Morning Scan

The big stories today sit at the intersection of power and money: crypto flows and sanctions, a $2.5B ad-tech acquisition, and a utility merger that consolidates control over the energy infrastructure AI runs on. Hackers had a productive week in Berlin, and "radical transparency" is apparently worth exactly $100M to Shein.

$2.5B — Publicis's all-cash grab for LiveRamp is the largest bet yet that first-party data infrastructure is the real moat in AI-driven advertising. (Beet)

Connected World

Publicis Buys LiveRamp in $2.5 Billion Push Into AI-Driven Advertising

The French holding company is essentially buying the pipes that connect advertiser data to AI targeting — a structural move, not just a media buy. (Beet)

NextEra Energy to Acquire Dominion, Creating a Utility Giant

Framed as a power-demand play driven by AI data centers, this deal consolidates control over electricity infrastructure across Florida and Virginia. (NYT)

Connected World

Two Crypto Billionaires Sit Behind Both the Trump Family Token and Iran's Sanctions-Evasion Engine

Reuters traced $2.3B in flows from Iranian exchange Nobitex to blockchains tied to World Liberty Financial — a thread unlikely to stay quiet. (The Next Web)

Polymarket and Kalshi Continue to Operate in India Despite Government Ban

Defying a government advisory by routing around it via VPN is a bold regulatory posture, especially while US authorities are already issuing information requests. (Bloomberg)

Machines & Minds

Pwn2Own Berlin 2026: Hackers Earned $1.3M for 47 Vulnerabilities

Successful exploits of AI products including Codex, Cursor, and LM Studio suggest the attack surface on AI tooling is wide open and under-tested. (SecurityWeek)

Grafana Refused to Pay Ransom After Hackers Accessed Its GitHub Environment

A supply chain breach at an observability platform used by thousands of engineering teams is exactly the kind of infrastructure risk that rarely gets headlines. (The Hacker News)

Does Google Have a Claude Code Counterpunch?

The coding agent race has reshuffled AI competitive dynamics faster than most expected, and Google's response remains the most important unanswered question in enterprise software right now. (Big Technology)

The AI Trial of the Century Ends With a Whimper

The jury found Musk filed too late — and never had to weigh in on whether OpenAI's nonprofit-to-commercial conversion was legitimate, leaving the biggest governance question in AI unresolved. (Marcus on AI)

Connected World

The Orion PDA Runs on Sunlight and Ignores the Internet by Design

A solar-powered, offline-first personal digital assistant in 2026 is either the most contrarian product launch of the year or a surprisingly sensible response to notification fatigue — possibly both. (Yanko Design)