This Week in Tech (Week Ending July 11, 2025)
TL;DR - ⭐️X’s CEO steps down; 💻Perplexity's browser; 🤖 Grok 4,
Hey folks!
Hope you had fun shopping on Prime day week 🛍️📦! Tech news below.
TL;DR -
🙂↔️the DOJ and FBI denied that Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender, blackmailed powerful figures or maintained a "client list," and have concluded Epstein died by suicide.
💻Perplexity launched its much-hyped AI-powered web browser, Comet.
🤖Elon Musk’s xAI launched Grok 4, the latest generation of its AI models, and it’s performing better than other models based on reasoning - although it’s kinda antisemitic….
🌎 Macro (Economic) and Trends
😢Texas flooding - Flash flooding in Texas over the July 4 weekend resulted in over 111 deaths and at least 173 missing. Tragically, the flooding also impacted a popular children’s summer camp, Camp Mystic, which lost 27 campers and counsellors.
⏸️ Trump paused tariffs, which should give retailers more time to stockpile goods ahead of the holiday season. If higher rates do go into effect Aug. 1 — the White House's new deadline — it's likely that consumers won't feel a difference until the new year.
🇲🇾🇹🇭The Trump administration is planning to restrict the sale of key artificial intelligence chips to Malaysia and Thailand as part of an effort to block China’s access to such chips through intermediaries in Southeast Asia.
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor, has drawn heated opposition from many, but most recently has attracted the ire of Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia. Maguire wrote on X that Mamdani “comes from a culture that lies about everything” and many have censured Maguire’s comments as anti-Muslim.
🇺🇸 Elon Musk said Friday that he planned to launch his own political party, the “America Party”. Unsurprisingly, Tesla stock took a dive. Let’s see if he backs out like he tried to back out of buying Twitter.
🙂↔️Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender, apparently didn't blackmail powerful figures or maintain a "client list," and died by suicide — according to the DOJ and FBI. 🤨 Why it matters: The findings represent the first time Trump's administration has officially contradicted conspiracy theories about Epstein's activities and his death — theories that had been pushed by the FBI's top two officials before Trump appointed them to the bureau.
💉🦠 U.S. measles cases hit a 33-year high as vaccination rates decline.
🔬 Micro (Tech Companies)
⭐️X’s CEO Linda Yaccarino is stepping down. Yaccarino was the first permanent CEO Elon Musk hired after buying the social media platform in 2022 and was tasked with revitalizing its ad business. Why it matters: Yaccarino was hired to rehabilitate X's ad business and bring stability to the company, but even she — one of the most experienced leaders in the ad industry — struggled to rein in Musk. Between the lines: Musk's attention then was more focused on turning X into an "everything" app — and now his attention has shifted toward turning X into a strip mine for AI training data.
In light of Meta’s, ahem, aggressive AI recruiting efforts, this essay by an AI researcher who ended up leaving sheds some light as to how it’s actually going:
“I have yet to meet someone in Meta-GenAI that truly enjoys being there. Someone that feels like they want to stay in Meta for a long time because it’s such a great place,” wrote Tijmen Blankevoort, who worked on Meta’s flagship AI model Llama. “You’ll be hard pressed to find someone that really believes in our AI mission. To most, it’s not even clear what our mission is.”
😮 Apple has considered launching its own public cloud for its millions of developers.
Nvidia's market cap briefly surpassed $4 trillion this week. It's the first time any public company has ever hit that benchmark.
💃TikTok is building a new version of its app for users in the U.S. ahead of a planned sale of the app to a group of investors.
💬Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and Block CEO, created a new messaging app, called Bitchat, that runs through Bluetooth mesh networks.
SpaceX is in talks to allow employees and investors to sell shares that would value the company at $400 billion, up from $350 billion in December.
🕶️Meta acquired a roughly 3 percent stake in EssilorLuxottica, which makes Ray-ban smart glasses for Meta. The investment signals Meta’s ongoing interest in A.I.-enabled wearables;
🤖 AI News
💻Perplexity launched its much-hyped AI-powered web browser, Comet. Right now it's only available for Perplexity Max subscribers and a small group of invitees. Enjoy the spotlight for now Perplexity bc….
💻OpenAI’s web browser is coming soon - like in the next few weeks.
🧼How Unilever is using AI to make soap go viral: Unilever works with tens of thousands of influencers and is aiming to grow that by 10 to 20 times over the next year. To equip its army of influencers, Unilever used AI to create thousands of creative assets a week
🤖Elon Musk’s xAI launched Grok 4, the latest generation of its AI models. Musk said the Grok 4 models performed 12 to 17 percentage points better than state-of-the-art models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google in taking Humanity’s Last Exam, a closely-watched evaluation of how models handle tough problems in math, science and other fields. (The Information) But also… Grok seemed to have a penchant for pushing antisemitic narratives so it needs some work still. And Musk tweeted Grok will be available in Teslas by next week.
🤝 Select M&A, Fundraises, IPO, Partnerships
M&A
CoreWeave has agreed to buy Core Scientific in an all-stock deal worth about $9 billion. The merger will help CoreWeave expand its AI data center capacity
Thoma Bravo has agreed to acquire restaurant software maker Olo for $2 billion.
Trend - acquisitions of data companies: TechCrunch argues data companies are being bought “in hopes the acquired technology will be the missing piece needed to get enterprises to adopt AI [because] the success of AI companies, and AI applications, is determined by access to quality underlying data.”
Ferrero, the Italian candy maker, has agreed to buy WK Kellogg, the American cereal giant, in a deal valued at $3.1 billion.
Fundraising
Mistral is reportedly looking to raise up to $1 billion in new equity.
LangChain, an AI infrastructure startup, is raising a new round that will give it unicorn status a mere three years after it started as an open-source project.
Partnerships
Amazon is teaming up with delivery startup Gopuff to offer same-hour deliveries of groceries and other household goods to U.K. shoppers.
Replit announced a strategic partnership deal with Microsoft. This means Replit's software will be available through Microsoft's enterprise cloud store and integrated into numerous Microsoft cloud services.
⚱️ Gold Panning - For those who reached the bottom
Art schools are seeing record-high applications. Experts link the surge to Gen Z’s AI anxiety, screen fatigue, and a desire for tactile, purpose-driven work.
😍 Missed connections are back - but instead of Craigslist, people are using Reddit, Tiktok and Instagram to find their potential soulmates
🍵Matcha mania: A global matcha shortage has sparked infighting among Gen Z tea lovers on MatchaTok and Reddit. Premium tins that cost $17 a year ago now exceed $100.
👜 The original Birkin bag sold at auction in Paris this week for a whopping 8.6 million euros, equivalent to $10.1 million. Hermès designed the bag for entertainer Jane Birkin in 1984, following a chance encounter on an airplane in which she sketched out her ideal satchel on the back of a vomit bag. I probably can’t even afford the vomit bag that she sketched on.
🤑 Get it girl: Scarlett Johansson has officially become the highest-grossing lead actor in box office history, thanks to 'Jurassic World: Rebirth's' massive $318M global opening over the weekend.
Ever heard of Ne Zha 2? It’s the highest-grossing animated feature of all time and it’s scheduled to get an English version
🦸🏻 Yet another hero movie? Superman flies into theaters this weekend and the NYT says “It’s a sincere but also goofy movie, with a few well-timed twists on the mythology”.
Paris opened parts of the River Seine to public swimming this past weekend for the first time in more than 100 years. It follows a major cleanup effort conducted for the Olympics in 2024. Hope you’re enjoying your summer like these Parisians!
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