This Week in Tech (Week Ending July 18, 2025)
TL;DR - 📈Inflation; 🤖OpenAI's ChatGPT agent; 💨🏄Windsurf's double acquisition
Hey folks!
Happy Friday 😎 Tech news below.
TL;DR -
📈Inflation rose 2.7%, the swiftest pace since February, from a year earlier as Trump’s tariffs leave a bigger impact on the economy.
Mind the (gender) gaps: The WFH gap - 29% of employed men spent time WFH vs 36% of women. The gap reflects women’s preferences, but also means they risk losing out on career advancement. The fertility wealth gap - Egg freezing is booming among young women, but its high cost — $15,000–$20,000 per cycle, plus $500–$1,000 annually for storage — is creating a new “fertility wealth gap,” causing women to drain their savings accounts to do it.
OpenAI announced the launch of ChatGPT agent, which the company claims to be its most capable AI agent product yet.
💨🏄Double acquisition: Google agreed to pay about $2.4 billion in a deal to license the technology of AI coding startup Windsurf and hire its CEO and some of its employees, and then Cognition, maker of the AI coding agent Devin, scooped up the rest of Windsurf (excluding the CEO, cofounder and research leaders) - which was approximately 250 ppl.
👀Catch the latest “tech news” gossip about philandering CEOs below
🌎 Macro (Economic) and Trends
🦶Why are people talking about Trump’s ankles? Trump’s ankles were swelling and his hands appeared to be bruised, spurring discussion about his health. On Friday, the president was diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, a common vein condition, after he sought medical care for the swelling.
📈Inflation rose 2.7%, the swiftest pace since February, from a year earlier as Trump’s tariffs leave a bigger impact on the economy.
The market is concerned that Trump may fire Jay Powell, the Fed chair.
🇰🇪Around the world: Kenya is experiencing widespread antigovernment protests that are becoming deadly - Last week, officers fired live rounds at crowds. There were more than 500 arrests, and 38 deaths including 2 children. Why it matters: Kenya has historically been a politically stable economic and democratic country in a tumultuous region.
😷 COVID cases are rising in about half of the U.S.
📈Bitcoin is going strong this week on the back of news that legislation from the House will make the US a haven for digital currency.
The WFH gap: 29% of employed men spent time working from home in 2024 on an average day (down from 34% the prior year). For women, that figure stayed largely flat at 36%. The gap reflects women’s preferences, but also means they risk losing out on career advancement.
🐣❄️The fertility wealth gap: Egg freezing is booming among young women, but its high cost — $15,000–$20,000 per cycle, plus $500–$1,000 annually for storage — is creating a new “fertility wealth gap,” disproportionately impacting Gen Z and millennial women as they navigate career, dating, and economic instability. Women say egg-freezing brings a “relative peace of mind,” but that comes with resentment that they have to drain their savings accounts to do it. Meanwhile, sperm-freezing startups are on the rise, offering men low-cost, at-home options to preserve fertility, often for as low as $500.
Subscriptions everywhere: Weekly subscriptions have now become one of the most popular ways iOS apps are earning revenue, with these plans contributing 46% to the bottom line
🌊The National Weather Service has issued a record number of flash flood warnings so far in 2025. The numbers reflect the recent above-average rainfall we've had in parts of the country.
Americans' attitudes toward immigration have softened in the past year:
🔬 Micro (Tech Companies)
Waymo said that its robotaxis hit a new milestone of completing 100 million miles without a driver. The progress reflects Waymo’s gradual expansion of its service to more cities: the company is now operating in Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Francisco, Atlanta and Austin. It plans on launching its robotaxi service in Miami and Washington D.C. next.
Apple announced a $500 million deal to buy rare-earth materials from MP Materials, a U.S. producer that recently sold a stake to the Pentagon.
Meta is currently building out a data center, called Hyperion, which the company expects to supply its new AI lab with five gigawatts (GW) of computational power,
🇮🇳Tesla finally enters India.
🏡Nextdoor has launched a redesigned app in an attempt to serve more as a daily utility. The relaunch aims to deepen engagement among its existing 100 million users and attract more advertisers.
✂️ Layoffs: The State Department is planning to fire more than 1,300 people; Between those dismissals and voluntary departures, the department says it expects to shed a total of roughly 3,000 employees. Scale AI is cutting 14% of the company just weeks after Meta invested $14.3 billion in the startup and hired away its CEO; interim CEO Jason Droege told staff that Scale AI had too quickly scaled its core data-labeling business — in which the startup supplied AI labs with labeled, structured data to train AI models. Droege said in the memo that Scale AI would staff up around its enterprise and government sales units.
🤖 AI News
OpenAI plans to add e-commerce checkouts into ChatGPT and take a cut of online shopping purchases made within the chatbot
OpenAI announced the launch of ChatGPT agent, which the company claims to be its most capable AI agent product yet.
Huang vs. Amodei debate: Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, believes there will be a white collar job-pocalypse, but Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, thinks AI will create vastly more and superior jobs. Why it matters: The debate captures a deep divide among AI experts over America's job market in a highly automated world.
The U.S. Department of Defense has awarded contracts worth up to $200 million to artificial intelligence developers xAI, Google and Anthropic to “address critical national security needs”.
Nvidia plans to resume selling an artificial intelligence chip to China that the U.S. government had previously restricted. The chip had previously been restricted due to U.S. concerns it would aid a geopolitical rival.
Mistral released Voxtral, its first open source AI audio, speech recognition model. The release is aiming to challenge the dominance of walled-off corporate systems with open-weight alternatives.
Butterfly Effect, the startup behind Manus, an artificial intelligence agent that went viral earlier this year, has shut down its entire China-based team. It’s the latest sign that Manus, whose biggest target market is the U.S., wants to minimize geopolitical risks associated with China ties.
Blackstone plans to invest $25 billion in data centers and energy production in Pennsylvania
🤝 Select M&A, Fundraises, IPO, Partnerships
M&A
💨🏄Last Friday Google agreed to pay about $2.4 billion in a deal to license the technology of AI coding startup Windsurf and hire its CEO and some of its employees. Previously, OpenAI was in discussions w Windsurf to acquire them for $3bn; those talks ended after Windsurf’s team raised concerns over how the coding assistant would fit into the OpenAI and Microsoft agreement over intellectual property.
💨🏄Cognition, maker of the AI coding agent Devin, acquired the rest of Windsurf (excluding the CEO, cofounder and research leaders) - which was approximately 250 ppl.
Meta Platforms has acquired PlayAI, a startup working on artificial intelligence-powered voice technology
Pronto.ai, an AV startup, acquired off-road autonomous vehicle rival SafeAI.
Fundraising
🚀SpaceX has agreed to invest $2 billion in xAI, nearly half of the Grok chatbot maker’s recent equity raise.
🚗Uber is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into Lucid and autonomous vehicle technology startup Nuro in a bid to launch its own robotaxi service.
Thinking Machines Lab AI, founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, just announced a new $2B seed raise. The secretive company will share its first product in “the next couple of months.”
Lovable has raised a $200 million Series A round led by Accel at a $1.8 billion valuation.
Substack raised a $100mill Series C
Partnerships
Google will pay more than $3 billion to source carbon-free hydropower from Brookfield Renewable Energy Partners' plants in Pennsylvania.
🚗Uber said that it partnered with Baidu to launch thousands of Apollo Go robotaxis in cities outside of the U.S. and mainland China.
IPO
Grayscale, the crypto asset manager owned by Digital Currency Group, said it has filed paperwork confidentially for a U.S. initial public offering.
⚱️ Gold Panning - For those who reached the bottom
🔥This counts as tech news right?: At a recent Coldplay concert, a kiss-cam jumbotron showed a canoodling couple that proceeded to freak out. The internet did its thing to reveal the jumpy couple were married to different people and were in an alleged affair. Oh and the people in question were Astronomer CEO and his HR chief.
☕️🪣Trending now - coffee buckets: It’s what it sounds like.
☄️A 54-pound chunk of Mars — the largest piece of the red planet ever discovered on Earth — sold for $5 million at auction. An enormous asteroid strike blew the piece of rock off the Martian surface and it was discovered in the Sahara Desert in 2023.
😢The Late Show with Stephen Colbert announced that this year will be its last year.
🗑️That’s kind of alot for what it was: The rights to Fyre Festival sold on eBay for $245K.
🤓Your next vacation? a reading retreat
🎾🏆At Wimbledon this past weekend, Iga Swiatek and Jannik Sinner won the women’s and men’s finals.
🏆The Emmy nominations were announced this week, and Severance led the field with a whopping 27 Emmy nominations
👀😑Have you seen the “Gen Z stare”? It’s a blank look you might get from a young person who doesn't seem to be listening. Depending on who you ask, the stare either means the Gen Zer thinks you're a total moron or that kids today don't have social skills.
🦸"Superman" opened with $122 million in domestic ticket sales over the weekend — the third-highest opening of the year. It currently has 83% on Rotten Tomatoes
📨 The price of stamps went up this past weekend (78cents)
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