Insider Brief Forcepoint has appointed Vincent Merlin as chief marketing officer, where he will lead global marketing across brand, demand generation, product marketing and analyst relations. Merlin joins Forcepoint from Proofpoint, where he spent 10 years in senior marketing roles, most recently as senior vice president of global growth marketing. He will also participate in…

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Insider Brief Virginia, Ohio, Tennessee, Georgia and Texas rank as the five U.S. states best positioned for AI data center growth, according to a TRG Datacenters study weighing capacity, electricity use and environmental pressures. Virginia ranked first despite not having the most facilities or capacity, while Ohio led the study in total AI data center…

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TechCrunch testing found that Claude Opus 4.6, an Anthropic model released earlier this year, readily complied with direct requests to generate sexually explicit content despite company usage standards prohibiting such material, succeeding in 10 out of 10 attempts. Older models including Opus 3 and Haiku 4.5 were also found vulnerable to a multiturn jailbreak technique…

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Read Online | Sign Up | Advertise Good morning, {{ first_name | AI enthusiasts }}, and welcome to the 11,000 new readers who joined this weekend. A new, seemingly capable AI has landed on the block, and no one knows who built it. The weekend has been all about “Ox Alpha,” which showed up on…

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The Information reports that Nvidia is discussing an equity investment in Perplexity at a valuation above $30 billion. Perplexity’s annualized revenue has reportedly passed $750 million, up from less than $250 million at the start of 2026. Separately, Bloomberg says SoftBank plans a record ¥1 trillion, or $6.3 billion, retail bond to help repay the…

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XPENG’s physical AI unit has secured over $900 million at a $6.3 billion valuation to scale its IRON humanoid robot platform. The Chinese electric vehicle maker announced the funding round for its robotics business through a set of share purchase agreements with multiple investors. XPENG says the deal represents the largest single-round private capital raise…

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Insider Brief China’s Mech-Mind Robotics Technologies is preparing a Hong Kong IPO that could raise about $300 million, with investor orders expected to open Monday ahead of a targeted Sept. 1 trading debut, the South China Morning Post reported. The industrial 3D vision and AI robotics company plans to use the proceeds for advanced AI…

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Insider Brief China North Industries Group Corp., or Norinco, is debuting a full-size humanoid robot designed for reconnaissance, patrols and hazardous-area operations, the Global Times reported. The Fuxi humanoid can be remotely controlled in real time by a human operator and can conduct all-weather reconnaissance, identify people, issue alerts and perform patrol duties. Norinco said…

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Insider Brief Schaeffler is expanding its humanoid robotics portfolio with a formed strain wave gearbox designed for high-volume production, with mass manufacturing scheduled to begin in Germany in 2027. The company said its forming process can cut gearbox manufacturing costs by more than 25% and material use by more than 75%, while completing key production…

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Insider Brief Veeda AI has raised more than $90 million in seed funding to build world models that create simulated environments where robots can learn through trial and error, The Logic reported. Founded by former Nvidia AI researchers Sanja Fidler, Zan Gojcic and Huan Ling, the startup is backed by Radical Ventures and Khosla Ventures.…

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