Opening statements begin in the biggest consumer protection case in the US
Opening statements begin in the biggest consumer protection case in the US

Opening statements in the states’ case against Meta begin today in Oakland. The court seated a jury last week. The trial should run about five weeks. Twenty-nine state attorneys general brought the case in 2023. Lawyers for California, Colorado, Kentuc…

Wispr raised $280mn at $2bn to argue the text box is finished
Wispr raised $280mn at $2bn to argue the text box is finished

Wispr has raised $280mn at a $2bn valuation. Menlo Ventures led the round, having led the last one too. Total funding now stands at $361mn. The company makes Wispr Flow, a dictation app that turns speech into cleaned-up text in whatever application you…

An AI agent built a working exploit for this macOS flaw in four hours
An AI agent built a working exploit for this macOS flaw in four hours

A security company built working exploits for two pre-authentication root bugs in macOS. It took four hours. The firm, Calif, used an AI agent. It now withholds technical details of one of those bugs, CVE-2026-65400, until most Macs carry the patch. Th…

The DOJ is investigating Andreessen Horowitz over competing board seats
The DOJ is investigating Andreessen Horowitz over competing board seats

The US Justice Department is investigating Andreessen Horowitz. At issue is whether partners at the venture capital firm improperly sit on the boards of competing artificial intelligence companies. Bloomberg reported the investigation on Monday, citing…

Higgsfield raised $400mn at $5.4bn, four times its January valuation
Higgsfield raised $400mn at $5.4bn, four times its January valuation

Higgsfield has raised $400mn at a $5.4bn valuation. DST Global led the round. Goldman Sachs, Intel Capital, and Liberty Global Tech Ventures all took part, alongside Tribe Capital, Smash Capital, Fifth Wall, Valor Capital, Mirae Asset Capital, and NTT …

OpenAI disbanded the team that assessed catastrophic model risks
OpenAI disbanded the team that assessed catastrophic model risks

OpenAI shut down its preparedness team at the end of July, the Financial Times reports. The team existed to work out whether OpenAI’s models posed catastrophic risks. It also designed the ways to contain them. The work has not disappeared. Responsibili…

OpenAI is funding 13 Axios local newsletters in a three-year deal
OpenAI is funding 13 Axios local newsletters in a three-year deal

OpenAI is paying the startup costs of 13 new Axios Local newsletters, covering both staff and technology. Axios employees also get free credits for OpenAI’s enterprise tools. In return, Axios lets OpenAI train its models on its free published coverage….

Instagram blocked the search terms. Its algorithm serves the videos anyway
Instagram blocked the search terms. Its algorithm serves the videos anyway

The genre is simple enough to describe. A man wearing camera glasses walks up to a woman in the street. He delivers a line and films her reaction without asking. The clip goes to Instagram, tagged as shot on Meta glasses. The woman is now content. Some…

Nvidia is not backing OpenAI’s rent. It is backing the buildings
Nvidia is not backing OpenAI’s rent. It is backing the buildings

A residual value guarantee is a promise about an object, not about a tenant. Someone builds a thing. Someone else rents it. A third party promises the thing itself will still be worth a set amount. If the renter walks, the owner relets or sells. The gu…

A Trump-backed crypto firm is helping sell the very Chinese AI his government is trying to block
A Trump-backed crypto firm is helping sell the very Chinese AI his government is trying to block

A crypto venture backed by Donald Trump and his family is helping to bankroll a platform that resells artificial intelligence from Chinese companies the US government has blacklisted, an arrangement that sits awkwardly beside the administration’s own c…