• Sources: officials say OpenAI risks its White House relationship by hiring Dean Ball, who has criticized Trump's AI strategy after leaving the administration (Thomas Barrabi/New York Post)
• Sources: AI cloud computing provider Lambda is selling a $917M leveraged loan to finance the purchase of GPUs as part of a contract with Nvidia (Bloomberg)
• Tel Aviv- and San Francisco-based Corma, which develops AI models for defensive cybersecurity, emerges from stealth with a $60M seed led by Sequoia Capital (Emily Forlini/Fortune)
• As Waymo expands its fleet from 700 in 2025 to nearly 4,000 now, recalls and edge-case failures like flooded roadways and a San Francisco power outage mount (Emmy Martin/New York Times)
• Online course cheating has accelerated from chatbot-written essays to agents executing commands like "log in and complete my quiz"; major AI tools didn't refuse (New York Times)
• Sources: Microsoft plans to unveil its next-gen AI chip, the Maia 300, potentially as soon as September, and is in talks with TSMC to make 300K+ chips for 2027 (The Information)
• Analysis: the 256GB iPhone 18 Pro is set to have a bill of materials cost ~38% higher than the iPhone 17 Pro due to memory prices; memory's BOM share hits 34% (TrendForce)
• Anthropic, Macquarie, and Singapore's GIC form Theseus Infrastructure to develop AI computing sites; Anthropic commits to cover consumer electricity price hikes (Mark Bergen/Bloomberg)
• Google adds Venmo as a payment option on Google Play for games, apps, add-ons, subscriptions, and more in the US, expanding support beyond PayPal and Cash App (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)
• Intel announces a $15B common stock offering, with proceeds going to general corporate purposes, like "maintaining a strong balance sheet"; INTC falls 3%+ (Ian King/Bloomberg)
• South Korea plans to launch a ~$3.5B chip fund for promising materials, parts, equipment, and fabless companies, and speed the development of domestic chip hubs (Reuters)
• Sources: Palmer Luckey's Erebor, which aims to fill the gap left by Silicon Valley Bank's collapse, is in advanced talks to raise ~$1.5B at an $8B valuation (Financial Times)
• Sources: the AI-driven memory chip shortage has kicked off a rush of DC lobbying; many US officials appear unsympathetic to Apple's desire to buy Chinese chips (New York Times)
• As AI salaries collide with lack of San Francisco housing supply, CoStar says the average asking rent is up 18% in under two years to $3,728/month, passing NYC (Wall Street Journal)
• Q&A with Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour on his vision to "financialize everything", sports betting, Kalshi's "philosophical misalignment" with Polymarket, and more (Jordyn Holman/New York Times)
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