Texas Governor Greg Abbott has ordered a moratorium on the approval of data center projects until the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas can perform audits on proposed data centers trying to connect to the state's electric grid.

The Texas Tribune has the backstory.

Here's the problem that has Abbott saying "Texas must come first."

ERCOT is currently considering approximately over 474 gigawatts of requests to connect to the Texas grid, more than five times Texas’ record peak electricity demand for ERCOT. Approximately 90 percent of the new power requests are data centers. That unprecedented load growth could endanger the reliability and stability of the Texas electric grid.

It is one thing to announce an AI data center project. It’s another thing to build it and connect it to the grid.

OpenAI has responded to Apple’s lawsuit over IP theft and posted messages exchanged between employees of the two companies (heavily redacted so they are essentially useless).

The gist via OpenAI’s blog post:

“Apple had claimed that they contacted OpenAI in February and that we didn’t respond. They now admit that their outside lawyers emailed the wrong person after confusing two Asian last names—only after we brought this to their attention. Apple also claimed they had a discussion with our General Counsel, which they now concede never happened. But they again hide the fact that they never raised the specific allegations in this lawsuit at that time, and that they in fact told us that they were “resolving any issues”. We then heard nothing for five months until they sued. In their latest filing, Apple tries hard to spin this sequence of events, but you can just read the emails for yourself here⁠.”

This battle is playing out about the way I thought and these lawyer love letters are just getting started. Here’s what I wrote in Notebook July 12.

Apple is suing OpenAI over IP theft and trade secrets and its lawsuit revolves mostly around former employee Tang Tan, who worked on the iPhone. This case is going to be covered extensively and Sam Altman and Elon Musk are exchanging jabs. The big takeaway is that OpenAI's hardware ambitions can be delayed no matter how the case turns out. Discovery should be interesting. Keep in mind that this court battle will take time to play out. Settlement? Unlikely. Will this be entertaining? Definitely. We'll see how this plays out, but for now it's just a lot of noise.

TopTal's quarterly report on technology, design, finance and services hiring is showing an uptick. In the company's second quarter report, Toptal reported the following:

• Demand for experienced remote and hybrid technology and professional services personnel rose 8.9% in the second quarter compared to a year ago.
• Technology layoffs were up 5% from a year ago.
• Market strength scores were strongest for data science experts, up 14% from a year ago; finance consultants, up 42%; product managers, up 27%, and project managers, up 14%.

TopTal's data set is based on the Toptal Talent Network, which includes 30,000 professionals, and is focused on hybrid and remote roles.

Visa said it will acquire BioCatch, which provides behavioral-first multi-signal fraud detection systems. BioCatch uses AI and machine learning to analyze keystrokes, touch gestures and device handling to help detect fraud.

Persistent Systems said first quarter revenue was up 16% from a year ago to $452.4 million. The company said it had record quarterly total contract value of $1.15 billion.

Alibaba released Qwen 3.8-Max and said it will also release the open weights behind the model. On benchmarks, Qwen 3.8-Max is competitive with frontier models and Moonshot's Kimi K3.

Rimini Street launched Rimini Govern for AI, a managed service designed to centralize control of agentic AI. Rimini Govern for AI monitors agent events and activities, enforces security, governance and compliance guardrails and measures business value.

In addition, the company reported second quarter earnings of $2.4 million, or 3 cents a share, on revenue of $111.1 million, up 6.7% from a year ago. Excluding revenue for Oracle's PeopleSoft products, Rimini Street's growth in the second quarter was 10%. The company is projecting third quarter revenue of $110 million to $112 million.

Rimini Street reiterated its 2026 revenue growth target of 4% to 6%.

Google launched Gemini Robotics ER2, a model designed to be a "high-level brain" for robots. The model enables robots to chat with humans, understand the physical world and plan tasks. Gemini Robotics ER2 is designed for multiple types of robots ranging from wheeled to humanoid.

Arm delivered a strong first quarter and promise for its AI CPU efforts. CEO Rene Haas said: "Demand now exceeds $2 billion as we continue to add new customers, including multiple customers in the U.S. and China, while the overall value of our pipeline has continued to strengthen. We're also working closely with our manufacturing and supply chain partners to expand capacity. Our confidence in achieving upside to our $1 billion opportunity for the Arm AGI CPU business has increased in the past 90 days."

IBM along with researchers at the University of Chicago, Qedma and Algorithmiq highlighted a series of computations that they claim showed quantum advantage with error correction. A trio of papers walk through the calculations and the research.

Qualcomm reported third quarter earnings of $2 billion, or $1.87 a share, on revenue of $9.95 billion, down 4% from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were $2.21 a share. The company said it executed well and managed through memory prices and tight supply. Qualcomm's non-GAAP earnings missed estimates by a penny a share.

The company also said that it has completed its acquisition of Modular. The company also inked a 10-year deal to be the silicon provider for BMW's digital cockpit and automated driving efforts.

Nate Baxter, the new CEO for Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, said he's planning to hire a new CIO and Chief Innovation Officer but won't fill the chief operating officer role. Speaking on Scotts Miracle-Gro's third quarter earnings call, Baxter said he's building out his team to drive transformation.

"I will be hiring a Chief Innovation Officer and a Chief Information Officer as we focus on increasing our investments in our brands, AI, automation, technology and data analytics. In parallel, we are undertaking a rigorous assessment of our talent to ensure we have the right people in the right roles for where we are going and to create a strong pipeline of future leaders."