Larry Dignan

Apple CEO Tim Cook said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that the company will be raising its prices. The price increases are unavoidable. Cook said:

"Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable. We're doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable."

Cook didn't say when prices would increase or note the products affected.

OpenAI's ChatGPT market share has fallen to 46.4% with Gemini commanding 27.7% market share and Anthropic's Claude at 10.3%. Other assistants such as Grok, Perplexity and Meta AI are less than 5% in terms of market share, according to a Sensor Tower report.

ChatGPT did become the fastest app to hit 1 billion users though.

Google dropped Android 17, which appears on Pixel devices first. Here's a look at the productivity, security and connectivity features.

SpaceX said it has exercised its option to buy Cursor for $60 billion. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter. The news isn't surprising given it was telegraphed leading up to the SpaceX IPO.

• SpaceX's worth $2 trillion: Do you believe in space data centers, xAI's potential?

Plaud said it has gone from $1 million in ARR to $100 million in ARR within two years. Plaud is making a go of a business that sites in the middle of AI, hardware and notetaking. The company said it now has more than 2 million customers in 170 million countries.

Plaud, known for its Plaud Note, Plaud Note Pro, Plaud NotePin S, pairs hardware with subscriptions.

Atom Computing raised $100 million in a Series C round that will be combined with $100 million from the US Department of Commerce. Atom Computing has raised more than $300 million to date.

Third Point Ventures led the latest funding round.

Atom Computing said it will use the funding to scale qubit counts and fidelity for next-gen systems, advance software and expand global deployments. Atom Computing will also grow its engineering and sales ranks.

UiPath launched Maestro Case, an agentic case management tool. Maestro Case is part of the UiPath Maestro business orchestration platform and specializes in case management for complex and long running cases. UiPath added that Maestro Case is designed for enterprises in hybrid environments.

Adding an update to the Anthropic vs. US government over Fable 5 vs Mythos 5 dispute. Simply put, it’s a s**tshow.

Reports are coming out about the inner workings of this Anthropic decision to pull Fable 5 and Mythos 5. Some reads include:

• Axios: Anthropic struggles to communicate with Trump administration, which thinks it was screwed over.
• Financial Times: Anthropic was given 90 minutes to address issues before export control was ordered.
• WSJ: Anthropic racing to address issues. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy raised concerns.

Forty six percent of US professionals plan to look for a new job in the next six months, up from 38% last quarter, according to a Robert Half survey.

• 55% of Gen Z workers are planning to look for new jobs.
• 56% of healthcare workers are looking and 49% of technology workers are looking for new gigs.
• 46% say AI-generated applications have intensified competition for open roles.

Fox said it will acquire Roku in a deal valued at $22 billion. The plan is to combine Fox's live content, sports and Tubi with Roku's streaming platform. The companies combined will reach more than 100 million households. This deal is really about advertising data and scale.

Here's the deck.

My only two asks are to make streaming sports easier. Right now it's a disaster that requires me to know what league has deals with a streaming service. The other ask is to don't make the already buggy Roku platform worse.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said companies are going to have to combine human capital and token capital (also known as AI agents) to truly get returns. Without an ecosystem and "learning loop" you have "compute running in circles."

The riff, posted on X, is worth a read, but in many ways is obvious. What's also obvious is that Microsoft wants to be that orchestration layer. Nadella said:

"Human capital does not become less valuable as token capital grows. It only becomes more valuable! I believe human agency will be the driver of token capital growth. Humans will set ambitious goals, connect dots across domains, build relationships, and recognize patterns that matter most. Without human direction, you have compute running in circles.

This means the real opportunity is not in picking the best model but instead in building a learning loop on top of models where human capital and token capital compound. You can offload a task, or even a job, but you can never offload your learning. The future of the firm is the ability to compound that learning across people and AI.

This requires a new architectural approach where every business is able to build agentic systems that improve over time, while still retaining control over their IP."

It's an extortion spree in education due to Oracle PeopleSoft Zero-Day attacks. Google Cloud and its Mandiant unit said educational institutions and others are under attack from ShinyHunters for an unpatched vulnerability. The details are here via Google Cloud. Oracle mitigations here.