Reading List

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

Source: the Trump administration has talked with SpaceX about donating shares to Trump Accounts, which provide children with tax-advantaged savings accounts (Semafor)

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Nebex, a fintech startup aiming to act as a broker platform connecting US space tech suppliers, foreign governments, and investors, raised a $30M seed led by GV (Bloomberg)

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Australia's ACCC sues Amazon for allegedly introducing ads to Prime Video under unfair contract terms and forcing existing subscribers to pay more to avoid them (Peter Vercoe/Bloomberg)

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OpenAI teases a device it is launching in partnership with keyboard maker Work Louder on July 15, saying "Your favorite Codex shortcuts are getting an upgrade" (Emma Roth/The Verge)

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Sources: AI video startup Higgsfield is in talks to raise $300M to $500M at a $5B pre-money valuation, more than 4x its valuation in a January 2026 round (The Information)

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The UK FCA unveils the updated version of its crypto regulatory framework, after softening proposed rules that critics said risked holding the UK back (Financial Times)

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AI coding startup 8090 raised a $135M Series A led by Salesforce Ventures; founder Chamath Palihapitiya announces that he will lead the company as CEO (Julie Bort/TechCrunch)

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Marc Andreessen is appointed to the DOD's Defense Policy Board, a committee tasked with giving strategic advice to the defense secretary and other top officials (Nick Wadhams/Bloomberg)

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AI leaderboard provider Arena says it hit $100M in annualized run-rate revenue eight months after launching AI Evaluations, which offers performance analytics (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)

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Google says the Gemini app now offers personalized Nano Banana image generation, previously limited to Plus, Pro, and Ultra users, to eligible US users for free (Lauren Forristal/TechCrunch)

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Sources: hundreds of Meta contractors posed as minors to probe how competitor chatbots responded to prompts involving suicide, sex, and other high-risk subjects (Wired)

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Tidal adopts an AI policy that blocks wholly AI-generated music from earning royalties and removes AI-generated music that impersonates artists (Murray Stassen/Music Business Worldwide)

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Digital Realty says it plans to acquire a majority stake in three fully leased Northern Virginia data centers from Blackstone-managed funds in a $7.8B deal (Jaspreet Singh/Reuters)

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Source: Taiwanese authorities raided Super Micro's Taiwan office as part of a probe into the alleged smuggling of Nvidia chips to China; SMCI closed down 8.1% (Debby Wu/Bloomberg)

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As a new law bars DOD from working with companies whose lobbyists also represent blacklisted entities, DC lobbying firms drop companies like Alibaba and Tencent (Bloomberg)

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Waymo and Uber quietly ended their partnership in Phoenix in May; Uber says it is readying the launch of a separate autonomous vehicle partnership in the city (Sean O'Kane/TechCrunch)

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Sources: component and supplier lists, and photos of iPhone 18 Pro models, are among files a ransomware group stole from Apple's Indian supplier Tata (Reuters)

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Baz releases Baz Planner, which uses four specialized AI agents to analyze code at the planning stage, and extends its seed funding by $9M to $17M (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE)

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California strikes a deal with Anthropic to expand the use of Claude products across state agencies and local governments at a 50% discount (Christine Mui/Politico)

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In Q2, there were thirteen $1B+ US venture-backed startup exits, either through acquisition or IPO, the most exits since the 2021 market peak (Joanna Glasner/Crunchbase News)

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