Welcome back to your daily memorandum talking tech, business, AI, markets, and more. 🗞️

In today’s edition we are tackling the following:

🧪 Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky plans to launch a new AI lab.
🤖 Meta launches a new AI creator assistant to help Facebook creators.
📈 Anthropic's Daniela Amodei shrugs off doubts about AI returns ahead of IPO.
🍎 Apple study shows App Store generated $1.4T in sales, mostly commission-free.
🕵️ Chinese spies use LinkedIn to lure Westerners into sharing sensitive information.

TECHNOLOGY

• Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky plans to launch a new AI lab (Bloomberg)
  ^{_{More: Yahoo!, TechCrunch, Fortune}}

  • Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky plans to back a new AI lab, unsatisfied with current frontier lab models.

  • Airbnb uses AI coding tools but skipped an LLM partnership, with Chesky saying existing products weren't ready.

  • A longtime Sam Altman mentor who helped broker his OpenAI return, Chesky now appears to rival that company.

• Cash App launches a $25 tap-to-pay wand for its Visa cardholders (CNET)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, WIRED}}

  • Cash App debuted the $25 Wand, a near-field communication payment accessory for Visa Card holders on the go.

  • The pearlescent Wand is the first of several physical payment accessories Cash App calls Tags.

  • Block plans more limited-run Tag designs, letting holders link and tap to pay without their phone or card.

• Meta launches a new AI creator assistant to help Facebook creators (Tech in Asia)
  ^{_{More: Engadget, TechCrunch}}

  • Meta introduced an AI creator assistant on Facebook offering personalizations based on style, performance, community, and goals.

  • The conversational assistant answers questions like when to post and lets creators ask follow-ups to dig deeper.

  • Beyond performance, it brainstorms content ideas by drawing on trends, suggesting trending audio or posts around cultural moments.

BUSINESS

• Anthropic's Daniela Amodei shrugs off doubts about AI returns ahead of IPO (Tech in Asia)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, Yahoo!}}

  • Anthropic's $65B raise at a $965B valuation was greatly oversubscribed amid intense investor demand for the company.

    It filed confidentially for an IPO, with Daniela Amodei citing the heavy capital needs of frontier AI.

    Annualized revenue crossed $47B in May, up from about $9B in late 2025, though sector growth faces tests.

• Meta's Oversight Board says account bans lack due process & transparency (Firstpost)
  ^{_{More: Engadget, TechCrunch}}

  • Meta's Oversight Board says account deactivations lack due process, clear violation explanations, and adequate customer support for appeals.

  • It investigated a case over violent threats against a journalist, agreeing Meta rightly disabled the account permanently.

  • However, it flagged systemic human rights concerns and inconsistency in Meta's two-tier system for disabling accounts.

• Apple study shows App Store generated $1.4T in sales, mostly commission-free (MacRumors)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, Forbes}}

  • App Store ecosystem facilitated a record $1.4T in total billings and sales during 2025.

  • Apple collected no commission on more than 90% of billings, including physical goods and services.

  • Apps with consumer-facing AI saw four times more billings growth as ecosystem nearly tripled since 2019.

MARKETS

WORLD

• Chinese spies use LinkedIn to lure Westerners into sharing sensitive information (WSJ)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, The Guardian, BBC}}

  • FBI, MI5, and allies in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand warn of Chinese recruitment-site espionage.

  • Spies pose as recruiters or HR firms from fake companies to obtain non-public information benefiting Beijing.

  • Advisory shows spies cultivate sources via public websites, seeking strategic advantage over the Five Eyes alliance.

• Xi Jinping visits North Korea next week, his first trip since 2019 (CNN)
  ^{_{More: AP, SCMP, Bloomberg}}

  • Xi Jinping will visit North Korea next week, his first trip there in nearly seven years.

  • The trip reinforces China's ties with Pyongyang, even as Kim Jong Un has deepened relations with Russia.

  • Analysts say China wants to reassert influence over Pyongyang and protect its strategic interests in northeast Asia.

• India's central bank cuts growth outlook, raises inflation forecast, holds rates steady (CNBC)
  ^{_{More: WSJ, Reuters}}

  • India's central bank held interest rates at 5.25% on Friday, as economists had widely expected.

  • It raised its inflation forecast to 5.1% and cut growth projections to 6.6% for fiscal year 2027.

  • Governor Sanjay Malhotra said policy turned more cautious amid Middle East tensions and surging energy prices disrupting activity.

FUTURISM

• A robot wearing a clown wig roundhouse kicked a small child (Futurism)
  ^{_{More: Yahoo!}}

  • A viral video shows a Unitree G1 humanoid robot in a clown wig kicking a child.

  • The robot landed a roundhouse kick to the stomach of a young audience member who did nothing wrong.

  • The incident highlights ongoing robot safety concerns, showing such powerful machines aren't suited to children's birthday parties.

• Waymo will repurpose its spent robotaxi batteries as electricity grid storage (WSJ)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, Mashable, InsideEVs}}

  • Waymo signed a deal with storage firm B2U to repurpose retired robotaxi batteries across California and Texas.

  • The partnership addresses end-of-life treatment for thousands of deployed robotaxis, mostly Jaguar I-Pace EVs nationwide.

  • Waymo plans hundreds of megawatts of storage capacity, joining repurposing rivals like Redwood Materials in second-life batteries.

• Apple approves Poke as the first AI agent on Messages for Business (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: Yahoo!, Tech Buzz, AppleInsider}}

  • Poke became the first stand-alone third-party AI agent approved to run on Apple's Messages for Business platform.

  • Launched in March, Poke lets everyday users handle planning, calendars, health tracking, smart homes, and photos via text.

  • Operating over SMS, Telegram, and WhatsApp, Poke has relayed roughly 100M messages and will now add iMessage

• Cut through the hype. Roko’s Basilisk distills the day’s AI breakthroughs, market moves, and workable workflows into a five-minute brief*

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CONTENT

• As AI gets better, its share of the economy might shrink (Dwarkesh Patel)

  • An Economics of AGI episode with Alex Imas and Phil Trammell tackles questions only economics can answer.

  • They debate how to tax and redistribute AI-generated wealth, and whether exploding inequality is avoidable at all.

  • Other topics include whether capital's share rises, why demand collapse is unlikely, and what developing countries should do.

• David Ricks discusses GLP-1 drugs, obesity treatment, & America's healthcare trust crisis (The Prof G Pod)

  • Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks joins Scott to discuss GLP-1 drugs and the future of obesity treatment.

  • He argues America's healthcare system faces a crisis of trust, touching on costs, addiction, and unregulated peptides.

  • The talk also covers pharmaceutical innovation and the role AI could play in next-generation drug discovery.

• Naveen Rao & Alex Finn discuss AI layoffs, compute costs, & agents (This Week in Startups)

  • Naveen Rao and Alex Finn argue AI's future depends on whether we can afford to run models.

  • They dig into the AI cost panic, the looming energy wall for compute, and prompt discipline.

  • They also argue developers aren't disappearing, saying claims about vanishing coders get the economics exactly backwards.

EXTRAS

• A Waymo-riding burglar stole San Francisco yoga clothes & evaded police (Engadget)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, Yahoo!, SF Chronicle}}

  • A burglar rode a Waymo to steal yoga clothes in San Francisco last January, evading police since.

  • Despite surveillance fears, the case shows Waymo's stored ride footage had vanished before April's search warrant was filed.

  • Exterior camera footage was blurred for privacy, and turned-over account data failed to lead police to the suspect.

• Founders Fund launches a game show starring Sam Altman and tech elites (Business Insider)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, Yahoo!}}

  • Founders Fund, the VC firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, has launched its own tech-celebrity game show.

  • Titled 'MAFIA the GAME,' the ongoing show has tech luminaries face off over the classic party card game.

  • The debut, moderated by Mike Solana, features Sam Altman, Palmer Luckey, Bryan Johnson, and Moxie Marlinspike.

• Bluesky, a struggling Twitter rival, now eyes Reddit for fresh inspiration (CNBC)
  ^{_{More: The Verge}}

  • Two years after launch, Bluesky has only about 10% of X's estimated global user base.

  • COO Rose Wang says Bluesky's future lies in taking inspiration from Reddit rather than rivaling X.

  • It plans to drop the 'public square' feed model and focus on community-driven discovery and better video.

AND MORE

• Asus just announced a new OLED version of the Xbox Ally X.

• An Australian cockroach kingpin was caught with 100k illegal insects.

• Explore all the tools and more here to outperform the competition.*

• Filtr is a privacy tool blocking ads across iPhone and Mac apps.

• Aston Martin and Chillblast teamed up on some very expensive gaming PCs.

• Trump officials worry a U.S. loophole let China buy NVIDIA Blackwell chips.

• A YouTuber was arrested as Patreon's CEO refused to remove his videos.

• Dell revives the XPS 13 as a MacBook Neo rival at $599.