Edition: July 17, 2026

Databricks has reached a valuation of $188 billion after a new round of funding, extending its successful transition into an AI provider. The company has been on a fundraising tear, with this latest round being its third in the past year. Databricks' shift towards AI has granted it a strong reputation and attracted significant investment.

Agility Robotics is opening a 60,000-square-foot facility in Fremont, California to train its humanoid robots, competing with Tesla's Optimus robots. The company's robot, Digit, is already generating revenue in manufacturing and warehouse settings. Agility has secured $300 million in contract orders and plans to go public later this year.

India's smartphone market is experiencing a significant disruption due to rising memory chip costs, driven by AI-driven demand, resulting in a 10% year-over-year decline in smartphone shipments. The price increase has hit the lower-end market hardest, with shipments in the sub-₹15,000 segment falling 45%. This shift is reshaping competition among smartphone makers, with Samsung posting growth while others struggle.

Apple has filed a trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging misconduct and claiming over 400 former Apple employees now work at the company, which could disrupt OpenAI's potential IPO plans. The lawsuit's timing is particularly sensitive given OpenAI's reported plans to go public later this year. The case raises questions about trust in AI companies and their handling of data.

Apple is suing OpenAI in a lawsuit over trade secrets, with many experts questioning the validity of the allegations. The move is seen as a potential attempt to crush OpenAI, a major player in the AI industry. The lawsuit comes as Apple releases its new software, including an updated Siri AI.

Bunkerhill Health has raised $55 million to scale its agentic AI platform, Carebricks, which aims to bridge the gap between AI models and live clinical data in healthcare systems. The platform allows hospitals to build their own AI agents, which can perform tasks such as reviewing cardiology imaging and handling administrative work. With backing from prominent investors, Bunkerhill's technology is already being used by several major health systems, including Cleveland Clinic and the University of Texas Medical Branch.

NVIDIA NeMo Automodel and Hugging Face's Diffusers library have collaborated to enable fine-tuning of video and image models at scale, allowing for production-grade distributed diffusion training with no checkpoint conversion required. This integration supports various diffusion models, including Wan 2.1 and FLUX.1-dev, and provides a consistent interface for inference, adaptation, and pipeline composition. The collaboration unlocks new capabilities for Diffusers users, including easy fine-tuning and generation of high-quality images and videos.

Patreon is working with Cloudflare to block AI bots from scraping its content without permission, citing increased sophistication in AI scraping since 2023. The company is using Cloudflare's AI Crawl Control technology to enforce its policies, allowing only bots that index pages and send users back to Patreon. This move aims to give creators more control over how their work is used by AI companies.

Apple has filed a trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging misconduct and claiming over 400 former Apple employees now work at the company, which couldn't come at a worse time as OpenAI eyes an IPO later this year. The lawsuit may impact OpenAI's hardware ambitions and IPO timeline. The case also raises questions about trusting AI companies with data.

Misinformation surrounding perimenopause is on the rise, with marketers claiming false treatments and tests, while China has made a significant leap in AI by releasing the world's largest open AI model, narrowing the gap with the US. This development has sent AI and semiconductor stocks sliding and is seen as a major move in China's AI ambitions. The model competes with those from Anthropic and OpenAI, and its launch highlights China's growing presence in the global AI landscape.

General Compute, an AI inference cloud startup, has secured a $400 million loan from Upper90 to finance inference-specific chips, marking a shift towards more affordable AI infrastructure. The deal signals a growing market response to concerns over the high cost of AI tools and tokens. General Compute's chips are designed to run trained AI models efficiently and could provide 16 times faster inference than GPU-based clouds.

San Francisco's city attorney has ordered Apple and Google to remove 13 AI-powered 'nudify' apps from their stores, citing the creation of nonconsensual nude images as illegal and harmful. The apps allow users to generate AI-created explicit images, often using photos of women and girls without their consent. The city attorney claims Apple and Google have profited from these apps through in-app payments.

Foundation Future Industries, a company backed by Eric Trump, is developing humanoid robots for military use, with plans to give them lethal capabilities soon. The company has government contracts worth millions of dollars and has tested its robots with Ukrainian forces. The development of autonomous robot soldiers is seen as a promising niche, but experts say fully autonomous systems are still a distant dream.

The accuracy of weather predictions is at risk due to the temptation to manipulate weather data for financial gain in emerging prediction markets. Weather forecasts influence strategic decisions in various industries, and sabotage could have significant consequences. Experts warn that new threats are putting observational accuracy at risk, potentially leading to systemic problems.

TikTok is testing an AI likeness detection tool that allows creators to scan for and report AI-generated likenesses, with the tool initially being tested with some US creators. The feature requires identity verification through a third-party company called Jumio. This move follows YouTube's similar efforts to combat AI-generated deepfakes.

Vertu's Alphafold is a luxury foldable phone targeting executives, featuring an AI agent designed to automate tasks and a price tag of $6,880. The device boasts premium materials and a unique AI experience, but its underlying hardware is similar to the $1,100 ZTE Nubia Fold. The Alphafold's value lies in its luxury experience and AI capabilities, rather than its specs or hardware.

A growing trend of using AI transcription apps to record meetings and conversations is raising concerns about privacy and social etiquette, with some individuals taking measures to opt-out, such as modifying their names on Zoom to include a statement of non-consent. This trend is becoming increasingly ubiquitous, with many using these apps to record and analyze interactions. The practice is sparking debate about its social acceptability and potential legal implications.

The growing trend of discussing perimenopause has led to misinformation and oversimplification of its symptoms and treatment, with some promoters encouraging unnecessary hormone replacement therapy and supplements. Experts warn that perimenopause is complex and cannot be diagnosed with a single test, and that HRT may not be suitable for all women. Women are advised to approach perimenopause with a nuanced understanding and consult healthcare professionals for personalized advice.