Morning Scan

Holiday weekend is over, and the inbox did not take it easy. The week opens with a crypto reckoning, a quiet sunset for one of Amazon's oldest platforms, and a handful of companies restructuring around AI while insisting it has nothing to do with headcount. Sure.

$3.8B — The total losses absorbed by retail investors in Trump's memecoin, per a new crypto analytics report covering nearly a million buyers. (NYT)

Machines & Minds

AWS Is Winding Down Mechanical Turk

The crowdsourcing service that once stood in for AI is now being retired by AI — no new customers, maintenance mode, and a slow exit that closes a 20-year chapter in human-labeled data. (The Register)

Starling Bank Cuts 130 Jobs, Blames AI Efficiency

The UK neobank is restructuring around automation and international expansion — 3% of staff, framed as a bet, not a retreat. (The Next Web)

Samsung in Talks to Make 2nm AI Chips for Anthropic and Meta

If it closes, this would be a meaningful lifeline for Samsung Foundry, which has been losing ground to TSMC in the race to serve the AI hardware stack. (SamMobile)

Apple Silicon's Mac Mini Is Becoming the Go-To AI Agent Machine

Apple's senior PM for silicon explains how a decade of chip investment quietly positioned the company at the center of on-device AI inference — a role nobody saw coming three years ago. (The Deep View)

Connected World

Nearly a Million Investors Lost $3.8B on Trump's Memecoin (paywall)

Most retail buyers are underwater while a narrow group of early insiders captured the bulk of gains — the distribution looks less like a market and more like a funnel. (NYT)

Bending Spoons' Nasdaq IPO Lands Atop $4.4B in Debt (paywall)

The Italian app-rollup machine goes public after 50+ acquisitions, but the leverage load means investors are really betting on whether its subscription flywheel can outrun its interest payments. (Financial Times)

LinqAlpha Raises $22M to Bring AI Research Tools to Hedge Funds

AI-powered market research for institutional investors is a crowded pitch right now, but a $22M Series A co-led by three funds suggests this one landed with conviction. (Tech Funding News)

Uber Quietly Pulls Back on European Food Delivery Expansion (paywall)

Pausing five of seven targeted country launches as Delivery Hero talks advance — Uber is consolidating rather than building, which says something about where European delivery economics stand. (Financial Times)

Connected World

White House Deletes 6,000 Energy Conservation Pages During Historic Heatwave

The Department of Energy removed the pages as temperatures spike across the US — the overlap between the deletion and the weather event is not subtle. (The Verge)

India's First Domestic Chip Plant Opens in Gujarat

The $870M CG Semi facility marks a symbolic and practical milestone for India's semiconductor ambitions, beginning with assembly and testing operations that lay the groundwork for future fab capabilities. (The Next Web)

Midjourney Wants Hollywood to Disclose Its Own AI Use

In an ongoing lawsuit, Midjourney is trying to compel the studios suing it over training data to reveal how much AI they're using themselves — a tactic that could reframe the whole case. (TechCrunch)