Nektaria Stamouli / Politico:
A Greek court sentences four people, including spyware maker Intellexa's founder, to prison, for using spyware to target journalists, politicians, and others  —  Greece's “Predatorgate” scandal is one of Europe's biggest political crises over the use of hacking software.

Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch:
Driverless truck startup Einride raised a $113M PIPE at a $1.35B pre-money valuation, down from $1.8B initially attached to its upcoming SPAC deal  —  Einride has secured an oversubscribed $113 million PIPE (private investment in public equity) ahead of its public debut that's expected for the first half of 2026.

Rocket Drew / The Information:
Encord, whose software helps companies developing AI models manage training data for robots and other uses, raised $60M at a $500M pre-money valuation  —  Companies developing AI models to power humanoid and other robots have been hard at work collecting videos and other data for training their models …

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Google says Nano Banana 2 can create images with a resolution ranging from 512px to 4K, and will become the default image generation model in the Gemini app  —  Google today announced the latest version of its popular image generation model, Nano Banana 2.  The new model, which is technically …

Rohan Goswami / Semafor:
Sources: PayPal isn't in talks to sell itself, to Stripe or anyone, and has been preparing for months for a potential activist campaign or unwanted takeover bid  —  The Scoop  —  PayPal isn't currently in talks to sell itself — to Stripe or anyone else — and has been working for months …