Source: OpenAI has reassigned Aleksander Mądry, the head of its Preparedness AI safety team, to a role within its research organization focusing on reasoning (Stephanie Palazzolo/The Information)

Stephanie Palazzolo / The Information:
Source: OpenAI has reassigned Aleksander Mądry, the head of its Preparedness AI safety team, to a role within its research organization focusing on reasoning  —  OpenAI has reassigned the executive in charge of ensuring that its artificial intelligence won’t harm society …

YouTube Q2 ad revenue grew 13% YoY to $8.66B, vs. $8.93B est.; Google’s subscriptions, platforms, and devices unit that includes YouTube TV had revenue of $9.3B (Alex Weprin/The Hollywood Reporter)

Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
YouTube Q2 ad revenue grew 13% YoY to $8.66B, vs. $8.93B est.; Google’s subscriptions, platforms, and devices unit that includes YouTube TV had revenue of $9.3B  —  The Google-owned video platform still saw its ad haul rise by 13 percent compared to last year.

Google Cloud Q2 revenue grew 29% YoY to $10.35B, vs. $10.2B est.; Cloud exceeded $10B in quarterly revenues and $1B in operating profit for the first time (Jennifer Elias/CNBC)

Jennifer Elias / CNBC:
Google Cloud Q2 revenue grew 29% YoY to $10.35B, vs. $10.2B est.; Cloud exceeded $10B in quarterly revenues and $1B in operating profit for the first time  —  Google parent company Alphabet reported earnings after the bell Tuesday.  —  Here’s how the company did, compared with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG:

Comcast reports Peacock Q2 revenue up 28% YoY to $1B, and a $348M loss, down from $651M in Q2 2023; paying subs were up 38% YoY to 33M but down from 33.5M in Q1 (The Hollywood Reporter)

The Hollywood Reporter:
Comcast reports Peacock Q2 revenue up 28% YoY to $1B, and a $348M loss, down from $651M in Q2 2023; paying subs were up 38% YoY to 33M but down from 33.5M in Q1  —  Meanwhile, Comcast’s core cable and telecom business once again lost pay-TV and broadband subscribers in the second quarter.

Daniel Ek says Spotify is working on a deluxe Spotify tier, around a $17-$18 price point, that has “a lot more control, a lot higher quality across the board” (Chris Welch/The Verge)

Chris Welch / The Verge:
Daniel Ek says Spotify is working on a deluxe Spotify tier, around a $17-$18 price point, that has “a lot more control, a lot higher quality across the board”  —  The saga of Spotify HiFi has many twists and turns.  First announced over three years ago, the music service’s higher …

Harvey, which is building an AI-powered “copilot” for lawyers, raised a $100M Series C led by GV that values it at $1.5B and brings its total funding to $206M (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Harvey, which is building an AI-powered “copilot” for lawyers, raised a $100M Series C led by GV that values it at $1.5B and brings its total funding to $206M  —  Harvey, a startup building what it describes as an AI-powered “copilot” for lawyers, has raised $100 million …

A staffer at Activision Blizzard, which had layoffs in 2024 affecting many 2D artists, says some remaining artists were “forced to use AI to aid in their work” (Brian Merchant/Wired)

Brian Merchant / Wired:
A staffer at Activision Blizzard, which had layoffs in 2024 affecting many 2D artists, says some remaining artists were “forced to use AI to aid in their work”  —  A WIRED investigation finds that major players like Activision Blizzard, which recently laid off scores of workers, are using generative AI for game development.

Mark Zuckerberg argues “open source AI” is the path forward, that closed models are vulnerable to vendor lock-in, state-backed espionage, and more (Mark Zuckerberg/Meta)

Mark Zuckerberg / Meta:
Mark Zuckerberg argues “open source AI” is the path forward, that closed models are vulnerable to vendor lock-in, state-backed espionage, and more  —  In the early days of high-performance computing, the major tech companies of the day each invested heavily in developing their own closed source versions of Unix.

dYdX, which is reportedly exploring a sale, says v3, an older version of its DeFi crypto exchange that averages ~$1.5B/week in derivates trading, was hacked (Danny Nelson/CoinDesk)

Danny Nelson / CoinDesk:
dYdX, which is reportedly exploring a sale, says v3, an older version of its DeFi crypto exchange that averages ~$1.5B/week in derivates trading, was hacked  —  News of the problem emerged just as Bloomberg reported dYdX v3 is for sale.  —  Decentralized crypto-exchange giant dYdX said Tuesday …