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1.	Anthropic in Talks to Raise at a $170 Billion Valuation By Sri Muppidi Source: Bloomberg

Anthropic is raising a new financing at a $170 billion valuation in a deal led by Iconiq Capital, reported Bloomberg. That's up from the $58 billion-valued round, before the investment, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners at the start of this year.

The new funding round is expected to be between $3 billion to $5 billion. Anthropic has also held discussions with Qatar Investment Authority and Singapore sovereign fund GIC, among other investors, about investing in the round as well. Earlier this month, The Information first reported that investors floated a new financing at valuations above $100 billion. The higher valuation likely reflects continued strong interest in the four-year-old startup.

Investor interest comes as the company crossed $4 billion in annualized revenue and some of its profit-related metrics improve. Anthropic's gross profit margin from selling its AI models and Claude chatbot directly to customers was roughly 60% and moving towards 70%. However, its gross profit margin from selling its Claude models through Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud was generating negative 30% earlier this year.

2.	Groq Cuts Revenue Projections in Span of a Few Months By Miles Kruppa Source: The Information

Groq, a chip startup taking on Nvidia, recently cut its 2025 revenue projections from more than $2 billion to more than $500 million, The Information reported. The company gave out the lower projections as it talks to investors about a new round of funding that would double its post-investment valuation to $6 billion.

A Groq spokesperson said the company shifted some revenue projections to 2026 because of a lack of data center capacity in a region where it planned to install more of its chips. She also said Groq had since adjusted the most recent projection to reflect a recent deal with Bell Canada and the addition of new artificial intelligence models to Groq's cloud service.

3.	JPMorgan Nears Apple Credit Card Deal To Replace Goldman By Michael Roddan Source: Wall Street Journal

JPMorgan is nearing a deal to replace Goldman Sachs as the provider of Apple's credit card program, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The largest U.S. bank has emerged as Apple's preferred choice to take over the program which has about $20 billion in balances, according to the report. Over the last two years, Apple has gauged interest from other major financial firms such as Capital One and American Express to replace Goldman Sachs, which was fined last year by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for mishandling the program.

The Apple partnership represented one prong of Goldman Sach's ill-fated expansion into retail consumer banking. A deal between Apple and JPMorgan has not been signed and there is a possibility it could fall through due to the complexity of the program, the WSJ said.

4.	Palo Alto Networks in Talks to Acquire CyberArk for $20 Billion By Aaron Holmes Source: Wall Street Journal

Palo Alto Networks is in talks to acquire the login software firm CyberArk for more than $20 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. CyberArk's stock rose more than 12% on Tuesday following the report.

CyberArk, a 26-year-old publicly traded startup based in Israel, sells software for verifying companies' employees when logging into applications that run in the cloud. The firm, which competes with the likes of Okta and Microsoft, was trading with a market cap of roughly $18 billion before the deal talks were reported.

The deal would be the latest in a string of acquisitions by Palo Alto Networks, which acquired the AI-focused security startup Protect AI for $700 million earlier this year, and bought the secure browser startup Talon for over $600 million in 2023. It would also follow Google's planned $32 billion acquisition of the cloud security startup Wiz this year, which was one of the largest cybersecurity deals in history.

5.	DOJ Fires Senior Antitrust Enforcers By Sylvia Varnham O'Regan Source: CBS News

The Department of Justice has fired two senior antitrust staffers following weeks of internal feuding inside the department over its handling of enforcement decisions, according to CBS News.

Tension inside the DOJ had been building over a lawsuit aimed at blocking Hewlett Packard Enterprise's acquisition of Juniper Networks, a major rival. The DOJ ended up settling the lawsuit. During the settlement talks, the department's antitrust chief Gail Slater reportedly took issue with HPE bringing on lawyers and consultants with connections in the White House, arguing that her team should have discretion to make decisions free of political interference.

Roger Alford and William Rinner—leading deputies of Slater—were both placed on administrative leave last week and have now been fired. It's unclear what the grounds for their dismissal were. Slater was reportedly against the firings.

The situation raises questions about how tough the Trump administration will be on big business—and the level of independence his antitrust officials will be afforded in their roles. Trump previously fired two Democratic commissioners serving in the Federal Trade Commission, a decision a federal court recently ruled was illegal.

6.	AI Chipmaker Cerebras Seeks $1 Billion in Funding As IPO Stalls By Valida Pau and Cory Weinberg Source: The Information

Cerebras Systems, a startup that is developing artificial intelligence chips to challenge Nvidia's, is in talks to raise up to $1 billion in private funding, potentially delaying a plan to go public this year, The Information reported.

The potential delay would represent a shift for Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman, who said in May that the company would aim to go public this year after it got permission from U.S. regulators to sell shares to Middle East investors.

Cerebras had several issues that could have made it a tough sell for public investors. Most of its revenue comes from one Middle East customer G42, which enlisted Cerebras to build three supercomputers. Cerebras' close ties to G42 has also drawn scrutiny from U.S. national security regulators.

7.	Spotify Says Ad Business is Moving Too Slowly By Catherine Perloff Source: The Information

Spotify executives on Tuesday signalled that the departure of its ad chief, Lee Brown, on Monday was in response to their unhappiness with the speed of changes with the company's ad business. In a second quarter earnings conference call, Spotify co-president Alex Norstrom responded to a question about Brown's exit, said that "we need to see more progress within ads…we felt it was the right time for a leadership change."

Earlier on the call, CEO Daniel Ek said "the one area that hasn't yet better expectations is our ads business. We've simply been moving too slowly and it's taken longer than expected to see the improvements we initiated to take hold."

Spotify has for years had trouble making its advertising business contribute meaningful revenue, having trouble having solutions that work well for all types of advertisers, especially small ones, the Information has previously reported.

Spotify reported operating income of €406 million, which was below the company's previously stated guidance of €539 million. Spotify's revenue of €4.2 billion also missed previously stated guidance of €4.3 billion, though was still up 10% year over year. The company's business was hurt by foreign exchange movements. Advertising revenue fell 1% year on year, although excluding foreign exchange movements, ad revenue grew 5%. Spotify stock fell more than 9%.

8.	CFPB To Launch New Open Banking Rule By Michael Roddan Source: The Information

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said it will fast-track a new rule governing access to consumer financial data, weeks after JPMorgan unveiled new data-access fees that threw the fintech industry into turmoil.

On Tuesday, the CFPB intervened in a lawsuit the banking industry had launched against a regulation, known as the open banking rule, which gives consumers, not banks, ownership of their banking data. The rule meant banks can't charge fees when consumers seek to share their data with outside companies such as payments firms, or other apps connected to bank accounts. Earlier this month, JPMorgan outlined plans to charge to access that data, potentially costing fintech and crypto companies hundreds of millions of dollars for information they currently got for free.

The CFPB asked a federal court to pause the banking industry's lawsuit. "In light of recent events in the marketplace, the bureau has now decided to initiate a new rulemaking to reconsider the rule with a view to substantially revising it and providing a robust justification," the agency said in a court filing. It's another reversal of the CFPB's position, which earlier this year had sided with the banking sector and said it was scrapping the CFPB's long-planned open-banking rule after the Trump administration took over the agency. David Sacks, an investor who was named President Trump's Crypto Czar, said he was concerned by JPMorgan's move, as did crypto entrepreneur and Trump supporter Tyler Winklevoss, posting on X that the bank was "trying to kill fintech and crypto companies."

9.	Judge Strikes OpenAI Defenses in Musk Suit By Rocket Drew Source: The Information

The judge overseeing Elon Musk's breach of charitable trust lawsuit against OpenAI struck down 16 of OpenAI's 55 defenses on Tuesday, ruling that OpenAI "inappropriately asserted an excessive number of defenses, many of which appear to be irrelevant, redundant, insufficient, or immaterial."

Among the struck defenses, OpenAI had argued that Musk's claims are invalid because he waited too long to bring a suit and he has "unclean hands," meaning he shares responsibility if OpenAI did commit wrongdoing.

But the judge refused to strike OpenAI's other defenses and wrote that Musk's lawyers "over-reached" by trying to strike all of OpenAI's defenses. Among the remaining defenses, OpenAI argues that Musk lacks the legal right to bring the lawsuit, and the nonprofit that owns OpenAI did not form a charitable trust.

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