Good morning. It's Tuesday, June 30, and we're covering growing tensions in the Amazon–Anthropic partnership, why AI data centers are investing in smarter cooling, and how compute shortages are slowing Meta's AI.
Plus: a guest essay arguing for a new way to share the wealth created by automation, and a reader poll on the same topic.
Google caps Meta's access to Gemini AI models after the social media company requests more computing capacity than Alphabet can provide. The shortfall, first communicated around March, delays some of Meta's internal AI projects and prompts employees to use AI tokens more efficiently. Google Cloud generated $20 billion in first-quarter revenue, but CEO Sundar Pichai says compute constraints also slowed growth.
Cursor launches a native iOS app that lets developers start, monitor, and manage AI coding agents from their phones without staying tethered to a computer. The public beta supports cloud-based agents, remote control of local agents, voice input, and pull request reviews on iPhone. The app is available on all paid plans, with 75% off Composer 2.5 runs through July 5, 2026, while repo-less chats remain in development.
California partners with Anthropic to expand AI access across state and local government while emphasizing cybersecurity and responsible adoption. The agreement provides Claude AI to California agencies and local governments at a 50% discount. Governor Gavin Newsom says the partnership aims to extend the benefits of Silicon Valley innovation to public services while strengthening government cyber defenses.
POWERED BY BOX
AI Leaders Are Betting on Platform Flexibility
Most organizations are concerned about AI provider lock-in and know it’s critical that their agents operate “headlessly” — connecting directly to systems, APIs, and data sources without a human interface.
Box’s State of AI report breaks down how the companies on the leading edge of AI are betting on infrastructure flexibility rather than a winning model.
VIDEO
Regulation Reshapes Frontier Access
FORWARD FUTURE ORIGINAL
A Tax System Built on Labor Is a Tax System Built on a Melting Glacier
Something strange happened over the past ten months. The idea that the public should own a stake in the companies getting rich off automation went from fringe to seeming consensus, fast.
Bernie Sanders introduced the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which would hit the biggest AI companies with a one-time 50% tax paid in stock and drop those shares into a fund that pays dividends to all of us. Trump signed an executive order creating a sovereign wealth fund, and his administration has been grabbing equity stakes along the way: in Intel, in MP Materials, in US Steel, and more recently with the big AI companies, with a household dividend floated as one use of the proceeds. → Read the full article here.
POLL
How Should AI Wealth Be Shared?
Several "universal AI dividend" plans are gaining traction. Sanders' 50% stock tax, Trump's sovereign wealth fund equity grabs, Altman's old share-tax plan.
Scott Santens proposes something different: a never-ending 1.5% stock "dilution tax" that mints and sells new shares every year, paying ~$365/month to every American, with no government ownership stake.
Which approach do you trust most? |
PARTNERSHIPS
Amazon Renegotiates Anthropic Deal as AI Costs Rise
Anthropic has renegotiated part of its partnership with Amazon, shifting pricing for its AI models from compute-hour billing to token-based billing starting in 2027, according to people familiar with the discussions. The change could increase Amazon's costs for products powered by Claude, prompting the company to evaluate alternatives, including OpenAI's models and its own Nova family, although Amazon disputes that the revised agreement will raise its overall costs.
The development highlights growing tension in one of AI's most significant partnerships as Amazon balances major investments in both Anthropic and OpenAI while seeking greater control over the technology underpinning its AI services. → Read the full article here. (Paywall)
FUNDING
Omen AI Raises $31 Million to Monitor Data Center Cooling Systems
Omen AI has raised a $31 million Series A funding round led by Nava Ventures to expand its real-time fluid monitoring technology for AI data centers. The startup's miniature spectrometer detects bacterial growth and other contaminants in liquid cooling systems before they cause clogs and costly downtime, which can sideline GPU racks for several hours.
Originally built for heavy machinery maintenance, the technology gained traction through Caterpillar dealerships before the company pivoted toward the fast-growing AI infrastructure market. → Read the full article here.
NEWS
What Else is Happening
Proception Settles Tesla Suit: Robot hand startup settled Tesla's trade secret lawsuit, raised $11M, and began shipping its first robotic hands.
Ford Rehires Quality Engineers: Ford brought back 300+ veteran inspectors after AI quality checks fell short, highlighting the limits of automation.
Google Opens Gemini Images to Free Users: Free US users can now generate personalized images via Gemini's Nano Banana model.
Momenta Seeks $751M IPO: GM- and Tencent-backed self-driving startup launched a $751M Hong Kong IPO to fund AI R&D and Robotaxi expansion.
Pocket Raises $11M: AI note-taking startup Pocket raised $11M after selling 130,000 recording devices for meetings and transcription.
TIDAL Demonetizes AI Music: TIDAL will stop paying royalties on fully AI-generated tracks and remove AI impersonations to prioritize human artists.
