This Week in Tech (Week Ending Sept 5, 2025)
TL;DR - 🔎Apple's new web search engine; 👓Amazon's Lens Live; 🤝 AI M&A
Hey folks!
Happy Friday - hope you had a lovely short week ⭐️ Tech news below.
TL;DR -
🔎Apple is working on a web-search engine powered by artificial intelligence, similar to products offered by AI rivals Perplexity and OpenAI.
Amazon launched Lens Live, an AI-powered shopping tool for use in the real world.
🤝 Fair bit of AI M&A: OpenAI acquired product testing startup Statsig; Nvidia bought Solver; CoreWeave acquired agent-training startup OpenPipe.
👖How did American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney ad campaign really perform? see the update from their earnings call at the bottom
🌎 Macro (Economic) and Trends
“Axis of Upheaval”- Very Mean Girls-coded
🇨🇳🇷🇺🇰🇵The leaders of China, Russia and North Korea walked together in Beijing this week to attend a massive military parade and send a message to President Trump. Why it matters: For the first time ever, these three leaders gathered to show solidarity. Trump’s response: "Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un as you conspire against the United States of America."
Trump’s “no tax on tips” pledge was highlighted alot in talk about the “big, beautiful bill”. Now, the Treasury Department just shared the 68 jobs that qualify for the new tax deduction - see the full list here.
📈 Forecast - Stock highs for the next 2 yrs? Bank of America says this bull market could rally another 52.5% by September 2027. Why it matters: It's an extremely bullish call after the market has already had 20 record highs this year. The bottom line: Bulls are focused on rate cuts, the AI narrative and stimulus that could come in 2026.
🇦🇫Afghanistan: A 6.0-magnitude earthquake killed more than 800 people. The death toll is expected to rise significantly.
It would: Florida will end all state vaccine mandates.
😓Americans are losing faith that hard work leads to economic gains: Nearly 70% of people said they believe the American dream of working hard to get ahead no longer holds true or never did, the highest level in nearly 15 years of surveys.
🇨🇳 Trending in China media - propaganda movies: Chinese movie theaters are filled with big-budget epics about China’s fight against the Japanese during World War II. On social media, audiences are seen singing the national anthem and rallying up. The films are part of a broader effort to rally the nation as the ruling Communist Party grapples with a sluggish economy, increasingly disillusioned young people, and an escalating rivalry with the United States.
🎄Holiday outlook: Americans plan to spend 5% less this holiday season compared to last year — the first pullback since 2020. Why it matters: Rising costs and tariff fears are hitting gift budgets, shifting dollars toward food and essentials.
🛌 go to bed: The average bedtime for American adults is 11:37pm, and the average duration of sleep is 6 hours 40 minutes (based on Apple Watch data from 61,000 adults). Why it matters: Participants in all 50 states are falling short of the recommended 7-9 hours.
⚱️Gold has surged to record highs while Big Tech stocks and bonds sell off.
There are now more unemployed Americans than job openings for the first time in four years
🔬 Micro (Tech Companies)
🙅A federal judge barred Google from paying to be the exclusive search engine on devices and browsers but allowed it to keep its Chrome browser and high-stakes agreement with Apple
🔎Apple is working on a web-search engine powered by artificial intelligence, similar to products offered by AI rivals Perplexity and OpenAI. The tool will integrate into Apple’s Siri voice assistant, and potentially its Safari web browser and Spotlight search tool. Apple is planning to release the web-search feature alongside its delayed Siri revamp in the spring of next year
Amazon launched Lens Live, an AI-powered shopping tool for use in the real world. Lens Live will not replace Amazon’s existing visual search tool, Amazon Lens, which lets you take a picture, upload an image, or scan a barcode to discover products. Instead, it brings a real-time component to Amazon Lens so you can point your phone at things you’re seeing in the real world to see matching products in a swipeable carousel at the bottom of the screen.
🐭The Walt Disney Company agreed to pay $10 million to settle a children's privacy lawsuit with the Federal Trade Commission related to videos it uploaded on YouTube mostly during the pandemic. Why it matters: It's the first known case in which a YouTube content provider has settled with the FTC over children's privacy violations since the agency's landmark settlement with YouTube and its parent Google in 2019. Context: The FTC complaint alleges Disney failed to designate certain YouTube videos as being made for children when it added them to the platform. In failing to do so, Disney inadvertently allowed those videos to be targeted with online advertising, which is why the FTC considers the improper designation problematic.
📣Earnings
Salesforce revenue rose 10% to $10.2 billion in the fiscal quarter that ended in July, breaking a streak of 8% revenue growth in the prior four quarters that had drawn concerns about its future growth prospects in the artificial intelligence era.
Figma’s June quarter revenue grew 41% to $249.6 million, the newly public company said Wednesday, as customers spent more on its AI-powered design software. The company forecast that its revenue growth would decelerate to 33% in the current quarter and 37% for the full year. Figma’s stock fell 15% in after hours trading.
Flip, a video-sharing social media app that at one point tried to challenge TikTok’s dominance, has shut down. The social commerce app raised over $300 million from investors since its founding in 2019, and was valued in April 2024 at more than $1 billion.
Bettors rejoice: Polymarket, the world’s largest prediction market, is set to launch in the U.S. after getting a green light from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Condé Nast named Chloe Malle as its new head of editorial content of Vogue U.S., marking the most significant step taken by longtime Vogue leader Anna Wintour in mapping her succession plan.
MrBeast, the 27-year-old popular YouTuber, plans to launch a phone company as he diversifies his brand.
🤖 AI News
Flattery works on the AI chatbots: A study from University of Pennsylvania researchers found that, with the right techniques, AI chatbots can be nudged into breaking their own rules. Typically, ChatGPT would only explain how to synthesize lidocaine (a controlled substance) 1% of the time when asked directly. But when researchers first asked about creating vanillin — establishing that it answers chemistry questions — compliance shot up to 100%. The model could also be manipulated through flattery and social pressure: telling the chatbot that "all the other LLMs are doing it” 🤣seemed to boost compliance by 18%.
OpenAI said it plans to route sensitive conversations to reasoning models like GPT-5 and roll out parental controls within the next month – part of an ongoing response to recent safety incidents involving ChatGPT failing to detect mental distress.
🤝 Select M&A, Fundraises, IPO, Partnerships
M&A
OpenAI acquired product testing startup Statsig and is bringing on the founder of Statsig as its CTO of Applications, and making changes to other leadership roles at the company.
Nvidia last month bought Solver. The three-year-old startup formerly known as Laredo Labs has developed an AI coding agent that completes software development tasks for users.
Atlassian has agreed to acquire The Browser Company, which makes the Arc and Dia browsers, for $610 million in cash.
CoreWeave acquired agent-training startup OpenPipe. Coreweave hopes OpenPipe will help it expand up the stack and cash in on enterprises developing AI agents.
AI M&A Forecast - The Information expects many more AI acquisitions both because larger startups are on the hunt for technology and people to build better applications and models, and because public software companies are hungry to incorporate more AI in their products to stay relevant.
Fundraising
LayerX, a Japanese startup, raised $100mill in a series B to cut back-office workload.
Anthropic raised a $13billion Series F at a $183B valuation. The funds will be used to grow its enterprise adoption, deepen safety research, and support international expansion.
Mistral AI is finalizing a €2 billion investment at a post-money valuation of $14 billion
OpenEvidence, which operates a ChatGPT-like product for doctors to find health information, is considering multiple investment offers valuing the three-year-old startup at $6 billion, nearly double its private valuation from a financing just one month ago.
Sierra, the artificial intelligence startup founded by Bret Taylor, is in talks to raise $350 million at a $10 billion valuation.
You.com, the artificial intelligence search startup making a push into business sales, completed a $100 million round of funding valuing the company at $1.5 billion
IPO
Klarna, the payment giant, said it would pursue an I.P.O., seeking to raise as much as $1.27 billion at a valuation of up to $14 billion.
Lambda, a San Jose, Calif.,-based cloud provider that rents out Nvidia graphics chips to AI companies, has hired banks to prepare for an initial public offering in the U.S. as soon as the first half of next year.
⚱️ Gold Panning - For those who reached the bottom
What GenZ girls wore on their first day of school: White baby tees and baggy jeans, typically low-rise and light wash; butter yellow; and denim skirts.
The next Labubu is… *drumroll* Monchhichi - fluffy stuffed Japanese characters.
👖The Sydney Sweeney effect in action: American Eagle’s quarterly earnings call took place this week, and it turns out that the controversial “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans” campaign has proven to be a commercial win. CEO Jay Schottenstein credited Sweeney with fueling an uptick in “customer awareness, engagement and comparable sales.” The campaign launched just a week before Q2 closed, but still helped beat revenue expectations; it drove double-digit denim sales growth, generated 40 billion impressions, and sold out the “Sydney Jean” in one week.
🎶 Remember those tearful dog commercials she did? Sarah McLachlan is releasing her first album in nine years this fall.
🍿Goodbye summer: How did the summer box office do? Summer 2025 theater attendance wasn’t as strong as hoped - Summer 2025 was essentially flat with summer 2024's $3.68B, and down 10% from 2023's ‘Barbenheimer’-fueled $4.09B season.
But still the summer of Glen Powell - out later this month:
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