The Internet · 20 Jun 2026

THE INTERNET | Jun 20, 2026

Highlights

AIGoogle is using Nvidia's playbook to build a rival AI-chip business, moving to sell its in-house TPUs beyond its own data centers.
AIApple CEO Tim Cook called product price increases "unavoidable" as an AI-driven memory shortage squeezes even Apple's purchasing power.
AITrump said he no longer views Anthropic as a national security threat as a standoff over foreign access to its top models eased.

CORPORATE

AIUSApple: CEO Tim Cook told the Wall Street Journal that price increases across Apple products are "unavoidable," calling the worldwide memory shortage "unsustainable" as surging AI demand routes DRAM and storage to Nvidia AI chips ahead of device makers. The disclosure came less than three months before Cook steps down as CEO; the iPhone maker had been viewed as insulated from such increases because of its market power. IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo said consumers are "already paying the bill" for AI, and Gartner's Ranjit Atwal said "even Apple can't be safe." [CNBC] [WSJ]
AIUSAnthropic: Nobel laureate John Jumper, a senior scientist at Google DeepMind, will leave the lab to join Anthropic, according to Reuters, CNBC, and Bloomberg. [Reuters] [Bloomberg]
AIUSGoogle: Alphabet's Google is using Nvidia's commercial playbook to build a rival AI-chip business, moving to sell its in-house tensor processing units (TPUs) more widely beyond its own data centers, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing reporters Robbie Whelan and Katherine Blunt. [WSJ]
AI Takeaway: Selling TPUs externally would put Google in direct competition with Nvidia for third-party AI-accelerator demand, the segment Nvidia still dominates. Amazon (Trainium) and Microsoft (Maia) have built in-house AI silicon but largely kept it captive to their own clouds, making Google the first hyperscaler positioning its accelerators as a merchant-silicon alternative to Nvidia.
AIUSOpenAI: Barret Zoph has left OpenAI again after about five months, The Verge reported; Zoph had previously departed the company to help found Thinking Machines Lab. [The Verge]

AI

REGULATORYUSTrump softens on Anthropic as export-control standoff eases. President Donald Trump told "The Axios Show" (published Friday) that he no longer views Anthropic as a national security threat, a week after ordering the company to block foreign nationals from its most advanced models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5 — which Anthropic disabled for all users in response. Senior Anthropic technical staff were due to meet administration officials this week over the foreign-access dispute. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's crackdown claimed new federal authority over AI models, Bloomberg reported. [Reuters] [Bloomberg]
REGULATORYUSEarly Glasswing testers retain Mythos access despite US shutdown order. Some organizations chosen to test Anthropic's Mythos model kept access to a preview even after a U.S. government order shut down other versions, Bloomberg News reported via Reuters. Anthropic had limited Mythos Preview to about 200 organizations, including the U.S. government, under its Glasswing program after the model identified thousands of software vulnerabilities; a less powerful public version was then disabled under Washington's export-control directive barring foreign nationals. Dragos and Cisco Systems confirmed retained access, while EU cybersecurity agency Enisa was told Friday it would lose access. Anthropic's government relationship ruptured this year after it refused to let the U.S. military use its models for domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons. [Reuters]

PAYMENTS

USA PYMNTS survey found 53% of businesses plan to adopt real-time payments as instant-settlement habits shift, PYMNTS reported. [PYMNTS]
AIUSInstacart's agentic AI assistant is driving larger grocery orders. Instacart said orders placed through its new AI assistant are generally larger than typical orders, in a Thursday (June 18) blog post announcing a rollout to millions of U.S. customers, with a full U.S. and Canada rollout due within months. Built into the Instacart Marketplace, the assistant draws on live inventory from nearly 100,000 stores across North America to build carts from prompts such as "easy weeknight dinners for four." CEO Chris Rogers has said the company is turning a decade of grocery data into an agentic system that plans meals and predicts forgotten items. [PYMNTS]
EUMollie commits €350 million to a five-year EEA expansion. Dutch payments provider Mollie will invest €350 million over five years to expand its products, infrastructure, and team across the 30 countries of the European Economic Area outside its home market of the Netherlands and the UK, where it is closing its acquisition of GoCardless, Finextra reported. The plan centers on "hyper-localization" — native-language support, local payment methods, local-currency processing, and links to local business registries. [Finextra]

MARKETS

19 Jun 2026 close | Retrieved 19 Jun 22:00 UTC | Yahoo Finance

THE INTERNET | Jun 20, 2026

Highlights

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