Google’s London Outage Hits Banks, and SpaceX’s AI Outsells Starlink
A power failure at Google’s London data center took down Lloyds, HSBC and Revolut, Salesforce agreed to buy Braze for $5.66 billion, and SpaceX’s AI unit outsold Starlink.
Good morning. Google's London data center lost power, Salesforce agreed to buy Braze for $5.66 billion, and SpaceX's AI unit outsold Starlink.
A Power Failure at Google's London Data Center Took Down Lloyds, HSBC and Revolut
A power event knocked out one of three zones in Google Cloud's London region on Tuesday. The zone, europe-west2-b, went down at 0608 UTC. At 1403 UTC Google said the problem was fixed for most customers, about eight hours later. A very small number were still affected.
The Register lists Lloyds Bank, HSBC, Royal Mail, Rightmove, DPD, BT, Screwfix and Revolut among the hit. The BBC says court video links failed too. Google says it will publish an analysis when its investigation ends.
One zone failed, and banking and retail apps went down together. Google hasn't said why failover didn't hold. If you run production on any cloud, check this week that your services span at least two zones.
Sources: The Register, Reuters, BBC
Salesforce Agrees to Buy Braze for $5.66 Billion in Cash
Salesforce will pay $47.50 a share in cash for the marketing platform Braze. That's an enterprise value of about $5.66 billion. Braze has about 2,770 customers, including Canva, Instacart and Venmo.
Salesforce says Braze's real-time messaging and AI decisioning will feed its Marketing Cloud. It expects no change to fiscal 2027 guidance. CNBC reports Braze stock jumped about 50%.
The deal needs shareholder and regulatory approval. It won't close until Salesforce's fiscal 2028. If you use Braze, check your renewal terms before you sign.
Sources: Salesforce, CNBC, Bloomberg
Elon Musk's Insane Projection: 7,692,207%
Where should you invest $100 right now?
Elon Musk just invented and patented this new AI technology…
And he's predicting it will launch a NEW industry that will grow more than 7 million percent in the coming years.
Even if he's only 10% right, that would still be enough to grow $100 into more than $700,000.
Click here to see the details on what Elon Musk called "an infinite money glitch."
Apple Commits Up to $100 Million to a Pennsylvania Titanium Maker
Apple will commit up to $100 million over three years to Perryman Company. The Pennsylvania firm supplies titanium for the iPhone Duo. Apple also expanded its work with Delaware's Qnity on films for the iPhone 18 Pro's variable aperture camera.
Apple says nearly 100 parts in the iPhone Duo and iPhone 18 Pro come from US suppliers in more than a dozen states. It ties the push to a $600 billion four-year US commitment.
This is a supply announcement, not a launch. Apple gave no price or ship date. Nothing changes for what you'd pay this week.
Sources: Apple, CNBC, MacRumors
DeepSeek Open-Sources the Engine That Runs Its Models
DeepSeek released DeepInfer on Tuesday. It's the inference engine DeepSeek says powers its production services. The license is Apache 2.0. It runs DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash on Nvidia SM100 GPUs and Huawei Ascend 950 chips.
It isn't a full serving stack. The README says a complete service also needs a KV cache system, prefill and decode disaggregation, and load balancing. None ships. DeepSeek's performance charts haven't been reproduced independently.
Tom's Guide also reports a Homeland Security notice telling federal civilian agencies to remove DeepSeek products. The order dates to July and doesn't cover consumers. If you self-host models, test DeepInfer on a spare node this week.
Sources: RuntimeWire, GitHub, Tom's Guide
Eka Robotics Raises $150 Million for a Robot Hand That Feels
Eka Robotics raised a $150 million Series A at a $1.45 billion post-money valuation, TechCrunch reports. Andreessen Horowitz and F-Prime led. Eka makes a gripper under $1,000 and a model that works from touch and force, not only vision.
Eka claims about 1,500 picks an hour, against roughly 600 for a human, at better than 95% reliability. Those are company numbers from lab tasks. Pilots with unnamed industrial customers are running. Nobody has shown it on a production line.
If you run a warehouse, don't buy yet. Ask your automation vendor how it measures picks per hour.
Sources: TechCrunch, a16z
Elon is going all in on THIS
Must-see video reveals everything
Take a look at this…
It’s Terafab — Elon Musk’s new AI chip factory in Texas.
You see, Elon needs more AI chips than the whole industry can make today…
So he decided to mass produce his own.
But there’s a catch…
Because AI can’t scale without a radical “light-speed” device…
Not even Elon’s.
Yet most Americans have never heard of it.
Former Wall Street insider Jason Bodner — the same man who called Nvidia at $4.50 split-adjusted — says this device is about to launch a whole new wave of AI winners…
And to prove it, he’s giving away his #1 stock involved with it — for free.
Stocks tied to this “light-speed” device already surged 133%, 217%, and even 320% — in a few short months. But it’s just getting started. Click here before the mainstream catches on.
New York City Proposes Fines for AI Customer-Service Dead Ends
New York City's consumer protection agency proposed rules Tuesday for AI customer service. Businesses would have to say when you're dealing with an automated system and offer an easy route to a human. Fines would start at $525.
Advertising help and then repeatedly giving unresponsive or wrong answers would count as deceptive. Businesses couldn't dodge blame for unlawful conduct by their AI. A 30-day comment period applies.
If your chatbot serves New York customers, you've got a month to comment. Add a human handoff now.
Sources: NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, City Record
Nvidia: Reuters, citing two people, says ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent ordered more than 3 million RTX PRO 5500 cards at about $11,400 each. Nvidia reportedly can't fill that and could build no more than 3 million worldwide in 2027.
AGCO: The tractor maker signed a deal with Agility Robotics to pilot Digit humanoids at its Hesston, Kansas plant in 2027. Tasks start with sorting parts and placing totes. No robot count was given.
Otter.ai: It raised $320 million in non-equity financing from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund, per Reuters. That's financing to repay, not an equity round.
Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.