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

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

🕵️ Speculation swirls over who built Ox Alpha, the stealth model on OpenRouter.
🤖 OpenAI urges California to expand safeguards in its landmark AI safety law.
🍎 Apple reportedly cuts over 200 roles across Vision Pro & Siri teams.
💻 NVIDIA takes a minority stake in data center infrastructure developer Cloverleaf.
⚠️ Iran warns that supporting new U.S. sanctions would constitute an act of war.

TECHNOLOGY

• Speculation swirls over who built Ox Alpha, the stealth model on OpenRouter (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: Business Insider, Yahoo!, Straits Times}}

  • The free model arrived Thursday, with an anonymous third-party provider developing and operating it during preview.

  • OpenRouter pitched it for coding and agentic work, and Stripe's Patrick Collison called it "very impressive."

  • Theories range from Z.ai's Chinese GLM models to an unreleased version of Microsoft's MAI.

• OpenAI urges California to expand safeguards in its landmark AI safety law (Engadget)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, Politico, Mashable}}

  • The company wants SB 53 amended to require monitoring of frontier models during training and evaluation.

  • It also seeks stronger cybersecurity protections, citing a model that escaped testing and was used to hack Hugging Face.

  • The push marks a reversal, since OpenAI opposed SB 53's transparency and whistleblower requirements.

• Flock CEO urges privacy-safety 'compromise' as surveillance backlash builds across parties (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: FOX, Yahoo!, CryptoRank}}

  • Garrett Langley told Fox News that the country must balance safety and privacy rather than prioritize either alone.

  • The Washington Post found 46 cases of officers allegedly misusing Flock tools, including to stalk partners.

  • Langley apologized to one victim but argued Flock exposed police abuse rather than creating it.

BUSINESS

• Apple reportedly cuts over 200 roles across Vision Pro & Siri teams (Bloomberg)
  ^{_{More: Engadget, PCMag, TechCrunch}}

  • Roughly 100 came from Vision Pro, with the rest hitting Siri and Intelligent Systems Experience.

  • Apple confirmed the cuts, saying it will create new roles while affecting only a limited number of employees.

  • Sources say the reshuffle targets newer AI efforts as memory shortages raise flagship production costs.

• NVIDIA takes minority stake in data center infrastructure developer Cloverleaf (Reuters)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, WSJ, Yahoo!}}

  • Founded in 2024, Cloverleaf raised $300M and connects utilities to data centers needing power infrastructure.

  • Terms went undisclosed, though the Wall Street Journal expects the investment to reach several hundred million dollars.

  • Days earlier, NVIDIA committed $1.5B to SB Energy, an OpenAI-linked data center project in Ohio.

• California may demand channel divestitures before approving Paramount-WB merger (WSJ)
  ^{_{More: Reuters, AOL, Investing.com}}

  • Attorney General Rob Bonta reportedly wants Paramount to keep its movie studio separate from Warner Bros.

  • Both sides meet Monday to explore settling the antitrust suit that California and 11 states filed.

  • CEO David Ellison promises 30 films yearly from the $110B deal, a pledge states call unenforceable.

MARKETS

WORLD

• Iran warns supporting new U.S. sanctions would constitute an act of war (Politico)
  ^{_{More: AP, ABC}}

  • Iran's new security council head issued the warning Sunday as its president defended a U.S. memorandum.

  • Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is expected to announce unprecedented economic measures against Tehran on Monday.

  • Pakistan's army chief visits Iran on Monday as an Iranian authority restricts dozens of vessels near the Strait of Hormuz.

• Dutch regulator fines Uber nearly $1B over automated driver account deactivations (AP)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, Yahoo!}}

  • The €825M penalty is the second largest ever issued under the EU's GDPR, Reuters reports.

  • Regulators found some drivers were permanently cut off without human review, calling the infringements serious.

  • Uber disputes that, says suspensions are brief and appealable, and will contest the 'disproportionate' fine.

• Alibaba launches record $10.2B Hong Kong share sale to fund AI (SCMP)
  ^{_{More: Reuters, Bloomberg}}

  • The HK$80B placement marks the largest primary follow-on offering ever by a Hong Kong-listed company.

  • All net proceeds go toward 'full stack' AI capabilities spanning chips, infrastructure and model development.

  • Alibaba is selling 710M shares at HK$112.70, a 3.6% discount to its last close.

FUTURISM

• Waymo reveals custom 5nm robotaxi chip & names its seven hardware suppliers (The Verge)
  ^{_{More: Bloomberg, TNW, TechCrunch}}

  • A Thursday blog post detailed the onboard computer architecture, marking a rare hardware disclosure from a secretive company.

  • The custom ASIC processes raw lidar, radar, and camera data before the driving system's inference engine sees it.

  • NVIDIA and AMD remain suppliers, and the quoted 1k TOPS figure covers only front-end processing.

• Harvard's $699 startup bootcamp uses AI avatars to critique student pitches (NY Times)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, CryptoRank}}

  • HeyGen built the avatars for the eight-week HBS Foundry program, which also includes weekly live sessions.

  • The digital instructors handle feedback during practice pitches and simulated board meetings rather than the humans.

  • Jeff Bussgang called his copy 'creepy' but said students enjoy it, matching Foundry participants' reactions.

• Training AI on copyrighted books sits in a legal gray zone (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: CryptoRank, Tech Buzz}}

  • Judge William Alsup ruled Anthropic's training itself was lawful, penalizing the company for pirating books instead.

  • He likened an LLM ingesting text to a writer studying literature rather than copying it.

  • Attorney Cathy Gellis reads the outcome as favorable to AI firms, since copyright hinges on copying.

• Stay ahead of AI at work*

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

  • Get one sharp deep dive, fast Quick Hits, and a witty pro tip, plus links that actually matter.

  • Join 100k+ readers who start decisions here each morning.

CONTENT

• Jen Abel returns to map the full 15-step enterprise sales cycle (Lenny's Podcast)

  • Abel argues that the standard five-stage CRM pipeline forecasts revenue rather than guiding an actual sales process.

  • Her 'pincer model' lands first meetings by targeting executives and their direct reports simultaneously.

  • Intro calls extract intelligence pre-demo, while short pilots lead into pricing and procurement negotiations.

• Jerry Murdock on whether Chinese open-source AI models should worry investors (20VC)

  • Insight Partners' co-founder flags credit market warning signs and Japan's $1T Treasury holdings as risks.

  • A credit dislocation could wipe out roughly half the neocloud providers, Murdock argues.

  • He weighs open-source token traffic against Frontier Labs' dollar traffic, plus declining AI-era margins.

• Astrocade CEO Amir Sadeghian argues taste is the new programming language (This Week in Startups)

  • Astrocade turns written descriptions into playable games in minutes, published to a TikTok-style feed.

  • Sadeghian says frontier models regress to the mean, so human creativity still drives originality.

  • A human-in-the-loop workflow reshapes generic prompts into games worth playing and sharing.

EXTRAS

• Shein targets $26.8B valuation in Hong Kong debut on September 1 (BBC)
  ^{_{More: WSJ, Reuters, Financial Times}}

  • The retailer will offer nearly 280M shares priced between HK$47.60 and HK$49.50, raising up to $1.77B.

  • That valuation sits far below its $100B peak in 2022, reflecting slower growth and rising costs.

  • Regulatory scrutiny derailed earlier attempts to list in the U.S. and London since 2023.

• KPMG Australia cuts 5% of workforce as scandal & weak demand bite (Firstpost)
  ^{_{More: Reuters, Business Times}}

  • The cuts hit 27 partners and roughly 360 employees, mostly in consulting and business services.

  • CEO John Sams, appointed last month, acknowledged failings and the work needed to rebuild trust.

  • March whistleblower claims alleged staff used inside information to win audits, prompting government breakup talk.

• Father of USS Abraham Lincoln sailor taken into U.S. immigration detention (Reuters)
  ^{_{More: NBC, The Hill, The Guardian}}

  • Border Patrol arrested Luis Manuel Aviles Roa during a vehicle stop in Key West, Florida.

  • His son, a U.S. Navy sailor deployed aboard USS Abraham Lincoln, said detention was heartbreaking.

  • DHS said Roa entered illegally, while his family said his green card application remained pending.

AND MORE

• Eli Lilly debuts Foundayo, an oral weight-loss pill, across the UK.

• Could the DOJ's a16z investigation spook other venture capital firms?

• Athyna: Hire vetted LATAM engineers and save up to 70% salary costs.*

• Frontier AI labs still won't say how they would contain rogue models.

• One Indian food safety officer is shaking up Mumbai through viral raids.

• Pixel 11 Pro XL review: sharper cameras can't mask an iterative upgrade.

• Big pharma courts China's weight-loss market through subway ads & stealth marketing.