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Good morning. Here is what happened in tech over the last 24 hours.
Google's cheaper Gemini Flash models, Anthropic's $1.5 billion piracy bill, a factory-floor humanoid, and the $1.65 trillion hiding in Big Tech's books.
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FEATURED
AI • YESTERDAY
Google ships three new Gemini Flash models and teases Gemini 4
Google shipped three new Gemini models yesterday: Gemini 3.6 Flash, a smaller 3.5 Flash-Lite, and a security-tuned 3.5 Flash Cyber. No new Pro model this time, but Google added that pretraining for Gemini 4 has already started.
Flash is the model most people actually run. The new 3.6 version uses 17% fewer output tokens and costs less: $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 per million output, down from $9. It is already live in GitHub Copilot and Google's Antigravity tool.
Cheaper tokens matter if you build on AI. Agentic apps burn through them fast, so a 17% cut lands straight in your margins. The Cyber variant, limited to governments and trusted partners, hunts and patches security bugs. That is Google pushing Flash from a chatbot toward a working tool.
Read the source ›
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AI & LAW • YESTERDAY
Judge signs off on Anthropic's $1.5 billion book piracy settlement
A federal judge in San Francisco gave final approval to Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement with authors. They had accused the company of training Claude on pirated books pulled from piracy sites.
The court had already drawn the line. Training on books you bought can count as fair use. Downloading them from pirate libraries does not. That distinction is what cost Anthropic $1.5 billion, plus another $101 million in legal fees.
More than 91% of eligible authors filed claims. If you build or license AI, the message is plain: how you got your training data matters as much as what you do with it.
Read the source ›
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ROBOTICS • YESTERDAY
Generative Bionics launches Gene.01, a humanoid built for the factory floor
Generative Bionics launched Gene.01, a humanoid robot built to work next to people in industrial settings. It debuts at AMD's Advancing AI event and heads to shipyards through a deal with Fincantieri.
Most humanoid robots are still demos. This one has a job lined up on day one. Shipbuilding is heavy, dirty, and short on workers, which is exactly where a robot earns its keep.
Humanoid startups pulled in roughly $4.3 billion last year. The race now is not who can walk. It is who can show up to a real shift and get paid.
Read the source ›
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AVIATION • YESTERDAY
U.S. moves to fast-track air taxis and supersonic jets
The U.S. is moving to speed up approvals for electric air taxis and supersonic passenger jets. The aim is to keep these companies from shipping their testing and jobs overseas.
Certification has been the wall. eVTOL makers have flown thousands of tests but still wait on pilot rules, sound limits, and landing pads. Supersonic developers face sonic-boom and emissions hurdles too.
Faster approvals could decide where the industry grows. If you are watching air-taxi stocks, regulation just became the main story.
Read the source ›
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SEMICONDUCTORS • YESTERDAY
TSMC plans to raise chip prices up to 10% in 2027
TSMC plans to lift chipmaking prices by as much as 10% starting in 2027, per Nikkei Asia. The hikes cover both cutting-edge and older processes.
TSMC makes chips for Nvidia, Apple, AMD, and Qualcomm. When it charges more, that cost flows into AI accelerators, phones, and servers. It usually reaches you.
Few rivals can match its scale, so customers tend to pay. Expect device and cloud prices to feel it by 2027.
Read the source ›
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AI INFRASTRUCTURE • YESTERDAY
BlackRock and MGX pour another $5 billion into Aligned Data Centers
BlackRock and Abu Dhabi's MGX committed another $5 billion to Aligned Data Centers after buying the company. The deal values Aligned near $40 billion.
Aligned runs or is building 51 campuses with more than 6.4 gigawatts of capacity. That is power-plant scale, aimed at the AI computing clusters everyone is racing to build.
Big money now treats data centers like roads and power grids: core infrastructure, not a passing trend. The bet is on the buildings every AI model needs.
Read the source ›
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▶ WATCH THIS
CONSUMER • YESTERDAY
Fake AI 'doctors' are selling real supplements to millions
The New York Times tracked hundreds of AI-generated 'doctors' and wellness influencers across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Fake diplomas, fake before-and-afters, real supplement sales.
One product tied to these ads got hit with a Salmonella recall. Chinese content shops crank out up to 1,200 of these videos a day for U.S. feeds. No federal law bans synthetic people in ads yet.
Watch the video ›
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Quick Hits
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France voted on a law to bar under-15s from TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. Platforms would need approved age checks, with new accounts blocked as soon as September 1.
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Ant International raised about $1.2 billion to expand payments abroad and build rails for AI agents that shop and pay on your behalf.
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Zhongji Innolight is targeting an $8 billion Hong Kong IPO on the back of AI data-center demand, set to be the city's biggest listing since 2019.
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Stat of the Day
Hidden AI debt across Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle. Off-balance-sheet, and up 8x in four years.
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$1.65T
Off-balance-sheet AI debt (Nikkei)
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Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.
Tech 24
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