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Jun 09, 2026
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Supported by
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Happy Tuesday! OpenAI files IPO paperwork. Apple attempts yet another Siri reboot. The Pentagon adds Alibaba, Baidu and other Chinese tech firms to a blacklist.
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OpenAI said on Monday that it has filed draft paperwork for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission, a week after rival Anthropic said it had done the same. OpenAI also plans to let employees sell their shares ahead of the IPO, according to a person familiar with the situation. OpenAI has held several such tender offers in recent years, allowing insiders to sell billions of dollars worth of shares. In a single-paragraph statement, OpenAI said it had not decided on IPO timing. “It may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company. But it’s a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best,” the statement said. The employee tender offer will be at OpenAI’s March valuation of $852 billion, after its most recent funding round. Employees have not yet been told how much they can sell, or when the tender offer will be.
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Apple launched a much anticipated new version of its Siri voice assistant at the start of its annual developer conference on Monday, which users will be able to access through a new Siri app. The refreshed voice assistant, now called Siri AI, which uses Google’s Gemini models, will allow users to communicate with it using written commands. As with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, users of the new Siri app will be able to back at previous conversations they’ve had with the assistant, which was not possible when Siri was primarily a voice experience. Still, Apple’s demonstrations of the new Siri capabilities didn’t include some of the more dazzling features of rival chatbots. While ChatGPT and Claude can be asked to carry out more vague and bigger picture goals, Apple executives showed simple back-and-forth interactions with Siri. In one scenario, Siri lead Mike Rockwell looked up a local concert using Siri, asked it how to buy tickets, set a reminder to enter a lottery to get those tickets and then played a song of the artist’s new single. In some cases, there were delays of several seconds before Siri responded to commands. Apple also said it’s launching new visual intelligence capabilities, through which AI can analyze and take actions based on what’s taking place on a user’s iPhone or Mac screen. For example, Apple showed how the feature can examine a schedule for a music festival and add multiple events to a users’ personal calendar. Apple’s shares traded down 4% following the announcement. In addition to the AI features, Apple said it made a number of software improvements to its new operating system that will enhance how its devices perform. Apps will now launch 30% faster than previously, and new photos will appear 70% more quickly than before in the photo library, it said. Apple also said it remade the search tool on its devices to deliver results that are more comprehensive than in the past and better surface old and new content. Finally, Apple will be adding new child safety features, likely in response to growing regulatory scrutiny about the company’s past parental controls. The new feature lets parents decide what their children can see and do on Apple devices, such as which websites they can visit and which apps they can use. Parents will also be able to decide which people they can communicate with.
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The U.S. Department of Defense on Monday added more than a dozen Chinese tech companies including Alibaba and Baidu to a blacklist, a move that could further escalate tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Electric vehicle makers Byd and Nio, humanoid maker Unitree, Yangtze Memory Technologies and ChangXin Memory Technologies, China’s two largest memory chip makers, were also among those included to the “Chinese Military Companies” list. Created under the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, the list flags companies that the DoD deems to be owned, controlled or operated by the Chinese military, or to act on behalf of the Chinese military. Most of the companies on the list are state-backed, and it’s the first time that high-profile Chinese tech firms were added. The list bars anyone included from doing business with the DoD and carries no other immediate sanction implications. Still, the designation could have reputation damage. Several of the companies being added disputed the DoD’s decision and vowed to take actions to get themselves removed. “Alibaba is not a Chinese military company nor part of any military-civil fusion strategy. We will take all available legal action against attempts to misrepresent our company,” an Alibaba spokesperson said in a statement. Similarly, Baidu said in a statement: “The suggestion that Baidu is a military company is entirely baseless.” NIO said inclusion to the list will not impact its business, adding that it “will proactively engage with” the DoD, including taking legal actions if necessary, to get itself removed. Alibaba and Baidu are dual-listed in New York and Hong Kong, while NIO is listed on the NYSE and Byd is listed in Hong Kong. Unitree has filed to go public in Shanghai. Being added to the list doesn’t prevent any U.S. investors from trading their stocks. Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi was added to a similar list by the Pentagon in 2021 and was removed months later after filing a lawsuit against the department.
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Italian conglomerate Bending Spoons, which has acquired a string of aging U.S. internet businesses including AOL, Eventbrite, Evernote and Vimeo, filed to go public in the U.S. to give it the funds to pursue more acquisitions. The company’s IPO paperwork shows Bending Spoons’ revenue doubled to $1.3 billion in 2025, and also doubled in the first quarter of this year to $601 million, reflecting its spate of acquisitions. The company spent $3.3 billion to buy AOL, Eventbrite and Vimeo since last year, funded mostly by borrowings. In the first quarter, Bending Spoons had an operating profit of $120 million, compared with an operating loss of $4.6 million. The IPO filing shows that AOL was solidly profitable when it was acquired, earning $333.6 million in operating profits on $633 million in revenue in 2025. Bending Spoons paid $1.454 billion for AOL.
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