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💰 OpenAI's July revenue topped all of Q2
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- OpenAI's finance chief Sarah Friar told staff that the company's annualized recurring revenue in July exceeded its entire second quarter total, in a meeting meant to reassure employees the business stays healthy amid rising competition.
- Friar and board chair Bret Taylor credited the growth to the new GPT-5.6 models, an enterprise agent called ChatGPT Work, and wider use of the Codex coding tool, which Taylor said is winning users away from Anthropic's Claude Code.
- The push comes as OpenAI defends its $852 billion valuation ahead of a possible IPO, trailing Anthropic in valuation and facing cheaper open-weight rivals like China's newly released Kimi K3 from Moonshot AI.
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🤖 Google's new AI lets robots collaborate
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- Google has released Gemini Robotics ER 2, an "embodied reasoning" model that acts as a high-level brain for robots and, for the first time, lets multiple robots work together in shared spaces to finish tasks one machine couldn't handle alone.
- The model lets robots chat with people, plan multi-step tasks, and hand off physical movement to a separate vision-language-action model, while watching live video to track progress, fix mistakes, and know when to move to the next step.
- Gemini Robotics ER 2 is now available to developers through the Gemini API and Google AI Studio, plus a private preview on the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, and it can call tools like Google Search on its own.
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🚕 Zoox wins first US robotaxi approval
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- Federal regulators granted Zoox, owned by Amazon, the first US exemption letting a purpose-built robotaxi charge riders, clearing one of the last hurdles before the company can run a paid autonomous ride service.
- Because Zoox vehicles have no steering wheels or pedals, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration waived eight motor vehicle safety standards, including windshield defrosting and braking rules, while capping the fleet at 2,500 vehicles a year for two years.
- A Zoox spokesperson said paid rides will start first in Las Vegas, with more cities following as state rules are met; California still requires driverless deployment permits from its utilities commission and DMV.
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📉 AI hedge fund dumps all stocks
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- Situational Awareness, the AI-focused hedge fund started by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, is unwinding many of its trades after heavy losses on AI stocks and a losing bet against software companies left it scrambling for cash.
- The fund had grown to as large as $45 billion in early July before losses hit, with its AI infrastructure holdings like SK Hynix falling and short positions in software firms such as Adobe moving against it.
- Prime brokers including Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase have been marketing the firm's holdings for sale to meet margin calls, and its biggest bets, Nebius, Sandisk, Micron and CoreWeave, are all down over 35% this month.
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📡 SpaceX looks to compete with the carriers
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- SpaceX plans to chase spectrum for a full wireless network, either by bidding in a government auction next year or buying rival carriers, putting Musk's Starlink in direct competition with AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.
- The company is hunting for airwaves that work well in cities and dense areas, and the upcoming C-band auction offers spectrum with both satellite and land uses that could suit Starlink's plans.
- News of the move sent AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon shares down 4%, as SpaceX could outbid the debt-heavy carriers by issuing fresh equity, much like its $60 billion all-stock purchase of Cursor last month.
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✅ LinkedIn adds AI slop flag button
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- LinkedIn has quietly added a button that lets users flag a post as "AI slop," according to tests by 404 Media, hiding the flagged content and telling people their feedback helps improve the feed.
- The option appears under the three-dot menu at the top of any post, and the wording bluntly says "Seems like AI slop" rather than a softer phrase like "generated with AI."
- The move follows a 404 Media report citing AI detector Pangram, which estimated 41 percent of long posts and 30 percent of short posts on LinkedIn are likely AI-written, despite LinkedIn offering its own AI writing assistant.
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