Reading List

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

Lumia, which uses AI to analyze interactions between autonomous agents and humans, raised an $18M seed led by Team8 (Chris Metinko/Axios)

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Sources: Fluidstack, an AI cloud provider that is aiding Google's effort to expand access to its TPUs, is in talks to raise $700M+ led by Situational Awareness (The Information)

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Microsoft will increase prices for commercial Office subscriptions on July 1, 2026, including a 33% jump for front-line worker plans like Microsoft 365 F1 (Jordan Novet/CNBC)

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Phia, founded by Bill Gates' daughter Phoebe to develop an AI search engine accessed via an extension for Chrome and Safari, raised $30M at a $180M valuation (Christina Kyriasoglou/Bloomberg)

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Russia's Roskomnadzor says it has blocked FaceTime in Russia, claiming the service is being used to organise and "carry out terrorist attacks in the country" (Reuters)

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Sources: Polymarket has recruited staff for a market making team that could face off against its customers; Kalshi's similar unit exposed Kalshi to criticism (Bloomberg)

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Amazon plans to release its $630 Kindle Scribe Colorsoft and $500 Kindle Scribe on December 10, after announcing them in September, but won't offer preorders (Jay Peters/The Verge)

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Meta launches a centralized support hub for Facebook and Instagram, with AI-powered search and an AI assistant to answer queries, in its iOS and Android apps (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

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Apple announces its 2025 App Store Award winners and names visual planner Tiimo as the iPhone App of the Year; many of the winning apps have AI integrations (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

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OnePlus launches US preorders for its $900+ OnePlus 15 a month late, after receiving FCC clearance, which had been delayed due to the US government shutdown (Dominic Preston/The Verge)

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A US federal judge rules that OpenAI must produce 20M anonymized ChatGPT chat logs in the copyright lawsuit brought by The New York Times and other news outlets (Blake Brittain/Reuters)

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7AI, which makes agents that analyze and triage info like cybersecurity alerts, raised a $130M Series A at a ~$700M valuation, taking its total funding to $166M (James Rundle/Wall Street Journal)

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A profile of AI hearing aid startup Fortell, which has raised $150M so far and is targeting affluent clients in NYC with a $6,800 device that uses a custom chip (Steven Levy/Wired)

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Flex, which offers AI-based payment tools, credit, and more to mid-sized companies, raised a $60M Series B led by Portage, a source says at a ~$500M valuation (Aditya Soni/Reuters)

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Sources: Meta is considering deep budget cuts to its metaverse efforts in 2026, potentially as high as 30% and most likely including layoffs as early as January (Kurt Wagner/Bloomberg)

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Taiwan's interior ministry announces a one-year ban on access to Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu, aka RedNote, citing 1,700+ fraud cases since 2024 (Ben Blanchard/Reuters)

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The EU expects to launch a formal bidding process for its AI gigafactories in early 2026 and close it in summer 2026, as the bloc seeks to catch up with the US (Mauro Orru/Wall Street Journal)

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AI legal software startup Harvey raised $160M led by a16z at an $8B valuation, up from $3B after raising $300M in February, taking its funding in 2025 to $760M (Michael J. de la Merced/New York Times)

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Yann LeCun says Meta will not back his unnamed AI startup, which will focus on advanced machine intelligence and world models, and hints it will be Paris-based (Benoit Berthelot/Bloomberg)

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The EU says it is gathering more info and feedback from ~200 stakeholders on Google's offer to fix alleged antitrust violations linked to its ad tech business (Bloomberg)

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