The Kimi K3 distillation claims levelled by the White House have run into a wall of scepticism from AI researchers, even as a separate and arguably more concrete allegation, that Moonshot AI obtained banned Nvidia chips, draws sharper scrutiny. Michael Kratsios, science advisor to the White House, accused Moonshot AI, the Chinese company behind Kimi K3, of building its model by copying Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 through large-scale distillation, while using Nvidia Grace Blackwell chips banned from export to China. ‘Large-scale, covert industrial distillation aimed at stealing proprietary U.S. technology and undermining American research is unacceptable,’ Kratsios wrote. Treasury Secretary…
Author: Funke Adeyemi
Funke Adeyemi
Funke Adeyemi spent a decade in corporate banking and fintech before moving to business journalism. She started in trade finance at a major UK bank, moved to a payments company scaling into African markets, and spent her last role leading partnerships at a cross-border remittance platform. She writes about business strategy, fintech, digital banking, and the corporate news that moves markets. She is interested in how companies actually make money rather than how they describe making money in investor presentations. Funke lives in South London. She reads earnings calls the way other people listen to podcasts, and finds them about as reliable.
The ServiceNow newsroom confirmed the ServiceNow BusinessNext investment on 23 July 2026: a $40 million Series C stake in the Noida-based banking software specialist, valuing BusinessNext at $700 million and giving ServiceNow a roughly 5% holding. For ServiceNow, the deal is less about the equity and more about distribution. BusinessNext founder and chief executive Nishant Singh said the company chose a strategic backer over financial investors specifically to access ServiceNow’s global sales infrastructure in markets where BusinessNext has a limited footprint. ‘Think of it as a strategic partnership, which is cemented with funding,’ Singh said. The ServiceNow BusinessNext Investment Case…
The IBM mainframe business decline at the heart of Big Blue’s second-quarter earnings wiped out roughly $67 billion in stock market value in a single session, according to The Wall Street Journal, triggering one of the most bruising days in the company’s 115-year history. The quarter’s headline numbers were, on their own terms, respectable. IBM posted $17.2 billion in revenue, $9,977 million in GAAP gross profit, and a GAAP gross margin of 58.8%, up 1.1 points year on year, according to Arvind Krishna’s letter to IBM investors. Net earnings came in at $2.2 billion. None of that was the problem.…
The PRIMA retinal implant has received a CE mark from European regulators, clearing the path for Science Corporation to begin commercial sales of a device that restores functional central vision in patients blinded by age-related macular degeneration (AMD). The authorisation, issued by the notified body DEKRA under the EU Medical Device Regulation, covers commercial availability across 30 European countries.Max Hodak, Science Corporation’s founder and CEO, offered a particular piece of evidence for what the technology can do. ‘One of our patients in France finished a 300-page novel a little while ago, and sent us the book,’ he said. ‘We have…
A new survey of nearly a thousand organisations has put the ransomware re-extortion risk in stark relief: pay a criminal gang once, and the odds of a second demand are disturbingly high. Cybersecurity company Proofpoint surveyed 953 full-time security professionals across 20 industries and 12 countries between March and April 2026, and found that more than one-third of organisations that paid a ransom were subsequently hit with a second extortion demand. The headline figure is striking enough. The context behind it is worse. More than half (54%) of all organisations affected by ransomware paid up, despite years of law enforcement…
Glow endpoint security has stepped out of stealth with $180 million in funding and a $1.2 billion valuation, making it one of the handful of cybersecurity startups to achieve unicorn status before disclosing a single revenue figure. The Palo Alto company closed an all-equity Series A backed by Sequoia Capital, Cyberstarts, Greenoaks, and Redpoint Ventures, with Index Ventures, Swish Ventures, Lux Capital, Operator Collective, and Holly Ventures also participating. One Israeli financial outlet, Calcalist Tech, described the raise as a $100 million Series B that brought cumulative funding to $180 million across three earlier rounds; Glow’s own press release characterises…
The Synthesia Roleplay Sessions launch marks a calculated pivot for a British startup that has spent years selling enterprises on the idea that AI avatars could replace expensive video production. Now it is betting that what companies actually want is proof their training worked. On Wednesday, Synthesia, founded in 2017 by CEO Victor Riparbelli and co-founders Steffen Tjerrild, Professor Matt Niessner, and Professor Lourdes Agapito, unveiled Roleplay Sessions: an interactive product in which employees practise high-stakes conversations with an AI avatar that responds, pushes back, and scores performance against a rubric. Target use cases include sales pitches, performance reviews, and…
The rumour of an Anthropic Physical Intelligence acquisition spread across AI Twitter last weekend faster than either company could contain it, and for good reason: even after Physical Intelligence’s chief executive pushed back, reporting from The Information confirmed the two companies had genuinely held acquisition talks this spring. The denial itself became part of the story. According to The Information, CEO Karol Hausman told employees via Slack that the reports were untrue, accompanying the message with a gif of a character from The Office shaking her head no. Lachy Groom, Physical Intelligence’s co-founder, did not respond to a request for…
The Apple Upgrade program, a lease-to-own scheme for iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Apple Watches powered by buy-now-pay-later financer Klarna, is set to launch on 28 July, according to a Bloomberg report published Tuesday, giving consumers a way to spread hardware costs across multiple years at a moment when Apple has already begun raising prices. The timing is deliberate. Apple has been contending with an industry-wide shortage of memory chips, a supply crunch that manufacturers have taken to calling “RAMageddon,” driven largely by AI companies consuming memory at a pace that has squeezed supply for consumer electronics. Lease payments, spread across…
The Light Flip phone price of $299 is, by the company’s own admission, the whole argument. For a decade, Light has sold the idea of a simpler life through simpler hardware. Pricing has always been the thing that almost killed that pitch. Kaiwei Tang co-created the original Motorola Razr more than 20 years ago. He has spent the past 10 years building Light, the startup behind the minimalist Light Phone series. His new device is a flip phone, which he acknowledges surprised even him. ‘We’ve been interviewing young people that use flip phones for a few years,’ Tang told TechCrunch.…
