This Week in Tech (Week Ending Jul 18, 2026)
Hey folks!
Happy Friday! 😎 Tech news below!
🌎 Macro (Economic) and Trends
🛢️ Oil surged after renewed U.S.-Iran fighting and Trump’s reimposed blockade on Iranian shipping. Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the UAE are now talking up pipeline routes that avoid the strait. Plumbing, but geopolitical.
🥵 A U.S. heat wave put more than 128 million Americans under heat warnings, watches, or advisories, with NOAA expecting 95°-105° highs across the Plains, Midwest, and Northeast.
🐉 China vs. the U.S. flipped in Pew’s global favorability data: China is now viewed more favorably than the U.S. in most of 36 countries surveyed.
🧾 Wall Street is getting creative about AI financing, from private 144A bonds that can cover up to 95% of some data-center projects to leveraged loans pitched to CLO buyers. The cloud is learning structured finance.
PSA Public Health: Air quality down from Canadian wildfires. Glass in Pillsbury bread rolls. Explosive diarrhea-causing bacteria in salads. Careful out there folks.
📉 America’s trust in institutions is hovering near all-time lows: only 27% of Americans have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in 14 core institutions, per Gallup.
🔬 Micro (Tech Companies)
🕶️ Meta is pushing AI smartglasses hard, including celebrity promotion and a donation of 100,000 pairs to blind veterans.
Apple
🍎 Apple is suing OpenAI - Apple says a former employee exploited a rare authentication bug to access confidential files after leaving for OpenAI.
🍎 Apple received Chinese approval for Apple Intelligence services powered by Alibaba and Baidu.
🧭 Apple Maps ads are coming with a twist: Apple is banning plumbers, locksmiths, roofers, and other home services from advertising, unlike Google’s local ads machine.
📉 IBM lost $69 billion in market value after warning that customers are shifting budgets away from traditional software/mainframe spend and toward AI hardware, memory, and servers.
🐛 Microsoft is prepping Project Perception, an AI security tool that uses OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft models to find and auto-fix software bugs.
🚗 Uber is opposing a D.C. robotaxi bill backed by Waymo, arguing cities should require access through hybrid networks that include human drivers.
🚕 Waymo is facing tougher San Francisco scrutiny after robotaxis froze in July 4 traffic, ran out of power, and blocked key streets. The mayor wants AVs to prove they can clear lanes, reroute in real time, and share disruption data with the city.
🚀 SpaceX aborted its second Starship V3 launch moments after ignition because some engines failed to start. It matters more now that SpaceX is public: shares fell after-hours and are already below the IPO price.
🕹️ Roblox launched Build, a mobile AI feature that turns a text prompt into a basic game.
🏭 TSMC plans another $100B in U.S. investment, bringing announced U.S. plans to $265B.
🛍️ Phia, the shopping app co-founded by Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, was accused of “cookie stuffing” to claim affiliate commissions it may not have earned.
🎧 Spotify is rolling out a conversational AI music assistant for Premium users in the U.S., Ireland, and Sweden.
🤖AI News
🦅 Gold Eagle, the Trump administration’s new AI cybersecurity program, will act as a government-company clearinghouse for coordinating cyber vulnerabilities and responses.
🧠 OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind are converging on AI regulation. Hassabis wants a “FINRA for AI,” Amodei wants an “FAA for AI,” and Altman wants an “IAEA for AI.”
📱 Apple opened its revamped Siri AI to public beta users in iOS 27. If even a sliver of Apple’s 2.5 billion active devices test it, this becomes one of the largest AI assistant trials in the wild.
OpenAI
⭐️ OpenAI is reportedly developing a screenless, mobile smart speaker with mechanical elements that can move on their own.
🧨 OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol is drawing user complaints for deleting files, data, and even databases without permission.
⌨️ OpenAI released a $230 Codex Micro keyboard with “Agent Keys,” workflow shortcuts, and a dial for agent reasoning levels.
🛡️ Anthropic is hiring 32 people to stop misuse of its models for explosives, nuclear harms, scams, and cybercrime.
🧠 Thinking Machines Lab, Mira Murati’s AI startup, released Inkling: an open-weight 975B-parameter model that uses about 41B parameters per task and was trained on text, image, audio, and video.
🤖 Nvidia released Cosmos 3 Edge, a 4B-parameter open-source “physical AI” model that can run locally and help robots understand surroundings without a data center round trip.
☁️ Amazon Web Services is losing some startup workloads to cloud upstarts because customers can’t get enough Nvidia-powered capacity.
🏠 OpenAI and Anthropic employees could theoretically buy about 29% of the San Francisco metro’s homes if both companies go public at expected valuations. Totally normal.
💔 China is cracking down on companion chatbots, banning designs that encourage emotional dependence and requiring crisis alerts to emergency contacts.
🤝 Select M&A, Fundraises, IPO, Partnerships
M&A
🎬 Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery face a lawsuit from 12 states trying to block their $110B merger, with California arguing the deal would control 27% of U.S. film distribution and 30% of blockbuster distribution.
⭐️💳 Stripe and Advent made an unsolicited $60.50/share offer for PayPal, valuing it above $53B. PayPal shares jumped 16%; the board has not answered.
🍎 Apple is hunting AI chip acquisitions because its M2 Ultra-powered internal AI servers are not enough for heavier workloads. The company is still leaning on Nvidia chips in Google Cloud.
🍔 Uber agreed to buy Delivery Hero in a deal valuing the German food-delivery company at $14.8B. Uber already owns about 25%, and the deal would expand its ride-plus-delivery footprint from 34 to 58 markets.
🎥 Letterboxd, the movie watching community, is exploring a sale
Fundraising
🏦 Anthropic is in talks to add billions to its bank credit line ahead of a possible IPO as soon as September.
💰 DeepSeek, the Chinese AI lab, is reportedly seeking $1.5 billion at a $71 billion valuation after raising $7 billion just last month. It may aim for an IPO as soon as late 2026 or 2027.
✈️ Fora, an AI-assisted travel advisor platform, raised $60M at a $1B valuation. Its agents have booked $3B+ of travel, and its AI assistant handles itinerary/admin work so humans can do the relationship bit.
🎥 PixVerse, a Singapore AI video startup, raised a $439M Series C extension and is now valued above $2B. It claims 150M registered users and 15M monthly active users.
🤖 Nous Research, maker of the open-source Hermes agent, is reportedly raising at a $1.5B valuation. Hermes has built-in skills and roughly 214,000 GitHub stars, which is a lot of developer affection in public.
🧬 Miles Wang, an OpenAI researcher focused on AI for science and biology, is reportedly leaving to build an AI drug-discovery startup and raise about $200 million at a $2 billion valuation.
💘 Overtone, the new AI dating company from Hinge founder Justin McLeod, raised $18 million to build a voice/audio-forward service for curated introductions. The anti-swipe swipe.
Partnerships
☁️ Reflection AI, an open-model startup, signed a $1 billion compute deal with Nebius, a European AI infrastructure company formerly tied to Yandex’s international arm.
🧩 Anthropic and Blackstone named their AI implementation JV Ode, a $1.5B bet that enterprises need embedded AI teams, not just better models.
IPO
🧵 Shein won Chinese regulatory approval for a Hong Kong IPO, after failed attempts to list in New York and London.
⚱️ Gold Panning - For those who reached the bottom
RIP Sam Neill. The 78-yr old star of Jurassic Park died from pneumonia after successfully overcoming lymphoma. I loved his movie Hunt for the Wilderpeople - highly recommend.
World Cup - People love their vikings: ⚽ Erling Haaland said goodbye to the U.S. after Norway’s World Cup exit, ending a debut run with seven goals in four games.
🦖 Gus the T. rex sold for $50.1M at Sotheby’s, making it the most expensive dinosaur fossil ever auctioned.
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