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The U.S. government ordered Anthropic to shut off worldwide access to Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5 over national security concerns, a move Anthropic says overreacts to a narrow potential jailbreak and could effectively halt new frontier-model deployments if applied industrywide. TechCrunch has more here.

SpaceX shares jumped as much as 30% in their Nasdaq debut, pushing the company’s market value to nearly $2.3 trillion and making it the sixth most valuable public company in the U.S., helped by a small public float, heavy retail demand, and index-rule changes that could force large funds to buy the stock within days. TechCrunch has more here.

Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire on paper after SpaceX’s public-market debut, with his stake in the rocket company – combined with his Tesla holdings and SpaceX’s first-day stock pop – pushing his net worth above $1 trillion. TechCrunch has more here.

Google sued a Chinese cybercrime network it says used Gemini to mass-produce online scams, seeking a court order to help shut down the group’s infrastructure after it allegedly created hundreds of fake corporate and government websites mimicking Google, YouTube, the Postal Service, and E-ZPass. TechCrunch has more here.

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By Connie Loizos

Anyone who works at Meta or knows anyone who works at Meta will tell you the same thing: It is not a happy place, particularly given the seemingly endless layoffs the company has executed over the last few years — cuts that have only accelerated as the company funnels billions into AI.

Now, a new report in Wired suggests the company’s Applied AI team is on the verge of revolt.

The drama kicked off when someone hijacked a livestreamed, employee-only presentation this week with an expletive-laden meltdown, demanding that attendees tell a senior Meta AI executive that he was “a piece of sh*t.” One presenter reportedly covered their face with their hands.

That outburst, Wired reports, reflects simmering rage inside the three-month-old unit of roughly 6,500 engineers and product managers who have been tasked with supporting the company’s AI research ambitions.

A report last month in Business Insider shed light on how many employees originally learned they’d be moved into the group — through a surprise email, a process that one self-described draftee described later on Reddit as “quite random.” According to an internal announcement reviewed by BI, the reason they were enlisted is that Meta’s AI models still lacked the knowledge to outperform humans at technical tasks like coding. “For agents to understand how people actually complete everyday tasks using computers, we need to train our models on real examples,” the announcement read.

In a leaked audio recording from an internal meeting that month, CEO Mark Zuckerberg offered his reasoning for drafting employees rather than outside contractors. Alexandr Wang — who sold his data-labeling startup Scale AI to Meta for $14.3 billion before taking the role of chief AI officer and heading up Meta Superintelligence Labs — knows the data-labeling world well, Zuckerberg said. And candidly, the average Meta employee has “significantly higher” intelligence than third-party contractors, he added, making them the better choice.

Climate First Bancorp, a five-year-old startup based in St. Petersburg, FL, that operates a climate-focused bank and fintech platform that finances solar projects and helps community banks, credit unions, CDFIs, and green banks offer sustainable lending products, raised a $67 million round co-led by Wellington Management and AllianceBernstein. The company has raised a total of $222 million. More here.

Genspark, a three-year-old Palo Alto startup that develops agentic workplace software to automate workflows and improve productivity, raised a $100 million Series B extension at a $2.6 billion post-money valuation. Investors included Sozo Ventures, UpHonest Capital, and Mirae Asset. The company has raised a total of $645+ million. The SaaS News has more here.

Koho, a 12-year-old Toronto company that provides Canadians with spending and savings accounts, prepaid cards, credit-building, overdraft protection, and crypto trading through a mobile app, raised a $93.1 million round at a $950 million valuation. Investors included Mubadala Investment Company and Savano Capital as well as previous investors Portage Ventures, Drive Capital, BDC Capital, Eldridge Industries, and Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan. The company has raised a total of $363 million. More here.

Nesto, an eight-year-old Montréal startup that provides digital mortgage lending and white-label mortgage technology for Canadian financial institutions, raised a $76.5 million Series E round and facilitated almost $140 million in secondary sales at approximately a $1 billion post-money valuation. New investors included La Caisse, Fidelity, Picton Investments, and Endeavor Catalyst, with previous investors Portage, Diagram, NAventures, Fonds de solidarité FTQ, and Fondaction also participating. BetaKit has more here.

Equal AI, a four-year-old Indian startup that answers and screens phone calls on behalf of users, identifies caller intent, records conversations, and provides transcripts, summaries, and automated responses, raised a $30 million Series B round co-led by Prosus Ventures and Tomales Bay Capital, with Think Investments and Valiant Fund also contributing. The company has raised a total of $42+ million. TechCrunch has more here.

NS/TX, a six-year-old Toronto startup that develops and operates manufacturing systems that produce whole-cut plant-based meat and seafood using scaffolding structures to replicate animal muscle texture and cooking behavior, raised a $10.5 million Series A round co-led by Inter IKEA Development and Lever VC, with Good Startup and Verdex Capital also investing. The company has raised a total of $30+ million. Green Queen Media has more here.

Sandstone, a one-year-old New York startup that routes and triages legal requests from emails, Slack, and Jira and automates drafting, review, and analysis workflows for in-house legal teams, raised a $30 million Series A round led by Lightspeed. TechCrunch has more here.

Artis, a four-year-old Austin startup that manages social media, websites, and search visibility for residential architects, designers, and builders, raised a $7.3 million seed round led by LiveOak Ventures, with Mark VC and Capital Factory also participating. More here.

Enera, a one-year-old London startup that provides EV charge point operators with AI agents for driver support and a dashboard analyzing calls, hardware logs, and backend data to identify charging failures, raised a $2 million pre-seed round led by Lakehouse Ventures, with Divergent Capital and Masia also taking part. UKTN has more here.

Mistral, a three-year-old Paris startup that develops generative models and large language models, is reportedly in the market to raise a $3.5 billion round at a $23+ billion valuation. Bloomberg has more here.

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EngineAI, a three-year-old Shenzhen startup that makes humanoid robots, has confidentially filed for a Hong Kong IPO after raising $200 million in April at a $1.5 billion valuation. Bloomberg has more here.

JPMorgan is hosting about 250 newly wealthy SpaceX employees tonight at its new Park Avenue headquarters after Jamie Dimon personally pitched Elon Musk on staging a dinner. The celebration will feature SpaceX-branded tomahawk steak, sushi, cocktails, and a skyline light show as the bank works to cultivate a wave of potential wealth-management clients. Business Insider has more here.

SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said a merger with Tesla “might make Elon’s life a little easier,” adding fuel to speculation that Musk could eventually combine the two public companies after SpaceX amended its IPO filing to warn that it may issue significant equity in future transactions. TechCrunch has more here.

Sam Bankman-Fried lost his bid to overturn his fraud conviction and 25-year sentence over the collapse of FTX, with a federal appeals court saying the evidence against him was “robust” and rejecting his argument that he believed the exchange had enough funds to cover customer losses. Reuters has more here.

MrBeast became the first YouTube creator to reach 500 million subscribers, livestreaming the milestone to more than 600,000 viewers and saying he remains “more motivated than ever” to keep making videos for the platform. TheWrap has more here.

Wired profiles Thibault Sottiaux, the OpenAI engineer and newly appointed head of core products who helped turn Codex into one of the company’s fastest-growing businesses and is now overseeing OpenAI’s push to merge Codex and ChatGPT into a personalized AI “super app.” More here.

SemiAnalysis says the $200-a-month Claude Max and ChatGPT Pro plans are far more generous than commonly assumed. Based on API pricing, it turns out they offer roughly $8,000 and $14,000 a month worth of tokens, respectively, a disparity that raises questions about whether AI labs can sustain subscription pricing without limiting access to their newest models or features. More here.

Companies are increasingly cutting AI costs by routing work to cheaper open-source and Chinese models from players like DeepSeek and Alibaba, threatening to turn the boom into a price war that pressures OpenAI and Anthropic to lower prices even as both are losing billions on compute. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

China is increasingly dominating the humanoid robot supply chain, even as the industry struggles to find use cases in which robots are more productive than human workers. The New York Times has more here.

Scientists and startups are trying to customize psychedelic trips, from shorter-acting psilocybin analogues to drugs designed to produce specific mental states, though skeptics say the experience may depend as much on setting and preparation as chemistry. The Atlantic has more here.

As U.S. consumption of apples and bananas has declined, American children are increasingly eating imported strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries year-round, leading parents to bemoan the high cost of raising berry-obsessed kids.

World Cup tourists visiting the U.S. are turning everyday American life into viral content, marveling at Buc-ee’s, Big Gulps, Walmart, Waffle House, ranch dressing, fire trucks, and other American fixtures that many Europeans know only from movies.

Warning: you could be fined $2,900 for wearing flip-flops at this popular Italian tourist destination.

A 7,000-square-foot duplex penthouse on Miami’s Grove Isle is asking $23.5 million, with 5,700 square feet of private outdoor space, a 97-foot bayside terrace, a rooftop entertainment lounge, and a 40-foot pool overlooking Biscayne Bay and the Miami skyline.

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