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

In today’s edition we are tackling the following:

🧑‍🔬 Four senior Google AI researchers depart to found a new startup.
🕵️ Flaws in Apple's Private Relay can expose users' real IP addresses.
📋 OpenAI accepts three years of DOJ oversight over green-card hiring practices.
🎥 Disney & TikTok partner to bring creator-made fan videos to Disney+.
🕊️ Iran nears Strait of Hormuz deal with Oman as Lebanon clashes continue.

TECHNOLOGY

• Four senior Google AI researchers depart to found a new startup (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: NY Times, CNBC, WSJ}}

  • Jeff Dean is departing Google to lead Discovery Loop, a public benefit corporation applying AI to science.

    Co-founders include Sanjay Ghemawat, Quoc Le, and DeepMind's Oriol Vinyals, all senior Google researchers.

    The startup wants to run thousands of parallel experiments and pursue recursive AI self-improvement.

• Flaws in Apple's Private Relay can expose users' real IP addresses (MacRumors)
  ^{_{More: CNET, 9to5Mac, TechCrunch}}

  • Researchers found flaws letting websites reveal real IP addresses despite Apple's Private Relay being enabled.

  • The bugs stem from three WebKit features; Private Relay only protects Safari, unlike a VPN.

  • Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk skipped reporting to Apple, citing "months of delays" previously.

• Nikita Bier exits X product lead role after year of launches (Firstpost)
  ^{_{More: Business Insider, TechCrunch, Yahoo!}}

  • Bier stepped down as head of product at X after just over a year.

  • He plans to 'pass the torch' and remain an adviser, returning to posting full-time.

  • He claims 30 product launches, though Grok scandals over harmful imagery marred his tenure.

BUSINESS

• OpenAI accepts three years of DOJ oversight over green-card hiring practices (Politico)
  ^{_{More: Axios, WSJ, TechCrunch}}

  • OpenAI and Statsig settled with the DOJ, accepting three years of hiring oversight.

  • The DOJ alleged they blocked U.S. citizens from jobs while sponsoring immigrant workers for residence.

  • They paid $3.2M without admitting wrongdoing, including $2M reserved for restitution to affected applicants.

• Disney & TikTok partner to bring creator-made fan videos to Disney+ (CNN)
  ^{_{More: NY Times, NBC, TechCrunch}}

  • Disney and TikTok struck a deal letting creators make short-form videos using its brands.

  • Star Wars, Marvel, and Pixar assets can be shared on both TikTok and Disney+, starting in the U.S.

  • The deal is an early move by new CEO Josh D'Amaro to lift Disney+, which has 130M subscribers.

• Moove raises $250M at $2.1B valuation to own robotaxi fleet operations (Bloomberg)
  ^{_{More: TNW, TechCrunch, Yahoo!}}

  • Moove raised $250M at a $2.1B valuation, led by Mubadala, to scale robotaxi operations.

  • The Dubai-based firm runs a 42k-vehicle ride-hailing fleet across 14 countries and employs 3.3k people.

  • Delano says no AV developer, automaker, or marketplace actually wants to own the vehicles.

MARKETS

WORLD

• Iran nears Strait of Hormuz deal with Oman as Lebanon clashes continue (AP)
  ^{_{More: Seattle Times, The Hill}}

  • Iran says a Strait of Hormuz agreement with Oman is in its final drafting stage.

  • A joint statement may follow, though the deal likely hinges on the U.S. lifting its blockade.

  • Two Israeli soldiers were killed in Lebanon; the strait once carried a fifth of global oil.

• Min Aung Hlaing visits Thailand seeking legitimacy as Bangkok backs engagement (Reuters)
  ^{_{More: Straits Times, Japan Times}}

  • Myanmar's Min Aung Hlaing received red-carpet treatment in Thailand, his fourth foreign trip as president.

  • Bangkok argues engagement could advance Myanmar peace, though ASEAN still bars him from its summits.

  • The 2021 coup leader faces Western sanctions and has sought legitimacy since April's army-dominated election.

• Drought-hit EU rivers force authorities to blow up riverbeds to save trade (WSJ)
  ^{_{More: CNBC, CNN}}

  • Record-low water on the Rhine and Danube is disrupting energy generation, freight, and river transport.

  • The rivers support nuclear cooling, hydropower, industry, and trade, so prolonged lows could raise costs.

  • Authorities are resorting to extreme measures, including blowing up riverbeds, to counter the economic damage.

FUTURISM

• Anthropic builds custom silicon team to design its own AI chips (Reuters)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, Yahoo!, Business Insider}}

  • Anthropic is assembling a custom silicon team to co-design hardware and models for Claude.

  • The move follows deals with AWS, Google, NVIDIA, and AMD that alone cannot meet rising demand.

  • OpenAI, Google, and Meta have already built their own chips; Samsung is a reported Anthropic partner.

• Meta releases Muse Code, a terminal AI agent for large repositories (CNET)
  ^{_{More: TOI, CNBC, TechCrunch}}

  • Meta's Muse Code, now in beta, handles engineering tasks across large software repositories.

  • The agent fans out to parallel sub-agents in isolated worktrees, leaving the working copy untouched.

  • Powered by Muse Spark, it targets OpenAI's Codex and Anthropic's Claude Code on cost.

• Amazon's Zoox begins charging for robotaxi rides in Las Vegas on August 10 (CNBC)
  ^{_{More: Reuters, Bloomberg, TechCrunch}}

  • Paid rides begin August 10, ending the free public service Zoox launched last year.

  • It is the company's first commercial market after under a year of free public rides.

  • Zoox says fares will stay competitive with the 'comfort' tier pricing offered by ride-hailing services.

• Hunting for AI roles eats hours across careers pages, internal referrals, group chats, and a dozen overlapping boards*

  • The Athyna AI Job Board does the watching for you and matches openings to your profile in the background.

  • When a role hits a 75% matching index or higher, we notify you with details and a direct apply link.

CONTENT

• Airtable sells for $2.25B, 81% below peak, but VCs call it a win (This Week in Startups)

  • Airtable sold for $2.25B, an 81% drop from its $11.7B peak valuation.

  • Investors on the TWiST panel frame the deal as a sensible unwind, not a failure.

  • The company reached over $400M ARR, which the panel argues is worth celebrating alone.

• Starcloud's contrarian bet on orbital data centers turned into a unicorn (Y Combinator)

  • Starcloud launched an NVIDIA H100 into orbit in November 2025 and trained an LLM there.

  • The company raised $200M and hit a $1B valuation just 17 months after YC demo day.

  • CEO Philip Johnston has filed with the FCC to deploy 88k more satellites in orbit.

• Mark Forsyth breaks down the rhetorical techniques that make writing memorable (David Perell)

  • Forsyth argues great writing rests on figures of rhetoric, drawn from Shakespeare to Taylor Swift.

  • He walks through seven tools, from polyptoton and chiasmus to anaphora, epistrophe, and synesthesia.

  • Each technique is explained by what it is, how it works, and when to use it.

EXTRAS

• Klaviyo acquires AI startup Agency, making founder Elias Torres product chief (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: Business Wire, Investing.com, Yahoo!}}

  • Klaviyo has agreed to acquire Agency, Elias Torres' three-year-old AI customer success startup, for undisclosed terms.

  • Torres joins as chief product officer, leading his 25-person team on Klaviyo's Composer and Customer Agent.

  • Agency raised $32M from Sequoia, Menlo Ventures, and Felicis; Torres previously sold Drift for $1.2B.

• Lucid delays affordable EV launch to 2027 during major operational reset (Reuters)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, Yahoo!}}

  • Lucid pushed its cheaper EV launch to the second half of 2027 from late this year.

  • The company aims to save $1.4B this year by cutting production and inventory after Q2 losses.

  • CEO Silvio Napoli said the Air and Gravity launched "a bit in haste"; shares fell 8%.

• Ex-Uber CFO Gautam Gupta joins Kalanick's robotics startup Atoms as finance chief (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: Tech Buzz, Yahoo!}}

  • Gupta, Uber's former finance chief under Kalanick, has joined Atoms as chief financial officer.

  • The hire follows Atoms' $1.7B raise last month, deepening Kalanick's pattern of recruiting ex-Uber staff.

  • Atoms, formerly CloudKitchens, also acquired Pronto, run by ex-Uber self-driving engineer Anthony Levandowski.

AND MORE

• Reddit will lean on AI moderation, reducing karma's weight for new posters.

• Drones patrol South Korean farmland to warn elderly workers during extreme heat.

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

• This slim under-pillow speaker made falling asleep easier than using earbuds.

• Expatriates return to Hong Kong, lured by low taxes & better jobs.

• Venture firm Lightspeed recruited its latest hire via an Instagram DM.

• Attackers target ex-Bangladesh cricket captain Shakib's home following Hasina media appearance.