Jul 8, 2025 4 min read Daily Rundown

⛵ Tech Feasts Forever

Apple Tax Tangle, New God Rising, Waymo Goes NY

Good Morning, Early Adopters!

Feel the hum? It's where market forces tangle, foundational tech reshapes, and new ventures meet harsh realities. This is the dynamic flow of our digital world.

LAWSUIT

Apple Fights €500M EU Fine for Killing Payment Links

👀 What’s the move: Apple’s appealing the EU’s half-billion euro fine for blocking music apps like Spotify from showing users cheaper payment options outside the App Store. The EU says it’s antitrust. Apple says it’s “design choice.”

💡 Why it’s not boring: This isn't just Spotify drama—it’s a test case for dismantling Apple’s entire App Store revenue grip. If the EU wins, expect the same logic to hit games, dating, news, and beyond.

⛵ Key takeaway: Apple called it “user experience”; the EU called it a shakedown—and brought receipts.

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DATA

CoreWeave Buys Its Builder for $9B in Stock

👀 What’s the move: Nvidia‑backed CoreWeave just agreed to acquire Core Scientific—the bankrupt Bitcoin miner turned AI infra landlord—for $9B in stock. This isn’t just a real estate grab, it’s a vertical integration move on AI compute capacity. They’re buying their own landlord to lock in power-hungry AI data center infrastructure.

💡 Why it’s not boring: This is a heat-check on how far up the stack AI hyper scalers are willing to go. CoreWeave’s already raised billions for GPUs; now it wants to own the concrete and copper too. And Core Scientific, once wrecked by crypto winter, is now being refitted for the AI summer. It's a redemption arc, if you squint hard enough.

⛵ Key takeaway: From mining coins to training models—same chips, new gods.

ROBOTAXI

Waymo Finally Enters Hard Mode

👀 What’s the move: Alphabet's Waymo is rolling into Philadelphia and New York City. This isn't a commercial launch, but a classic "road trip" to start mapping the notoriously chaotic streets and test with safety drivers. They're collecting data on America's most challenging urban terrain, from Philly's tight corridors to Manhattan's everything-at-once traffic.

💡 Why it’s not boring: This is Waymo's stress test. If its AI can handle NYC cabbies and Philly potholes, it can handle anything. It’s a high-stakes data grab in massive, dense markets, signaling a move from sunny, wide-laned comfort zones to the brutal reality of the northeast. Success here would be a massive flex on competitors and a crucial step toward justifying its colossal valuation.

⛵ Key takeaway: Waymo is finally learning to drive in cities that actively hate cars.

STARTUP SPOT

🧠 Centific
“The hidden infrastructure behind world-class AI.”
A frontier AI data foundry that provides the data, intelligence, and human-in-the-loop assurance for enterprise AI deployments.
→ Ex-Pactera exec Venkat Rangapuram (CEO). Raised a $60M Series A in June 2025. Partners with NVIDIA, Microsoft & AWS.

⚡️ FLUIX AI
“The AI operating system for physical infrastructure.”
AI-powered autopilot for data centers, autonomously optimizing cooling, power, and water systems to dramatically cut energy waste.
→ Founder Abhishek Sastri. Raised $2.1M from firms like Pi Labs & Shadow Ventures. Alum of Techstars and the MSIVL.

⚡️ Emerald AI
“Turning AI data centers into grid allies.”
AI software orchestrates compute loads, letting data centers dynamically adjust power use to support grid stability, not just drain it.
→ Founder Dr. Varun Sivaram. Launched w/ a $24.5M seed from Radical, NVentures, John Doerr & Jeff Dean.

BAY AREA MEMOS

Synfini gets $8.9M to accelerate drug discovery with AI.
Pimloc raises $5M to expand its AI video privacy platform globally.
Epic Games settles its antitrust lawsuit with Samsung over third-party app store restrictions.
New data shows Meta's Threads is closing the gap with X in daily active mobile users.
Tulum Energy raises $27M to commercialize a rediscovered methane pyrolysis technology for clean hydrogen production.

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