The Internet · 04 Jul 2026

THE INTERNET | Jul 4, 2026

Highlights

AIAlibaba, Tencent and Baidu backed a $2.8 billion round in Kuaishou's Kling AI video unit, valuing it at $15 billion and diluting the parent to 68%.
PAYMENTSVisa ran live agentic-commerce card transactions across Europe with more than 30 issuers and enabled AI agents to book travel through eDreams ODIGEO.

CORPORATE

INUPDATEApple: India is investigating a data breach at Tata Electronics, Apple's Indian supplier, that exposed documents tied to the unreleased iPhone 18 Pro, IT secretary S. Krishnan said Thursday in the government's first public comment on the incident. A ransomware group posted at least six files on the dark web naming which companies produce specific iPhone 18 Pro components — information Apple does not disclose in its public supplier database — alongside photos of the models. Tata has hired a global consultant for a forensic audit after Tesla, Qualcomm and TSMC documents were also leaked. Apple is expected to release the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max in September. [Reuters]

AI

CNKuaishou Technology said a group of investors including Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu will inject more than 19 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) into its Kling AI video unit, valuing the business at $15 billion on a pre-money basis, according to a regulatory filing. Tencent, whose own Hunyuan platform rivals Kling, is contributing $200 million; the round dilutes Kuaishou's stake to about 68% from 100% and can rise to 20.45 billion yuan as one more investor joins within two months. Kling generated 650 million yuan of revenue in the March quarter, more than quadruple a year earlier, and is expected to be spun off and floated eventually. Citi analysts called the investor roster "impressive." [Reuters]
AI Takeaway: A $15 billion mark for a video-generation arm, funded by three of China's largest platforms at once, signals that the domestic capital wave is concentrating around generative-video capacity as OpenAI's shuttering of Sora leaves the category open. Kling and ByteDance's Seedance are being financed to chase global creator revenue, positioning Chinese labs to compete on the application layer where US frontier labs have pulled back.

PAYMENTS

REGULATORYEUEBA Clearing service-development head Erwin Kulk said Verification of Payee has been a strong introduction but is "no silver bullet," telling FinextraTV at EBAday in Copenhagen that fraud has continued to rise and grow more organised despite the mandate. Kulk argued payment providers must complement VOP with collaborative, network-based tools that detect suspicious activity earlier and share data in real time to meet the EU's Payment Services Regulation. [Finextra Research]
EUUPDATEVisa carried out live agentic-commerce transactions across Europe with more than 30 issuers — including Barclays, BBVA, HSBC, Klarna and Revolut — with AI agents browsing, selecting and buying at merchant sites within consumer-defined limits via Visa Intelligent Commerce. Separately, travel group eDreams ODIGEO tapped Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol, Agentic Directory and Payment Passkey to let AI agents complete purchases across its eDreams, Opodo, GO Voyages and Travellink brands. Visa also launched a Threat Intelligence Platform for banks, drawing on the roughly 90 million cyberattacks it blocks monthly. [Finextra Research]
AI Takeaway: Moving agentic checkout from pilots to a 30-issuer live deployment lets Visa embed itself as the authentication and settlement layer for AI-mediated purchases before rivals codify a standard, extending the network's rail advantage into a new transaction class. The travel integration shows the pattern replicating merchant by merchant across Europe under existing regulatory guardrails, the same distribution reach that underpins card-network economics against Mastercard.

MEDIA

USYouTube: A new weekly late-night show, "Outside Tonight," hosted by digital creator Julian Shapiro-Barnum, 26, is streaming full episodes on YouTube rather than a broadcast network or subscription service, on a budget a fraction of the $100 million-plus typical for the genre. The launch comes as traditional late-night contracts: CBS exited the business after canceling Stephen Colbert's "Late Show," citing losses it put at $40 million last year, and ABC may follow when Jimmy Kimmel departs. [The New York Times]

MARKETS

3 Jul 2026 close | Retrieved 3 Jul 22:00 UTC | Yahoo Finance

THE INTERNET | Jul 4, 2026

Highlights

CORPORATE

AI

PAYMENTS

MEDIA

MARKETS

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