ByteBrief
We're a portrait publication through and through. Turn your phone back and your briefing picks up right where you left it.
(We tried widescreen once. It wasn't us.)
July 20 to July 26, 2026 · 12 stories · the week is still unfolding
Stocks ended lower for the week as AI-driven chip stocks extended losses, with the S&P 500 down 1.6% and the Nasdaq off 2.9%. Fundstrat's Tom Lee says stocks are poised to rebound after a massive margin call and selloff in AI trade darlings.
Day by day
Distilled from 200+ publications by ByteBrief. A new recap every week.
Bristol Myers Squibb is deploying NVIDIA's Vera Rubin systems, giving the drugmaker what it calls the most powerful AI computing infrastructure in life sciences to speed drug discovery.
U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín ordered Paramount Skydance to pause its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery through August 3 after several states argued the merger would harm competition. The judge said the states made a "strong showing" that the merger would decrease competition.
Morgan Stanley topped Wall Street in AI-related debt deals and beat estimates on trading and deals, driven by strong performance in its trading and investment banking divisions.
Zhongji Innolight shares surged as much as 8% Monday after the Chinese optical transceivers firm received approval for a Hong Kong listing worth up to $8 billion. The deal will exceed Luxshare Precision's $3.1 billion IPO, becoming the largest Hong Kong listing this year. Hong Kong's IPO market posted its strongest first-half result in five years.
Apple is testing a new AI-powered Live Notes feature at some retail stores that transcribes and summarizes Genius Bar conversations. The system requires both employee and customer opt-in. Transcripts are saved to the employee's iPad and the internal Genius Bar system, but managers do not receive them and recordings are not saved.
Google is designing a server chip codenamed Frozen v2, optimized for its Gemini AI models and slated for release in 2028. The chip could deliver six to ten times better performance per watt than Google's current AI silicon, measured by tokens generated per unit of power. Google did not directly confirm the report.
AZ-COM Maruwa Holdings, a Japanese logistics company, plans to adopt the JPYC stablecoin to pay around 2,300 business partners, including truck drivers. The yen-denominated stablecoin enables faster, more frequent payments with no transfer fees. AZ-COM Maruwa is also considering a partnership with JPYC and an investment of over 1 billion yen ($6.2 million).
The HONOR Robot Phone is expected to launch in China in August with a 1.5K flat display, Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, and ~6,000mAh battery. It features a 200MP 4D gimbal primary camera, 50MP ultrawide, and 200MP periscope telephoto lens, all manufactured by Arri Imaging.
David Sacks warned the U.S. could lose the AI race after a Chinese model's breakout. The warning highlights growing competition from Chinese AI models, which have demonstrated rapid advances and could challenge U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence development.
Allbridge Core paused its cross-chain bridge after a $1.65 million exploit on its Solana deployment. The attacker used a $1.12 million USDC flash loan from Kamino to manipulate the stablecoin pool's exchange rate, then withdrew liquidity at manipulated rates and bridged stolen funds from Solana to Ethereum into privacy pools.
A federal judge gave final approval to Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement of a class action copyright lawsuit. The payout delivers $3,000 per work across an estimated 500,000 works to authors and publishers. Judge William Alsup had ruled that training AI on copyrighted text counts as fair use, but found Anthropic's use of pirate sites illegal.