WHAT’S INSIDE

• Tech News: Tax Bill, Chip Tax, Trade, Cloudflare v Bots, Gender Case

• Company Watch: Lovable, Castelion, Nvidia, Joby, Clio, Figma, Grammarly

• Feature: AI Fair Use, Cloudflare Breaks AI & The Velvet Sundown

• Buzzy Tools: Latest Buzzy tech, AI and financial tools

• Deep Tech: The latest in deep tech, biotech, futurism and more

• Space Tech: Latest news in the space race and aerospace tech

• Crypto: Blockchain and crypto policy and startups or protocols to watch

TECH IN THE NEWS

Tax Bill Passes — The House narrowly passed Trump’s “Big Beautiful bill”, 218 to 214, extending tax cuts while reducing social programs. The 10-year ban on state AI regulation was removed on bipartisan concerns.

Chip Tax Boost — The new tax bill also raises tax credits for semiconductor manufacturers from 25% to 35%, encouraging domestic production.

Trade Thaw Begins — The US lifted restrictions on chip design software and ethane exports to China. Companies like Synopsys, Cadence, Siemens resume services as China eases rare earth export controls. Chip software stocks soared.

Cloudflare Blocks AI Bots — Cloudflare now blocks AI web crawlers by default, shifting from opt-out, to protect sites from excessive requests empower publishers in a blow to the AI giants’ business models.

Health Websites Restored — A court ruled the Trump administration unlawfully removed gender-related health websites, violating procedural laws. The judge ordered the restoration of the sites.

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AI Fair Use, Cloudflare Breaks AI & The Velvet Sundown

Last week, AI companies Anthropic and Meta were handed major wins in copyright cases brought by authors who claimed that the use of their published books was illegal. These rulings set a precedent that bodes well for AI companies regarding copyright conflicts, but dealt a major blow to creatives who saw the courts as a way to fight the power of big AI. However, this week there was some better news for creatives. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” was passed without the controversial provision aimed at preventing states from regulating AI for a decade. And, Cloudflare just announced yesterday it will now block AI web crawlers by default, shifting from an opt-out system, to protect publishers and sites from unauthorized use. 

Big Wins for Big Tech 

Last week, federal Judge William Alsup granted Anthropic its win in the suit filed in 2024 by three authors. Alsup’s ruling marked the first time a meaningful decision has been made regarding fair use and generative AI. The authors had alleged that Anthropic had used millions of copyrighted books to train its models, with some works being bought and others being pirated illegally. These books were, according to the lawsuit, amassed with the ultimate goal of creating a “central library” of “all the books in the world.” 

Just days later, Meta also scored a win in its own lawsuit, brought by thirteen authors claiming that Meta’s training of AI models on their works harmed them through market dilution. Judge Vince Chhabria ruled in favor of Meta, stating that the plaintiffs had failed to gather substantial evidence supporting their argument. 

Fair Use: Outdated or Enduring? 

Both rulings hinged on the legal doctrine of fair use, which grants use of copyrighted material without permission for purposes like parody or education. A key question in these AI cases is whether training an AI model on copyrighted works qualifies as "transformative”– meaning it adds new expression or meaning, rather than merely copying. In the cases of Anthropic and Meta, the judges deemed the companies’ use of legally acquired books to be sufficiently transformative. With generative AI and blurring the lines between fair use and infringement, the lack of strict guidelines continues to shed doubt on the ability to use the principle as a defense. 

While this may seem like significant precedent for fair use in training AI models, details within each case reveal that the victories may not be as definitive as they seem. Both judges have said that the cases were limited and future cases may not be ruled in the same way. Judge Chhabria even stated, “This ruling does not stand for the proposition that Meta’s use of copyrighted materials to train its language models is lawful.” He simply claimed that the plaintiffs hadn’t brought forward the right argument. Anthropic is also set to have another trial later regarding its illegal pirating of books from the Internet. 

Artists vs. AI 

Since 2020, over thirty copyright infringement lawsuits have been filed against major AI companies like OpenAI, Perplexity, Microsoft, Google and others by groups of publications, artists, record labels, performers, and more. Visual artists have sued over models trained on artwork scraped from the internet, while record labels like UMG are targeting companies allowing AI generated impersonations of musicians. Online movements have even called for the boycotting of AI generated art, demonstrating that the dislike that creative communities harbor for AI models and the companies that produce them is clear. If the 2023 Hollywood strikes were any indication, artists don’t seem to want to back down regarding their rights and AI. The rulings in the Anthropic and Meta lawsuits are sure to be seen as a major defeat by these artists, but their  non-definitive nature makes tracking similar cases crucial. 

Speaking of AI generated art causing a stir, this week a band, The Velvet Sundown emerged  from nowhere to blow up on Spotify after somehow racking up more than 500,000 monthly listeners before being slammed for its obviously AI-generated music and branding. The band’s official channels initially denied the accusations it used AI. However, the pseudonymous artist Andrew Frelon who runs the band’s Twitter account now says in a Medium post that he was running an elaborate art hoax aimed at the media. Frelon “confirmed” that the band created music with the AI tool Suno, and despite the obvious AI origins of its photos and music, it has been picked up on numerous Spotify playlists, and gained widespread media coverage despite the band not even existing. The point is, this is just the beginning of AI slop making its way into our feeds, and it’s only going to get harder to discern from here on in.

What Comes Next? 

Another major piece of news just hit the tech industry in the form of the GOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill” narrowly passing without the provision aimed at preventing states from regulating AI for a decade. The Senate voted 99-1 to remove the 10-year ban, citing bipartisan concerns over consumer protection and the oversight of powerful AI companies. The argument – that fragmented regulation within the States would slow down innovation right when it seems to be most crucial – was rejected by a bipartisan majority of representatives. States like California, Illinois, and Tennessee have all enacted legislation protecting artists from AI, considered hard-earned victories for creatives that would be overridden by this provision. 

In another blow for the big tech model of training AI models on massive amounts of creative content, Cloudflare just announced yesterday it will now block AI web crawlers by default, shifting from an opt-out system, to protect sites from excessive requests. This change aims to give publishers control over their content and introduces a "Pay Per Crawl" program for AI companies seeking access, potentially transforming the economic landscape for content usage online and opening up a mechanism for companies to earn revenue from content used for training purposes.

The future will determine just how much of a precedent the Anthropic and Meta cases set. It will also be interesting to see what protections states, the senate or artist-driven litigation can achieve to level the playing field for artists now that the moratorium on legislation is out of the picture.

COMPANIES TO WATCH

Lovable — The AI web app-building startup plans to raise over $150M at a nearly $2B valuation. Achieving $50M in ARR within six months, it’s releasing a beta AI agent for task automation.

Castelion — The hypersonic missile producer is raising a $350M Series B, following a $100M Series A. Supported by the U.S. DoD, it aims to deliver cost-effective hypersonic weapons.

Nvidia — The chip giant’s market cap briefly hit $3.92T, surpassing Apple's peak making it briefly the most valuable company in history.

Joby Aviation — The Santa Cruz-based flying taxi company saw a 12% stock rise after delivering its first air taxi to the UAE. With exclusive six-year rights, Joby aims to launch services in Dubai by 2026.

Clio — Clio, a legal software company, has agreed to acquire vLex for $1B adding its AI-driven legal data, positioning it to integrate AI capabilities for small and medium law firms.

Figma — The design software company is nearing an IPO to raise $1.5B, with 2024 revenue of $749M and a 91% gross margin. It returned to profitability in late 2024.

Grammarly — Acquired AI email client Superhuman to enhance its productivity suite with AI agents for email communication. Superhuman's team joins Grammarly, following its recent $1B funding round.

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BUZZY TOOLS

Buzzy Tech Tools To Watch & Use

OpenAI — Jony Ive & Sam Altman device may be non-wearable AI Pen. Ok.

Perplexity Max — $200/m plan unlimited access to AI advanced search tools.

Replit Agent — Upgraded AI app-building tool boosts complex tasks 10-15%.

Flashes — Bluesky-based instagram rival photo/video app, customizable feeds.

BUZZY TECH

The Latest Deep Technology & Trends To Watch

Sakana AI — Novel algorithm enables multiple AI models to collaborate.

Centaur — Predicts human behavior by fine-tuning LLMs on 10M choices.

Google Veo 3 — Hints Video gen model could simulate real-world gaming.

Monostable Tetrahedron Bille — Solves major self-righting robots problem.

CRYPTO WATCH

Token Trouble — OpenAI disavows Robinhood's sale of "OpenAI tokens," clarifying they lack equity ties. Robinhood claims tokens offer indirect stock exposure, but equity transfers require OpenAI approval, which was not granted.

Token ETF Standards — The SEC is considering generic listing standards for token- based ETFs to streamline approvals, potentially enabling new crypto ETFs like Solana, enhancing liquidity while remaining cautious about staking risks.

Grayscale Crypto ETF — The SEC approved conversion of its Digital Large Cap Fund into the first U.S. multi-asset spot crypto ETF, allowing investment in Bitcoin, alts through traditional brokerage channels.

J.P. Morgan — Predicts stablecoin growth will cap at $500B by 2028, citing limited mainstream adoption, with payments adoption at just 6% of demand, tempering previous trillion-dollar forecasts.

Coinbase — Acquired token management platform Liquifi, marking its fourth acquisition in 2025, to simplify token launches and integrate features into Coinbase Prime for better support to onchain developers.

Stablecoin Concerns — Amundi cautions that the U.S. GENIUS Act promoting USD-backed stablecoins might destabilize the global payments system, potentially leading to dollarization, undermining monetary sovereignty globally.

SPACE_RACE

Blue Origin_Second launch targets NASA's Mars mission 2025.

Netflix+NASA_Partnership to stream live space content.

NASA Artemis_$10B boosts SLS and Gateway station, Musk opposes.

Gourmet Space_French astronaut gets Michelin chef meals on ISS.

MethaneSAT_Lost communication disrupts methane tracking satellite.

Interstellar Object_Extra-solar system object sighted moving at 245K km/h.

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