AI Funding & Business: recent coverage

Funding rounds, acquisitions, and market moves across the AI industry.

• Premium Newsletter: The Hater's Guide To SoftBank, the story of Masayoshi Son, the world's best-funded gambler, his many terrible bets, and how investbluesky · Jul 6, 2026
• State of Brand newsletter: bluesky · Jul 6, 2026
• Station F ramps up as a launchpad for Europe’s hottest AI startupsrss · Jul 6, 2026
• Why OpenAI and Anthropic may struggle to float ft.trib.al/tUDuhRQbluesky · Jul 6, 2026
• Masayoshi Son's bet on OpenAI is 4 times larger than the $16bn he lost on WeWork. To make matters worse, he's making bet after bet on the greater AI ibluesky · Jul 6, 2026
• Microsoft To Lay Off 4,800 Workers In Latest Wave Of AI-Led Job Cuts - Microsoft announced the cuts on Monday following a rough stretch, with its shares falling nearly 23 per cent in the first six months of 2026, their worst first-half performance since 2022reddit · Jul 6, 2026
• 'Now the Guardian can reveal that OpenAI does not appear to have visited one of Stargate UK’s key sites – and that £20bn of the “potential” £30bn in ibluesky · Jul 6, 2026
• Japan is aiming to develop its own AI model and deploy 10 million robots by 2040 through a consortium called Noetra, which includes SoftBank, Sony, Honda, NEC, and other companiesreddit · Jul 6, 2026
• Comparing OpenAI to WeWork undersells the danger it poses to SoftBank. An OpenAI IPO will not be sufficient - SoftBank will need a margin loan on its bluesky · Jul 6, 2026
• The Guardian is reporting neither OpenAI nor its partner NScale visited Cobalt Park, a key Stargate UK site. Only Nvidia did months later.bluesky · Jul 5, 2026
• ".. The Silicon Data LLM Token Expenditure Index, which tracks what users pay for AI tokens, is down almost 20% from the high in May .. the cleanest rbluesky · Jul 3, 2026
• OpenAI Offering 5% Equity to US Government - Trump Admin Extorting Big Techbluesky · Jul 6, 2026
• OpenAI's Stargate UK was completely fakebluesky · Jul 5, 2026
• Anthropic is now after Pharmareddit · Jul 2, 2026
• AI Soaks Up 70%+ of Q2 2026 Venture Capital — $510B in H1, More Than All of 2025 Combinedreddit · Jul 6, 2026
• Stargate UK sollte OpenAI & Co. in die britische Wirtschaft bringen. Doch am Großteil des Projekts wurde nie wirklich gearbeitet. #Künstliche Intelligbluesky · Jul 5, 2026
• Microsoft joins AI-driven tech layoff wave with 4,800 job cutshackernews · Jul 6, 2026
• OpenAI's apparent failure to visit key site raises questions over UK investmenthackernews · Jul 6, 2026
• What is Mistral AI? Everything to know about the OpenAI competitorrss · Jul 4, 2026
• SemiAnalysis expects Meta to sign compute deal with Anthropic worth $10Breddit · Jul 4, 2026
• did you know that claude is owned by anthropic? did you know that they recently signed a deal to use all computing capacity at colossus 1, a huge databluesky · Jul 3, 2026
• China's Biren seeks US$900M to fund GPU push and challenge Nvidia amid AI boomhackernews · Jul 6, 2026
• What is Mistral AI? Everything to know about the OpenAI competitorbluesky · Jul 5, 2026
• Venice AI becomes a unicorn with its privacy-first AI platform takes offhackernews · Jul 6, 2026
• Microsoft, AWS and Anthropic are spending billions – and not on better modelshackernews · Jul 6, 2026
• South Korea's SK Hynix launches $28B US listing to ride global AI wavehackernews · Jul 6, 2026
• Nvidia supplier Hon Hai’s sales beat on continued AI demandreddit · Jul 6, 2026
• US and Chinese companies train almost all of the world’s most-used AI modelsreddit · Jul 4, 2026
• Vibe-coding platform Base44 launches own model as AI startups seek defensibilityhackernews · Jul 5, 2026
• Meet Mistral AI: The French Competitor to OpenAIbluesky · Jul 5, 2026
• Google DeepMind and A24 announce first-of-its-kind research partnershiprss · Jul 3, 2026
• This week in AI: GPT-5.6, Gemini 3.5 Flash, Claude Science, and a Qwen price war — inference cost is collapsing across every tier at oncereddit · Jul 4, 2026
• The AI Big Crunch Is Startinghackernews · Jul 6, 2026
• 💸 The Financial Times reported OpenAI is discussing giving the US gov't a 5% equity stake as part of a public benefit proposal.bluesky · Jul 3, 2026
• New Microsoft 365 pricing live, some products up by 42% due to AIhackernews · Jul 5, 2026
• US and Chinese companies train almost all of the world’s most-used AI modelsreddit · Jul 4, 2026
• Why OpenAI and Anthropic may struggle to floathackernews · Jul 6, 2026
• Reminder that The Guardian has a partnership with OpenAIbluesky · Jul 4, 2026
• US and Chinese companies train almost all of the most-used AI modelshackernews · Jul 5, 2026
• US and Chinese companies train almost all of the most-used AI modelshackernews · Jul 4, 2026