The week in tech.

Google will allow third-party app stores inside the Google Play Store in the US starting next week, dropping its challenge against a court order from the Epic Games lawsuit. The company withdrew its alternative proposal after US District Judge James Donato ordered it to enable rival marketplaces through the Play Store.

Flex, an AI-native private banking fintech, raised $70 million in Series B1 funding at a $1.2 billion valuation. The round was led by Halo, an investment firm founded by Qualtrics founder Ryan Smith and Accel general partner Ryan Sweeney. Total equity raised reaches $180 million, plus $300 million in debt financing.

SpaceX shares dipped below their $135 IPO price for the first time on Wednesday, closing at $135.27. Short sellers have earned an estimated $8.7 billion in paper profit since the IPO. The company raised $86 billion in the largest IPO in history and recently announced a $60 billion acquisition of AI coding startup Cursor.

Spectro Cloud raised $100 million in a Series D round led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, with participation from AMD Ventures, Ericsson, LG Technology Ventures, and Maximus. The San Jose-based company provides AI infrastructure management software, bringing total funding to over $260 million. It plans to expand its PaletteAI platform, target geographic growth, and deepen hardware integrations.

1Password launched a browser integration that lets Anthropic's Claude use stored credentials to log into sites like Audible and Stripe without the passwords ever reaching the AI model. The zero-exposure architecture requires biometric approval for each login. The integration is available on Mac for business, family, and individual plans.

OpenAI published details of GPT-Red, an internal automated red-teaming model that attacks OpenAI's own models to find prompt injection vulnerabilities. GPT-Red beat human red-teamers 84% to 13% on prompt injection. Human red-teaming is time-intensive and does not scale, while robustness evaluations are saturated by latest models.

TSMC will invest another $100 billion in Arizona, bringing its total U.S. investment to $265 billion. The expansion includes new fabs for 2-nanometer production and advanced packaging. The move follows a record 77.4% year-over-year jump in second-quarter profit and increased annual capital expenditure to $60 billion-$65 billion.

Apple increased iCloud+ subscription prices in Nigeria, Türkiye, Vietnam, Japan, Egypt, New Zealand, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Price hikes range from 11 percent to 55 percent depending on plan and country. Nigeria saw the largest increase, with the 50GB plan rising from ₦900 to ₦1,300. U.S. pricing remains unchanged.

A Taiwanese minister says TSMC plans two more advanced chip packaging plants in Chiayi Science Park. All four plants are expected to generate over $9.35 billion in annual output.

Oracle is leading the race to sell air-gapped cloud services to Japan, which the US says are key to secure intelligence sharing between Tokyo and its allies. Larry Ellison's group proposes an air-gapped network as the US pressures Tokyo to tighten security of sensitive data.

Apple released AirPods public beta firmware version 9.0.314 (build 9A314b), adding a long-requested custom EQ feature. The three-band equalizer lets users adjust lows, mids, and highs in the Settings app under Audio and Routing. It works on AirPods with an H2 chip, including AirPods Pro 2, AirPods Pro 3, AirPods 4, and AirPods Max 2.

Samsung Health now requires users to consent to their private health data being used for AI training or risk losing all synced data. The toggle, deep in settings, allows Samsung to use sleep, medications, medical records, and cycle tracking data. Humans may review some collected data. The app recently added Gen AI features including Vitals and Heart Health Score.