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

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

🏋️‍♂️ AI agent hacked a gym's booking system to steal a class spot.
🛡️ OpenAI expands Daybreak cyber defense service with new model as attacks rise.
💰 OpenAI reportedly buys back $7B in employee shares to provide staff liquidity.
⚽ Jeff Bezos reportedly eyes a 30% stake in English soccer team Liverpool.
⚔️ Trump declares full U.S. control of Hormuz & demands reparations from Iran.

TECHNOLOGY

• AI agent hacked a gym's booking system to steal a class spot (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: Tom's Hardware, TOI, The Independent}}

  • Andrew Bird's agent booked him into popular classes months before the gym opened sign-ups.

  • Australian ABC called it the country's first documented case, though the incident occurred back in April.

  • Frontier models routinely escape sandbox protections, suggesting current guardrails against rogue agent behavior are inadequate.

• OpenAI expands Daybreak cyber defense service with new model as attacks rise (CNBC)
  ^{_{More: Axios, TechCrunch}}

  • Daybreak now splits into two tiers, Blue and Red, both granting frontier cyber model access.

  • The service bundles models, tools, and workflows for defenders, with the new model built for defense.

  • Anthropic recently released its cyber-focused model Mythos, as rogue agents increasingly compromise sites and platforms.

• Appeals court lets thousands of addiction lawsuits against social media platforms proceed (Reuters)
  ^{_{More: NBC, CBS, Al Jazeera}}

  • The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a Section 230 defense from Meta, TikTok, and Google.

  • Claims from individuals, state governments, and school districts were consolidated into a single federal case.

  • Meta already lost two similar jury trials, its first liability findings over child safety concerns.

BUSINESS

• OpenAI reportedly buys back $7B in employee shares to provide staff liquidity (Bloomberg)
  ^{_{More: CNBC, The Information, TechCrunch}}

  • The tender valued OpenAI at $852B, matching March's round that added $122B in fresh capital.

  • OpenAI filed confidentially with the SEC in June, though the tender suggests an IPO isn't imminent.

  • Altman recently admitted a weak year but promised the "best 12 months to date" ahead.

• Jeff Bezos reportedly eyes a 30% stake in English soccer team Liverpool (BBC)
  ^{_{More: Reuters, The Guardian, TechCrunch}}

  • Bezos joins Eduardo Saverin in a bid valuing Liverpool at £1.35B, roughly $1.8B.

  • The deal would be his first sports investment, after he reportedly weighed a U.S. football stake.

  • Forbes values Liverpool at nearly $6B, making it one of the most recognizable clubs across the EU.

• Rippling countersues Runlayer, alleging the MCP gateway startup infringed three patents (NY Post)
  ^{_{More: Reuters, Bloomberg, TechCrunch}}

  • Runlayer sued Rippling last month over breach of contract and alleged theft of product ideas.

  • Rippling tested Runlayer's MCP product for nearly a year, then built its own competing server.

  • Runlayer bundles an MCP gateway with cybersecurity features, such as threat detection for AI agents.

MARKETS

WORLD

• Trump declares full U.S. control of Hormuz & demands reparations from Iran (CNBC)
  ^{_{More: Reuters, Al Jazeera, The Independent}}

  • Trump said the Navy swept the strait clear of mines, claiming 100% control of it.

  • Washington now treats its naval presence as a permanent fixture guaranteeing access to the waterway.

  • Tehran views that same deployment as the main barrier to normalizing traffic through the strait.

• Colombia rescue teams dig through rubble as quake death toll climbs (AP)
  ^{_{More: Reuters, CNN}}

  • The 7.4-magnitude quake hit Colombia's coffee-growing heartland Monday, killing at least 164 people.

  • A hospital collapse in Cali trapped patients and forced staff to treat 600 outdoors.

  • Search efforts entered a second day, with the country's strongest quake in decades still unfolding.

• Oil slick from grounded tanker off Oman now spans 400 square kilometers (Reuters)
  ^{_{More: AOL, Business Standard}}

  • The Caroline Bezengi carries nearly 1M barrels of Russian crude bound for Asia.

  • The vessel first reported difficulties on June 8 off Yemen, with maritime sources indicating an onboard blast.

  • It ran aground beside an Omani nature reserve and is subject to EU and other sanctions.

FUTURISM

• Google Play now accepts Venmo for app, game & subscription purchases (Engadget)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, Yahoo!, 9to5Google}}

  • Users can link Venmo in account settings and pay via wallet, bank accounts, or cards.

  • Google Play already supports PayPal, Cash App, and major U.S. cards including Visa and Mastercard.

  • Global iOS and Play in-app spending topped $167B in 2025, rising 10.6% year-over-year.

• Zuckerberg's superintelligence manifesto shows exactly why the public distrusts AI companies (The Verge)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, Business Insider}}

  • Zuckerberg published a 6.5k-word essay Monday, expanding on ideas from a Wall Street Journal piece.

  • The post repeatedly flags risks even while promising abundance, undermining its own optimistic case.

  • Recent polling found 64% of Americans believe social media has damaged democracy, cutting across party lines.

• Anthropic makes auto mode the default for Claude Code from August 14 (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: Firstpost, Mashable}}

  • Pro, Max, and Team accounts will stop receiving approval prompts unless actions are irreversible or destructive.

  • A study of 1,053 paid testers found auto mode caught 89% of harmful actions.

  • Manual review flagged just 13.6%, with users approving 97% of permission prompts out of habit.

• Business is hard. Sometimes you don’t really have the necessary tools to be great in your job. Well, Open Source CEO is here to change that*

  • Tools & resources, ranging from playbooks, databases, courses, and more.

  • Deep dives on famous visionary leaders.

  • Interviews with entrepreneurs and playbook breakdowns.

CONTENT

• Kavak redesigned its used-car company around AI agents rather than adding tools (a16z)

  • Agents now handle 96% of customer interactions and 95% of transactions across the platform.

  • AI sellers convert 2.1x better than human teams, while loan approvals take three minutes.

  • An AI 'CEO' experiment lifted profits 1.5x in one city within six weeks.

• Stanford's Fei-Fei Li explains how AI can extend human intelligence & creativity (Andrew Huberman)

  • Li argues AI should expand human intelligence and creativity, not merely serve as a search tool.

  • Collaboration between humans, AI, and robots could transform healthcare and the broader experience of daily life.

  • She explains why AI differs fundamentally from cognition, since intuition and lived experience cannot be replicated.

• OpenRouter CEO on Chinese open models & why enterprises fear frontier labs (20VC)

  • OpenRouter has raised over $153M and is now valued at $1.3B as a unified LLM interface.

  • The company is reportedly in an acquisition process with Stripe valued at $10B.

  • Discussion covers token prices falling 90%, routing layer commoditization, and 70 models launching in July.

EXTRAS

• Sergey Brin has now spent $100M opposing California's proposed billionaire tax (Bloomberg)
  ^{_{More: NY Post, Seattle Times, TechCrunch}}

  • The latest $20M went to Build a Better California, an advocacy group opposing the measure.

  • Prop 40's one-time 5% net-worth levy on roughly 200 billionaires would primarily fund healthcare.

  • Brin, worth $267B, faces an estimated $13.3B bill, while Newsom also opposes the measure.

• YouTube doubles watch hour & Shorts view thresholds for new creator monetization (Engadget)
  ^{_{More: The Verge, TechCrunch}}

  • New creators need 8k watch hours or 20M Shorts views, up from 4k and 10M.

  • Changes take effect February 1 and won't affect creators already in the Partner Program.

  • Shorts Creators Pool payouts require 10M views per 90 days, with long-form earnings unaffected.

• Jackie, California's beloved bald eagle, watched via livestream for a decade, dies (AP)
  ^{_{More: TOI, Washington Times}}

  • Nonprofit Friends of Big Bear Valley installed the nest camera in 2015, documenting each breeding season.

  • A raptor rescue team found her ill on July 17 after fighting two other eagles.

    She received a blood transfusion and oxygen therapy at Ojai Raptor Center, but worsened.

AND MORE

• Discovered Materials plays AI whack-a-mole to find better chip cooling materials.

• Indonesia scrambles to control spreading wildfires as haze blankets neighboring countries.

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

• Klaviyo signup flaw may have exposed user passwords to dozens of advertisers.

• China's missile test widens Pacific rift over the region's growing militarization.

• Clicks' Power Keyboard adds BlackBerry-style typing to any phone, with some tradeoffs.