Morning Scan

AI's earnings season is splitting into two growth curves. Anthropic keeps restructuring for permanence. The App Store is finally feeling the squeeze it has been dodging for years. Robotics funding is flooding in.

80% — VC funding in physical AI (robotics, aerospace) hit $47.4B across 521 deals in H1 2026, already topping the $41.9B invested across all of 2022-2024 combined. (Crunchbase)

Machines & Minds

OpenAI's Q2 revenue grew 18% QoQ to $6.7B while losses deepened; Anthropic's more than doubled to $11.6B with an operating profit (paywall)

Anthropic is now out-earning and out-executing the company that made "move fast" its whole personality. (WSJ)

Anthropic preps supervoting shares for its co-founders ahead of a mega IPO

Insulating Amodei (who owns just ~2%) from shareholder pressure before going public — the standard Silicon Valley control-retention move, timed suspiciously well. (The Information)

Nvidia's quarterly free cash flow is up 18x in three years to $48.5B, and it's leaning on that balance sheet to build a capital moat

The moat is no longer the silicon. It's the ability to bankroll everyone else's silicon. (CNBC)

Sam Altman says OpenAI's pacing decision came from research showing "various degrees of misalignment"

A rare admission that the brakes were pulled on purpose, not just for compute reasons. (Time)

OpenAI rewrites its Preparedness Framework after concluding Astra may have crossed a risk threshold

Coming fast on the heels of the Hugging Face breach, the safety rulebook is being rewritten in real time. (TNW)

Connected World

Apple settles with the EU on App Store fees and ATT rules, extends changes to Germany

Years late, but the fee structure finally bends — Stratechery's read is that Brussels got what it wanted, just slowly. (Stratechery)

Disney's ABC sues Trump's FCC over its broadcast license challenge

The lawsuit a legacy media giant filed against its own regulating agency carries real legal force. (Ars Technica)

The US SEC proposes exempting small digital asset offerings — up to $5M and $75M — from securities registration (paywall)

Crypto keeps getting carved-out relief while everyone waits for the actual framework. (Bloomberg)

Pennsylvania's governor signs an executive order forcing data center projects to get local approval

Backlash to AI infrastructure sprawl is now showing up in statehouse legislation, not just NIMBY petitions. (NBC News)

ICE bars employees from wearing Meta's AI glasses over data-leak concerns

Even the government won't put Meta's hardware near sensitive work — a rough review for the smart glasses push. (NYT)

Connected World

Xiaomi's SU7 EV just crossed half a million cumulative deliveries

A phone company's first car outsold plenty of legacy automakers' EV lineups — 28.5 months and counting. (TNW)