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Choclate 🍫 Weekly<br>ICYMI: Tesla's $225 kids' bike sells out
Darius Ogenyi<br>Jul 19, 2026
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👋🏻 Happy Sunday<br>Tesla fans have spent years asking Elon Musk to build an e-bike.<br>Elon has said no each time because of a teenage cycling accident he had.<br>But last week, Tesla launched a $225 magnesium-frame toddler balance bike, and it sold out within hours of going live, with resellers already asking up to $5,000 on eBay.<br>Let’s unpack the rest of last week’s news:
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⚙️ Tech
Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, a 2.8 trillion-parameter open-weight model it says rivals Anthropic’s Fable while costing far less to run.
Spotify launched “Talk to Spotify,” letting Premium users create playlists and control playback through voice or text conversations.
Tesla launched a $225 balance bike for toddlers that sold out shortly after hitting its online store.
Image source: Engadget
Google redesigned its Images homepage into a personalized, Pinterest-style feed and added AI image generation powered by Nano Banana.
DoorDash launched a native sales channel inside Shopify’s App Store.
OpenAI released the $230 Codex Micro, a programmable macro pad that lets developers monitor and control AI coding agents.
Image source: PC Mag
Anthropic launched Claude for Teachers, a free AI assistant for verified US K-12 educators that includes a library of teaching skills, built in partnership with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s Learning Commons.
Apple released the iOS 27 public beta, bringing its AI-powered Siri to millions of iPhone users for the first time.
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💼 Business
Apple received approval to launch Apple Intelligence in China, powered by Alibaba’s Qwen AI, with Baidu handling search integration.
And has been in talks with chip startups and bankers about potential acquisitions to strengthen its AI server capabilities.
The EU ordered Google to share search data with rivals and open Android to competing AI assistants under the Digital Markets Act.
Reflection AI signed a $1B compute deal with Nebius, weeks after a separate $6.3B agreement with SpaceX, as it prepares to launch its first AI model.
Seven-Eleven Japan installed its first Tesla Superchargers and plans to expand the chargers to about 10 stores this fiscal year.
Image source: Top Gear PH
OnePlus will stop launching new products in Europe and North America as its parent company, Oppo, scales back the brand outside China.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order imposing a one-year moratorium on new data centers requiring 50 megawatts or more of power, making New York the first US state to halt large-scale data center construction.
Netflix said about 300 titles used generative AI this year, mainly in post-production, as quarterly revenue rose 13%.
Twenty-six former Meta employees sued the company, alleging AI tools were used to select workers for layoffs.
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💸 Deals
Seed and Early Rounds<br>Aina raised $5.5M in seed funding to build hardware for controlling AI agents, starting with a three-key AI macro keyboard.
Self Inspection raised $10M for its AI platform that estimates vehicle damage from smartphone photos.
Vorflux, founded by Rippling co-founder Prasanna Sankar, raised a $15M seed round to build AI software engineering tools for enterprises.
Hinge founder Justin McLeod raised $18M for Overtone, a voice-first AI dating app that replaces swiping with curated introductions.
Sable raised $45M in a round led by Sequoia Capital and 8VC for Aidan, an AI employee that runs live product demos and customer calls.
Microagi raised $55M (Germany’s largest-ever seed round) to build Atlas, a data and deployment platform for training and fine-tuning factory robots on plant-specific tasks.
Series A<br>Applied Computing raised a $20M Series A to build an AI foundation model for oil, gas, and petrochemical plants.
Rime raised $24 million in a Series A led by M13 Ventures for its voice AI models trained on proprietary conversational data recorded in the company’s San Francisco studio.
Syntetica raised a $30M Series A to commercialize technology that recycles mixed nylon textile waste.
Monumental raised a $32M Series B to expand its autonomous bricklaying robots across Europe and the US.
Series B+ and Growth<br>Senra raised a $65M Series B to modernize wire harness manufacturing for the aerospace and defense industries.
Emergent raised a $130M Series C at a $1.5B valuation, making the AI coding startup a unicorn just over a year after launch.
Funds<br>Greylock raised $1.5 billion for its eighteenth fund, a 50% increase over its previous $1 billion vehicle, with a focus on incubating and leading seed and Series A rounds in AI-native...