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August 7, 2026, 12:01 AM
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WeSmirchTop News
| Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: |
Sources: OpenAI's new device, slated for 2027, is a hockey puck-sized smart speaker with moving parts that help give it personality, likely costing $300+ — A highly anticipated new device from OpenAI will have a unique look, complete with moving parts that help give it personality …
More: TechCrunch, The Verge, PYMNTS, SiliconANGLE, The Indian Express, Android Authority, 9to5Mac, AppleInsider, The Information, iPhone in Canada, MacRumors, Engadget, MobileSyrup, iClarified, Digital Trends, and Daring Fireball
Forums: r/accelerate, r/singularity, r/ChatGPT, r/BetterOffline, r/technology, r/OpenAI, and MacRumors Forums
| KOB 4: |
New Mexico trial: a judge orders Meta to pay $567M and make changes for underage users after finding its platforms helped create a public nuisance harming teens — SANTA FE, N.M. - A Santa Fe judge ordered Meta to pay $567 million, and make changes for the user experience of juvenile accounts …
More: Wall Street Journal, BBC, Quartz, France 24, New York Times, Tech Policy Press, The Guardian, Bloomberg Law, Associated Press, CNET, Reuters, Business Insider, Reuters, First Judicial District Court of New Mexico, The Wrap, Courthouse News Service, TRT World, Al Jazeera, Times of India, Mediaweek, Social Media Today, Proactive, Toledo Blade, nmdoj.gov, RTÉ, CNBC, CNN, Albuquerque Journal, KOAT, Source New Mexico, Santa Fe New Mexican, India Today, and Newser
X: @andymstone, @jason_kint, and @andrewcurran_
LinkedIn: Nicki Petrossi and Kelly Stonelake
Bluesky: @jamisonfoser and @justinhendrix
Forums: r/news and r/Snorkblot
| Carl Zimmer / New York Times: |
Scientists trained AI on genetic sequences to design viruses not found in nature, yielding 16 viable viruses that can infect bacteria but don't threaten humans — Scientists trained artificial intelligence on libraries of DNA and then asked the model to create recipes for viral genomes.
More: Science, Ars Technica, Wall Street Journal, Telegraph, The Guardian, KIFI-TV, Australian Financial Review, Newser, NewsMax.com, The Daily Wire, Gizmodo, Financial Times, BBC, Forbes, Axios, and Engadget
X: @garymarcus. LinkedIn: Vikram Kanda, PhD. Bluesky: @michaeldgreen.phd, @markriedl, and @chrislhayes
Forums: r/technews, r/technology, r/circled, r/science, and Slashdot
| Herb Scribner / Axios: |
OpenAI updates the default model for free users to GPT-5.6 Luna, adds unlimited text chats for free users, rolls out an improved GPT-5.6 Sol version, and more — OpenAI on Thursday announced a series of changes that will upgrade ChatGPT for both paid and free users.
More: OpenAI, The Verge, CNET, Android Authority, Cyber Security News, BleepingComputer, Digital Trends, 9to5Mac, The Decoder, The New Stack, TechCrunch, MacRumors, Pulse 2.0, WeRSM, iClarified, RuntimeWire, AppleInsider, Neowin, Unite.AI, and PYMNTS
X: @angaisb_, @techwithhannahm, @heaney555, @openai, @somewheresy, @openai, @mehulmpt, @andrewcurran_, @sama, @openai, @_jason_dean_, @angaisb_, @openai, @mweinbach, @gdb, and @openai
Forums: Hacker News, r/singularity, r/accelerate, and r/OpenAI
| Tobias Mann / The Register: |
AMD acquires Toronto-based Taalas, which integrates model weights directly into silicon to boost inference performance, for an undisclosed sum — Early tech demos show model-specific integrated circuits churning out up to 17,000 tokens a second — In AMD's latest bid to upset Nvidia's dominance …
More: Advanced Micro Devices, MarketWatch, CNBC, SiliconANGLE, Unite.AI, Reuters, ServeTheHome, EE Times, Wccftech, The Logic, BetaKit, and Bloomberg
X: @rrhoover, @taalas_inc, @emostaque, @lisasu, and @zephyr_z9
Forums: Hacker News, r/hardware, and r/AMD_Stock
| Reuters: |
Google and data: hackers used phone calls, phishing websites, and “meticulous” tactics to target dozens of US PE firms and other businesses over the past month — Ransom-seeking hackers who use phone calls to compromise their victims targeted dozens of prominent U.S. financial institutions … | Reinhardt Krause / Investor's Business Daily: |
Twilio reports Q2 revenue up 22% YoY to $1.5B, above $1.43B est., and forecasts Q3 revenue above estimates; TWLO jumps 16%+ after hours — Twilio (TWLO) stock jumped Thursday after the communications software maker reported second-quarter earnings and revenue that topped consensus estimates …
More: SiliconANGLE, Morningstar, and Twilio Inc.
| Koyena Das / Reuters: |
Instacart reports Q2 revenue up 14% YoY to $1.04B, GTV up 14% to $10.35B, above est., forecasts Q3 GTV and core profit above est.; CART jumps 8%+ after hours — Instacart (CART.O) forecast third-quarter gross transaction value and core profit above analysts' estimates on Thursday …
More: Instacart and Wall Street Journal
| Todd Spangler / Variety: |
Roku reports Q2 revenue up 22% YoY to $1.35B vs. $1.3B est., net income of $164.2M, ad revenue up 25% to $673M, and subscription revenue up 26% to $548M — Roku kept its streaming engines blazing in the second quarter of 2026 with earnings that blew past Wall Street estimates.| Kelly Cloonan / Wall Street Journal: |
Lyft reports Q2 revenue up 16% YoY to $1.84B, vs. $1.81B est., rides up 12% to 262.4M, and expects Q3 gross bookings growth to slow to 15%-19% — The company's gross bookings rose 23% to $5.5 billion in the latest quarter — Lyft's second-quarter bookings rose, boosted by overall demand, particularly for its premium rides.
More: Reuters, The Information, Barron's Online, Proactive, StockStory, Lyft, Bloomberg, and Benzinga
| Natalie Lung / Bloomberg: |
Airbnb reports Q2 revenue up 17% YoY to $3.6B, Nights and Seats Booked up 10% to 148.3M, above est., lifts 2026 revenue forecast; ABNB jumps 10%+ after hours — Airbnb Inc. boosted its annual revenue forecast for a second time this year after it saw robust global travel demand, particularly in the US and Europe.| Nichiket Sunil / Reuters: |
Sydney-based AI data center company Firmus raised $2B in funding from Coatue, Nvidia, and others at a $10.5B post-money valuation, up from $5.5B in April — Firmus said on Friday it had raised $2 billion in equity in its latest funding round to speed up the build-out of AI factories …
More: Bloomberg, Firmus, The Economic Times, SmartCompany, Capital Brief, and RuntimeWire
| Reuters: |
SpaceX and Tesla plan to initially invest $16.8B to build Terafab in Grimes County, Texas; combined demand from SpaceX and Tesla is forecast to top 1 TW — Elon Musk's SpaceX <SPCX.O> and Tesla <TSLA.O> will initially invest $16.8 billion to build Terafab, an advanced AI semiconductor complex …
More: TechCrunch, Bloomberg, Business Insider, Office of the Texas Governor, SpaceX, Electrek, Houston Business Journal, Chip Briefing, TESLARATI, Dallas Express, Quartz, The Tech Portal, Wccftech, The Verge, Austin American-Statesman, The American Bazaar, Dow Jones Newswires, Blockonomi, and Austin Business Journal
X: @elonmusk, @sawyermerritt, @jukan05, @scaling01, @tesla, @alex_intel_, @elonmusk, @elonmusk, and @spacex. LinkedIn: Kash Abbasi. Forums: r/intelstock
| Arunesh Sinha / Reuters: |
Atlassian reports Q4 revenue up 28% YoY to $1.77B, vs. $1.66B est., cloud revenue up 31% to $1.2B, forecasts Q1 revenue above est.; TEAM jumps 31%+ after hours — Collaboration software maker Atlassian (TEAM.O) beat Wall Street expectations for fourth-quarter revenue on Thursday …
| Angela Palumbo / Barron's Online: |
Cloudflare reports Q2 revenue up 36% YoY to $696.1M, above $665M est., and forecasts Q3 revenue above estimates; NET jumps 17%+ after hours — Choose Barron's as a preferred source of financial news — Key Points — Cloudflare stock was climbing Thursday night after the company reported better …
More: Bloomberg, Cloudflare, Investor's Business Daily, and SiliconANGLE
| Bloomberg: |
Alphabet raises $25B in a bond sale; sources say the offering attracted roughly $115B of peak demand and that the company plans to issue US debt twice a year — Alphabet Inc. sold $25 billion of investment-grade bonds after generous yield payouts helped secure one of the year's largest order books for AI-related debt.| Will Knight / Wired: |
Security researchers claim Kimi K3 went outside its sandbox during defensive cybersecurity tests, but did not hack anything after accessing the internet — Security researchers say that Kimi K3, an open-weight model from China, wandered off to the internet in an attempt to cheat on a test it was given.| Brody Ford / Bloomberg: |
Figma CEO Dylan Field forfeits ~$46M in stock awards to revive investor confidence amid AI disruption fears; FIG is down ~77% from its peak more than a year ago — Figma Is Betting on AI's Next Workflow Figma Inc. Chief Executive Officer Dylan Field forfeited about $46 million in company stock awards …
More: Motley Fool, The Information, MarketWatch, Benzinga, and Reuters
| Terrence O'Brien / The Verge: |
Suno says it will adopt new audio watermarking tech, fingerprinting tech, transparency tools, and a new download policy to limit the spread of spammy AI music — The company is changing its download policy and rolling out new watermarking technology.
More: Suno, TechCrunch, CNET, Unite.AI, Gizmodo, Engadget, RuntimeWire, Ars Technica, and Digital Music News
LinkedIn: Sam Berger and Jack Brody
| Victoria Turk / Wired: |
Google DeepMind says its WeatherNext model can accurately predict a storm's track and intensity using lower-resolution weather data, and open sources the model — Its WeatherNext model, which will be open-sourced, can accurately predict both a storm's track and intensity using lower-resolution weather data.
More: Google DeepMind, GitHub, Nature, The Verge, RuntimeWire, and New Scientist
Bluesky: @metoffice.gov.uk and @metoffice.gov.uk
Forums: r/TropicalWeather, r/aiwars, and r/weather
| Anna Tong / Forbes: |
Docs: US data labeling companies, like Surge AI and Mercor, that sell training datasets to US AI labs and the government are also selling them to Chinese labs — The same Silicon Valley startups supplying OpenAI, Anthropic and the U.S. government are also selling AI training datasets … | Zac Hall / 9to5Mac: |
OpenAI debuts Agent Plugins, an open standard for bundling skills and MCP servers, and says Amazon, Cursor, Microsoft, and Vercel are on its steering committee — OpenAI's GPT-5 turns one tomorrow, and the company is marking the week by looking beyond individual models.
More: Vercel, OpenAI on YouTube, RuntimeWire, Agentic AI Foundation, and The Next Web
X: @vercel, @embirico, @cramforce, @techgirl1908, @rauchg, @agenticaifdn, @tekbog, @thdxr, and @openaidevs
| Ram Iyer / TechCrunch: |
Naïve, which provides infrastructure for AI agents to handle most business operations, raised a $28.5M Series A led by Nexus, bringing its total funding to $32M — Developers detest drudgery. The entire field of programming is proof of how hard people will work to automate away the boring tasks involved in building things.
More: SiliconANGLE, Pulse 2.0, RuntimeWire, and Unite.AI
X: @rtinkslinger, @clayul, @oneabhishek, @gokulr, and @usenaive
| Iain Martin / Forbes: |
A profile of DDN, a managed data storage company whose annual revenue is expected to grow from $300M pre-AI boom to $1B by year's end, fueled by AI partnerships — For nearly three decades, Alex Bouzari ran a data storage stalwart for research labs at the likes of NASA.
LinkedIn: Iain Martin
| Reuters: |
Sources: Alibaba plans to ask heavy commercial users of its next Qwen open model for a share of revenue; Moonshot's Kimi K3 requires up to a 30% revenue share — Chinese technology giant Alibaba (9988.HK) plans to ask major users of the next version of its Qwen open-source AI model for a share …
X: @andrewcurran_ and @zephyr_z9
| Bloomberg: |
Sources: DeepSeek has resumed its funding round, seeking $8B at a $74B valuation, after pausing talks following the leak of Liang Wenfeng's remarks to investors — DeepSeek has resumed its second funding round, seeking close to $8 billion, with Monolith Management in talks to contribute, according to people familiar with the matter.
More: PYMNTS and ZeroHedge News
| Bloomberg: |
More: Paul Kedrosky, Spyglass, Wccftech, and The Information
X: @cheatyyyy, @mehulmpt, @morqon, @thdxr, @lisaabramowicz1, @zephyr_z9, @ruima, @stevehou, @gpuhell, @teortaxestex, and @firstadopter. Threads: @carnage4life
| Mark Bergen / Bloomberg: |
Demis Hassabis stepping down as Google DeepMind CEO may weaken the UK tech scene, marking an end for Hassabis' effort to keep his native UK as an AI stronghold — For years, Demis Hassabis was the only executive to oversee a US technology giant's artificial intelligence development from outside the country.
More: Financial Times, Gizmodo, Search Engine Land, Time, Fast Company, Axios, Business Insider, and The Verge
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X: @andrew_n_carr, @rihardjarc, @jsrailton, @millionint, @chamath, @artificialanlys, @louszbd, @kunchenguid, @valsai, @cline, @valsai, and @zephyr_z9. Threads: @k_ai_data
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