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Google launched Gemini 3.6 Flash and started pretraining Gemini 4. China weighed tightening AI export controls, Bessent said the US would probe Chinese model distillation, Apple prepped a Klarna-backed leasing program, and OpenAI passed 10M Codex and Work users.

Google launches Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber (9to5Google)

Google launches Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber, and says it has started its "most ambitious pre-training run yet" for Gemini 4 (CNBC)

Sources: China is weighing tightening AI and chip export controls and is consulting leading domestic AI companies, in a bid to slow advanced tech acquisitions (FT)

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the Trump administration will investigate whether Chinese AI models were illegally distilled from American models, and raises the possibility of sanctions (CNBC)

Sources: Apple plans to launch Apple Upgrade, a leasing program for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch, in partnership with Klarna in the US next week (Bloomberg)

OpenAI says it now has 10M people using Codex and ChatGPT Work, nearly doubling usage from earlier this month when the company announced ChatGPT Work (Bloomberg)

OpenAI says it now has 10M people using Codex and ChatGPT Work, nearly doubling usage from earlier this month when the company announced ChatGPT Work (Implicator AI)

Garmin launches the Cirqa Smart Band, a $200 screenless fitness tracker that monitors 80+ activities with an up to 10 day battery life, to compete with Whoop (Bloomberg)

Garmin launches the Cirqa Smart Band, a $200 screenless fitness tracker that monitors 80+ activities with an up to 10 day battery life, to compete with Whoop (The Verge)

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Alibaba launched Qwen3.8 Max as Moonshot paused Kimi K3 signups amid demand. The Trump administration weighed a slow squeeze on Chinese AI, Hugging Face used China's GLM-5.2 after US guardrails blocked its breach forensics, and Google built a Gemini chip.

Alibaba launches a 2.4T parameter Qwen3.8 Max preview that it says rivals frontier AI models and is second only to Fable 5, plans to make it "open-weight soon" (Bloomberg)

The Trump administration has reportedly explored sanctions, security warnings, and executive-order requirements since 2025 to build a slow, durable squeeze on Chinese AI models instead of pursuing an outright ban (The Decoder)

Ben Thompson argues the market reaction to Kimi and other Chinese models is overblown, since it's compute scarcity — not a real Chinese cost advantage — that's keeping frontier-model prices high (Stratechery)

Hugging Face says it used the open-weight GLM-5.2 hosted on its own compute for breach forensics, after US frontier model safety guardrails blocked the requests (The Stack)

Sources: Google is developing a specialized server chip, informally dubbed "Frozen v2", that integrates its Gemini AI model blueprint into the silicon, for 2028 (The Information)

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Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, a 2.8T-parameter model it says rivals Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.5. Google fell months behind on Gemini 3.5 Pro, MLB banned dugout iPads from accessing GenAI for in-game calls, and The Verge tested Siri AI.

Moonshot AI releases Kimi K3, a 2.8T-parameter AI model that it says rivals Claude Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.5, and plans to release its full model weights by July 27 (VentureBeat)

Sources: Google is months behind schedule on delivering Gemini 3.5 Pro as it tries to improve its capabilities, particularly in coding; GOOG closes down 4.43% (Bloomberg)

Memo: MLB bans the use of league-provided dugout iPads to access GenAI for in-game strategy calls; sources say at least a third of teams used AI this way (The Athletic)

Longreads

The Verge spends a month testing Siri AI in the iOS 27 public beta, finding it's already reshaping how people use their iPhone, though it can't yet reach non-Apple apps (The Verge)

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Uber agreed to acquire Delivery Hero for ~$14.8B, expanding into 99 markets. Thinking Machines released its first open-weight model, Inkling, SpaceXAI open-sourced Grok Build after a data-upload backlash, and sources detailed xAI's chaotic race to catch Claude under new leadership.

Uber agrees to acquire Delivery Hero in a deal that values the German food delivery company at ~$14.8B, offering €41.50 per share and buying Prosus' 16.8% stake (Bloomberg)

Thinking Machines Lab debuts Inkling, an open-weight MoE model with 975B total and 41B active parameters, trained to be broad rather than optimized for one area (Thinking Machines Lab)

Thinking Machines Lab debuts Inkling, an open-weight MoE model with 975B total and 41B active parameters, trained to be broad rather than optimized for one area (WSJ)

SpaceXAI open-sources Grok Build under an Apache 2.0 license, after the tool uploaded user repositories to SpaceXAI's Google Cloud bucket, causing a backlash (Simon Willison)

SpaceXAI open-sources Grok Build under an Apache 2.0 license, after the tool uploaded user repositories to SpaceXAI's Google Cloud bucket, causing a backlash (The Decoder)

Sources detail how xAI has been slowed down by internal chaos as Musk pushed for Grok to match Claude, amid signs it is turning a corner under Michael Nicolls (Bloomberg)

Sources: Apple is preparing new iPads, including an iPad mini with an OLED screen by October and refreshed entry-level iPads and iPad Airs for 2027 (Bloomberg)

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New York became the first state to pause new data center permits, worrying the AI industry. Stripe and Advent offered $53B+ for PayPal, OpenAI's first device leaked as a screen-free speaker, and PrismML shrank a model to run on iPhones.

AI advocates fear New York's moratorium on new data centers could embolden Democrats to enact more state restrictions and seize on the issue in the midterms (Politico)

Sources: Stripe and PE firm Advent have jointly offered $60.50/share to acquire PayPal, a 28% premium to Tuesday's close, valuing it at $53B+; PYPL jumps 15%+ (Reuters)

Sources: OpenAI's first device will be a moveable, screen-free smart speaker with a camera and sensors, meant to serve as an AI companion that taps into ChatGPT (Bloomberg)

OpenAI says Apple's claim that OpenAI never responded to its concerns is false; emails: an Apple lawyer mixed up two OpenAI staffers in Apple's initial outreach (NBC News)

OpenAI says Apple's claim that OpenAI never responded to its concerns is false; emails: an Apple lawyer mixed up two OpenAI staffers in Apple's initial outreach (9to5Mac)

PrismML launches Bonsai 27B, a model based on Qwen3.6 27B that it says runs natively on Apple devices via MLX; its CEO says Apple is evaluating the tech (CNBC)

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