Techmeme
July 31, 2026, 6:35 PM

Top News

Newley Purnell / Bloomberg:
DeepSeek rolls out the official V4 Flash API in public beta, touting enhanced agent capabilities and benchmark scores “far surpassing” V4 Pro Preview  —  China's DeepSeek rolled out a public beta application programming interface, or API, for its flagship artificial intelligence model …
Geoff Brumfiel / NPR:
Google rolls back an image generation tool in Google Earth to add “stronger guardrails” after concerns arose it can be used to create deepfake satellite imagery  —  A day after Google unveiled a new feature that allowed users to create AI-generated satellite images with the click …
Reuters:
Trump says he does not think Iran is behind a cyberattack on Minnesota water systems: “I think I blame it on Minnesota because they're grossly incompetent”  —  U.S. President Donald Trump at Camp David told reporters that he does not think Iran is behind a cyberattack on Minnesota water systems …
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
A leaked memo, issued by the water utilities information sharing group WaterISAC, links dozens of cyberattacks against Minnesota water utilities to Iran  —  A memo obtained by WIRED, issued by the water utilities information sharing group WaterISAC, links dozens of cyberattacks against Minnesota water utilities to Tehran.
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
New York sues Kalshi for alleged violations of its gambling laws; the CFTC files an emergency motion to stop the state's enforcement, calling it an “overreach”  —  New York's attorney general sued Kalshi on Friday, claiming that its prediction market platform violates state laws against illegal gambling.
Wall Street Journal:
An in-depth account of the past two days inside Situational Awareness, as Aschenbrenner assured investors he would focus on changes to his portfolio management  —  Leopold Aschenbrenner was hailed as the ‘Nostradamus of AI.’ But his Situational Awareness hedge fund took on too much leverage, leading to a crash he never saw coming.
Wall Street Journal:
Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch:
Snap says its recommendation systems will be adjusted so only videos created by real people, not AI-generated ones, are eligible for Spotlight recommendations  —  Snapchat is the latest company to strengthen its stance against AI slop.  The social network platform will no longer reward fully …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google starts rolling out access to Gemini Spark for Google AI Pro subscribers to over 160 countries and adds a Chrome auto browse integration on desktop  —  Gemini Spark is getting two big updates today, starting with Chrome auto browse integration on desktop.  —  Previously, Gemini Spark had access to a remote web browser.
Katherine Hamilton / Wall Street Journal:
OpenAI says its models now have more than 1B active users and are used by more than 2M businesses  —  The announcement comes after OpenAI said earlier this week it was cutting the price of several of its models  —  OpenAI has more than one billion active users and two million businesses using its artificial intelligence models.
More: OpenAI and QuartzLinkedIn: Sarah Friar
Ethan Gach / Kotaku:
Sony reports Q1 PS5 sales of 1.38M units, down from 1.56M a year ago, taking total sales of the console to 95.3M units, and 125M PlayStation MAUs, up 2M YoY  —  Profit projects are up even as console sales are down … What comes after that is anybody's guess as the PlayStation 6 approaches amid …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Apple CFO Kevan Parekh says Services surpassed 1.5B paid subscriptions, up from 1B in January 2025, but a gaming slowdown and App Store changes hurt growth  —  Apple says it has now topped 1.5 billion subscribers for its services business, up from 1 billion in January 2025.
Mackenzie Hawkins / Bloomberg:
Sources: Moonshot has a computing power agreement with Alibaba for the use of ~20K Nvidia chips; some say the deal is for H200 chips, which Alibaba denies  —  Chinese AI champion Moonshot has a computing power agreement with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. for the use of around 20,000 Nvidia Corp. chips …
Elizabeth Grenier / Deutsche Welle:
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  —  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.
Kit Norton / Barron's Online:
Roblox shares close down ~27%, its worst-ever daily percentage decline, after forecasting falling bookings and slowing revenue growth; RBLX is down 40%+ YTD  —  Choose Barron's as a preferred source of financial news  —  Key Points  —  Shares of Roblox tumbled Friday as Wall Street responded harshly …
Spencer Soper / Bloomberg:
Amazon shares closed up 15.32% on Friday, the biggest one-day jump since April 2012, after the company reported accelerating AWS revenue  —  Amazon.com Inc. shares surged the most since 2012 after the company reported accelerating cloud-computing revenue, easing investors' concerns …

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