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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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Demis Hassabis proposed a US-based frontier AI standards body modeled on FINRA. IBM's stock cratered 20% on a Q2 miss from chip-spending shifts, Spotify launched a voice-control feature, Kalshi debuted an AI compute forward curve, and Anthropic studied Claude's values.

Demis Hassabis proposes a US-based Standards Body for "Frontier-class" AI, modeled after FINRA; labs would share models for review up to 30 days before release (X)

Demis Hassabis proposes a US-based Standards Body for "Frontier-class" AI, modeled after FINRA; labs would share models for review up to 30 days before release (The Verge)

IBM reports preliminary Q2 revenue up 1% YoY to $17.2B, below $17.9B est., as CEO Arvind Krishna says customers are shifting spending to chips; IBM falls 20%+ (Bloomberg)

Spotify launches a Talk to Spotify feature that lets users create playlists and more, rolling out in beta to Premium users 18+ in the US, Ireland, and Sweden (Engadget)

Kalshi launches a forward curve tool for AI compute, using event contracts to track the future rental costs of GPUs, storage, and memory (Bloomberg)

Simulating everything, sort of: The promise and limits of world models (Ars Technica)

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Apple sued OpenAI, alleging ex-employees stole trade secrets for its hardware push. Twelve states sued to block the Paramount-WBD merger, Anthropic extended free Fable 5 access as rivals raced on price, and Meta killed its Instagram AI opt-out feature.

Apple sues OpenAI, alleging that ex-Apple employees stole "Apple's trade secrets for the benefit of OpenAI", and says OpenAI never responded to its concerns (9to5Mac)

A coalition of 12 states led by California files an antitrust lawsuit to block Paramount's WBD merger, alleging it lessens competition in three markets (Variety)

Anthropic says it is extending Claude Fable 5 access on all paid plans, as well as keeping Claude Code's weekly rate limits 50% higher, through July 19 (Economic Times)

OpenAI, Meta, and SpaceXAI are racing to offer more cost-efficient AI models as enterprise customers, stung by "tokenmaxxing" bills, scrutinize their AI spending (Bloomberg)

Meta says it will discontinue a feature that allowed users to generate images in Meta AI using public Instagram accounts, following days of criticism (Variety)

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OpenAI broadly released GPT-5.6 and launched ChatGPT Work, targeting Anthropic. Fidji Simo stepped down from OpenAI citing health, the EU found Meta's "addictive design" violates the DSA, Polymarket sought margin trading approval, and SK Hynix debuted on Nasdaq raising $26.5B.

OpenAI broadly releases GPT-5.6, and launches ChatGPT Work, an AI agent that can gather context across apps and files to create documents, on macOS and Windows (Axios)

OpenAI broadly releases GPT-5.6, and launches ChatGPT Work, an AI agent that can gather context across apps and files to create documents, on macOS and Windows (TechCrunch)

Fidji Simo, OpenAI's CEO of AGI Deployment, says she will step down and become a part-time adviser after her medical condition worsened; Simo joined in August (WSJ)

In preliminary findings, the EU Commission said Facebook's and Instagram's "addictive design" violates the DSA, telling Meta to make changes or risk hefty fines (NYT)

Filing: Polymarket is seeking CFTC approval to offer margin trading in the US, a move that would let users bet on events with less capital upfront (Bloomberg)

SK Hynix raises $26.5B in the largest ever US market debut by a foreign company, selling 177.9M ADRs for $149 each; the sale was more than 7x oversubscribed (Bloomberg)

SK Hynix raises $26.5B in the largest ever US market debut by a foreign company, selling 177.9M ADRs for $149 each; the sale was more than 7x oversubscribed (CNBC)

Xreal launches $299 A01 Plus AR glasses, weighing just 62 grams and featuring 1080p micro OLED panels with a 120Hz refresh rate and a 50-degree field of view (The Verge)

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SpaceXAI debuted Grok 4.5 with Cursor, targeting Opus-level performance at lower cost. Meta launched Muse Spark 1.1 via API, OpenAI rolled out full-duplex GPT-Live voice models, PrismML ran the largest AI model on an iPhone, and Character.AI launched AI microdramas.

SpaceXAI debuts Grok 4.5, its first model built in partnership with Cursor, designed to "handle difficult, long-running tasks" across finance, legal, and coding (Bloomberg)

Meta releases Muse Spark 1.1, capable of more advanced coding and a "step-change" from the first generation, available to US developers via a public API preview (The Verge)

OpenAI launches GPT-Live, new voice models powering ChatGPT Voice and built on a full-duplex architecture, meaning they can listen and speak at the same time (OpenAI)

OpenAI launches GPT-Live, new voice models powering ChatGPT Voice and built on a full-duplex architecture, meaning they can listen and speak at the same time (VentureBeat)

PrismML says it ran a 27B-parameter Qwen 3.6 model on an iPhone 17 Pro, bigger than any prior on-device model; sources: Apple held talks with PrismML about it (The Information)

Character.AI launches three human-written, AI-generated microdramas, whose characters users can chat with, and aims to eventually let users make their own shows (TechCrunch)

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