Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 4.5, claims it is the world's best coding model, strongest for building complex agents, and its “most aligned” frontier model — Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the best coding model in the world. It's the strongest model for building complex agents.
Since 2019, Brazil's courts have developed or implemented over 140 AI projects that have helped make the country's overburdened judicial system more efficient — Brazil's overburdened courts and lawyers are adopting artificial intelligence. But experts wonder whether it serves justice.
Friend, which launched a $129 AI-powered, always-listening necklace, plasters NYC subway with ads in $1M+ campaign that includes over 1,000 platform posters — The OOH ads blanketing all five boroughs deliberately court controversy — The founder of Friend is betting on making enemies.
Sources: EA is nearing a deal to go private in a leveraged buyout valuing EA at ~$50B; investors include Silver Lake and Saudi Arabia's PIF; EA jumps 13%+ — Investors including Silver Lake eyeing deal that would likely be the largest leveraged buyout ever
UK-based Kido nursery chain was hacked by a ransomware gang called Radiant, which posted profiles of 10 children online and threatens to release more data — Criminals calling themselves Radiant say they will post additional private data online unless they are paid
Source: cryptocurrency exchange Kraken quietly closed a $500M funding round at a $15B valuation, including from co-CEO Arjun Sethi's Tribe Capital — “My neighbors think I'm under house arrest,” observes Arjun Sethi. It's not hard to see why. On the driveway of Sethi's comfortable Menlo Park home …
OpenAI launches ChatGPT Pulse, a mobile feature for Pro users that delivers daily personalized updates based on their chats, feedback, and connected apps — ChatGPT's new Pulse feature does personalized research on your behalf overnight and serves you up a digest each morning.
Modular, which lets developers build AI apps that run across multiple GPU and CPU vendors, raised $250M led by US Innovative Technology at a $1.6B valuation — Demand for AI chips is booming—and so is the need for software to run them. Chris Lattner's startup Modular just raised $250 million …
Filing: Indian ride-hailing app Rapido doubled its valuation to $2.3B after Swiggy offloaded its 12% Rapido stake for ~$270M in a secondary share sale — Rapido, a popular ride-hailing platform in India that competes with Uber, has doubled its valuation to $2.3 billion following a secondary share sale by food delivery giant Swiggy.
Empower Semiconductor, which makes power management chips that cut server power consumption by ~50%, raised a $140M Series D, bringing its total raised $200M+ — Chip startup Empower Semiconductor Inc. today announced that it has closed a funding round worth more than $140 million.
Perplexity debuts Email Assistant for Gmail and Outlook, which can manage inboxes, schedule meetings, and more, for subscribers of its $200/month Max plan — Perplexity's $200 subscription is gaining a new feature that lets it manage your inbox by drafting replies to threads, scheduling meetings …
On the H-1B fee, Jensen Huang says he's “glad” to see “Trump making the moves he's making”; Sam Altman says “outlining financial incentives seems good to me” — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Monday commented on President Donald Trump's decision …
Omnea, which makes AI tools for automating procurement, raised a $50M Series B led by Insight Partners and Khosla Ventures, taking its total funding to $75M — - Omnea focuses on building AI for procurement, which is top of mind amid economic uncertainty. — Three-year-old Omnea has raised $50 million, for a total of $75 million.
The UK FCA has improved its crypto registration process, reducing approval times and increasing acceptance rate after criticism it was too slow and restrictive — Regulators in Britain are facing calls to be more accommodating to the fast-growing sector — The UK financial watchdog …
The FTC's 2023 lawsuit against Amazon goes to trial this week, alleging it used misleading tactics to entice people into Prime and made cancellation difficult — Trial begins this week on FTC allegations that e-commerce giant uses misleading tactics to entice and keep customers
VCs and founders warn that the $100K fee will make H-1B sponsorship prohibitively expensive for startups, not Big Tech, and drive talent outside the US — Longtime entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are sounding the alarm over President Trump's new H-1B fee that would impact tech companies and the workers they hire from abroad.
A profile of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, a critic of Trump and David Sacks' AI agenda, arguing its hands-off approach could steer AI down a dangerous path — A battle between Anthropic's Dario Amodei and the White House pits worries about safe development against a free-market approach
Karoline Leavitt confirms Oracle will handle TikTok's data and security, and says the US is “100% confident” a deal is done and it “just needs to be signed” — - Congress passed a ban last year with bipartisan support, but President Trump has repeatedly ordered …
A White House official says the $100K H-1B fee will not apply to renewals or existing holders of valid visas re-entering the US, only new applicants — A new $100,000 fee for H-1B visas goes into effect Sunday, but it will not be applied to existing holders of valid visas re-entering the country, a White House official tells Axios.
Sources: xAI has raised $10B at a post-money valuation of $200B, weeks after reportedly raising $10B in debt and equity at a ~$150B valuation — Elon Musk's xAI is raising $10 billion from investors in a round that values the artificial intelligence startup at $200 billion, sources told CNBC's David Faber.
Neuralink plans a US clinical trial in October to test a brain implant that translates thoughts into text, hoping to put its device in a healthy person by 2030 — Neuralink Corp., Elon Musk's brain implant company, plans to launch a clinical trial in the US in October aiming to use its device …
Ray-Ban Display glasses are Zuckerberg's latest bid to reframe Meta, focusing on “personal superintelligence”, but they face technical and societal challenges — They're trying to back AI and Smart Glasses into the ‘Metaverse’... Live tech demos are a bitch.
Court filings: Tesla has settled two lawsuits over deaths in two separate California crashes in 2019 involving Autopilot; the terms were not disclosed — - Settlements follow separate $243 million verdict against Tesla in August — Trials for both cases were scheduled to start next month
Gemini 2.5 Deep Think achieves a gold medal performance at the 2025 ICPC World Finals programming competition; only four out of 139 human teams won gold medals — Like the rest of its Big Tech cadre, Google has spent lavishly on developing generative AI models.
Trump extends the deadline for ByteDance to divest TikTok's US operations until December 16, the fourth such extension; a deal is expected to be finalized soon — President Donald Trump again extended the deadline for TikTok's Chinese parent ByteDance Ltd. to divest the platform's US operations …
