2026-07-17
AI was supposed to kill the travel agent. Instead it just minted a billion-dollar one.
Fora, a platform that lets ordinary people become travel agents and gives travellers a way to find them, has raised a $60m Series D at a $1bn valuation led by Forerunner and Tactile Ventures. It has 15,000+ advisors (97% new to the profession) who have booked over $3bn in travel, an accelerating curve. Fora is […]<br /> This story continues at The Next Web [...]
2026-07-17
Xi tells World AI Conference no single country should monopolise AI
Xi Jinping told the World AI Conference in Shanghai on Friday that artificial intelligence “should not be a solo performance by a single country, but a symphony of international cooperation,” casting Beijing as the patron of open, shared technology. The line, aimed at the developing world and, by implication, at Washington, set the tone for a speech […]<br /> This story continues at [...]
2026-07-17
PayPal board rebuffs $53bn Stripe and Advent bid as too low, sources say
PayPal’s board reckons that a $53bn (£39bn) joint takeover approach from Stripe and the private-equity firm Advent International sells the payments pioneer short, the latest twist in a fast-moving round of payments consolidation. People familiar with the talks told Reuters the directors view the offer as inadequate and have yet to respond formally. The approach values PayPal at […]<br / [...]
2026-07-17
A luggage maker’s filing just pinned DeepSeek at $52bn
The most precise figure yet attached to DeepSeek’s worth did not come from the lab, its bankers or its founder. It surfaced in a stock-exchange filing by Anhui Korrun, a Chinese luggage maker, which discloses a stake small enough to imply the Hangzhou AI startup is valued at around $52bn. The arithmetic is narrow but […]<br /> This story continues at The Next Web [...]
2026-07-17
Network School founder says Malaysia immigration probe risks its tech ambitions
Balaji Srinivasan built Network School as a working prototype of the “network state,” his theory that an internet country of engineers and founders can eventually do the work of a real one. This week a real one reminded him who still holds the passports. The former Coinbase chief technology officer and Andreessen Horowitz partner said on 15 […]<br /> This story continues at The Next [...]
2026-07-17
Netflix beats on Q2 earnings but a soft Q3 forecast sends the stock down 9%
Netflix cleared the quarter and stumbled on the outlook. The company posted second-quarter revenue of $12.56bn on Thursday, up 13% on the year, alongside earnings of $0.80 a share, a cent ahead of the $0.79 analysts had pencilled in. Then it guided the next three months lower, and the stock did the rest. Third-quarter revenue is forecast […]<br /> This story continues at The Next Web [...]
2026-07-17
Moonshot unveils Kimi K3, the world’s largest open AI model
Chinese startup Moonshot AI has unveiled Kimi K3, a 2.8-trillion-parameter system it bills as the world’s largest open-weight AI model. The claim, made on 16 July, plants the firm squarely alongside the American frontier labs it has spent two years chasing. The model arrives weeks after Moonshot was reported to be seeking a $30bn valuation, and […]<br /> This story continues at The Next [...]
2026-07-17
China just put its first commercial brain implant into a patient. It’s smaller than Neuralink’s, on purpose.
China has performed the world’s first surgery using a commercially approved brain-computer interface. Surgeons at Huashan Hospital in Shanghai implanted a coin-sized chip in a patient with impaired hand movement, the South China Morning Post reports. The patient had lost hand function after a spinal cord injury in a car accident a decade ago. The procedure […]<br /> This story continues [...]