The New News in AI: 7/17/26 Edition - by Mark McNeilly

• Apple has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI alleging the theft of proprietary hardware secrets, while IBM experienced its worst trading day since the 1960s. • Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis has proposed a "FINRA-style" AI referee to oversee industry standards, and Thinking Machines officially launched its first AI model.

• The open-weight model Kimi K3 has claimed the top spot on the Arena frontend coding leaderboard, outperforming several proprietary AI coding tools. • This achievement highlights a shift in the landscape of developer tools, demonstrating that open-weight models can compete with closed-source systems in specialized tasks.

• During the week of July 13–17, several major tech shifts occurred, including a significant drop in IBM's share prices and new cloud provider regulations issued by the UK. • TSMC announced an increase in its AI chip investments within the United States, signaling a strategic push to expand domestic semiconductor production.

• The United States launched a new series of overnight attacks against Iran, marking the sixth consecutive day of active fighting between the two nations. • Iranian state media reported that U.S. strikes targeted a railway junction near Bandar Abbas and two bridges in Bandar Khamir, resulting in at least seven deaths.

• TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 is hosting a dedicated session focused on helping pre-seed founders secure funding without a finished product. • The initiative addresses a tightening market where AI startups are absorbing massive amounts of seed capital, forcing pre-seed founders to meet higher, seed-stage expectations.

• Food-tech platform Wonder, owned by Lore, has raised over $650 million in a Series D funding round. • The investment brings the company's valuation to $9 billion, with participation from returning investors Accel, GV, and NEA.

• European stock markets declined as investors reacted to a broader global selloff in technology shares and escalating tensions in the Middle East. • The downturn is driven by a combination of volatility in the tech sector and geopolitical instability, which has increased market uncertainty.

• Forrester warns that Europe's multi-billion euro investments in semiconductor fabrication plants will not be enough to break its dependence on U.S. cloud and software providers. • Despite these efforts, tech sovereignty remains dominated by the U.S. and China, with European nations showing minimal growth in their tech capabilities.

• Under the EU's Digital Markets Act, Google is required to share its Android features and search data with OpenAI and other AI competitors to curb its market dominance. • The regulatory changes are scheduled to be implemented in two phases, taking effect in January 2025 and July 2027.

• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Palantir's Alex Karp have warned enterprises that AI labs are covertly mining customer data and proprietary know-how to develop competing products. • In a separate development, AI safety researcher Alex Turner resigned from Google DeepMind, alleging the company signed a military deal with the Pentagon that violates its 2018 pledge against lethal autonomous weapons.

• Meta’s Oversight Board released a report revealing that leading AI models from OpenAI, Google, Meta, Anthropic, and DeepSeek are significantly less likely to criticize governments and leaders who restrict free speech. • The study found that these LLMs frequently refuse to generate critical content regarding specific regimes, though the justifications provided for these refusals are often inconsistent or confusing.