An anonymous reader quotes a report from PYMNTS.com: Stripe is in talks to buy OpenRouter, an artificial intelligence (AI) startup that could sell for roughly $10 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. The move would mark a significant step outside payments for a company that processes transactions for much of the internet. It also lands while Stripe pursues a far larger target: a bid for PayPal that would value the payments giant at about $53 billion. The Journal reported Thursday (July 23) that a transaction could be announced soon, though the talks could still collapse or another buyer could step in. The exact price under discussion could not be learned. Several other large technology companies had also been weighing deals for OpenRouter. The startup was valued at $1.3 billion in May, according to PitchBook, meaning a sale near $10 billion would represent a steep markup in a matter of months. Its backers include Menlo Ventures and CapitalG, the growth fund of Google parent Alphabet. OpenRouter sells software that lets customers reach AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic, along with open weight alternatives anyone can download and run. The Journal described the company's position this way: "OpenRouter is part of an emerging crop of startups that have found a lucrative niche between AI developers and the companies that want to use them." The platform lists hundreds of large language models and lets developers compare and switch between them.

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Nearly 200 Silicon Valley companies, including Proton and Y Combinator, are urging the Trump administration not to block U.S. access to Chinese open-weight AI models or risk crippling the next generation of U.S. startups. Politico reports: On Wednesday, the newly-formed Little Tech Association sent letters to President Donald Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and others in the administration with its appeal, marking the first coordinated effort by Silicon Valley's wider influential startup community to weigh in on one of the Trump administration's most closely watched AI debates. At issue: whether Washington should restrict access to increasingly powerful open-weight -- meaning, AI models whose weights are publicly available -- AI models released by Chinese companies such as Moonshot AI and Alibaba. "American leadership requires two things: world-leading American open-weight models and continued access for U.S. builders to open models already available worldwide," the startup founders wrote in the letter (PDF) obtained by POLITICO, also sent to Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios. Instead of broad prohibitions, they argue the government should adopt targeted safeguards. And they warn that banning Americans from downloading Chinese open-weight models wouldn't stop their proliferation -- but would weaken U.S. startups. "There'll be hundreds of companies that instantly die," said Suhail Doshi, founder of AI infrastructure startup Particle and a member of the association, which POLITICO first wrote about exclusively, in an interview. "It's great for Anthropic. We're all going to have to spend money on Anthropic." Last week, the Beijing-based AI company "Moonshot" released a massive new model that reset the AI race overnight, immediately vaulting into the top tier of global AI, beating Anthropic's Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol in front-end coding tests. China's Xi Jinping also used his first appearance at China's World AI Conference to promote a vision of low-cost, broadly accessible AI and call for international cooperation rather than technological rivalry.

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TSMC said it will invest another $100 billion in Arizona after reporting a record 77.4% year-over-year jump in second-quarter profit. The expansion would bring its total U.S. investment to $265 billion and include new fabs for 2-nanometer production and advanced packaging to serve major U.S. customers. The Associated Press reports: As AI-related demand continues to jump and needs for computing power from data centers surge, TSMC has been expanding chip fabrication plants in the U.S., Japan and Taiwan. It said it is increasing its annual capital expenditure budget for this year to $60 billion-$64 billion, up from an earlier estimate of $52 billion-$56 billion. TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., is a key supplier to Nvidia and Apple. It had previously already committed $165 billion in the U.S. for building plants in Arizona, with six fabrication facilities planned. The extra $100 billion in investments are to "support the strong multiyear demand from our leading U.S. customers," C.C. Wei, chairman and CEO of TSMC, said during the company's quarterly earnings conference Thursday. An additional four fabrication plants in Arizona will likely be built with the new investments, TSMC said. They will focus on making some of the most advanced chips that are 2-nanometer and below.

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Stripe and private equity firm Advent International have reportedly made a joint $60.50-per-share offer to buy PayPal, valuing the payments company at more than $53 billion. The bid is said to represent a 28% premium to PayPal's latest closing price and is backed by roughly $50 billion in committed bank financing.

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German textile firm ZEGO has filed for insolvency and is blaming a March cyberattack that shut down production for nearly six weeks. "ZEGO's filing adds another name to the short but growing list of companies that say a digital break-in was commercially fatal to their business," reports The Register. From the report: In a notice to customers and suppliers, the organization said it had exhausted every available option before seeking insolvency protection. Managing director Johannes Zenglein described the filing as "one of the most difficult steps in our company's 37-year history." "The cyberattack of March 29, 2026, however, impacted our company to an extent that we could not fully compensate for despite our best efforts," Zenglein wrote. "The consequences resulted in a production outage of nearly six weeks and significant financial strain. These effects ultimately impacted our financial situation so severely that filing for insolvency became necessary." ZEGO did not disclose what kind of attack it suffered, whether ransomware was involved, who was behind it, or whether customer or employee data was compromised. What it has made clear is that the operational disruption alone was enough to push the business beyond the point of recovery. ZEGO said insolvency proceedings have now been initiated, but insisted the filing does not necessarily spell the end of the business. It said it plans to keep production running while administrators attempt to restructure the business, preserve jobs, and keep customers and suppliers on board.

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Apple says it will spend $30 billion to design US-made Broadcom wireless connectivity chips, part of its broader push to diversify its supply chain and support domestic chip production. CNN reports: The agreement with Broadcom will lead to the production of 15 million chips in United States and allow Broadcom to invest $1.5 billion to expand and modernize its manufacturing facilities in Fort Collins, Colorado. It is part of Apple's commitment in August to invest $600 billion as part of its "American Manufacturing Program" which it said is dedicated to bringing even more of the company's supply chain and advanced manufacturing back to the US.

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Doom developer id Software is reportedly laying off about half its staff as part of Microsoft's broader Xbox cuts. The reported layoffs potentially affects around 90 employees. Engadget reports: While neither Microsoft nor id Software have formally acknowledged the layoffs, one former member of the studio's staff, Michael Maynard, has echoed the 50 percent figure on LinkedIn. According to at least one of Game Developer's sources, that could translate to around 90 job cuts, though it's so far unclear what departments at id Software have been hit hardest. [...] Bloomberg reported yesterday that as part of the "reset" at Xbox, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of id Software, will be focusing on its biggest franchises -- like The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Wolfenstein and Doom -- going forward. It's possible that motivated the cuts to id Software, but the developer at least outwardly appears to be already heavily focused on Doom. The studio launched Doom: The Dark Ages in 2025 and an expansion to the game on July 7, 2026. Whatever the reason, the cuts at Xbox aren't over: While Microsoft eliminated 1,600 roles alongside the announcement that Xbox is restructuring, it still plans to lay off another 1,600 employees over the coming months.

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Samsung's chip division is projected to earn more in 2026 than it made across its previous 40 years in semiconductors, driven by soaring AI-fueled demand for memory and storage. The company's latest quarterly operating profit reportedly topped Nvidia's, making Samsung the world's most profitable tech company for the period. Tom's Hardware reports: Brokerage consensus puts Samsung's full-year 2026 operating profit near 300 trillion won ($196 billion), and its second-quarter figure at about 84.6 trillion won ($55.1 billion). Samsung easily beat the consensus with $58.5 billion when it posted preliminary results on July 7, overtaking Nvidia's most recent quarterly operating profit of $53.54 billion and becoming the most profitable technology company in the world for the period, on the back of AI-driven memory demand. Samsung's DS division booked 53.7 trillion won ($35.1 billion) of the company's 57.2 trillion won in total operating profit during the first quarter of 2026, roughly 94% of the total, which is why the division's projection sits so close to Samsung's full-year consensus. "This year's profit will exceed the cumulative profit generated over the past 40 years since we entered the semiconductor business," Kim Yong-Kwan told staff, scoping the claim to the chip business rather than the wider conglomerate. Further reading: Samsung Chip Workers To Get $340,000 Average Bonus In AI Boom

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