Anduril unveils Thunder, an attack helicopter
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ICYMI: Anduril unveiled Thunder<br>And: Apple tries lease-to-own with Klarna
Darius Ogenyi<br>Jul 26, 2026
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👋🏻 Happy Sunday<br>Two years ago, Apple shut down its buy-now-pay-later service.<br>Last week, it retrieved the keys and handed it over to Klarna, launching Apple Upgrade: a lease-to-own program for Apple products.<br>But Developers who dug into the iOS 27 code found out that the phone locks itself if you miss a payment.<br>Let’s unpack the rest of last week’s news:
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⚙️ Tech
Anthropic launched Claude Opus 5, a model it says approaches the capabilities of its flagship Fable 5 at half the price.
Google released three new Gemini models, including Gemini 3.6 Flash, a lighter Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, and Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber, a cybersecurity-focused model fine-tuned to detect and patch software vulnerabilities within Google’s CodeMender agent.
Anduril and Archer Aviation unveiled Thunder, an autonomous hybrid-electric attack aircraft designed to fly alongside Apache helicopters.
Image source: Anduril
Suno disclosed a data breach affecting 55.3 million users, exposing personal information including contact details and partial payment card data.
Amazon integrated its Luna cloud gaming service into Prime Video, adding a “Games” tab on Fire TVs in the US and UK that lets Prime members stream titles including Hogwarts Legacy, EA Sports FC 26, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle at no extra cost.
Facebook launched Seller, a standalone app for Marketplace merchants to manage listings and communicate with buyers.
Image source: Meta
Block launched Buzz, a free, open-source group chat platform that puts human employees and AI agents in the same conversations, positioning the tool as a replacement for Slack and GitHub.
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đź’Ľ Biz
AMD will invest up to $5B in Anthropic as part of a deal for Anthropic to deploy up to 2 gigawatts of AMD’s Instinct MI450 GPUs, with the first gigawatt scheduled for deployment in the first half of 2027.
OpenAI raised its projected infrastructure spending through 2030 to $750B, up 25% from its $600B estimate earlier this year.
Revolut reached a $115B valuation in a secondary share sale, and received a full banking licence from Australia’s prudential regulator, making it the first global fintech to hold banking licences in the UK, the EU, Mexico, and Australia.
Apple is partnering with Klarna to launch Apple Upgrade on July 28, a lease-to-own program covering iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple Watches, and computers.
Image source: Apple
A federal judge gave final approval to Anthropic’s $1.5B copyright settlement, the largest in US copyright history, paying roughly $3,000 per work across an estimated 500,000 books.
Monday.com is cutting approximately 630 employees, or 20% of its headcount, to fund a restructuring around its AI Work Platform.
Rivian sued the US government to recover tariffs paid under President Trump’s “Liberation Day” trade policy after the Supreme Court struck it down.
Kalshi sent Netflix a cease-and-desist letter over a documentary trailer it says falsely depicts sports betting on its platform.
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đź’¸ Deals
Seed and Early Rounds<br>Scape raised $3.2M in seed funding from Y Combinator, General Catalyst, and angels from OpenAI, Google, and Meta to build a desktop AI agent designed to replace email.
Cascade raised $3.5M to help construction firms find and win projects through AI-powered bid matching and proposal generation.
Aprise, an edtech platform, raised $4.5M to teach students how to build software with AI coding tools, targeting the growing demand for vibe-coding skills.
Bluecore Energy raised $10M in pre-seed funding led by Slauson & Co. to build small nuclear reactors on floating barges that can be shipped to ports, coastal infrastructure, or disaster zones.
Yope raised $12.3M to build a private social network without algorithmic feeds or advertising, funded by users paying for the service directly.
Infinity raised $15M in seed funding at a $100M valuation from Touring Capital, Principal VC, and researchers from OpenAI and Anthropic to build software that makes non-Nvidia AI chips inference-ready.
Series A<br>Passionfroot raised $15M in a Series A led by Insight Partners to expand its B2B creator marketplace from Berlin to the US.
Natural raised $30M in a Series A led by Forerunner Ventures, 193 days after launch, to build payment infrastructure for autonomous AI agents, positioning itself as a direct competitor to Stripe for agent-to-agent transactions.
Paper raised $34M in a Series A led by Accel and ICONIQ to build an AI-native design platform for...