Reflection AI, founded by ex-DeepMind researchers, has secured $2 billion in funding, valuing the company at $8 billion. The startup aims to be an open source alternative to labs like OpenAI and a Western counterpart to Chinese AI firms like DeepSeek. Led by Misha Laskin and Ioannis Antonoglou, Reflection AI focuses on building frontier models outside established tech giants, having recruited top talent from DeepMind and OpenAI.

The company plans to release a frontier language model next year, trained on tens of trillions of tokens, using a Mixture-of-Experts architecture. Reflection AI will release model weights for public use, while keeping datasets and training pipelines proprietary. Revenue will be generated from enterprises building on top of Reflection AI's models and governments developing sovereign AI systems.

Investors in this round include Nvidia, Disruptive, DST, and others. The funding will be used to acquire the necessary compute resources for training new models, with the first model expected to be released early next year.

Datacurve, a Y Combinator graduate, has raised a $15 million Series A round led by Chemistry to focus on high-quality data for software development. The company uses a "bounty hunter" system to attract skilled software engineers to complete datasets and has distributed over $1 million in bounties.

Datacurve emphasizes a positive user experience, treating data collection as a consumer product. This approach aims to attract talent, as the company believes that intrinsic motivation is more important than financial incentives. Datacurve is creating an infrastructure for post-training data collection to attract and retain experts in their domains, initially focusing on software engineering but with potential applications in finance, marketing, and medicine.

Security researchers at Google report that the Clop extortion gang has exploited vulnerabilities in Oracle's E-Business Suite, leading to data theft from dozens of organizations. The campaign, which began around July 10, involved a zero-day bug allowing hackers to access systems without usernames or passwords. Oracle's software, used for managing customer data and HR files, was targeted. Google has provided technical details to help organizations detect potential compromises. The Clop gang, known for mass-hacking campaigns, has previously targeted file transfer tools like Cleo Software, MOVEit, and GoAnywhere.

China has increased export controls on rare-earth minerals and related technologies, adding five rare-earth elements to the export control list, bringing the total to 12. This action, according to the Commerce Ministry, aims to safeguard national security. Foreign producers must now apply for an export license if they intend to export products that use Chinese-origin rare-earth minerals or related technology. Defense organizations will not receive export licenses, but licenses for semiconductor manufacturing will be reviewed individually. Exports for humanitarian aid are exempt. This move mirrors U.S. restrictions on chipmaking equipment exports to China and follows previous actions in retaliation for tariffs, potentially impacting industries reliant on rare-earth minerals.

Apple is adapting to Texas state law SB2420, which mandates age verification for app store users and developers. This law raises concerns about user privacy, especially the requirement of collecting sensitive, personally identifiable information for app downloads.

The law, set to take effect on January 1, 2026, will require Apple to verify if users in Texas are 18 or older. Users under 18 must join a Family Sharing group managed by parents or guardians, who must consent to all App Store downloads, purchases, and transactions.

Apple is providing tools and APIs to help developers comply with the law while preserving privacy. These include the Declared Age Range API, which will be updated to provide age categories for new account users in Texas, and new APIs for parental consent for significant app changes.

Apple cautions developers about similar laws coming into effect in Utah and Louisiana later in the year.

OpenAI's video-generating app, Sora, has surpassed ChatGPT in first-week iOS downloads, according to Appfigures data. Sora achieved 627,000 iOS downloads in its first seven days, compared to ChatGPT's 606,000. Sora reached a million downloads across platforms in under five days. While ChatGPT was initially available only in the U.S., Sora launched in the U.S. and Canada. Sora's performance is impressive, given its invite-only access. The app quickly rose to the No. 1 Top Overall app on the U.S. App Store. Sora videos, powered by the Sora 2 video model, are widespread, enabling users to create realistic deepfakes.