Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter:âą The Big Read: Inside ZaiNar, the secretive startup hoping to power the physical AI era ⹠Policy: Meet the Trump official who wants to deliver a win to prediction markets ⹠Plus, Recommendationsâour weekly pop culture picks: âExpanse: The Nannup Four,â âThe Infinity Machineâ and âBeefâWatching the Elon Musk versus OpenAI trial from inside the courtroom gave me a front-row seat to the AI boomâs... Read more âș
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Over the summer, two software engineers at Mixus, a San Franciscoâbased artificial intelligence startup, staged a bit of a rebellion by refusing to follow instructions to rely heavily on Cursor or any of the other popular new coding-assistance software. They figured âthey could do better than Cursor,â said an incredulous Shai Magzimof, Mixusâ co-founder. With just five full-time employees, the duoâs revolt was a substantial headache for Magzimof. One of... Read more âș
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About halfway through a panel discussion at The Informationâs first-ever sports business event this week, Bill Schlough, chief information officer of the San Francisco Giants, asked our capacity crowd for a show of hands. How many people, he asked, were in favor of artificial intelligenceâassisted umpiring in baseball? Almost every hand in the room shot up. Read more âș
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Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who was once seen as a leading voice for liberal politics in the Bay Area, voiced strong support for President Donald Trump in a new interview with the New York Times and advocated for Trump to send National Guard troops to San Francisco. âWe donât have enough cops, ... Read more âș
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Apple is in talks to acquire computer vision startup Prompt AI, CNBC reported. The 11-person company offers an app called Seemour that adds artificial intelligence capabilities to home security cameras. Apple has acquired several AI-based security camera companies over the years, including Silk ... Read more âș
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Iâm not sure what everyone elseâs social media feeds are looking like these days, but over the past 72 hours mine has become unrecognizable to me. On TikTok, Iâve been inundated with short clips of slap-boxing competitions between Fred Rogers and Kurt Cobain, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, and Elvis Presley and Bob Marley. Iâve watched indie rocker Elliott Smith dunking a basketball in a Portland Trail Blazers uniform while... Read more âș
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Tech stocks fell across the board, as investors responded to President Trumpâs threat to impose a âmassive increaseâ in tariffs on Chinese imports, in the wake of new Chinese restrictions on the export of rare earths. Trump also said there was âno reasonâ for him to meet with Chinese president ... Read more âș
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Kalshi, a U.S.-regulated prediction market, said it raised more than $300 million at a $5 billion valuation led by Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz. The company will face new competition with the return of rival Polymarket to the U.S. market. Kalshi and Polymarket are the two biggest prediction ... Read more âș
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Lately, venture capitalist Ben Lerer has found himself experiencing a bit of dĂ©jĂ vu: Once again, thereâs a whole nest of thriving e-commerce startups worth his attention. When I reached him a couple weeks ago, his firm, Lerer Hippeau, was just putting money into two of them: Elm Biosciences, a new skin care startup, and Stillerâs Soda, a healthy beverage brand from actor Ben Stiller. Lerer was displaying none of... Read more âș
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When ecommerce consultant David Khandrius had to help a client who sold baby strollers write a product listing for Amazonâs website in the past, he typically tried to jam as many words into the listing as possible to ensure Amazonâs search algorithm would capture it. That might result in a convoluted title for a listing, like âtravel stroller for beach park super compact airplane overhead.â Nowadays, though, he said, the... Read more âș
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China has launched an antitrust investigation into Qualcomm over its acquisition of Israeli startup Autotalks, in another salvo at the U.S. weeks ahead of a planned meeting between President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The State Administration for Market Regulation, which oversees ... Read more âș
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Reflection AI, a New York-based startup building open-source models to rival labs like Chinaâs Deepseek, said it has raised $2 billion in venture capital at an $8 billion valuation including the investment. The Information first reported the deal talks. Nvidia invested about $800 million into ... Read more âș
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Itâs been nearly a year since we scooped the news that OpenAI, Google, Snowflake and Cohere were all working on artificial intelligence search products similar to the one startup Glean made a big splash with. Gleanâs AI-powered search lets workers at companies easily find emails, Slack messages and other data scattered across business applications. As we said at the time, it seemed like everyone was trying to be like Glean.... Read more âș
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Coinbase and Mastercard have each held advanced talks to buy BVNK, a London-based stablecoin infrastructure firm, in a deal that could value the startup at between $1.5 billion and $2.5 billion, Fortune reported, citing people familiar with the deal. The talks are not finalized and may not ... Read more âș
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Google and Amazon, as part of their competition for corporate AI spending, both announced new suites of products that make it easier for employees to find corporate data and automate multi-step work tasks. Both companies are essentially giving their existing AI search and agent-building products ... Read more âș
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OpenAI told Europeâs top antitrust regulator that big tech firms including Microsoft, Google, and Apple could be difficult for the startup to compete against, Bloomberg reported Thursday. During a Sept. 24 meeting with EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribaldi, OpenAI said it faced âdifficultiesâ ... Read more âș
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The court overseeing Elon Muskâs breach of charitable trust lawsuit against OpenAI has ordered the companyâs former CTO Mira Murati to be deposed, seeking information such as âthe extent to which [OpenAI CEO] Altman was sidelining safety procedures in the pursuit of commercial interests,â ... Read more âș
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Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz says only a small subset of AI companies, such as portfolio companies Safe Superintelligence Inc. and Thinking Machines Labs, need massive compute contracts. But many AI startups still need help getting access to bottlenecked resources, like chips to train their models.The venture firm said Thursday it had hired Raghu Raghuram, former VMware CEO, to help address those computing challenges. Horowitz believes Raghuram is one of... Read more âș
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Jessica Hertz will become Shopifyâs chief operating officer, she said in a LinkedIn post on Thursday. Hertz joined Shopify as the e-commerce software makerâs general counsel in late 2021. Prior to joining Shopify, she worked in the Biden administration and at Meta. Shopifyâs previous COO Kaz ... Read more âș
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SoftBank-owned PayPay, a major mobile payment app in Japan, said it has acquired a 40% equity stake in Binance Japan, a subsidiary of the worldâs largest crypto exchange Binance. The deal could help Binance Japan gain ground in the country, where global crypto platforms have faced intense ... Read more âș
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OpenAI can hardly announce a new product before a chorus of tech pundits declare it will kill a bunch of other applications. In the most recent example, investors in several public software companies went into a panic last week after OpenAI showed a demo of an internal artificial intelligence tool it developed to analyze contracts. The internal tool, DocuGPT, isnât a standalone product that OpenAI plans to sell but rather... Read more âș
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10.05.2026 03:15
Last update: 03:12 EDT.
News rating updated: 10:13.
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