Commentary circulating in business media periodically declares the chief marketing officer role obsolete, citing flatter organizational structures, decentralized marketing functions, and AI tools that can generate campaigns quickly. A counterargument holds that these same forces make experienced marketing leadership more essential, not less, since someone still needs to set strategy and judge what automated output actually serves the brand.
AI coding startup Cognition has closed a Series E funding round of $2 billion, valuing the company at $48 billion. The round includes backing from investors such as Peter Thiel, underscoring strong investor confidence in AI-driven software development tools.
Apple is holding its September hardware event today at 1:00 p.m. ET, streamed live via Apple.com, YouTube and the Apple TV app. The event, themed 'Surprise and shine,' marks the start of John Ternus's tenure leading product launches and is expected to introduce the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, a first-ever foldable iPhone Duo, updated Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 models, and new AirPods 5 earbuds.
Several U.S. states that previously granted multi-decade tax exemptions to lure data center investments from Amazon, Meta and Google are now reconsidering or rolling back those deals. The reversal follows growing public backlash over the facilities' strain on local resources and limited job creation relative to the tax revenue forgone.
Noma Labs researchers disclosed an authorization design flaw in enterprise AI pipelines that lets attackers submit ordinary-looking requests through unauthenticated channels—like support inboxes or web forms—to trigger actions using elevated internal permissions. They demonstrated this by sending a support email that tricked an AI workflow into retrieving and forwarding a finance director's private email contents to an attacker.
Reddit users report receiving personalized win-back offers on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, with one subscriber getting a 30% discount ($16.09 vs $22.99 monthly) after repeatedly canceling and resubscribing over two years. Other users have shared similar discounted offers, including an $18 rate for 12 months on a secondary Xbox account.
Uber has put another $10 million into Indian fleet operator Carrum Mobility through a Series B round, pushing the startup's valuation to about $168 million, up from $63 million after Uber's earlier $7 million investment in January. Uber now holds a mid-teens stake in Carrum, which operates roughly 5,100 vehicles and over 18,000 drivers across six Indian cities and generates about $45 million in annualized revenue.
Apple has unveiled its first foldable iPhone, dubbed the Duo, and early hands-on impressions describe a matte-finish inner display, a smooth hinge with barely detectable crease, and IP68 water resistance. The device has a compact 5.4-inch outer screen and animates a gradual visual transition as it opens and closes, rather than simply switching displays on and off.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev defended his company's tokenized stock products, arguing that once a company goes public, other firms can build financial instruments referencing its shares without needing the issuer's permission. This follows AMC CEO Adam Aron's public criticism that Robinhood's tokenized AMC shares let the brokerage profit from exposure to the stock without AMC's involvement or consent.
Analysts examining OpenAI's newly released GPT-6 Astra note it outperforms its GPT-5.6 predecessor across writing, math, coding, and especially 3D rendering tasks, jumping from 7.8% to 99.9% on the ARC-AGI-3 benchmark. Speculation has emerged that Astra uses a looped or recurrent-depth transformer architecture and may be concealing parts of its chain-of-thought reasoning process from users.
Android Authority found code in a beta build of the Google app (version 17.56.14) suggesting Gemini's floating overlay could soon let users assign tasks to Spark, Google's autonomous AI agent, without launching the full Gemini interface. The same handover option is also being tested in the main Gemini app, alongside a possible model-switching shortcut in the overlay.
Microsoft, acting through TracerAI, has withdrawn its DMCA takedown notice that accused the open-source voxel game Luanti of infringing Minecraft's copyright. The Luanti app has been reinstated on Google Play immediately, without needing to wait out the standard counter-notice period, signaling Microsoft has abandoned the case entirely.
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