🧶 Shorts Are Hot

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🔦 Spotlight

🧵 YouTube Shorts hits 200B views. Advertisers are pouring money into YouTube Shorts, now averaging 200 billion daily views. With CPMs around $5 (half of Meta or TikTok), brands love the bargain. Google's new Demand Gen tools let them isolate Shorts placements, boosting confidence. Some agencies have doubled or tripled Shorts spend quarter-over-quarter. Bonus? 45% of Shorts viewers aren’t on TikTok, and 65% skip Instagram, making Shorts prime real estate for reaching new eyeballs. (More)

🧵 Palantir scores $10B Army deal. Palantir just landed its biggest win yet: a $10 billion contract from the U.S. Army to handle its software and data needs over the next decade. This deal consolidates previous contracts, speeds up procurement, and boosts battlefield AI tools like Maven. It also cements Palantir as the Pentagon’s data whisperer, just in time for rising global tensions and a military leaning harder into AI warfare. (More)

🧵 OpenAI removes searchable chat feature. OpenAI quietly tested a feature that made shared ChatGPT convos show up on Google, and it backfired. Users could opt in, but many didn’t realize their chats (including resumes and overshares) were turning up in search results. OpenAI blamed the “oops” on too many people accidentally exposing private info. After the internet noticed, the company pulled the plug just hours later, calling it an experiment that’s now officially over. (More)

👀 Next Up

🧵 Amazon posts $18.2B profit. Consumers kept clicking “Buy Now,” pushing Amazon’s Q2 sales to $167.7B and profit up 35% to $18.2B. Retail boomed, cloud services grew 17.5%, though margins slipped. Amazon dropped $31B on infrastructure, betting big on AI and faster delivery. Despite economic wobble, shoppers and investors aren’t flinching. (More)

🧵 Russia’s FSB hacks embassies via ISPs. Microsoft caught Russia’s FSB spying on foreign embassies in Moscow by hijacking local ISPs to slip in malware. Dubbed “Secret Blizzard,” the group’s been cyber-stalking for two decades. Now, it’s placing backdoors to steal data, just as NATO tensions rise and Ukraine pressure builds. (More)

🧵 SK Hynix becomes top memory maker. SK Hynix edged past Samsung in Q2 memory revenue, thanks to booming AI demand. It now owns 62% of the high-bandwidth memory market, key for Nvidia chips. (More)

🧵 SEC launches “Project Crypto” overhaul. The SEC unveiled “Project Crypto” to modernize securities rules for blockchain trading. Chair Paul Atkins said it’s part of Trump’s push to make the U.S. a crypto leader. The plan backs tokenization, supports super apps, and aims to cut red tape to keep fintech firms onshore. (More)

🧵 Moderna lays off 10% of staff. Moderna is cutting 10% of its workforce, aiming to shrink below 5,000 employees by 2025. The move is part of a $1.5B cost-cutting plan amid falling Covid vaccine sales and a $1B Q1 loss. CEO Stéphane Bancel says the company’s future remains “bright.” Investors weren’t convinced, shares fell 4.5%. (More)

🎭 Backstage

🧵 Amazon backs AI ‘Netflix’ startup. Amazon’s investing in Fable Studio’s Showrunner, a platform for AI-generated shows where users can create content à la South Park knockoff. (More)

🧵 Illicit Market becomes ‘Amazon for Criminals’. Cambodia’s Huione Group enabled $81B in scams via Telegram. Think Amazon, but for fake money, malware, and laundered crypto. Shutdowns barely slowed them. (More)

🧵 Tesla halts Model S/X orders in Europe. Tesla quietly stopped new orders for Model S and X across Europe. Only preconfigured units remain, hinting at supply issues or a slow phase-out. (More)

🧵 TikTok and Instagram eye TV apps. TikTok and Instagram are building TV-friendly apps to chase YouTube’s living room dominance. Think Reels and high-production Shorts, but no broadcaster deals yet. (More)

🧵 Anthropic seeks Middle East funding. Anthropic is in talks with Qatar’s wealth fund for a mega-raise, despite past warnings about authoritarian influence. The AI arms race doesn’t run on principles alone. (More)

🧵 Salesforce, ServiceNow eye $1.5B Genesys deal. Rival software giants Salesforce and ServiceNow are each set to drop $750M into AI customer-service firm Genesys, valuing it at $15B. Rare teamwork, same AI goal. (More)

🧵 Klarna eyes revived NY IPO. Klarna may reboot its New York IPO as early as September, riding fintech’s stock upswing after pausing plans due to Trump-era tariff turmoil. (More)