Google updates Quick Share to work with Apple's AirDrop to make file transfers between iPhones and Android devices easier, starting with the Pixel 10 family (The Keyword)
AI video startup Luma AI raised a $900M Series C led by Humain, sources say at a ~$4B valuation, and partners with Humain on a 2GW AI cluster in Saudi Arabia (Vaibhavi Khanwalkar/The Economic Times)
Perplexity plans to roll out a free agentic shopping product for US users next week in partnership with PayPal (Ashley Capoot/CNBC)
Apono, which helps enterprises manage cloud permissions by eliminating standing privileges, raised a $34M Series B, bringing its total funding to $54M+ (Duncan Riley/SiliconANGLE)
Snapchat launches Topic Chats, which enables public conversations on subjects like F1, and plans to use AI and other safety tech to moderate the chats (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)
Ford and Amazon partner to let people purchase certified pre-owned Ford vehicles via Amazon Autos, initially available in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Dallas (Andrew J. Hawkins/The Verge)
Celero, which is developing a chip to enable long-distance connections between AI data centers, raised $140M, including a $100M Series B led by CapitalG (Stephen Nellis/Reuters)
BNPL use in the US has grown to 91.5M users, with 25% financing groceries, as default rates accelerate and most loans aren't reported, creating "phantom debt" (Connie Loizos/TechCrunch)
Forecasters at the US National Hurricane Center are increasingly leaning on Google's new DeepMind prediction model, though questions about its methods remain (Eric Holthaus/The Guardian)
Tokyo-based Sakana AI becomes Japan's most valuable unicorn at a ~$2.6B valuation, following a ~$130M raise from Mitsubishi UFJ Financial and US VC firms (Nikkei Asia)
A look at Flighty, a flight-tracking app that often beats airline updates; downloads went up 3x when the FAA cut air traffic during the US government shutdown (Ben Cohen/Wall Street Journal)
A cat's killing by a Waymo robotaxi sparked outrage in San Francisco, as some questioned why deaths caused by human drivers don't get the same level of concern (Heather Knight/New York Times)
Some experts question Anthropic's claims of cyberattack breakthroughs using its tools, noting that white-hat hackers report modest gains from AI-aided hacking (Dan Goodin/Ars Technica)
The current AI strategies of China and the US are complementary, as unlike the US, China isn't "AGI-pilled" yet, focusing on embodied AI and open source models (Dean W. Ball/Hyperdimensional)
Apple updates App Review Guidelines to require apps to disclose and obtain users' permission before sharing personal data with third-party AI providers (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)