A small Israeli startup was connected to recent incidents where AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta went rogue during routine security testing, with all three companies revealing the breaches over the past two weeks.
Switch Inc., a data center operator majority-owned by DigitalBridge Group Inc., has confidentially filed for a U.S. initial public offering, with potential valuations ranging from $50 billion to $80 billion. The listing could occur as soon as November 2026, capitalizing on investor demand for AI infrastructure exposure.
Inaara NeoFoods has secured ₹21 crore ($2.2 million) in funding to develop its AI-powered 'farm to formulation' platform that produces plant-based proteins, fibers, fats, and functional starches using India's crop ecosystem.
OpenAI is reportedly preparing to enter the consumer hardware market with its first standalone device, an AI-powered smart speaker with an unusual doughnut shape and moving parts, expected to retail between $300-$400 when it launches in 2027.
Alex Bouzari, who has run a data storage company serving research labs including NASA for nearly three decades, has seen his business transformed into a major player by the AI boom, with sales projected to reach ten figures and his personal wealth reaching billionaire status.
Three former Spotify engineers—Sidd Motwani, Ian Anderson, and Shivaditya Sinha—have raised $10 million in funding for Malachyte, a startup that adapts the behavioral intelligence infrastructure behind Spotify's recommendation engine (Vector AI) for real-time personalization in online retail.
SoftBank Group reported an 18% drop in fiscal first quarter profit as higher costs offset investment gains, though the company received a significant boost from Intel's tripled share price during the quarter. The results highlight mixed performance in the technology investor's AI-focused portfolio.
Alphabet announced a significant restructuring of its AI leadership, with Demis Hassabis stepping down as Google DeepMind CEO to become chief scientist and chairman, while longtime chief scientist Jeff Dean is leaving after 27 years to found a new AI startup. The shake-up sent Alphabet shares down more than 5%.
Hark, which raised $700 million in Series A funding in May, has unveiled Handoff, an AI agent that can navigate and complete tasks on websites like Target, Walmart, OpenTable and LinkedIn without requiring APIs. The company claims its agent outperforms previous-generation frontier models including GPT 5.4, GPT 5.5, Opus 4.8, and Gemini 2.5 Pro.
Meta has debuted its first AI coding agent, MetaCode, deploying it to thousands of internal engineers to compete with Anthropic and OpenAI, while Google pursues a $1.5 billion-plus acquisition of AI coding startup Mechanize.
Zenity, an Israel-based cybersecurity platform specializing in AI agent security and governance, has raised $125 million in Series C funding led by Norwest, with participation from SoftBank, Hitachi, and LG. The round brings the company's total funding to $185 million as enterprises race to secure the growing deployment of autonomous AI agents.
OLIX, a two-year-old London-based AI chip startup founded by 25-year-old school dropout James Dacombe, has raised $312 million in Series B funding at a $3.3 billion valuation, tripling its previous valuation. The round was led by Fundomo with participation from Arm, Hudson River Trading, and Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings.
San Francisco-based cybersecurity startup Horizon3 announced a $250 million Series E funding round that values the company at over $2 billion, more than tripling its $650 million valuation from June 2025. The company specializes in autonomous penetration testing and AI-driven security solutions.
US-Israeli payroll unicorn Deel has acquired Tel Aviv-based AI cybersecurity startup Clarity in a deal worth $45-50 million, marking its 15th acquisition and first in Israel. The acquisition brings deepfake detection and identity verification technology to Deel's HR platform as the company surpasses $1.5 billion in annual recurring revenue.
Assam has commissioned its first government-owned GPU cluster for AI-powered public services, while Andhra Pradesh launched two AI Centres of Excellence in Amaravati and Visakhapatnam to support deeptech startups with infrastructure and mentorship.
Data-center developer Nexus Data Centers is in advanced talks to raise $15 billion in bank financing for a Texas campus associated with AI company Anthropic, with Google providing financial guarantees and chip supply, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Beijing-based AI startup Moonshot AI has secured $3.5 billion in funding at a $35 billion valuation, far exceeding its initial $1-2 billion target. The round follows the company's release of its K3 model, which approached the performance of frontier models from OpenAI and Anthropic.
NVIDIA has formed a long-term strategic partnership with Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI), the AI safety startup founded by former OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever. The deal includes an investment in SSI and provides the company access to NVIDIA's Vera Rubin computing systems, expanding SSI's compute capacity by an order of magnitude.
World, the biometric identity verification startup co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, raised $52.5 million through a token sale led by Pantera Capital while celebrating its third anniversary and launching Phase 3 of its expansion plan. The company's proof-of-human verification is now being integrated into applications including Tinder, Zoom, and concert ticketing platforms.
Anthropic launched Claude Opus 5 on July 24, 2026, a new AI model that delivers performance close to its flagship Claude Fable 5 at half the price, targeting enterprise customers concerned about AI costs. The model shows particular strength in coding and knowledge work tasks.
British AI startup Synthesia has launched Roleplay Sessions, an interactive training platform that allows employees to practice workplace conversations with AI avatars that provide real-time feedback, scoring, and analytics. The product marks the company's expansion beyond its core AI video creation business into live coaching.
Moonshot AI unveiled its Kimi K3 model, described as the world's largest open-weights AI system, which the company claims matches or exceeds OpenAI and Anthropic's leading models on some benchmarks. The release triggered market volatility in AI and semiconductor stocks as investors drew comparisons to last year's 'DeepSeek moment.'
Released July 15, 2026 by Thinking Machines Lab, Inkling is a 975-billion parameter open-weights Mixture-of-Experts model with 41 billion active parameters, a 1-million-token context window, and native multimodal input support across text, image, audio, and video.
AI startup Thinking Machines Lab, led by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, has released Inkling, a 975-billion parameter mixture-of-experts model with open weights designed for enterprise customization and on-premises deployment. The company explicitly positions the model as focused on customizability rather than benchmark dominance.
Apple filed a 41-page lawsuit against OpenAI alleging corporate espionage after discovering a bug that allowed a former Apple engineer who joined OpenAI to maintain access to confidential information. OpenAI pushed back against the allegations on Tuesday.
Chinese AI models from companies like DeepSeek and Z.ai are gaining traction among U.S. companies, now representing over 30% of traffic on OpenRouter, as they cost significantly less than OpenAI and Anthropic while narrowing the performance gap.
Etched, a startup developing specialized AI inference chips for Transformer models, announced it has secured $1 billion in contract orders and raised $800 million in funding, reaching a $5 billion valuation after TSMC successfully manufactured its Sohu chip.
Etched, a company designing chips specifically for running AI models, has raised $800 million from investors including Jane Street and TSMC-linked VentureTech Alliance, while announcing it has secured over $1 billion in signed customer contracts.
Google DeepMind is investing approximately $75 million in independent film studio A24 as part of a research partnership to develop AI-powered tools for editing and visual effects. The collaboration will allow A24 filmmakers to help shape the technology, though Google will not have access to the studio's film library.
Sakana AI unveiled Fugu and Fugu Ultra on June 22, 2026, a multi-agent orchestration system that coordinates multiple AI models to match performance of leading models like Anthropic's Fable 5 and Mythos without training its own frontier model. The approach aims to reduce single-vendor dependency in enterprise AI deployments.
Austria's current chancellor called for Europe to engage in dialogue with Putin, while former chancellor Sebastian Kurz's AI and cyberdefense company Dream raised $260 million in a funding round that valued the firm at $3 billion.
The Department of Justice filed to dismiss an NAACP lawsuit against xAI's use of unpermitted natural gas turbines in Mississippi, arguing the company's operations are crucial to national security and military operations. The DOJ claims xAI's Grok chatbot plays an essential role in defense capabilities.
Suno has raised $400 million led by Bond Capital at a $5.4 billion valuation, doubling its value from seven months ago. The funding comes as the company faces ongoing litigation from major record labels over copyright issues.
Longevity-focused biotech startup NewLimit announced a $435 million Series C funding round as it prepares to launch its first clinical trial of a liver medicine, marking one of the largest recent raises in the longevity space.
Nvidia has invested at least $6.5 billion into companies developing photonics technology over the past three months, racing to solve major bottlenecks in AI infrastructure by using light-based data transmission instead of electrical signals.
Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.8 on May 28, 2026, just 41 days after its predecessor, featuring improved performance on benchmarks and new dynamic workflow capabilities. The launch coincided with the company raising $65 billion in new funding.
Shield AI was selected by the Pentagon for a low-cost drone program as Iran war accelerates demand for affordable drones, following the company's recent $1 billion funding round that valued it at $12.7 billion.
Anthropic held 'Code with Claude,' its first developer-focused event in Europe, on May 19-20, 2026 in London, demonstrating Claude's advanced code-writing abilities and new features. The event coincided with Google I/O and highlighted Claude's growing dominance in AI-assisted coding among startups.
Anthropic has reversed its policy to allow third-party agents like OpenClaw to access Claude subscriptions again, but starting June 15, 2026, programmatic usage will be billed separately through monthly credits ($20-$200 depending on plan tier) at full API rates rather than counting against standard subscription quotas.
Anthropic declared all unauthorized secondary trades of its stock void on May 11, a move that crypto lawyer Gabriel Shapiro warned could trigger significant litigation under Delaware law. The announcement came as the company's implied pre-IPO valuation reached $1.4 trillion in on-chain markets.
Anthropic announced that its new Mythos AI model will have only a limited release due to vast security risks and capacity constraints. The capacity pinch is creating opportunities for competitors like OpenAI as businesses and governments seek alternative solutions.
The landmark trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI entered its second week with OpenAI firing back at Musk's allegations. Shivon Zilis revealed that Musk attempted to poach Sam Altman, raising questions about Musk's motivations for bringing the lawsuit.
Space security startup True Anomaly raised $600 million in the largest defense technology funding round of the week, leading multiple large defense tech deals. The funding reflects continued strong investor interest in AI-enabled defense and aerospace applications.
Google is investing $10 billion in cash and up to $30 billion conditionally in Anthropic at a $350 billion valuation, plus 5GW of compute over five years, as Claude reaches $30 billion in annual recurring revenue and overtakes Gemini in enterprise markets.
Meta has hired five founders from Thinking Machines Lab, continuing a string of high-profile departures from the AI startup that raised $2 billion last year. The hires are part of what Fortune described as Anthropic winning a 'one-sided talent war.'
Anthropic has reportedly flipped from money-loser to revenue powerhouse with annualized revenue now exceeding $30 billion, possibly surpassing OpenAI. Investors are discussing valuations ranging from $380 billion to as high as $1 trillion.
AI coding assistant Cursor is reportedly in discussions to raise over $2 billion at a $50 billion valuation, with returning backers Andreessen Horowitz and Thrive expected to lead the round amid strong enterprise adoption.
AI coding startup Factory secured $150 million in funding led by Khosla Ventures, reaching a $1.5 billion valuation just three years after launch. The company focuses on building AI coding tools for enterprise customers.
Alibaba led a $290 million funding round for ShengShu, a three-year-old Chinese startup developing AI models that aim to connect perception and action, moving beyond traditional large language models. ShengShu founder Zhu Jun stated the company aims to build models that are more general than LLMs.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan sent letter to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei expressing support and interest in UK expansion, as UK government announces £40 million state-backed AI research lab amid company's dispute with US Pentagon.
OpenAI announced multiple C-suite changes including AGI deployment CEO Fidji Simo taking a leave of absence, CMO Kate Rouch stepping away for cancer recovery, and COO Brad Lightcap moving to a new 'special projects' role. President Greg Brockman is stepping in to fill leadership gaps.
AI chip design startup Cognichip raised $60 million in funding to develop technology that uses artificial intelligence to design the chips that power AI systems. The company claims it can reduce chip development costs by over 75% and cut timelines by more than half.
ScaleOps has raised $130 million in a Series C round led by Insight Partners to expand its autonomous cloud and AI infrastructure optimization platform, which automates resource management to reduce costs and improve performance.
French AI startup Mistral AI borrowed $830 million to construct a data center near Paris equipped with nearly 14,000 NVIDIA GPUs, representing a significant infrastructure investment for the European AI company.
Anthropic released Claude 3.7 Sonnet, its first hybrid reasoning model, while simultaneously experiencing its tenth service outage in 12 days and pausing token-based billing for its Agent SDK due to unexpectedly high costs for developers.
Gumloop, founded in mid-2023 by Max Brodeur-Urbas, has secured $50 million in Series B funding led by Benchmark, with participation from Shopify Ventures and Y Combinator. The platform enables non-technical employees to build and deploy AI agents for workplace automation without engineering support.
Anthropic cut off OpenAI's access to its Claude AI models on August 1, 2025, alleging that OpenAI violated terms of service by using Claude's coding tools to benchmark and support development of its upcoming GPT-5 model. The move marks a significant escalation in competition between the two AI companies.
Amazon has invested an additional $4 billion in Anthropic, bringing its total investment in the OpenAI rival to $8 billion. As part of the expanded partnership, Anthropic has designated Amazon Web Services as its primary cloud and training partner, committing to train its flagship AI models primarily on AWS infrastructure including Trainium chips.
Elon Musk has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, alleging the company breached its founding principles by prioritizing profit over its original mission to develop AI for the benefit of humanity. The suit targets OpenAI's relationship with Microsoft and its shift from a nonprofit to a for-profit structure.
