https://thetechrundown.com AI, software, and industry news and analysis en https://thetechrundown.com/articles/nobody-selling-ai-agents-can-agree-on-how-to-charge-for-them.html https://thetechrundown.com/articles/nobody-selling-ai-agents-can-agree-on-how-to-charge-for-them.html Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0000 Salesforce, Sierra, Glean, and Harvey are four of the best-funded companies in enterprise AI agents, and each has landed on a completely different answer to what they're actually selling. https://thetechrundown.com/articles/four-companies-one-pricing-collapse-whats-really-going-on-with-ai-coding-agent-costs.html https://thetechrundown.com/articles/four-companies-one-pricing-collapse-whats-really-going-on-with-ai-coding-agent-costs.html Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0000 OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and GitHub all launched flat subscriptions, then walked them back once power users cost more than they paid. That convergence is the real story. https://thetechrundown.com/articles/the-biggest-sunk-cost-in-human-history.html https://thetechrundown.com/articles/the-biggest-sunk-cost-in-human-history.html Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0000 I think the AI industry stopped being about AI a while ago and started being about keeping a very large story alive long enough to cash out. Here's the math that makes me think that. https://thetechrundown.com/articles/googles-android-antitrust-fight-is-finally-over-and-google-lost.html https://thetechrundown.com/articles/googles-android-antitrust-fight-is-finally-over-and-google-lost.html Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0000 The EU's highest court dismissed Google's last appeal, making a 4.1 billion euro Android antitrust fine permanent after eight years of litigation. https://thetechrundown.com/articles/ais-climate-pledges-are-quietly-losing-to-its-power-bill.html https://thetechrundown.com/articles/ais-climate-pledges-are-quietly-losing-to-its-power-bill.html Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0000 Google's emissions are up 80% against its own 2030 zero pledge, and the AI industry is turning to on-site gas plants because renewables can't move at capex speed. https://thetechrundown.com/articles/journalisms-ai-problem-has-quietly-escalated-three-times-in-three-years.html https://thetechrundown.com/articles/journalisms-ai-problem-has-quietly-escalated-three-times-in-three-years.html Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0000 From outsourced AI product reviews to fully synthetic local news networks, each incident has been treated as isolated. Lined up in order, they show a clear progression. https://thetechrundown.com/articles/together-ai-raises-800-million-betting-on-cheaper-not-better.html https://thetechrundown.com/articles/together-ai-raises-800-million-betting-on-cheaper-not-better.html Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0000 The new round more than doubles Together AI's valuation to $8.3 billion, on the strength of a simple pitch: run open-source models cheaper than the closed frontier labs can. https://thetechrundown.com/articles/ai-is-propping-up-gdp-growth-it-isnt-propping-up-profits-yet.html https://thetechrundown.com/articles/ai-is-propping-up-gdp-growth-it-isnt-propping-up-profits-yet.html Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0000 AI capex drove roughly 75% of US GDP growth in Q1 2026, while 95% of enterprise AI pilots show no measurable financial return. Those two facts describe different phases of the same cycle. https://thetechrundown.com/articles/the-layoffs-blamed-on-ai-are-moving-in-the-wrong-direction-to-actually-be-about-ai.html https://thetechrundown.com/articles/the-layoffs-blamed-on-ai-are-moving-in-the-wrong-direction-to-actually-be-about-ai.html Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0000 Tech layoffs and AI capex are rising together, not trading off against each other. That pattern undercuts the story companies are telling about why they're cutting staff. https://thetechrundown.com/articles/the-dead-end-nobody-in-silicon-valley-will-admit.html https://thetechrundown.com/articles/the-dead-end-nobody-in-silicon-valley-will-admit.html Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0000 I don't think large language models are a path to general intelligence, and I think the architecture itself is the reason why. This is my case for that, not a settled fact. https://thetechrundown.com/articles/google-just-made-ai-image-and-video-generation-nearly-free.html https://thetechrundown.com/articles/google-just-made-ai-image-and-video-generation-nearly-free.html Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0000 Nano Banana 2 Lite generates images in four seconds for $0.034 apiece. Gemini Omni Flash prices video at ten cents a second. Neither is Google's best model, and that's the point. https://thetechrundown.com/articles/claude-sonnet-5s-price-cut-is-the-real-story-not-the-benchmarks.html https://thetechrundown.com/articles/claude-sonnet-5s-price-cut-is-the-real-story-not-the-benchmarks.html Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0000 Anthropic's new model lands near-frontier benchmarks at a fraction of the price. That pricing move matters more than the scores. https://thetechrundown.com/articles/south-korea-bets-880-billion-on-becoming-the-worlds-chip-hub.html https://thetechrundown.com/articles/south-korea-bets-880-billion-on-becoming-the-worlds-chip-hub.html Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0000 President Lee Jae-myung unveiled a decade-long, corporate-funded plan to turn southwest Korea into a global semiconductor and AI data center hub. https://thetechrundown.com/articles/meta-posed-as-teenagers-to-test-rival-ai-chatbots-report-finds.html https://thetechrundown.com/articles/meta-posed-as-teenagers-to-test-rival-ai-chatbots-report-finds.html Sun, 28 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0000 A WIRED investigation found Meta contractors sent tens of thousands of minor-perspective crisis prompts to competitor chatbots without those companies' knowledge. https://thetechrundown.com/articles/openai-pitched-washington-a-5-stake-in-itself.html https://thetechrundown.com/articles/openai-pitched-washington-a-5-stake-in-itself.html Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0000 Sam Altman floated giving the U.S. government a slice of OpenAI worth roughly $42.6 billion, modeled on Alaska's sovereign wealth fund. It's a proposal, not a deal, and the distinction matters. https://thetechrundown.com/articles/hackers-sat-inside-a-dhs-network-used-to-coordinate-world-cup-security.html https://thetechrundown.com/articles/hackers-sat-inside-a-dhs-network-used-to-coordinate-world-cup-security.html Fri, 26 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0000 DHS confirmed intruders had access to its Homeland Security Information Network, the unclassified system agencies use to coordinate event security, for up to five weeks. https://thetechrundown.com/articles/twelvelabs-raises-100-million-to-make-ai-understand-video-not-just-search-it.html https://thetechrundown.com/articles/twelvelabs-raises-100-million-to-make-ai-understand-video-not-just-search-it.html Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0000 A $100 million Series B pushes TwelveLabs from video search toward a full agentic system, a narrower and less crowded bet than the general-purpose AI agent race. https://thetechrundown.com/articles/qualcomms-39-billion-bet-against-nvidias-biggest-moat.html https://thetechrundown.com/articles/qualcomms-39-billion-bet-against-nvidias-biggest-moat.html Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0000 Qualcomm is acquiring software startup Modular in an all-stock deal aimed squarely at breaking developers' dependence on Nvidia's CUDA platform. https://thetechrundown.com/articles/intelligence-agencies-say-ai-driven-cyberattacks-are-months-away-not-years.html https://thetechrundown.com/articles/intelligence-agencies-say-ai-driven-cyberattacks-are-months-away-not-years.html Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0000 The Five Eyes intelligence alliance issued a joint warning that frontier AI models capable of dramatically escalating cyberattacks are close to public availability. https://thetechrundown.com/articles/spacex-just-became-an-ai-infrastructure-company.html https://thetechrundown.com/articles/spacex-just-became-an-ai-infrastructure-company.html Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0000 SpaceX will supply $6.3 billion in compute to startup Reflection AI from its Colossus 2 data center, its fourth such deal in months.