This Week in Tech (Week Ending Jun 26, 2026)

Jun 26, 2026

Hey folks!

Happy Friday 😎 Tech news below!

🌎 Macro (Economic) and Trends

📉 AI chip stocks got a reality-check wobble. Axios says the Nasdaq 100 slid 3.3% as investors started asking whether the AI buildout is eating budgets faster than anyone can explain at meetings with snacks.
🥩 U.S. consumer sentiment is getting dragged down by “kitchen table” prices, not just abstract inflation.

British Prime Minister Starmer resigned, setting in motion a process to replace him that will produce the country’s seventh prime minister in 10 years. But all that people were talking about was the hot podium guy:

🎲 Meta is building a prediction-markets app, reportedly called Arena internally, where users could bet on real-world events.
⚖️ Uber⁠ shareholders sued the board over sexual assaults and other incidents.
⚡ Amazon and Google have an edge in the AI power race, per WSJ. In the era of “who has enough electricity?”, cloud landlords are suddenly looking very smug.
📬 Notion Mail is shutting down amid Notion’s agent push.
🔐 Polymarket, the prediction-market platform, said hackers stole user funds.
🧩 Figma added code layers, animation support, and more AI features.
🔐 LastPass says hackers stole customer-support case data through a breach at Klue, a customer-intelligence software company.
🎮Just a few hours after Apple announced price increases across its hardware lineup, Microsoft revealed that Xbox game consoles are also getting more expensive. The company says the increases are being driven by rising memory and console storage prices, with costs more than 2.5x higher than previous levels.
Layoffs: 🚗 Lucid Motors⁠ is cutting 18% of staff as its new CEO tries to “simplify” the EV maker. I

🧯 OpenAI is reportedly being asked by the White House to slow-roll its next model release over security concerns.
🧑‍💻 Google is revamping its AI coding strike team as it tries to catch up w Anthropic.
💸 AI customers are trying to lower their Anthropic and OpenAI bills. The AI gold rush has reached the “wait, how much are tokens?” phase.
🪪 Claude⁠ may ask some users for government ID in certain circumstances, per Anthropic privacy-policy changes. And Claude Tag is Anthropic’s new always-on Slack teammate, learning company context one message at a time.
🛠️ OpenAI⁠ launched an effort to find and patch open-source bugs.
🛍️ OpenAI execs touted early ad progress at Cannes, saying travel, retail, health and beauty, and financial-services ads are performing best.
🎥 ByteDance unveiled Seedance 2.5, a new AI video model that can generate clips up to 30 seconds and use up to 50 reference materials.

✍️ Superhuman acquired GPTZero, the AI-detection startup, adding another layer to Grammarly/Superhuman’s writing stack.
📊Walmart’s acquired advertising technology startup Vibe for $1.4bn, showing how serious the retail giant is about building its ad business.
🖼️ Adobe acquired Topaz Labs, an image and video enhancement software maker.

🧱 Groq⁠, the AI chipmaker, confirmed a $650M raise.
🧪 Scaled Cognition, an AI reliability startup, raised $100 million led by Khosla Ventures and says its approach is more dependable than today’s models.
🧬 Mirendil, an AI research-tools startup from Anthropic veterans, raised $200 million to help scientists build their own AI systems.

📉 SpaceX shares fell more than 16%, wiping out roughly $400B in market value, even as the company announced a giant compute deal with Reflection AI.

🤖 OpenAI and Broadcom unveiled OpenAI’s first custom chip.
🔌 Microsoft and Chevron⁠ are planning a massive gas-powered data center project
🛰️ SpaceX and Reflection AI⁠ signed a $6B data-center capacity deal. Reflection AI, an open-source model startup, gets compute; SpaceX gets to be an AI landlord.
🎬 Google and A24⁠ are pairing up, with Google investing about $75M in the film studio as part of an AI research partnership.

💸 Top creators reportedly crossed $1 billion in combined annual earnings for the first time.
🎾 Serena Williams⁠ will play singles at Wimbledon after nearly four years away, and doubles with Venus.
🎸 CMA Fest happened Thursday with Jelly Roll, Ella Langley, Lainey Wilson, Shaboozey, Blake Shelton, Keith Urban, and more.
🌹 Rosette dresses are apparently summer’s prettiest trend.
🖋️Check out the typography of this generation - glitchy gloppy goo
⚽️Some more World Cup tangential news: The love affair between Boston and the Scots even after the Scots “vandalized” the city’s statues; The internet’s reactions to England’s team pics; and of course the celebrity viewers - iykyk

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