This Week in Tech (Week Ending Jul 10, 2026)
Hey folks!
Happy Friday! 😎 Tech news below!
🌎 Macro (Economic) and Trends
📉 Global economy: The I.M.F. projected world output growth would fall to 3 percent for the year, a number pushed down by high commodity prices.
🌡️ Northeast heat and flooding: Brutal heat gave way to flooding across New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia.
🌐 Europe is reportedly stripping U.S. tech from government systems and backing local space, AI and data-center companies after Trump’s tariffs, Greenland threats and Iran fallout.
📺 Netflix data suggests viewers are increasingly abandoning popular shows before the second season. Their new competition? video apps like Tiktok and Youtube
💸 AI capex is still in flamethrower mode: WSJ says Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta are expected to spend $168B in the June quarter, up 74% year over year. Meta may even rent out excess compute if it overbuilt.
🔬 Micro (Tech Companies)
🧊 Samsung said Q2 operating profit could hit about $59B, up 1,800% from last year, thanks to AI data-center demand for memory chips.
🚀 Blue Origin: Bezos’ space company is seeking $10B at a $130B valuation, its first outside capital after 25 years of Bezos-only funding.
📡 Nokia, now an AI data-center infrastructure supplier more than a phone nostalgia object, is up roughly 90% this year after buying Infinera and taking a $1B Nvidia investment.
Layoffs: 🎮 Microsoft is cutting nearly 5,000 jobs across Xbox and commercial sales;
🤖AI News
🧑💻 Claude and Salesforce: Small firms are using Anthropic’s Claude to replace parts of Salesforce.
🦾 OpenAI: The Trump administration lifted restrictions on GPT-5.6 after extra testing, moving from a staggered government-approved release to broader availability.
👩💼 OpenAI is losing Fidji Simo from her full-time No. 2 role after medical leave, creating another leadership gap as the company pushes toward enterprise products, coding tools, and a possible IPO.
🧠 OpenAI launched GPT-5.6 in three sizes: Sol, Terra, and Luna. The headline under the headline: Sol is 54% more token-efficient on coding and is being pitched as OpenAI’s strongest cybersecurity model yet.
🧡 HubSpot reversed a plan to use customer CRM data for an AI feature after four days of customer backlash.
📈 Mercor, an AI talent/data platform, reportedly hit more than $2B in gross annualized revenue as AI companies keep buying human expertise to train the machines.
🧠 MiniMax, a Chinese AI developer, is planning an open-source 2.7T-parameter model, much larger than its current 428B flagship.
🎨 Meta launched Muse Image across Meta AI, Instagram Stories and WhatsApp; users are already objecting because public Instagram photos can be pulled into AI-generated images unless settings are changed. Also PSA - change your instagram settings to private!
📱 Claude Cowork is expanding to mobile and web for Max subscribers, letting tasks run while your laptop is closed and pinging you when human judgment is needed.
🤝 Select M&A, Fundraises, IPO, Partnerships
M&A
🛠️ Figma acquired the team behind Bud, formerly Orchids, a YC-backed vibe-coding and AI-agent platform. Bud and Orchids shut down July 18; Figma wants the canvas to become the place where apps are built, not just mocked.
🍱 Wonder, Marc Lore’s food-delivery/meal-logistics company, is raising at a $9B valuation with IPO sweeteners after buying Grubhub and Blue Apron and taking on $500M of Grubhub debt.
Fundraising
💰 Even Realities, a smart-glasses maker, hit a $1B valuation with $150M led by Meituan and Tencent.
🧑⚖️ Norm, an AI legal startup, raised $120M led by Khosla at a $1.2B valuation.
💗 Lovable, a Swedish vibe-coding startup, is reportedly raising $300M at $13.2B after hitting a $500M annualized revenue run rate.
🧰 Prime Intellect, an AI agent infrastructure startup, raised $130M at $1B and says customers like Ramp use it to build cheaper, faster task-specific agents.
🧾 Mercor, an AI training-data startup, is reportedly in talks at a $20B valuation after saying ARR doubled to more than $2B in four months. The data-labeling lane is suddenly paved in gold.
A $100m seed?? 🎙️ Gradium, a Paris AI-voice startup, raised a $100M seed with Nvidia backing and is opening a Bay Area office. The pitch: ultra-low-latency voice models for things like cars and assistants.
Partnerships
🍎 Apple and Broadcom extended their custom-chip collaboration through 2031.
🏭 TeraWulf, a bitcoin-miner-turned-data-center operator, jumped on a reported $19B Anthropic data-center deal
🧩 Nvidia is partnering with AI chip rival d-Matrix to combine hardware for running AI models, after a similar SambaNova collaboration.
🚀 SpaceXAI and Cursor reportedly plan to launch their first jointly developed model this week, after delaying to improve efficiency. The memo says it aims to compete with Anthropic and OpenAI on speed;
⚱️ Gold Panning - For those who reached the bottom
When you cannot fund the biggest pipeline, you have to build a better radar.
Literally hadn’t heard of this tiny country until the World Cup: Cabo Verde’s World Cup strategy
⚽ U.S. World Cup dreams face-planted with a 4-1 loss to Belgium after Trump helped get Folarin Balogun cleared to play. Home turf, soft bracket, political assist, still no deep run.
🐐 Cristiano Ronaldo ended his World Cup career after Portugal lost to Spain.
🚫 Ex-Elon ETFs are now a filing category: two proposed funds would track major indexes while excluding Musk-led companies like Tesla and SpaceX. Passive investing, with a very specific grudge.
Emmy nominations are out: The Pitt led all programs with a whopping 25 nominations, and “Hacks,” which earned 24 nominations for its fifth season, the most ever for a comedy. Plus: 🏆 Bad Bunny - His Super Bowl halftime show earned a record nine Emmy nominations after drawing 128.2M viewers. I didn’t even know halftime shows could win Emmys.
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