A ransomware breach at Tata Electronics exposed sensitive Apple iPhone 18 Pro supplier lists, component details, and testing photos on the dark web, threatening Apple’s secrecy and its increasingly important manufacturing partnership in India. Reuters has more here.

Anthropic has struck a deal with California to give state agencies and local governments half-price access to Claude, training, and support, deepening its state-level foothold even as the federal government has labeled the OpenAI rival a supply-chain risk. TechCrunch has more here.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that geofence warrants seeking users’ historical phone-location data from companies like Google are covered by 4th Amendment privacy protections, limiting but not banning a law enforcement tactic that critics say sweeps in innocent people. TechCrunch has more here.

Wired is reporting that Meta contractors posed as minors to test how rival chatbots from OpenAI, Google, and Character.AI handled prompts about suicide, sex, eating disorders, drugs, and other high-risk topics. More here.

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Base44, the vibe coding platform that Wix acquired for $80 million just one year ago — when the company was barely six months old and had a team of eight — has started rolling out its own AI model to support its users in creating apps with natural language.

The move comes as the discussion in AI circles has intensified over whether frontier models are best suited for all use cases. A related question is whether businesses built on top of someone else’s models are truly defensible long-term. The latest move of Base44, based in the Bay Area, speaks to both.

While its custom LLM is only just rolling out, Base44 hopes that it will eventually outperform frontier models. According to its founder, Maor Shlomo, “training and owning the model as part of [our] entire stack allows us a lot more optimizations on latency, cost, and efficiency.”

At first glance, this could be a way to stay ahead of competitors such as Swedish startup Lovable, which reached unicorn status in its Series A round last summer and that relies on external LLMs. However, Shlomo expects that others will train their own models — “at least the players that have gotten enough scale and velocity to have enough data.” 

According to Jonathan Userovici, a general partner at VC firm Headline — whose portfolio includes AI companies like Mistral AI, but not Base44 — data is one of three key ingredients of defensibility for AI startups, alongside distribution and tech stack. 

The upshot is that players with strong brands are now leaning into their data and infrastructure to increase their defensibility, and Base44 fits that pattern. The company says the first iteration of its LLM, Base1, was developed and trained on a dataset generated from “tens of millions of real user interactions on the platform.” 

AI2 Robotics, a three-year-old startup based in Shenzhen, China, that develops wheeled humanoid robots and the vision-language-action models that control them, raised nearly $735 million in new capital at around a $2.8 billion post-money valuation from undisclosed investors. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Apptronik, a 10-year-old Austin company that develops humanoid robots for manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, and retail, has raised about $1 billion at a roughly $5 billion valuation. Investors included Mercedes-Benz and Google. Bloomberg has more here.

Straiker, a two-year-old startup based in Sunnyvale, CA, that helps enterprises discover AI agents, test them for vulnerabilities, and block risky behavior in production, raised a $64 million Series A round co-led by Marathon Management Partners, Citi Ventures, Illuminate Financial, and Workday Ventures, with previous investors Bain Capital Ventures and Lightspeed also buying in. The company has raised a total of $85 million. SecurityWeek has more here.

X Square Robot, a three-year-old startup based in Shenzhen, China, that develops AI models and robots for household, industrial, and logistics tasks, closed four consecutive financing rounds culminating in a Series C at a $2.8+ billion post-money valuation. Investors included IDG, HongShan, Xiaomi, Meituan, Alibaba, and ByteDance. More here.

Gaussion, a four-year-old London startup that adds magnetic control hardware to lithium-ion battery packs to speed charging, extend lifespan, and improve power management, raised a $28 million round co-led by BGF and AlbionVC, with Autotech Ventures, UCL Technology Fund, DN Capital, and Future Ventures also anteing up. The company has raised a total of $44+ million. Tech Funding News has more here.

Nebex, a New York startup founded late last year that connects space companies with sovereign buyers and financing for government space contracts, raised a $30 million seed round led by GV, with Eniac Ventures, 2048 Ventures, Better Tomorrow Ventures, Oceans Ventures, AIN Ventures, Also Capital, Anagram, Armory Square Ventures, Multiball Capital, Trajectory Capital, and VSC Ventures also pitching in. More here.

Omen AI, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that makes spectrometer-based sensors for monitoring fluid systems in data centers and heavy equipment, raised a $31 million Series A round co-led by Nava Ventures, with CRV, Vanderbilt University, Mann+Hummel, Starhill Holdings, and Hard Launch Capital also taking part. The company has raised a total of $40 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Pocket, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that makes an AI device for recording conversations and turning them into transcripts, summaries, follow-up emails, and action items, raised an $11 million round. Investors included Accel and Y Combinator. TechCrunch has more here.

Proception, a 20-month-old Palo Alto startup that develops dexterous robotic hands and sensor-packed gloves for collecting human hand-interaction data, raised an $11 million seed round led by First Round Capital, with Y Combinator and BoxGroup also opting in. The company also settled a Tesla trade-secret lawsuit tied to founder Jay Li’s earlier work on Optimus. TechCrunch has more here.

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Osney Capital, a three-year-old London VC firm focused on early-stage cybersecurity startups, raised £60 million for its first fund, exceeding its original £50 million target. Tech Funding News has more here.

Rocket Lab is paying $8 billion for satellite operator Iridium as the launch company keeps rolling up space assets and pushes deeper into satellite services, spectrum, defense, and communications. TechCrunch has more here.

Chinese self-driving software company Momenta launched a Hong Kong IPO seeking up to $751 million, with Mercedes-Benz, BlackRock funds, GIC, Fidelity, Oaktree, and others lined up as cornerstone investors amid renewed demand for China tech listings. Reuters has more here.

Chamath Palihapitiya’s 8090 Labs raised a $135 million Series A led by Salesforce Ventures for Software Factory, an AI coding agent for enterprise development teams, with Palihapitiya stepping in as CEO. TechCrunch has more here.

Crunchbase says Q2 produced the most $1 billion-plus venture-backed startup exits since 2021, led by SpaceX’s $2.1 trillion market debut, its $60 billion acquisition of Cursor, and big IPOs from Cerebras and Quantinuum. More here.

A global memory shortage is forcing Apple and Microsoft to raise device prices, but it is hitting smaller electronics companies much harder, leaving some unable to secure components or absorb DRAM cost increases that have reached several hundred percent. CNBC has more here.

Flock Safety’s AI license-plate cameras have spread to more than 100,000 locations across the U.S., drawing backlash over security flaws, police misuse, mistaken identifications, and searchable footage that can track far more than plates. Engadget has more here.

AI is forcing consulting firms to rethink hourly billing as software-like subscriptions, fixed-fee projects, and outcome-based pricing gain traction, but the shift is exposing firms to cash-flow risk, margin pressure, and disputes over what success actually means. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

San Francisco’s AI boom is making even $180,000 tech salaries feel stretched, as looming OpenAI and Anthropic IPO wealth, scarce housing, and rents averaging $3,827 a month push non-AI workers to question whether they can afford to stay. The New York Times has more here.

Vintage Broncos, Defenders, Jeeps, and other loud, high-maintenance SUVs have become status accessories for affluent young women, driving up demand for restomods that can cost well over $100,000.

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