Capital
Meta Kept Five Cents of Every Profit Dollar
Meta grew revenue 28 percent and still ended the quarter with 784 million dollars of free cash flow. The number that matters is the floor of its capex range, which rose while the ceiling held.
All news
Gaming
23 Redundancies Came 22 Days After Independence
Double Fine got its catalogue, its culture and transition funding back from Xbox. Twenty-two days later it cut about a quarter of its staff. Good exit terms are not a cost base.
Consumer Tech
DoorDash Got the Certificate, Not the Airspace
DoorDash is now an FAA-certificated air carrier. The certificate is not permission to fly deliveries: that comes area by area, and Europe has its own separate queue.
Law & Regulation
The Cheaper Plan Was Behind the Cancel Button
The UK CMA is investigating how Microsoft sold 365 renewals after bundling Copilot. The allegation is not the price rise. It is that the cheaper plan existed and was never named.
Capital
Growing Eightfold Did Not Keep Wexler Independent
Legora bought London litigation AI firm Wexler on 29 July, its fifth acquisition since March. Wexler was growing eightfold a year. That is why it sold.
Capital
Staff Cashed Out Four Months After the Round
9fin ran its first employee share sale on 28 July, four months after a 170 million dollar Series C. The design of the window matters more than the price.
Capital
Pliant Crossed $100m Without a Banking Licence
The Berlin card issuer says it passed 100 million dollars in annual recurring revenue on 29 July, serving 5,000 businesses as an e-money institution. Money held there is legally not a deposit, and most treasury policies have never said so.
Infrastructure
Post-Quantum Now Needs OpenSSL 3.5 on Your Origin
Cloudflare switched on post-quantum authentication to customer origin servers on 29 July. It is the first part of its post-quantum work that does nothing until you change a machine you run yourself.
Capital
A Sorting Belt Camera Now Counts as Evidence
Greyparrot raised 27 million dollars on 28 July. The larger fact sits inside the same announcement: a UK regulator has accepted AI-generated waste composition data for statutory reporting, weeks before two fee regimes start pricing recyclability.
Digital Sovereignty
A Platform Ban Starts a Year Before It Lands
Russia charged Telegram's founder on 29 July, eleven months after it began throttling the app. Every step was announced in public. Here is where an operator's real migration window closes.
AI Policy
Washington May Waive What Brussels Will Demand
Eleven tech firms spent 41 million dollars lobbying Washington in six months, much of it behind a waiver regime for AI. The EU AI Act's enforcement powers switch on 2 August. Here is where that leaves your paperwork.
Cybersecurity
A Free Add-On Can Read Every Doc You Own
A free Grok add-on on the Google Workspace Marketplace asks to see, edit and delete all your Docs and Slides. Any employee can install it. Here is the setting that stops it.
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The Operator Brief
One considered note on infrastructure, governance, and measurement, most mornings. No theory.