Techmeme
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Miter, which provides workforce management tools for the construction industry, raised a $40M Series B led by Battery Ventures, taking its total funding to $78M (Chris Metinko/Axios)
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CScale, which is developing optical interconnect for accelerators, emerges from stealth with a $145M Series C led by Atreides, Valor Equity, and Premji Invest (Dean Takahashi/GamesBeat)
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Google DeepMind introduces SynthID Bio, a family of watermarking methods for AI-designed proteins to help with biosecurity and scientific integrity (John Timmer/Ars Technica)
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Berlin-based Restate, which provides a durable execution engine to make software workflows resilient to crashes, raised a $20M Series A led by Singular (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)
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Alex Stamos is joining Cognition as its new chief security officer; he most recently oversaw security at AI security startup Corridor and SentinelOne (Sam Sabin/Axios)
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Metaview, which uses AI agents to automate recruiting workflows, raised a $60M Series C led by Insight Partners, bringing its total funding to $110M (Chris Metinko/Axios)
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ElevenLabs says existing investors and employees have sold $300M worth of stock in a tender led by Wellington and T Rowe Price and valuing the startup at $22B (Tim Bradshaw/Financial Times)
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An interview with OpenAI Chief Research Officer Mark Chen on the Hugging Face incident, slowing AI development, shifting 5%-10% of compute to safety, and more (Will Douglas Heaven/MIT Technology Review)
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Instagram rolls out a conversational AI video editing assistant for Edits, its dedicated CapCut competitor, after an initial preview at a creator event in June (Amanda Silberling/TechCrunch)
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The UK's MI5 issues a rare espionage alert urging UK universities to cut ties with the China General Technology Research Institute, which funded AI research (Financial Times)
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Sources: the US FTC has opened a probe of Anthropic, OpenAI, and other frontier AI labs over potential consumer harms, and plans to compel executives to testify (New York Post)
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Amazon aims to have 5,000 drivers wearing its smart glasses in 2026, rising to 20,000+ in 2027; the glasses capture static images for its AI mapping platform (Dave Lee/Bloomberg)
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Amazon says Fire TV now offers integrated live content from 40+ apps, like YouTube TV and DirecTV, and plans a Music app with podcasts and concerts in the fall (Mariella Moon/Engadget)
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Amazon unveils a faster, slimmer $60 Fire TV Stick 4K, simplifies its Fire TV Stick lineup, and plans to roll out an upgraded Alexa+ living room hub in November (Chris Welch/Bloomberg)
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DoorDash unveils new retail partnerships to deliver clothing and footwear; Macy's is listing products directly on the DoorDash app for two-hour delivery (Sarah Nassauer/Wall Street Journal)