with best practices and find trends based on farmers' "field, machine, and operational data" (Stevie Bonifield/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/98748…

John Deere launched an AI chatbot for farmers
John Deere launched a “JD” AI chatbot in its Operations Center app that farmers can use to ask questions about their farm’s data and equipment.

Is AI Profitable Yet?
Tracking the spend and revenue of frontier AI companies (May 2026).
📉 #aislop

Instagram says it will reduce the reach of accounts featuring AI-generated personas if they don't use a new "AI-generated profile" label (Karissa Bell/Engadget)
https://www.engadget.com/2246914/instagram-…

Instagram Will Demote AI-Generated Influencers If They Don't Clearly Label Their Account
The app isn't cracking down on other kinds of AI slop, though.

Company Offering Printed Books to Train AI Stops After 404 Media Coverage https://www.404media.co/ai-company-training-scanning-books-database-isbndb/

Hong Kong-listed Z.ai reports H1 2026 revenue up 5x YoY to ~$142M, with "open platform and API revenue" up 28x to ~$122M, and net loss down 12% YoY to ~$308M (Juro Osawa/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/chines…

Chinese AI Model Firm Z.ai’s API Sales Surge in First Half
Chinese AI firm Z.ai’s revenue in the first half jumped nearly fivefold from a year earlier to 954 million yuan ($142 million), boosted by skyrocketing sales of cloud-based AI model services. Z.ai, whose stock is listed in Hong Kong, said its “open platform and API revenue,” which includes the sales of its models through application programming interfaces and other services such as coding

Gal Gadot defends acting in Bitcoin, which used AI, saying "you're going to work with it or be out of the game" and her lawyers kept AI from altering actors (Zack Sharf/Variety)
https://variety.com/2026/film/news/gal-gadot-defends…

Gal Gadot Defends Starring in Bitcoin Movie With AI Sets and Lighting
Gal Gadot says her lawyers spent six months on her 'Bitcoin' movie contract to ensure AI would not be used on her acting.

PSI, which aims to use AI "to industrialize the discovery of new physics" including cracking interstellar travel, emerges from stealth with a $58M seed (Sabrina Ortiz/The Deep View)
https://www.thedeepview.com/articles/can-ai-crack-interstellar-travel…

Can AI help crack interstellar travel?
AI is best known for transforming coding. Now, one startup is making the case for physics. On Tuesday, the AI-native physics research lab, Physical Superintell...

UMG, WMG, Sony, and other record companies propose a set of principles for how AI-generated songs should be considered for chart eligibility (Ariel King/Billboard)
https://www.billboard.com/pro/umg-wmg-sony-propose-principles-ai-song-chart-eligibility…

UMG, WMG, Sony Music, HYBE, Believe, BMG & More Propose New Principles for AI Song Chart Eligibility
Universal Music, Warner Music, Sony Music, HYBE, Believe and more proposed guidelines on how AI songs should be considered for chart eligibility.

Instagram says it will reduce the reach of accounts featuring AI-generated personas if they don't use a new "AI-generated profile" label (Karissa Bell/Engadget)
https://www.engadget.com/2246914/instagram-…

Instagram Will Demote AI-Generated Influencers If They Don't Clearly Label Their Account
The app isn't cracking down on other kinds of AI slop, though.

AI Is Designing Radio Chips That Humans Couldn’t Even Imagine. Freed from intelligibility and aesthetics, AI designs faster.
#AI

AI Learns the “Dark Art” of RFIC Design
Freed from intelligibility and aesthetics, AI designs faster

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)
https://www.axios.com/pro/fintech-deals/2026/06/30/mdotm-27m-ai-portfolio-software

Exclusive: MDOTM raises $27M for AI portfolio software
Asset managers want to use AI inside investment workflows.

AI-generated images, video, audio, and text on matters of public interest designed to look authentic must be labeled in the EU under the AI Act from August 2 (Jennifer Rankin/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/202

AI labels to be compulsory on authentic-looking content under EU rules
Companies must ensure people know when they are interacting with artificially generated images, audio and text designed to look real

An interview with Amazon SVP of Devices Panos Panay on designing custom chips for Echo and Fire TV devices, experimenting with AI-enabled gadgets, and more (Arjun Kharpal/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/02/amazon-ai-chips-devices.html

Amazon is designing its own AI chips for Echo, Fire TV and future devices, exec tells CNBC
Amazon hardware chief Panos Panay says the company is designing custom chips for key devices as it experiments with AI gadgets.

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)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/31/snapchat-no-longer…

Snapchat no longer rewards fully AI-generated Spotlight content | TechCrunch
Snapchat has adjusted its recommendation systems to ensure that only videos created by real people are eligible for Spotlight recommendations, taking a stance against AI slop.

AI-generated images, video, audio, and text on matters of public interest designed to look authentic must be labeled in the EU under the AI Act from August 2 (Jennifer Rankin/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/202

AI labels to be compulsory on authentic-looking content under EU rules
Companies must ensure people know when they are interacting with artificially generated images, audio and text designed to look real

Sources: Google approached Disney, Universal, and other studios to license characters and films for its AI tools, but legal and union concerns stalled deals (Wendy Lee/Los Angeles Times)
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts

How Google is courting Hollywood to use its AI tools
Tech giant Google has been quietly making overtures to major studios as it tries to find ways to get Hollywood to use its AI technology.

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)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactiv…

A Deluge of A.I. Computing Power Is About to Come Online, Fueling Major Leaps
The number of A.I. chips that provide the computing power to advance the fast-evolving technology is doubling every nine months.

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)
https://www.semafor.com/article/07/28/2026/token-diploma…

Exclusive: Token diplomacy: How China is shaping the world’s AI future
Beijing is waging a campaign to set global standards.

Alex Karp calls US reliance on AI labs for military tech "effing insane", pans AI fees for businesses, and touts Palantir's Nvidia Nemotron deal for US agencies (Ty Roush/Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/20

Palantir Billionaire Karp Blasts AI Industry As ‘Effing Insane’
“This is the voice of American business that is being channeled through me,” the billionaire cofounder remarked.

AI power infrastructure company SB Energy, which is backed by SoftBank, OpenAI, and Nvidia, files for an IPO, and says it is "substantially dependent" on OpenAI (CJ Haddad/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/01/sb-energy-ipo-softbank-open-ai-nvidia.html

AI data center firm SB Energy, which is backed by Softbank, Nvidia and OpenAI, files for IPO
SB Energy hasn't generated any revenue from its data center business, and none of its data centers are operational yet.

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)
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/tid

TIDAL to automatically tag AI-generated music… and block it from earning royalties
TIDAL is introducing an AI policy that will automatically tag wholly AI-generated music in its app…

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)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/30/busines…

How Grindr’s C.E.O. Adopted A.I.: ‘I Just Imposed It’
George Arison, the gay dating app’s chief executive, is aiming for all code to be eventually written by artificial intelligence, making the company “leaner.”

Aslan, which offers AI agents for the FBI and wider intelligence community that can pose as analysts and undercover spies in online forums, raised $20.8M (Sam Sabin/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2026/09/01/aslan-agentic-ai-national-security-funding
…

Exclusive: Aslan raises $20.8M for AI undercover agents
Aslan raised $20.8M to build out its tech team and scale its customer base.

Axel Springer completes its £575M acquisition of Telegraph Media Group, ending a three-year sales process, and promises an "AI-powered transformation" (Charlotte Tobitt/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/axel-s

Axel Springer promises 'AI-powered transformation' as it completes Telegraph deal
Axel Springer's acquisition of The Telegraph will complete today, ending "three difficult years" without an owner for the UK newspaper.

Fermi Explorer Mission plans to launch a spacecraft to Alpha Centauri, the Sun's nearest star system, by 2029, using a trajectory discovered by PSI's AI system (Michelle Kim/MIT Technology Review)
https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/09/01…

How AI plotted an interstellar journey to Alpha Centauri
The Fermi Explorer Mission plans to launch a spacecraft to our nearest star by the end of 2029, using a trajectory discovered by AI.

Together AI, which offers access to open-source models, raised $800M led by Saudi Aramco's Prosperity7 at an $8.3B valuation, taking its total funding to $1.3B (Niko Gallogly/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/01/business/dealbook/together-ai-fu…

As Companies Race for Cheaper A.I. Options, This Start-Up Pitches a Solution
Together AI, which specializes in open-source artificial intelligence models, is now worth more than $8 billion.

A German court rules that Suno has violated copyrights and must disclose illicit revenue after Germany's state-mandated licensing agency GEMA sued in 2025 (Elizabeth Grenier/Deutsche Welle)
https://www.dw.com/en/german-court-rules-that-ai-m…

German court rules that AI music firm violated copyrights
Germany's state-mandated licensing agency, GEMA, says the verdict has "global significance," as Suno is also directed to pay yet-to-be-quantified damages.

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)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/31/snapchat-no-longer…

Snapchat no longer rewards fully AI-generated Spotlight content | TechCrunch
Snapchat has adjusted its recommendation systems to ensure that only videos created by real people are eligible for Spotlight recommendations, taking a stance against AI slop.

Z.ai reports H1 2026 revenue up 400% to ~$142M, below its $200M projection; Z.ai's market value surged 800% since its January listing, peaking at $137B (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-31/z-ai-sales…

Japan commits up to $6.16B over five years to Noetra, a consortium led by SoftBank, Honda, NEC, and Sony, to develop a domestic AI foundation model by 2027 (Nikkei Asia)
https://asia.nikkei.com/business/techn

Japan backs SoftBank-led AI models with up to $6.2bn in chasing US, China
New company will focus on physical AI using data from Japanese companies

LinkedIn introduces a "seems like AI slop" button to allow users to report a post they think is AI-generated (Joseph Cox/404 Media)
https://www.404media.co/linkedin-introduces-a-seems-like-ai-slop-button/

LinkedIn Introduces a 'Seems Like AI Slop' Button
Following 404 Media's reporting on how LinkedIn is full of AI slop, the platform is giving users a chance to report it when they see it.

OpenAI says it plans to publicly release a version of Astra "soon" but will make its advanced cyber capabilities available only to select partners (Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/openai-astra-first-ai-model-with-critical-cyber-abilities/…

OpenAI Is About to Release Its First AI Model With ‘Critical’ Cyber Abilities
The company will give select partners early access to its Astra AI model—so they have time to shore up their defenses.

Google launches Google Pics, a creative design suite powered by Gemini and Nano Banana to compete with Canva and Adobe Express, available as a Workspace app (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/tech/987423/google-pics-ai-image-editor-generator

Google Pics is like Canva, but with even more AI
Google Pics aims to make editing and generating “professional-grade” AI images less cumbersome for Workspace users.

Sources: Google approached Disney, Universal, and other studios to license characters and films for its AI tools, but legal and union concerns stalled deals (Wendy Lee/Los Angeles Times)
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts

How Google is courting Hollywood to use its AI tools
Tech giant Google has been quietly making overtures to major studios as it tries to find ways to get Hollywood to use its AI technology.

Sources: OpenAI starts letting some major customers pay only when its AI completes tasks, as Salesforce and other AI providers test outcome-based pricing (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/openai-starts-letting-customers-pay-ai-wo…

OpenAI Starts Letting Some Customers Pay Only When the AI Works
OpenAI in recent months has started giving some major customers the option of paying only when its AI completes tasks like handling customer support interactions, The Information reported Sunday . The move comes as Salesforce and a host of other AI providers are beginning to try to charge customers only when the AI works, otherwise known as outcome-based pricing, to help customers justify

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)
https://www.businessinsider.com/harmony-pitch-deck-…

AI startup Harmony raises $34 million seed after founders' Cisco exit
Harmony raised a $34 million round led by Lightspeed. Its founders previously sold their cloud software startup Epsagon to Cisco.

A look at South Korea's sovereign AI efforts, including its planned $919B AI infrastructure investment and Nvidia's expanded ties with Samsung and SK Hynix (SemiAnalysis)
https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/koreas-trillion-dollar-sovereign

Korea’s Trillion-Dollar Sovereign AI Investment: Nvidia Wins, Hynix Loses
Korea hosts a Squid Games, National AI Tournament, the best non-Chinese open source model gets eliminated, why Nvidia needs open source, implications for Hynix and Samsung

Bank of England Governor warns that advanced AI could destabilize the highly interconnected global financial system via cyber disruption across jurisdictions (Simon Goodley/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/aug…

AI could cause global economic downturn, Bank of England governor tells G20
Andrew Bailey, in role as financial stability watchdog chief, warns advanced models risk destabilising system

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)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/exclusive-openai-previews-…

Exclusive: OpenAI Previews ‘Astra’ AI Model in DC
OpenAI is preparing to release a new model family, tentatively using the name “Astra,” with improved abilities to complete long-running tasks, according to three people briefed on the plans. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman demonstrated Astra to policymakers and regulators in Washington, D.C., this week, according to the people. OpenAI touted its abilities to have multiple agents work together over a

Together AI, which serves open models, announces a deal to use compute from Humain in Saudi Arabia, where it can bypass US backlash over data centers (Niko Gallogly/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/31/busines…

U.S. Start-Up and Saudi Arabia Form Data Center Partnership
Together AI, which serves open-source artificial intelligence models, announced a deal to use compute from Humain in Saudi Arabia, where it can bypass U.S. backlash over data centers.

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)
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/tid

TIDAL to automatically tag AI-generated music… and block it from earning royalties
TIDAL is introducing an AI policy that will automatically tag wholly AI-generated music in its app…

LLM Token Expenditure Index: average cost per million tokens has fallen to 97 cents, part of a sharp months-long decline since hitting a high of $2.07 on May 28 (Alex Harring/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/01/ai-token-prices-lows.html

AI token prices are hitting new record lows
A closely followed measure of artificial intelligence token prices touched fresh lows.

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)
https://fortune.com/2026/07/30/forget-

Forget robots on assembly lines. Foundational Industries wants AI to run the entire factory
The startup says software-native factories can leapfrog China’s highly automated manufacturing base rather than trying to replicate it.

Indian IT company Persistent Systems offers to acquire its Germany-based peer Nagarro for $1.45B; Indian IT companies are ramping up M&A as AI reshapes growth (Sayan Chakraborty/Nikkei Asia)
https://asia.nikkei.com/business/technolog…

Indian IT firms ramp up acquisitions as AI reshapes growth
Smaller firms in particular target large contracts as clients consolidate vendors

Meta launches Muse Voice Transcribe, MSL's first real-time audio perception model, with streaming automatic speech recognition, trained with 70 languages (Meta AI Research)
https://research.meta.ai/blog/introducing-muse-voice-transcribe

Introducing Muse Voice Transcribe
Introducing Muse Voice Transcribe, a real-time audio perception model for streaming speech recognition, diarization, and endpointing.

Memo: Alexandr Wang says Meta is switching from Google Chat to Slack for internal communications as Slack is the "strongest platform available today for agents" (Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-switching-from-google-…

Meta is switching from Google Chat to Slack for AI agents
Meta is moving employees from Google Chat to Slack, saying Salesforce's product is better suited for an ecosystem of AI agents.

A German court rules that Suno has violated copyrights and must disclose illicit revenue after Germany's state-mandated licensing agency GEMA sued in 2025 (Elizabeth Grenier/Deutsche Welle)
https://www.dw.com/en/german-court-rules-that-ai-m…

German court rules that AI music firm violated copyrights
Germany's state-mandated licensing agency, GEMA, says the verdict has "global significance," as Suno is also directed to pay yet-to-be-quantified damages.

Salesforce is acquiring CMS provider Contentful; source: Salesforce paid between $1B and $1.5B, a steep discount from Contentful's $3B valuation in 2021 (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/salesforce-acquires-contentful-…

Salesforce Acquires Contentful in Latest Move to Boost AI
Salesforce is acquiring Contentful, a provider of content management software for businesses, in the latest sign of its efforts to make its customer data more easily accessible to AI agents. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but Salesforce paid between $1 billion and $1.5 billion for Contentful, which was founded in 2013, according to a person with direct knowledge of the figure. That’s a

Meta introduces a $20/month Meta One Premium tier for its glasses and limits its Conversation Focus feature to three hours of use per month for free users (Sean Hollister/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/gadgets/959899/meta-ai-glasses-paywall-rate-limit…

Meta is adding ridiculous ‘rate limits’ and a soft paywall to its smart glasses
Meta has quietly announced that Conversation Focus, an on-device AI feature, will be rate limited and made part of a paid subscription.

Sources: SpaceX showed investors a handset-like device prototype with AI tech from xAI, a proprietary OS, a Snapdragon chip, and a design slimmer than an iPhone (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/spacex-showed…

Wafer, which makes AI agents that optimize open-source models for a business's workload, raised a $40M Series A, a source says at a $200M valuation (Stephanie Palazzolo/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/w…

Wafer, An Inference Provider That Uses Non-Nvidia Chips, Lands Acquisition Offers and $200 Million-Plus Valuation
Developers and chip designers are increasingly upbeat about the benefits of using AI to supercharge the process of designing and optimizing AI chips, as my colleague Phoebe wrote about last week. Now, a year-old inference provider, Wafer, is trying a similar approach: using AI to improve the way ...

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)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-jacob-t

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)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/ai-video-startup-talks-quadruple-va…

AI Video Startup in Talks to Quadruple Valuation to $5 Billion
AI video startup Higgsfield AI is in talks with investors to raise $300 million to $500 million at a valuation of $5 billion before the investment, according to two people with knowledge of the fundraising efforts. A valuation at that level would be more than four times its valuation in a ...

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)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/29/arena-the-ai-leaderboar…

Arena, the AI leaderboard everyone uses, is now a $100M business | TechCrunch
The startup, which runs a popular free AI leaderboard, launched its commercial service just last September.

LinkedIn introduces a "seems like AI slop" button to allow users to report posts they think are AI-generated (Joseph Cox/404 Media)
https://www.404media.co/linkedin-introduces-a-seems-like-ai-slop-button/

LinkedIn Introduces a 'Seems Like AI Slop' Button
Following 404 Media's reporting on how LinkedIn is full of AI slop, the platform is giving users a chance to report it when they see it.

Encore AI, which studies companies' customer interactions to train and deploy AI voice agents, raised a $30M Series A led by Team8, Planven, and The Garage (Ram Iyer/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/29/encore-ai-raises-3…

Encore AI raises $30M to build AI agents that learn from customer calls | TechCrunch
The startup analyzes calls, messages and CRM data to identify effective sales techniques and turn them into playbooks for AI agents.

Omen AI, which provides real-time coolant health monitoring for data centers, raised a $31M Series A led by Nava Ventures, bringing its total funding to $41.5M (Tim Fernholz/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/29/omen-ais-plan-to-optimize-data-cent…

Omen AI's plan to optimize data centers is all wet | TechCrunch
Omen AI raised a $31 million Series A to monitor chip coolant and stop bacterial outbreaks in data centers.

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)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/magazin

Larry Ellison Bet It All on the A.I. Boom. Will He Be the Face of the A.I. Bubble?
Inside the 81-year-old billionaire’s risky, debt-fueled scramble to transform his data empire into an A.I. juggernaut.

NYC's Department of Education adopts a policy barring public school students from using AI until high school, banning companion chatbots in all grades, and more (Matthew Haag/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/01/nyregio…

A.I. Is to Be Banned in N.Y.C. Elementary and Middle Schools
A new policy to be announced by the Department of Education bars younger students from using A.I., but stops short of a moratorium.

Air Security, which builds a security service for extensions and other tools installed on AI agents, emerges from stealth with $50M led by Sequoia and Greenoaks (Meir Orbach/CTech)
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/r13apdnugg

Six-month-old AIR Security raises $50 million to build a firewall for AI agents
The Israeli startup emerged from stealth with research showing thousands of AI add-ons rely on untrusted sources, as companies give autonomous agents access to more data, tools and systems. 

Fei-Fei Li's World Labs unveils Atlas, a multimodal world model that generates image/video frames with pixel-perfect camera control and reconstructs them in 3D (World Labs)
https://www.worldlabs.ai/blog/atlas

Atlas: A World Model for Spatial Intelligence
Introducing Atlas, our new omni world model for spatial intelligence.

Okta agrees to acquire AI identity security startup Permiso; source: the acquisition is valued at just under $200M and is structured as an almost all-cash deal (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/30/okta-buys-ai-securi…

Okta buys AI security startup Permiso; source says for about $200M | TechCrunch
The deal gives Okta identity threat detection capabilities as enterprises seek to secure AI agents and other non-human identities across cloud environments.

Palo Alto Networks reports Q4 revenue up 34% YoY to $3.41B, vs. $3.35B est., and acquires Console, which provides AI-powered IT service management (Samantha Subin/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/01/palo-alto-networks-panw-q4-2026-earnings.html

Palo Alto Networks beats quarterly estimates on AI demand, continues acquisition spree
Palo Alto Networks' stock has nearly doubled this year as AI boosts demand for security detection and response tools

A UN panel co-chaired by Yoshua Bengio warns that AI capabilities are outpacing scientific understanding, the "potential benefits of AI are enormous", and more (Andrea Shalal/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/u

Sources: OpenAI bought tens of thousands of Macs for RL, Anthropic rents them, Nvidia sees Apple as its main local AI rival as Macs gain traction with AI devs (Aaron Tilley/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apple-stumbled-ai-hardware-succ…

How Apple Stumbled Into AI Hardware Success With the Mac
The hottest products at Apple right now are not the iPhone, the iPad or a buzzy new show on the company’s streaming service. They are two of the lowliest members of Apple’s venerable Mac product line: its boxy Mac mini and Mac Studio computers, which come without monitors, keyboards or mice and ...

OpenAI says its advertising business has hit $1B in annualized revenue run rate, touting its "diversified business model" ahead of an expected IPO (Ashley Capoot/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/31/open-ai-chatgpt-ads-revenue.html

OpenAI's ad business shows blistering growth, hits $1 billion annualized revenue run rate
OpenAI's move to serve ads in ChatGPT earlier this year drew ridicule from its chief rival, Anthropic, in the form of a Super Bowl commercial.

DeepSeek V4 Flash scores 50 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, matching Gemini 3.6 Flash and up 10 points from the preview launch in April (Artificial Analysis)
https://artificialanalysis.ai/article…

DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 scores 50 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, 10 points above previous DeepSeek V4 Flash
DeepSeek releases DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731

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)
https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini…

Start building with Nano Banana 2 Lite and Gemini Omni Flash
Scale your ideas with Nano Banana 2 Lite, our fastest, most cost-efficient Gemini Image model, and Gemini Omni Flash for high-quality video and conversational editing.

Perplexity launches Hybrid Compute, which splits workloads between frontier cloud models like Opus 5 and local LLMs, for all users of its Mac app (Igor Bonifacic/Engadget)
https://www.engadget.com/2248548/perplexitys-hybrid-compu…

Perplexity's Hybrid Compute Splits Sensitive Tasks Between Cloud And Local AI
Perplexity's Hybrid Compute lets you split tasks between cloud and local models.

Sources: Google plans to release Gemini 3.8 Flash as soon as Wednesday; Gemini 4 has done well on pre-training evals but still needs to complete post-training (Erin Woo/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/new-google-…

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)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/how-open…

Though Google's SynthID tech for watermarking AI images is hard to break, there will always be ways to create AI-generated content without any labeling (Ryan Whitwam/Ars Technica)
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/07/tested…

Google's SynthID watermark is hard to break, but it doesn't solve AI misinformation
Deciding what's real on the Internet won't be easy in the future.

Enterprise data pipeline startup DataBahn raised a $40M Series B led by Insight Partners, bringing its total funding to $59M (Duncan Riley/SiliconANGLE)
https://siliconangle.com/2026/07/30/databahn-raises-40m-ai-agents-queue-enterprise-telemetry/…

Scale AI hires former Google Cloud COO Francis deSouza as CEO, replacing interim CEO Jason Droege, who took over last year after Alexandr Wang left for Meta (Madison Mills/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2026/07/30/scale-ai-google-cloud-coo-francis-desouza

Scale AI taps former Google Cloud executive as new CEO
deSouza replaces Alexandr Wang, who left for Meta last year.