Morning Scan

Anthropic had a packed 24 hours: export controls lifted, new model launched, access rolling out next week. Trump's financial disclosures landed with numbers that are hard to contextualize quietly, and a 140-company stablecoin coalition is no longer easy to dismiss.

$1.4B+ — Trump's 2025 income from crypto ventures, per financial disclosure filings, including $635M from $TRUMP coin sales and $500M+ from World Liberty Financial. (Reuters)

Connected World

Anthropic Launches Claude Sonnet 5 With Near-Opus Performance at a Lower Price

A midrange model that punches up in coding and safety, now the default for all plans including free — the Fable news wasn't the only thing Anthropic shipped this week. (SiliconANGLE)

Anthropic is Back in the Trump Administration's Good Graces

The new jailbreak severity standard Anthropic is co-drafting with partners looks like the price of readmission, and a template others may have to follow. (WIRED)

Of Course Elon Musk Is Making an AI Phone

A prototype is reportedly circulating, and the timing, right as Anthropic's frontier models come back online, is not subtle. (Sources News)

Connected World

Visa, Stripe and 140 Others Back New Open USD Stablecoin to Challenge Tether

A 140-company consortium including Visa, Stripe, and BlackRock is a serious institutional signal that the stablecoin fight is no longer crypto-native. (SiliconANGLE)

Schneider Electric Acquires Cognite for $3.1B in Industrial AI Push

Industrial AI is attracting some of the year's biggest checks — Schneider is betting the operational data layer matters as much as the model. (SiliconANGLE)

Lime Raised $174M in Its US IPO at $25 per Share (paywall)

Priced at midpoint, $1.A $6B valuation from a micromobility company actually making it to public markets is its own kind of news. (Bloomberg)

Sources: Microsoft Plans Job Cuts Next Week Affecting Less Than 2.5% of Workforce

Sales, consulting, and Xbox in the crosshairs — fewer than 5,500 roles, but tech giants trimming headcount while expanding AI spend remains the pattern. (Business Insider)

Connected World

South Korean Exports Hit All-Time Monthly High on AI Chip Demand

$102.25B in June exports, up 70.9% YoY, anchored by a record $44.82B in chip shipments — a clear data point on how AI infrastructure demand is affecting trade flows. (Nikkei Asia)

Japan Commits Up to $6.16B to SoftBank-Led AI Consortium

SoftBank, Honda, NEC, and Sony in a government-backed consortium targeting a domestic foundation model by 2027 — Asia's AI sovereignty race is very much on. (Nikkei Asia)

Getty Images Ends Shutterstock Merger After UK Regulator Demands Divestiture (paywall)

The UK CMA's condition — sell the editorial business — was apparently a bridge too far, killing one of stock media's most-watched consolidation bets. (Wall Street Journal)

The Father of the Internet Is Finally Retiring

Vint Cerf is stepping down as Google's Chief Internet Evangelist after 21 years. (TechCrunch)

Russia Unveils a Plasma Engine That Could Get Humans to Mars in 30 Days

The thrust is roughly equivalent to holding an apple — but if the math on travel time holds, the propulsion calculus for deep space just got interesting. (The Space Newsletter)