This Week in Tech (Week Ending Jul 3, 2026)
Hey folks!
Happy Friday and almost 250th July 4th-versary! 🇺🇸🦅 😎 Tech news below!
🌎 Macro (Economic) and Trends
🥵 Heat dome has 142 million Americans under extreme heat warnings, with parts of the Midwest, South, and East Coast staring at 100-115 degree heat indices.
🏠 Remote work is still very much alive: 35% of U.S. workers did some or all work from home last year, well above 2019 levels.
📱 Youth social media bans are getting broad public support: Pew found 56% of U.S. adults support banning kids under 16 from social platforms.
📉 Mag 7 is looking more like “Lag 7”: Axios says the big tech cohort is down on average this year while the broader S&P 500 is up, as investors rotate toward AI suppliers instead of the AI spenders.
🔬 Micro (Tech Companies)
⚖️ Google was ordered by a Swedish court to pay Klarna nearly $2B in an antitrust case over favoring its own price-comparison service.
⚖️ Google lost its fight against a record €4.1B Android antitrust fine in Europe, ending an eight-year dispute over whether it unfairly favored its own services.
☁️ Meta is looking to turn excess AI compute into a cloud business.
🎮 Meta quietly launched Pocket, a vibe-coded gaming app.
💬 Threads is expanding Live Chats with new features, pushing Meta’s X rival toward more real-time conversation.
🛠️ Amazon launched a $1B forward-deployed engineering org, copying the OpenAI/Anthropic playbook of embedding technical teams directly with customers.
📱 SpaceX showed investors a sleek, phone-like AI device prototype tied to xAI.
🧱 Tesla is building a $55B Terafab semiconductor manufacturing effort with SpaceX overlap. 💸 Tesla is also capping employee AI spending at $200 a week after some engineers reportedly burned through thousands in tokens.
🪶 Anthropic launched Claude Sonnet 5 as a cheaper agent-running model.
🧩 X now offers an MCP server so AI tools can use the platform more easily.
👀 WhatsApp username reservations are already raising impersonation concerns.
Autonomous cars
🚗 Tesla started testing Cybercabs without pedals or steering wheels in Austin.
🚕 Waymo and Uber quietly split in Phoenix, ending a nearly three-year partnership in the city.
🧳 Hopper, the travel app, will pay $35M in an FTC settlement over hidden fees.
Layoffs: ✂️ Microsoft is planning thousands of layoffs across sales, engineering, and Xbox after its fiscal year close.
🤖AI News
🕵️ Meta is limiting internal use of Claude and Codex over concerns about employees relying too much on outside tools to build in-house replacements.
💸 Anthropic may charge Amazon more under a renegotiated deal, a sign that top AI labs now have leverage even over their cloud providers.
🚧 Anthropic model restrictions were partly rolled back for trusted partners after rattling the industry.
🧰 Microsoft committed $2.5B to an AI deployment effort while also overhauling its AI apps internally
🔬 Claude Science is Anthropic’s bet that scientists want better workflow support, not just another model drop with confetti.
📰 Cloudflare is pushing AI companies to pay publishers for content access.
🧠 Etched, an AI-chip startup trying to challenge Nvidia, hit a $5B valuation and $1B in sales for its specialized chip.
📱 OpenClaw is finally available on Android and iOS,
☁️ SoftBank plans to rent AI computing capacity to U.S. companies, entering the neo-cloud scramble.
🏆 Arena, the AI model leaderboard business, is now reportedly a $100M company.
🤝 Select M&A, Fundraises, IPO, Partnerships
M&A
🚀 Rocket Lab is buying satellite operator Iridium in an $8B deal, giving it a satellite network and a bigger swing at SpaceX.
Fundraising
💰 Chamath Palihapitiya’s AI coding startup, 8090 Labs, raised a $135M Series A, and Chamath is taking the CEO seat.
💰 Together AI, a neocloud/AI infrastructure startup, raised $800M at an $8.3B valuation.
IPO
🛴 Lime began life as a public company after years of scooter-market whiplash.
🥄 Bending Spoons opened up 11% after pricing its IPO, valuing the app roll-up company at about $19.4B.
Partnerships
⚱️ Gold Panning - For those who reached the bottom
⚽ U.S. men’s soccer beat Bosnia-Herzegovina 2-0 for its first World Cup knockout win in 24 years, despite playing a man down.
💍 Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are reportedly getting married this weekend and have Madison Square Garden wedding logistics so intense they now include city permits, street closures, and a 1,000-person guest count.
🧗 Empire State Building had two climbers arrested after they scaled the landmark, unfurled a peace banner, and reportedly staged an apparent marriage proposal.
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