Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

After Musk said Grok was improved "significantly", Grok wrote numerous antisemitic posts, sometimes without any clear prompting; some posts were later deleted (NBC News)

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Replit announces a partnership with Microsoft to make its platform available in the Azure Marketplace and integrate its tech with some Microsoft cloud services (Julie Bort/TechCrunch)

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Internal Slack message: OpenAI has hired four high-profile engineers from Tesla, xAI, and Meta, including David Lau, former VP of software engineering at Tesla (Wired)

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A US appeals court blocks the FTC's "click-to-cancel" rule that would have taken effect on July 14, saying it didn't conduct a preliminary cost-benefit analysis (Jody Godoy/Reuters)

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GlobalFoundries agrees to acquire MIPS, a developer of RISC-V-based solutions and IP, with the deal expected to close in H2 2025 (Anton Shilov/Tom's Hardware)

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Waymo introduces teen accounts in Phoenix, allowing teenagers aged 14-17 to use its Waymo One ridehailing service alone with parental approval (Andrew J. Hawkins/The Verge)

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Apple says COO Jeff Williams will retire later this year, and Sabih Khan, Apple's SVP of Operations, will take over much of his role later this month (CNBC)

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Source: Activision pulled Call of Duty: WWII after hackers exploited a flaw in a PC version, which led to some players getting their computers hacked (Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai/TechCrunch)

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Sources: Mistral AI is in talks to raise as much as $1B in equity from several investors including Abu Dhabi's MGX; it has raised €1B+ since its 2023 founding (Bloomberg)

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Sources: Meta has bought under 3% of Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica, a stake worth ~€3B, and is considering further investment that could build the stake to ~5% (Bloomberg)

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Private stock investment platform Linqto files for bankruptcy, citing SEC and DOJ probes and an internal probe that found users didn't own shares they bought (Wall Street Journal)

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Arago, which is developing a photonic chip, codenamed JEF, that is designed to cut AI energy use by ten times at a comparable cost, raised a $26M seed (Tamara Djurickovic/Tech.eu)

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Dubai-based Xpanceo, which is developing smart contact lenses with night vision, health monitoring, and more, raised a $250M Series A at a $1.35B valuation (Alexander Sazonov/Bloomberg)

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El Salvador-based Tether says it holds nearly 80 tons of gold, worth ~$8B, in a vault in Switzerland; precious metals made up nearly 5% of its reserves in March (Jack Ryan/Bloomberg)

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Sources: an impostor used AI to mimic Marco Rubio's voice and writing style and contacted foreign ministers, a US governor, and a member of Congress (Washington Post)

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ReserveOne, a cryptocurrency holding company with bitcoin, ethereum, and Solana, plans to list on the Nasdaq through a SPAC deal expected to raise $1B+ (Niket Nishant/Reuters)

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AirGarage, whose platform analyzes parking facilities' data to improve efficiency, raised a $23M Series B led by Headline, bringing its total funding to $41M (Chris Metinko/Axios)

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X says India ordered it to block 2,355 accounts, including two from Reuters, on July 3, but then told X to unblock the Reuters accounts after a "public outcry" (Swati Gupta/Bloomberg)

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Moonvalley debuts Marey, its licensed AI video model, for $14.99, $34.99, or $149.99 per month; ~80% of its footage is from independent filmmakers and agencies (Andrew R. Chow/Time)

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Global VC funding reached $91B in Q2 2025, up from $82B in Q2 2024, driven largely by AI investments, but down from $114B in Q1 2025, the highest since Q3 2022 (Gené Teare/Crunchbase News)

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