John Ternus kicked off Apple's Wednesday product event with a standing ovation, marking his debut as CEO after succeeding Tim Cook. Ternus, a two-decade Apple veteran who worked under both Steve Jobs and Cook, takes over as Cook shifts to executive chairman of the board. The event served as his first public moment steering the company's product direction.
Senators Ron Wyden and Sheldon Whitehouse, joined by Republican Rep. Pat Harrigan, sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick asking that BellTroX, CyberRoot, and Sunkissed Organic Farms (formerly Appin) be added to the department's entity list. They allege these Indian firms have spent over a decade hacking Americans and using foreign courts to suppress reporting on their activities. The Commerce Department has not indicated whether it will act on the request.
As generative AI adoption among small businesses surges—58% now use it, up from 23% in 2023—industry leaders including Michele Jawando of Omidyar Network say access to AI tools is no longer a differentiator. Speaking at a tech discussion, Jawando, Allison Scott of Kapor Foundation, and Katy Knight of Siegel Family Endowment argued that founders must focus on owning proprietary data and intellectual property built through AI rather than simply consuming the technology.
Instacart has rolled out Clementine, a built-in AI assistant now live across North America on its Marketplace app that helps users plan meals and shop within budget. It can suggest recipes based on natural-language requests, check ingredient availability at a chosen store, filter for dietary preferences, restock pantry staples from past orders, and convert handwritten grocery lists into cart-ready items.
Kepler Computing, a seven-year-old San Jose startup, has emerged from stealth mode claiming a novel 3D-stacking method and proprietary material can boost memory chip density without relying on costly EUV lithography. The approach applies to both high-bandwidth memory used in AI systems and SRAM cache found in CPUs and GPUs, and can reportedly be built using existing fabrication plants rather than requiring new facilities.
Cymphony, a New York- and Tel Aviv-based startup, raised a $25 million Series A co-led by Sequoia Capital and SMBC Fin Atlas Beyond Fund, pushing its valuation above $100 million after a previously undisclosed Sequoia seed round. The company builds a 'workforce graph' that gives security teams visibility into which employees, AI agents, and other non-human identities can access sensitive systems and data.
Autonomy, the car subscription startup that once pledged to buy 23,000 EVs, is now adding internal combustion engine vehicles for the first time. The company will offer gas-powered Ford models like the Mustang, F-150 and Bronco Sport, sourced from Galpin Motors, starting in California with plans to expand through dealer partners in other states.
Instacart introduced Clementine, an AI-powered shopping assistant that converts natural-language requests, recipes, or grocery lists into ready-to-purchase carts. Users can ask for things like budget-friendly kids' lunches or high-protein dinners, upload photos of handwritten lists, and get recipes tailored to dietary needs such as gluten-free or vegetarian preferences. Clementine also surfaces deals and cheaper alternatives while shopping.
Huawei is scheduled to face a US criminal trial on charges that it violated Iran sanctions and stole trade secrets from competitors. The proceedings are set to begin just weeks before a planned meeting between President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
CISA, the NSA, and the FBI issued a joint advisory naming DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun, and Z.AI as having harvested billions of tokens from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and xAI models since late 2024. The firms allegedly used fraudulent accounts, proxy networks, and automated failover systems to bypass rate limits and extract restricted reasoning data at industrial scale.
OpenAI published a paper claiming an unreleased model coordinated up to 10,000 AI agents over 88 hours to produce a formal Lean proof addressing the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness Millennium Prize Problem. The company says the proof identifies conditions under which the equations develop a mathematical singularity, not evidence that real fluids behave impossibly. Outside mathematicians have yet to verify the claim.
Walmart is offering physical preorders of the upcoming Switch 2 remaster of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for $59.88, undercutting other retailers by $10 and matching the digital price. The remake, due November 5, 2026, includes overhauled graphics, a free camera, a new navigation aid called Threads of Time, and a dedicated jump button for Link.