Tech Brew Ride Home

Google shook up its AI leadership, kicking Demis Hassabis upstairs while Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat left to found Discovery Loop. SpaceX's first earnings spooked investors, a UK-tested AI agent went rogue, and Disney let TikTok fans into Disney+.

Links

Google just announced a major shakeup of its top AI leadership (The Verge)

SpaceX reports Q2 revenue up 92% YoY to $7.8B, vs. $6.81B est., AI operating loss of $1.26B, vs. $2.39B est., says capex in Q3 and Q4 will remain similar to Q2 (Bloomberg)

An AI agent went rogue during UK safety tests, creating fake identities and launching social engineering attacks unprompted (The Decoder)

Disney announces a global deal with TikTok to bring "thoughtfully curated" fan-created short-form videos based on Disney's IP to Disney+'s vertical Verts feed (The New York Times)

Subscribe to the ad-free feed.

OpenAI took Apple's trade-secrets lawsuit to the court of public opinion, receipts and all. Bending Spoons bought Airtable, Anthropic inked a $10B Norway compute deal, the US eyed polysilicon tariffs, and Microsoft told engineers tokenmaxxing was over.

Links

OpenAI drags Apple's lawsuit into the court of public opinion (The Verge)

Bending Spoons agrees to acquire Airtable in an all-cash deal valuing the US software company at $1.285B, set to close by 2026's end, its first post-IPO deal (Reuters)

Bending Spoons buys Airtable at an implied equity value of ~$2.25B, five years after a $735M round valued the no-code company at $11.7B; Airtable's ARR is now ~$480M (Silicon Republic)

Sources: Anthropic agreed to a $10B deal for computing capacity in Norway from Nvidia-backed AI cloud startup Volta Infra, which says the deal is for six years (Bloomberg)

Sources: the US is preparing to set a price floor and impose tariffs on polysilicon, a material critical to chips, later this month, in a bid to counter China (Reuters)

Sources: Beijing is growing concerned about the cyber capabilities of Mythos and other US-developed frontier AI models and their potential as offensive weapons (Bloomberg)

White House to host AI companies Tuesday to review new model-testing framework (CNBC)

Internal email: Microsoft introduces token budget limits for employees' AI use, saying "tokenmaxxing is not what we are optimizing for" (404 Media)

Subscribe to the ad-free feed.

OpenAI found more instances of AI agents escaping containment, and nobody's sure who's liable. Astra solved ten open math problems, Google pulled a Google Earth image tool over deepfake fears, and AI chip counts were set to 10x by 2028.

Sources: OpenAI has discovered other instances where AI agents escaped containment; none of the agents were thought to have left OpenAI's network (Reuters)

Anthropic's breaches dated back to April but went undiscovered until last week; former UK cyber chief Ciaran Martin calls the lapses "sloppy" as experts warn of national security risks (Bloomberg)

Legal experts say US courts haven't settled who's liable when an AI agent goes rogue, with agency law, tort law, and the CFAA's intent requirements all an awkward fit (Wired)

OpenAI Says Astra Solved 10 Open Math Problems With Lean Proofs (Implicator AI)

Google rolls back an image generation tool in Google Earth to add "stronger guardrails" after concerns arose it can be used to create deepfake satellite imagery (NPR)

A look at the deluge of AI computing power set to come online in the coming years; Epoch AI expects the number of AI chips in use to double every nine months (NYT)

Subscribe to the ad-free feed.

Anthropic revealed Claude broke into three real organizations during cybersecurity tests it thought were simulations. Apple slid 10% as component shortages hit its outlook, Amazon jumped on accelerating AWS growth and a $220B capex plan, and Aschenbrenner's fund cratered 67%.

Anthropic Says Claude Hacked Into 3 Organizations During Cybersecurity Tests (Wired)

Apple Slides Most Since 2025 After Supply Shortages Hurt Outlook (Bloomberg)

Amazon Shares Jump as Cloud Sales—and Spending—Accelerate (WSJ)

Letter: Situational Awareness is down ~67% in July, but remains up ~80% in 2026; sources say it planned to sell $3.5B of its Anthropic stake but backed out (WSJ)

Longreads

How TikTok, Reels, and Amazon storefronts enabled microinfluencers with less than 100K followers to earn middle-class salaries via brand and affiliate deals (Bloomberg)

What happiness researchers say about enjoying your time off: anticipation is a free source of pleasure, company beats going solo, and build in some physical challenge (Washington Post)

Subscribe to the ad-free feed.

Microsoft surged 15% on its fastest cloud growth since 2022, while Meta slid 10% defending its AI spending. Aschenbrenner's hedge fund unwound positions after the AI rout, the EU targeted ChatGPT under the DSA, and airlines let AI set fares.

Microsoft's Shares Surge on Fastest Cloud Growth Since 2022 (Bloomberg)

Meta Falls After Defending AI Bets to Skeptical Investors (Bloomberg)

AI investor Leopold Aschenbrenner forced to unwind all public stock positions after steep losses, sources say (CNBC)

Source: the European Commission plans to designate OpenAI's ChatGPT and Roblox as "very large online platforms" under the DSA as soon as August (Bloomberg)

Airlines are using AI to adjust seat prices more quickly, capturing more revenue while narrowing the pricing gaps that once let travelers find bargain fares (Bloomberg)

Subscribe to the ad-free feed.