Techmeme: Sources: an addendum to the bipartisan Clarity Act would force President Trump to divest from crypto businesses, letting him defer paying taxes on the gains (Bloomberg)

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August 7, 2026, 5:40 AM

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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 and will likely cost $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 Hans India, Livemint, The Verge, Business Standard, Moneycontrol, Cult of Mac, Silicon UK, Mashable, The Information, The Indian Express, Android Authority, iPhone in Canada, Digit, SiliconANGLE, Digital Trends, 9to5Mac, MobileSyrup, Engadget, PYMNTS, iClarified, MacRumors, AppleInsider, Daring Fireball, Telecompaper, and Axios

X: @markgurman, @markgurman, @pitdesi, @nmasc_, and @gerstenzang. Bluesky: @snell.zone

Forums: r/accelerate, r/BetterOffline, r/technology, r/singularity, r/ChatGPT, 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, The Guardian, Fox Business, The Verge, Quartz, nmdoj.gov, First Judicial District Court of New Mexico, Associated Press, Tech Policy Press, Scottish Legal News, Silicon UK, Proactiveinvestors UK, JOE.ie, Lawyer Monthly, UPI, Reuters, Sky News, Financial Times, CBS News, The Wrap, TRT World, Bloomberg Law, Proactive, Social Media Today, KOAT, Outlook Business, Outlook India, Mediaweek, Channel NewsAsia, Source New Mexico, Al Jazeera, Albuquerque Journal, Santa Fe New Mexican, Courthouse News Service, CNET, Reuters, CNN, India Today, Newser, Times of India, CNBC, Business Insider, New York Times, and Toledo Blade

X: @andymstone, @jason_kint, and @andrewcurran_

LinkedIn: Nicki Petrossi and Kelly Stonelake

Bluesky: @joenoonan, @jamisonfoser, @peard33, @stardustbluepr.com, and @justinhendrix

Forums: r/Snorkblot and r/news

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, BBC, Ars Technica, The Hans India, ABC, The Rundown AI, The Guardian, Digit, Axios, Forbes, KIFI-TV, Newser, NewsMax.com, Australian Financial Review, Al Jazeera, Wall Street Journal, Telegraph, Financial Times, The Daily Wire, Gizmodo, and Engadget

X: @garymarcus. LinkedIn: Vikram Kanda, PhD. Bluesky: @bruces, @jimalwine, @elkeschwarz, @rimaanabtawi, @chrislhayes, @markriedl, and @michaeldgreen.phd

Forums: Hacker News, r/LocalLLaMA, r/accelerate, r/science, r/technology, r/biotech, r/singularity, r/accelerate, r/technews, r/circled, 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, Help Net Security, The Hans India, Moneycontrol, Business Today, The Verge, Android Authority, CNET, Digit, The Mac Observer, BleepingComputer, WeRSM, Cyber Security News, PYMNTS, AppleInsider, Pulse 2.0, The New Stack, iClarified, MacRumors, Neowin, The Decoder, Digital Trends, Unite.AI, TechCrunch, RuntimeWire, and 9to5Mac

X: @openai, @andrewcurran_, @sama, @gdb, @openai, @openai, @openai, @angaisb_, @techwithhannahm, @heaney555, @somewheresy, @mehulmpt, @openai, @_jason_dean_, @angaisb_, and @mweinbach

Forums: r/OpenAI, r/accelerate, and r/singularity

The Information:

Sources: Canva cut its revenue growth forecast as popular new AI features drove up costs, forced it to slow their rollout, and more Canva users moved to ChatGPT

More: Fast Company

Tobias Mann / The Register:

AMD acquires Toronto-based Taalas, which integrates model weights directly into silicon with the promise 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

More: Advanced Micro Devices, RuntimeWire, Blockonomi, Verdict, EE Times, SiliconANGLE, ServeTheHome, Yahoo Finance, Reuters, Unite.AI, Wccftech, CNBC, The Logic, BetaKit, Bloomberg, and MarketWatch

X: @lisasu, @taalas_inc, @rrhoover, @emostaque, and @zephyr_z9

Forums: Hacker News, r/hardware, and r/AMD_Stock

Financial Times:

Sources: ByteDance is pretraining an AI model with up to 10T parameters, roughly 3x larger than Kimi K3 and larger than the 8T estimate for Anthropic's Mythos 5 — TikTok owner training a model three times larger than Moonshot's Kimi K3 — ByteDance is training an AI model that could approach …

More: Reuters. X: @cryptopunk7213, @jukan05, and @zephyr_z9. Bluesky: @saridder. Mastodon: @LukaszOlejnik@mastodon.social

SemiAnalysis:

Analysis: Google DeepMind has lost frontier-model momentum amid leadership and RL talent departures, with Google Cloud emerging as a winner with more compute — GCP YoY rev growth >100%, DeepMind's long term failure is Google Cloud's short term gain — On Wednesday, August 5th …

More: Financial Times, Bloomberg, NPowerUser, Times Tabloid, Tech Brew, Time, Fast Company, and Search Engine Land

X: @tzedonn, @petergostev, @firstadopter, @zephyr_z9, @jukan05, @s8mb, and @semianalysis_

Financial Times:

Sources: Google's AI shakeup is a seismic shift in the works for months and cements Sergey Brin's influence, after execs became frustrated with Demis Hassabis

More: Bloomberg. X: @firstadopter

Will Knight / Wired:

Security researchers claim that Kimi K3 went outside of 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.

More: Reuters, South China Morning Post, Bloomberg, RuntimeWire, Cyber Security News, Digital Trends, and SiliconANGLE

Bluesky: @sungkim and @katie-drummond

Bloomberg:

Sources: an addendum to the bipartisan Clarity Act would force President Trump to divest from crypto businesses, letting him defer paying taxes on the gains — The bipartisan ethics proposal senators have pitched to President Donald Trump to get landmark crypto legislation over the line …

More: Blockonomi, CoinGape, Cointelegraph, The Block, and Bitcoin Magazine. Bluesky: @fckelnmskthnzbllnr

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, Twilio Inc., and Morningstar

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 …

More: Google Cloud Blog, Bloomberg, Financial Times, Digit, Times of India, SiliconANGLE, TechCrunch, and Bloomberg

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

Bloomberg:

Alphabet raises $25B in an investment-grade bond sale; sources say it attracted ~$115B of peak demand and that Alphabet plans to issue US debt twice per 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.

More: MarketWatch, Reuters, The Information, The Economic Times, The American Bazaar, Barchart.com, The Motley Fool, The Next Platform, and Reuters

X: @posingularity, @boringnrich, @froehlichthors1, @stealthct_storm, @photonbull, @advisorjohn, @harryread33, @farmerjoe0x, and @zerohedge

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, SmartCompany, The Economic Times, RuntimeWire, and Capital Brief

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.

More: MediaPost, Streaming Better, StockStory, Telecompaper, Deadline, The Wrap, Cord Cutters News, and TheDesk.net

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From Mediagazer

Salon:

Salon, launched in 1995 to cover politics, culture, and more, says it is closing: “business realities of independent digital journalism have changed profoundly”

A.J. Katz / The Wrap:

LIV Golf is shutting down after five years and over $5B in Saudi backing, ending its efforts to build a TV audience on Fox and, before that, The CW

Matthew Keys / TheDesk.net:

Nexstar reports Q3 net income up 285% YoY to $250M and net revenue up 78% YoY to $2.1B, as Q3 political ads brought in $317M; results include Tegna numbers

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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

LinkedIn: Iain Martin

Lara O'Reilly / Business Insider:

Gravity, which places text-based ads within AI chatbots, raised a $30.5M Series A co-led by Lightspeed and Committed, taking its total funding to $38.5M

More: RuntimeWire. X: @trygravityai

Anna Tong / Forbes:

Docs: US data labeling companies, like Surge AI and Mercor, that sell AI training datasets to US labs and the government are also selling them to Chinese labs

X: @alexandr_wang, @jordanschneider, @joeymannarino, @aakashsabharwal, @jason, @annatonger, @ksorbs, and @danielremler

Julia Hornstein / The Information:

Sources: Panthalassa, which aims to power data centers in the ocean using energy generated by waves, is raising $225M at a ~$2B valuation, up from $1B in May

More: Portland Oregon startups …

Bailey Lipschultz / Bloomberg:

Sources: Nscale told potential backers it generated $100M+ in Q2 revenue, up from ~$37M in Q1, and has ~$51B in contracts, ahead of a possible September US IPO

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

More: The Decoder, OpenAI on YouTube, Vercel, The Next Web, RuntimeWire, and Agentic AI Foundation

X: @vercel, @openaidevs, @embirico, @cramforce, @techgirl1908, @rauchg, @agenticaifdn, @tekbog, and @thdxr

Nate Wolf / Barron's Online:

Western Digital falls 13% after issuing guidance that didn't quite match Seagate's; Q4 revenue rose 44% YoY to $3.75B, above a $3.7B estimate

More: Reuters, Morningstar, Wall Street Journal, Motley Fool, Proactive, and Western Digital Corporation

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

More: Google DeepMind, GitHub, Nature, The Verge, RuntimeWire, and New Scientist

X: @googledeepmind, @googledeepmind, @googledeepmind, and @googledeepmind

Bluesky: @kebrightbill, @metoffice.gov.uk, and @metoffice.gov.uk

Forums: r/TropicalWeather, r/aiwars, and r/weather

Earlier Picks

The Information:

Sources: Nvidia is weighing lower-memory versions of its Rubin Ultra GPU because it may not be able to secure enough HBM, and has tested at least three versions

More: Seoul Economic Daily, Fierce Network, Motley Fool, and Wccftech

The Information:

Sources: Stripe recently entered exclusive talks to buy OpenRouter in a cash-and-stock deal that would value the startup for close to $10B

Katherine Hamilton / Wall Street Journal:

Datadog drops 15%+ after forecasting weaker full-year sales due to reduced usage from its largest client, a leading AI company; Q2 revenue rose 36% to $1.12B

More: SiliconANGLE, Motley Fool, Barron's Online, and Datadog

Tim Fernholz / TechCrunch:

WindBorne, which deploys weather balloons to collect data for its AI weather forecasting models, raised a $37M Series B at a $250M post-money valuation

More: WindBorne Systems and Techstrong.ai. LinkedIn: Kanu Gulati

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

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

More: ZeroHedge News, PYMNTS, Reuters, The Information, and Bloomberg

Artificial Analysis:

Meta's Muse Spark 1.2 scores 54 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, putting Meta next to SpaceXAI in a tie for third place amongst US labs

More: VentureBeat, Artificial Analysis, and The Information

X: @andrew_n_carr, @jsrailton, @rihardjarc, @millionint, @valsai, @chamath, @artificialanlys, @louszbd, @kunchenguid, @valsai, @cline, and @zephyr_z9. Threads: @k_ai_data

Andrew Webster / The Verge:

Rockstar says it will show an “extended look” at Grand Theft Auto VI on August 27, premiering on Netflix at 3pm ET before streaming on YouTube at 9pm ET

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