Global AI Picks — Top Tech Media Coverage

The New Friend AI Pendant Can Now Talk Back to You

Avi Schiffmann has a new version of his controversial AI companion. It’s more expensive, and you can’t change its personality.

TC

Okta buys AI security startup Permiso; source says for about $200M

The deal gives Okta identity threat detection capabilities as enterprises seek to secure AI agents and other non-human identities across cloud environments.

TC

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026’s biggest stage features leaders from Amazon, Replit, Tether, with much more to come

The Disrupt Stage is where many of the biggest conversations in technology happen, with a legacy that stretches back for more than a decade.

MIT

The Download: tricking LLMs, and reviving geothermal plants

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. A fundamental flaw leaves LLMs strikingly vulnerable to attack It is impossible to make large language models fully secure against hacks because of a fundamental flaw in how they work, a…

TC

Dili raises $21.7 million to bring AI compliance to the infrastructure boom

The Series A was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Allianz, Rebel Fund, Brick and Mortar Ventures’ Darren Bechtel, and Y Combinator’s Garry Tan.

WD

LinkedIn Won’t Be Expanding Its Data Centers in the Next Year

Despite the ongoing AI boom, LinkedIn is holding the line on compute spending. Instead, it’s challenging engineers to make every GPU count.

MIT

A fundamental flaw leaves LLMs strikingly vulnerable to attack

It is impossible to make large language models fully secure against hacks because of a fundamental flaw in how they work, a team of researchers argue in a paper presented at the International Conference on Machine Learning, a top AI conference, this month. The claim has huge implications for the safety of this technology, which…

WD

OpenAI’s Hacking Debacle Was a Human Mistake

If the generative AI giant had followed well-known security best practices, it’s likely that its AI agent would never have escaped to the open internet and hacked multiple companies.

AIN

How AI is Changing Linux VPS Security for Businesses

Cybersecurity wasn’t really something small and mid-sized businesses worried about too much a few years back. That’s changed fast. Once your customer data, your apps, your internal tools all end up online, protecting the server behind them stops being optional. And attacks aren’t getting any simpler either, which is part of the problem with sticking […] The post How AI is Changing Linux VPS Security for Businesses appeared first on AI News.

AIN

Zuckerberg details Meta’s personal AI superintelligence strategy

Mark Zuckerberg has published a WSJ op-ed that argues superintelligence must reach individuals, not just a handful of institutions. The Meta chief published the piece as a statement of company philosophy rather than a product announcement. It contains no release dates, no benchmark figures, no named models. What it does contain is an argument that […] The post Zuckerberg details Meta’s personal AI superintelligence strategy appeared first on AI News.

WD

AI Scammers Are Better at Building Trust Than Humans

Researchers pitted a person against a Claude agent and found that, after a week of texting, the AI chatbot was more effective at creating “exploitable trust” with others.

WD

I Got a Free Meal From a Private Chef—Who Filmed It All to Train Robots

A German startup sent a camera-wearing chef to my apartment. In exchange for a free lunch, I let them record every chop and stir to train future humanoids.

TC

Microsoft is openly competing with OpenAI, Anthropic more than ever

Microsoft pitched its own homegrown AI models, harnesses, and even a Mythos competitor on Wednesday, telling Wall Street it plans for continued growth.

TC

Zuckerberg says Meta’s enterprise AI opportunity extends beyond agents

On the company’s second-quarter earnings call Wednesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Meta sees a “large enterprise opportunity” spanning AI agents, APIs, compute, and internal software.

TC

Microsoft logs $3.2B from Anthropic investment, but OpenAI was a mixed bag

When Microsoft reported killer fourth-quarter earnings for its fiscal 2026 year (which ended June 30), it tucked in an interesting little tidbit about how its investments in the two biggest, and competing, AI labs are doing.

TC

Mark Zuckerberg predicts that billions of people will have personal AI agents in five years

As Meta pours billions into AI infrastructure and agents, Zuckerberg is working to convince investors that the payoff will be worth the price.

TC

Thinking Machines co-founder Lilian Weng left the company citing health reasons, then joined OpenAI

Weng previously served as the VP of AI Safety Research at OpenAI.

TC

Discover what’s next for AI, from the SaaS reckoning to the agent security gap, at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026

At TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, the AI Stage is back to dig into the single hottest topic in the community for the past few years, presented by Google for Startups.

ARS