Meta paid contractors to pose as teens and probe rival AI chatbots
Meta paid contractors to pose as teens and probe rival AI chatbots

The project ran under the internal name Cannes, and a Meta contractor called Covalen managed it. WIRED reported that hundreds of contractors created dummy under-18 accounts. They sent prompts and images to competitors’ chatbots, then logged the replies…

Chamath’s AI coding startup 8090 raises $135M, and he’s CEO
Chamath’s AI coding startup 8090 raises $135M, and he’s CEO

Salesforce led the Series A, which 8090 announced this week. The pitch behind it is blunt. AI can already write code. The hard part is stopping enterprise software from falling apart as dozens of agents and engineers change it every week. TechCrunch fi…

AI shopping just beat search at its own game on Prime Day
AI shopping just beat search at its own game on Prime Day

Amazon built Prime Day to keep shoppers inside its own marketplace. This year, AI shopping sent its best customers in from outside: a chatbot made the recommendation. US shoppers spent a record $26.4bn across retail sites during the four-day Prime Day …

Meta is telling engineers to handle Claude Code and Codex with care
Meta is telling engineers to handle Claude Code and Codex with care

Meta wants its own AI coding tools. To get there, it is telling its engineers to be careful with the rival tools they lean on today. Meta has placed strict limits on how engineers in its applied AI division use Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Code…

Marc Andreessen says ChatGPT beats 99% of doctors. The evidence says no
Marc Andreessen says ChatGPT beats 99% of doctors. The evidence says no

Marc Andreessen has a bold new claim about your health. The billionaire investor says “Doctor ChatGPT” is already a better doctor than 99% of human ones. Doctors, and the peer-reviewed evidence, strongly disagree. Andreessen made the remark on Joe Roga…

US House passes kids online safety package, setting up a Senate fight
US House passes kids online safety package, setting up a Senate fight

After years in which children’s online safety bills passed the Senate and then died quietly in the House, the House moved first this time, and immediately reopened the argument that has stalled the effort for half a decade. On Monday it passed a sweepi…

Google’s GV bets $30M on a stock exchange for space
Google’s GV bets $30M on a stock exchange for space

The space industry can build rockets. Moving money around them is the hard part. A new startup called Nebex wants to fix that, and Google’s venture arm is backing it with $30mn. GV, formerly Google Ventures, led the seed round, Bloomberg reported. Nebe…

Straiker raises $64M to secure the AI agents running your company
Straiker raises $64M to secure the AI agents running your company

AI agents are pouring into companies, and most security tools were never built to watch them. Straiker wants to fix that. The startup has just raised $64mn to police a workforce that does not clock in. The Series A was revealed first by Axios. It takes…

The Supreme Court just made it harder for police to track your phone
The Supreme Court just made it harder for police to track your phone

Your phone keeps a minute-by-minute diary of where you go. The US Supreme Court has now ruled that police cannot simply demand it. In a major win for digital privacy, the court said geofence searches need a warrant. The 6-3 decision lands on a practice…

NASA hired a startup to catch its falling telescope
NASA hired a startup to catch its falling telescope

Swift has watched the sky since 2004, catching some of the universe’s biggest explosions. Now it is sinking, and time is short. NASA is paying Katalyst Space Technologies about $30mn to save it, the Associated Press reported. Liftoff could come as earl…