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

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

📱 Qualcomm unveils two new smartphone chips focused heavily on AI.
🤖 OpenAI unveils GPT-6 Sol & Luna, promising lower costs & fewer errors.
🏥 Trump administration cancels roughly 760k Obamacare over alleged fraud.
📈 Wall Street stays near record highs as Brent oil dips below.
🤝 Trump calls Iran talks "very good" after threatening total annihilation.

TECHNOLOGY

• Qualcomm unveils two new smartphone chips focused heavily on AI (CNBC)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, PCMag, Yahoo!}}

  • Qualcomm unveiled two new Snapdragon 8 Elite chips at its annual Summit, emphasizing AI-driven personalization and agent features.

  • The chips' new sensing hub runs small AI models locally, enabling personalized scribes and voice-in, voice-out agents.

  • The Extreme version can run a 30B-parameter model locally, surpassing Apple's 20B mixture-of-experts model from June.

• OpenAI unveils GPT-6 Sol & Luna, promising lower costs & fewer errors (MacRumors)
  ^{_{More: OpenAI, TechCrunch, TOI}}

  • OpenAI expanded its GPT-6 lineup with updated Sol and Luna models, extending the efficiency of GPT-6 Astra.

  • Sol targets complex tasks like coding, while Luna handles high-volume clerical work, including summarizing and extracting information.

  • OpenAI cut GPT-6 API prices in half via caching gains, while boosting factual accuracy and lowering coding errors.

• ShinyHunters claims it breached the FBI, stealing agents' & applicants' data (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: Mashable, CNN, Reuters}}

  • ShinyHunters claims it stole sensitive data on nearly all FBI agents and job applicants from a breached server.

  • The hackers reportedly breached an Oracle PeopleSoft server, then an Amazon-hosted cloud storage system containing agents' and applicants' data.

  • ShinyHunters says the breach isn't financially motivated and demands that the FBI delete a report making false claims about them.

BUSINESS

• Trump administration cancels roughly 760k Obamacare enrollments over alleged fraud (CNBC)
  ^{_{More: WSJ, NPR, Time}}

  • CMS canceled roughly 315k ACA marketplace enrollments, covering about 760k people, citing rampant fraud and improper enrollments.

  • The enforcement action also verifies about 419k people to confirm legal U.S. residency and income eligibility.

  • Vice President JD Vance's task force led the cancellations, estimating savings of about $2.2B in taxpayer subsidies.

• Wall Street stays near record highs as Brent oil dips below $100 (AP)
  ^{_{More: LA Times, Seattle Times, Yahoo!}}

  • The S&P 500 stayed nearly flat, the Dow fell 185 points, and the Nasdaq notched a fresh record.

  • Brent crude briefly dipped below $98 Tuesday morning before settling at $99.25, down 1.1% for the day.

  • Oil stays well above its pre-war $72 level but below last week's near-$110 peak, amid uncertainty over the war in Iran.

• Snorkel AI valued at $3.5B amid demand for complex AI training data (Reuters)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, Yahoo!}}

  • Snorkel AI's CEO said the annualized revenue run rate climbed to about $350M, up from $20M a year earlier.

  • Frontier AI labs increasingly need complex training data and simulated environments to build and evaluate advanced new models.

  • Snorkel AI expects to reach profitability this year, following its shift from selling software to finished datasets.

MARKETS

WORLD

• Trump calls Iran talks "very good" after threatening total annihilation (Bloomberg)
  ^{_{More: The Guardian, PBS}}

  • Trump told the UN General Assembly he must decide between a deal with Iran or its annihilation.

  • He questioned whether to let Iran rebuild peacefully or annihilate the regime, giving it no chance to recover.

  • The remarks recalled Khrushchev's infamous 1960 UN outburst, but felt more alarming given the assembly's peacekeeping purpose.

• China calls Taiwan & human rights 'red lines' ahead of Xi-Trump summit (Firstpost)
  ^{_{More: Reuters, Japan Times}}

  • China's ambassador called Taiwan and human rights 'red lines' that cannot be crossed, ahead of the Xi-Trump summit.

  • Presidents Xi and Trump are set to meet in Washington this week to help stabilize strained bilateral relations.

  • China has repeatedly urged the U.S. to end arms sales to Taiwan, including a stalled $14B package.

• Priests & nuns march to Vatican demanding an end to Gaza 'genocide' (AP)
  ^{_{More: Washington Post, India Today}}

  • About 150 priests, friars, a bishop, and nuns marched to the Vatican, praying to end Gaza's 'genocide.'

  • Protesters carried a banner naming 300 children killed in Israel's war in Gaza and southern Lebanon.

  • The "Priests Against Genocide" network, formed in 2025, now includes more than 2.5k priests and bishops worldwide.

FUTURISM

• AstroForge hands over control of its next spacecraft to AI (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: Tech Buzz, Yahoo!}}

  • AstroForge built "Solo," an in-house transformer-based AI model, to autonomously control its next spacecraft.

  • The company plans to fly its first autonomous, NASA-backed spacecraft in 2027 on Stoke Space's debut rocket.

  • Past missions suffered communication failures, pushing AstroForge toward onboard intelligence capable of solving its own problems.

• Apple may develop a new fitness tracker to rival Whoop, report says (The Verge)
  ^{_{More: MacRumors, 9to5Mac, TechCrunch}}

  • Apple is investigating a screen-less fitness tracker to rival Whoop, the fitness firm valued at $10B.

  • Bloomberg reports Apple has built prototypes of a fabric-based sensor tracker, with release unlikely before 2028.

  • Unlike the multi-purpose Apple Watch, the new tracker's form factor closely resembles Whoop's simple, screen-less bands.

• a16z challenges Silicon Valley's drop-out culture by launching a new school (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: NY Post, CBS, Yahoo!}}

  • Andreessen Horowitz is launching The Horowitz Andreessen Academy, a tuition-free, one-year program for aspiring founders skipping college.

  • The unaccredited school will accept about 50 high school graduates chosen based on proof of prior work.

  • By 2028, the school plans a two-year, elite-priced program offering mentorship from NVIDIA, OpenAI, and eight other partners.

• 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

• Ryan Levesque built $35M in net worth, then traded it for a farm (Moneywise)

  • Ryan Levesque, founder of the $100M-revenue Ask Method Company, twice saw major acquisition deals collapse unexpectedly.

  • A $42.5M deal fell to $17M at the last minute; a $70M offer vanished amid Russia's Ukraine invasion.

  • Levesque now holds $30M-$35M in net worth, running a 150-acre Vermont farm that grows most of his food.

• Ryan Greenblatt discusses AI misalignment & the risk of losing control (Sam Harris)

  • Sam Harris speaks with Redwood Research's Ryan Greenblatt about AI misalignment and losing control of powerful systems.

  • They discuss the Hugging Face hacking incident, reward hacking, alignment faking, and risks of AI reasoning in 'neuralese.'

  • Greenblatt, lead author of the AI control agenda, also outlines how a potential AI takeover might unfold.

• Gabe Stengel explores what happens as AI moves beyond simple investor research (Invest Like The Best)

  • Rogo co-founder Gabe Stengel joins Invest Like the Best to discuss AI's expanding role in financial institutions.

  • Stengel explains how AI is moving beyond research to analyzing deals, building presentations, and coordinating transactions.

  • Stengel also discusses Rogo's use of 10k AI agents and which human skills still matter in finance.

EXTRAS

• Meta admits Muse's resemblance to OpenClaw is no coincidence after all (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: TNW}}

  • Meta's Nat Friedman said Muse was heavily inspired by OpenClaw, though built entirely from scratch.

  • Friedman said Meta's team loved OpenClaw and wanted Muse to scale similarly to billions of users.

  • The comments followed a viral claim from developer Ansh Nanda that Muse is essentially "OpenClaw for normies."

• Discord's age verification era arrives despite backlash from the community (Engadget)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, Tech Times}}

  • Discord begins mandatory age verification on Wednesday, following February's backlash and a breach that exposed 70k users' ID photos.

  • Discord's CTO acknowledged skepticism around biometric checks but cited expanding laws, including recent rollouts in Brazil and Texas.

  • More than 90% of users skip manual checks, as machine learning analyzes account tenure and activity patterns instead.

• Anthropic launches Opus 5.5, offering lower prices & Fable-level performance (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: Anthropic, Mashable, Yahoo!}}

  • Anthropic's Opus 5.5 sets a new state-of-the-art in coding and knowledge work, outperforming the larger Fable model.

  • The model cuts output pricing to $20 per million tokens, down from $25, and runs faster.

  • Opus 5.5 matches Mythos in biology and cybersecurity capability, so it's subject to the same Fable-level safeguards.

AND MORE

• Supreme Court to review Trump-backed Missouri congressional map for a third time.

• Waymo's newest expansion strategy targets teenagers as its next customer base.

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

• TikTok's U.S. arm joins Lantern, a cross-platform initiative protecting children's online safety.

• As climate disasters grow, funding for disaster-preparedness programs is being cut.

• Stolen passwords are leaving America's water providers increasingly vulnerable to hackers.

• Test yourself on whether you can spot an AI-powered scam.