gm.
midweek catch-up. five things that moved since monday.
the 5
1. the AI industry just went to war over open source.
on july 24, nvidia CEO jensen huang published an open letter defending open source AI (the practice of releasing an AI model's underlying code publicly). fifty companies signed on quickly, including microsoft, meta, google, openai, IBM, dell, AMD, and palantir. notably absent: anthropic and amazon.
on monday, anthropic CEO dario amodei responded with three counterproposals: (1) don't sell top-tier chips to china, (2) crack down on chinese AI companies "distilling" american models (basically stealing them), and (3) require safety testing for all powerful models before release. nvidia separately launched the Open Secure AI Alliance (a cybersecurity group) with microsoft, cisco, palantir, and others. this is the biggest AI industry fight of the year.
2. claude just broke encryption that humans couldn't.
anthropic revealed monday that an unreleased version of claude found a real security flaw in a new encryption method the US government was about to make an official standard. the method was designed to protect data even against future quantum computers (a new type of computer that could theoretically crack today's encryption). human cryptography experts had spent two years reviewing this method. none of them found this specific weakness. claude found it in about 60 hours of compute time, at a cost of roughly $100,000.
why this matters: it's one of the first times an AI has done original security research at a professional level, catching something that the world's best human experts missed. it also proves anthropic's argument (from story 1) that these models are getting powerful enough to need mandatory safety testing before public release.
3. oil jumped 7% after iran attacked US forces.
on tuesday, iran's revolutionary guard launched ballistic missiles at US bases in jordan (all intercepted). trump responded that the US would "hit iran hard." tensions have been escalating rapidly since.
oil markets reacted with brent crude jumping roughly 7% and WTI (US crude) up about 6%. context: oil already spiked above $100 a barrel last week during houthi attacks in the red sea. iran controls the strait of hormuz, which moves about 20% of the world's oil. gas prices will likely follow if this keeps escalating.
4. two massive new texas data center deals dropped this week.
on tuesday, meta and blackrock announced a $14 billion joint venture to build a new AI data center in el paso, texas. blackrock owns 80%, meta 20%. the center will have 1 gigawatt of compute capacity (huge). first capacity online in 2028.
separately, the financial times reported monday that nvidia is the secret tenant behind a $19.6 billion (up to $50.2 billion with renewals) lease on another texas data center in nueces county (near corpus christi). the center is being built by hut 8 (a bitcoin miner turned AI infrastructure company). texas is quickly becoming the physical center of the american AI buildout.
5. apple will now let you lease your iphone through klarna.
on tuesday, apple launched a new program called "apple upgrade". starting at $17.99 a month, you lease an iphone for 12 or 24 months. at the end, you can renew, buy the phone outright, or return it. macs, ipads, and apple watches are also included at various price points.
the twist: klarna (the swedish "buy now pay later" company) is powering the whole thing. only a soft credit check required, no security deposit. this is apple's biggest move yet toward treating hardware like software (a subscription instead of a one-time purchase). it also means klarna just landed one of the biggest consumer partnerships in fintech.
see you monday.
not financial advice. aggregated community trends and commentary.