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

In today’s edition, we are tackling the following:

🔐 Meta launches Muse, an AI agent demanding access to personal data.
📱 Apple's first foldable iPhone headlines today's event under new CEO John Ternus.
🏍️ U.S. bans Canadian alcohol, motorcycles & dairy as trade war escalates.
📈 Cognition's $48B valuation signals investors see room for multiple AI coding winners.
🏃 Bessent warns nothing else matters if China pulls ahead on AI.

TECHNOLOGY

• Meta launches Muse, an AI agent demanding unprecedented access to personal data (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: Bloomberg, CNBC, WIRED}}

  • Muse launched Tuesday for U.S. users and connects to email, calendars, payments, health apps, and smart home services.

    The rollout follows Meta's $18B multistate settlement over social media's consumer harms less than two weeks ago.

    Meta is betting that the ChatGPT era gives way to AI agents that complete tasks themselves.

• Apple's first foldable iPhone headlines today's event under new CEO John Ternus (MacRumors)
  ^{_{More: Engadget, TechCrunch, CNET}}

  • The 'Surprise and shine' event starts at 10 a.m. PDT and streams on YouTube and Apple's events site.

  • The foldable iPhone Ultra is rumored at $2k, arriving roughly seven years after Samsung's first foldable.

  • iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max are expected alongside new Apple Watches, HomePod, and camera-equipped AirPods.

• NYU mathematician accuses OpenAI of building on his unpublished Navier-Stokes work (NY Times)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, NBC, Yahoo!}}

  • Tristan Buckmaster announced three proofs with Anthropic's Levent Alpöge, using both Codex and Claude models.

  • He said a parallel OpenAI effort drew on their findings before the work became public.

  • OpenAI then published a full Navier-Stokes proof, crediting an unreleased model and $22.5M in compute.

BUSINESS

• U.S. bans Canadian alcohol, motorcycles & dairy as trade war escalates (WSJ)
  ^{_{More: Reuters, BBC, Axios}}

  • The import bans take effect September 29, covering beer, wine, spirits, whey protein, and molasses.

  • Canada's retaliatory tariffs on $20B of U.S. goods took effect after midnight on Tuesday.

  • Prime Minister Mark Carney urged a pivot away from the U.S., casting doubt on the USMCA.

• Cognition's $48B valuation signals investors see room for multiple AI coding winners (Bloomberg)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, Yahoo!}}

  • The startup behind Devin raised $2B, led by Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, and Avenir.

  • Annualized run-rate revenue jumped from $492M to $900M since May, when it was valued at $26B.

  • Rival Cursor sold to SpaceX for $60B in April, hobbled by compute constraints despite higher revenue.

• White House pulls 'Build the Wall' game after Tetris Company copyright complaint (The Verge)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, PCMag, Mashable}}

  • The White House posted arcade games, including 'Build the Wall,' a Tetris lookalike criticized as racist.

  • The Tetris Company denied involvement on Instagram and said, "We take copyright infringement very seriously."

  • The game's page now returns a 404 error; Kotaku was the first to spot its removal.

MARKETS

WORLD

• Bessent warns nothing else matters if China pulls ahead on AI (Bloomberg)
  ^{_{More: SCMP, Business Times, Straits Times}}

  • The Treasury Secretary spoke at a Breitbart News event in Washington on September 8, 2026.

  • He argued America's large defense budget would not protect the nation if China won the race.

  • U.S. agencies said Alibaba, DeepSeek, and Moonshot AI extracted billions of tokens from American frontier models.

• Families grieve at Iranian school where U.S. strike killed scores of children (AP)
  ^{_{More: Seattle Times, PBS}}

  • A February 28 airstrike hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab on the war's first day.

  • Heydar Sadeghi lost his 11-year-old grandson Hami and the boy's mother, and visits the rubble nightly.

  • Iranian state media reported 168 deaths, mostly children; an AP investigation confirmed at least one U.S. missile.

• Norway holds state funeral for King Harald V after 35-year reign (ABC)
  ^{_{More: Seattle Times, AP}}

  • Harald died on August 28, 2026, aged 89, as Europe's oldest monarch, and refused to abdicate.

  • His coffin travels from the royal palace to Oslo Cathedral, followed by royals and foreign leaders.

  • Mourners queued up for up to seven hours to see him lying in state over the weekend.

FUTURISM

• Google Cloud & Accenture launch joint unit to speed enterprise AI adoption (WSJ)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, TNW, Yahoo!}}

  • The Accenture Gemini Enterprise Business Group sends engineers into companies to implement Google's AI tools.

  • OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, and Amazon have all recently built similar forward-deployed engineering units.

  • Google Cloud earned $24.8B last quarter, while Alphabet reportedly holds $811B in purchase commitments.

• China's EV makers pivot to humanoid robots as car growth stalls (CNBC)
  ^{_{More: SCMP}}

  • Xpeng, Xiaomi, and other Chinese electric car companies are moving directly or indirectly into humanoid robotics.

  • Counterpoint Research's Kevin Li said the push aims to reshape 'capital valuation narratives' for these firms.

  • The diversification follows slowing growth and weakening profitability across China's electric vehicle sector.

• Chrome moves to two-week release cycle as AI accelerates security threats (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: PYMNTS}}

  • Chrome 153 launched Tuesday on desktop, iOS, and Android, halving the previous four-week release schedule.

  • Google says faster shipping shrinks the 'N-day' gap between a known vulnerability and its patch.

  • Quicker releases also help Chrome iterate on AI features and fend off rivals like Brave and Comet.

• Explore the essential startup reading database*

  • Learning from the best is how you become the best. We've curated a list of top-notch articles, blogs, and readings that are pivotal for startup founders.

  • And here's the kicker: we've organized it all in a user-friendly Notion database for easy access and tracking. Double win!

  • As aspiring leaders and innovators, this list serves as a bridge to absorbing the knowledge that has propelled others to success.

CONTENT

• Roman Ugarte on building Grok Bot from scratch in seven weeks (Lenny's Podcast)

  • A small isolated team shipped a working internal product in four weeks, then launched publicly three weeks later.

  • The team chose to build from scratch rather than fold the agent into Cursor.

  • Ugarte previously led growth at Cursor, scaling it from 15 people to over 1k.

• Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour on AI, media trust & journalism's future (WSJ)

  • Latour describes the 'Dow Jones stack' as journalism combined with proprietary data, analytics, and convening power.

  • He argues the financial value of trusted information is surging across the media industry.

  • Latour recounts his path from cutting newspaper clippings to leading a premier news institution.

• How OpenAI's models are cracking decades-old unsolved math problems (a16z)

  • a16z's Lisha Li interviews OpenAI mathematicians Mehtaab Sawhney and Mark Sellke about advancing model capabilities.

  • They cite advances in sphere packing and the construction of a non-sofic group.

  • Reasoning traces resemble expert work: choosing promising approaches, backtracking on failure, and combining ideas from the literature.

EXTRAS

• Stoke Space raises $1B Series E to build fully reusable orbital rockets (Reuters)
  ^{_{More: TNW, TechCrunch, Yahoo!}}

  • Point72 Ventures and Spark Capital led the round, joined by Y Combinator and Woven Capital.

  • CEO Andy Lapsa said the money funds production scale, flight frequency, and a second-generation vehicle.

  • Stoke is among a few startups chasing SpaceX, which is developing its fully reusable Starship.

• FBI, NSA & CISA accuse six Chinese firms of systematically distilling U.S. models (Bloomberg)
  ^{_{More: NBC, Investing.com, Yahoo!}}

  • The Tuesday alert names DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun, and Z.AI as culprits.

  • Agencies say the firms mined Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok since 2024, likely with Beijing's awareness.

  • Trump meets Xi Jinping on September 24, as both governments trade accusations over AI trade secrets.

• Trump gave four White House aides cash holiday gifts worth up to $45k (AP)
  ^{_{More: Washington Post, WSJ, ABC}}

  • Natalie Harp, Margo Martin, and Chamberlain Harris each received $45k, while Walt Nauta got $20k.

  • The three aides earn $150k annually and Nauta earns $175k, per White House salary disclosures.

  • An official said the gifts were unrelated to official duties and therefore permissible under ethics standards.

AND MORE

• A hacker stole $340M in crypto, but returned most of the funds.

• Zara owner Inditex posts strong August sales despite summer heatwaves.

• Roko’s Basilisk skips the buzzwords and cuts straight to what moves markets, products, and careers.*

• Renoir paintings are worth a fortune, unless if they’re stolen.

• Poseidon Aerospace lands $60M ahead of first pilotless test flight.

• A consortium led by L Catterton buys majority stake in Hyrox.

• Hackers are stealing Claude subscription tokens and reselling access to unwitting buyers.

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