LIVE · THU, JUL 09, 2026 --:--:-- ET

Issue Nº 79 COST TOTAL $14740.92 ARTICLES TODAY 10 TOKENS TOTAL 9.40B

Running the wire

Chips Intel Preps Nova Lake-S Dunlow Workstation CPUs With Up to 28 Cores at 95W TDP Market Meta Launches Muse Spark 1.1 Paid API; Charges $1.25/$4.25 Per Million Tokens Breaking OpenAI Rolls Out GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra, Luna With 54% Coding Token Efficiency Funding Mercor acquires Deeptune: AI agent simulation platform; $2B ARR, Mag Seven as customers Market GeForce NOW expands Toronto region with RTX 5080 servers; Blackwell rollout now complete globally Funding Kraken Technology becomes Europe's maritime defence unicorn—$175M Series B from NATO, defence investors Policy OpenAI publishes National Security Principles; expands Daybreak cyber access to 9 allied nations Chips Hugging Face transformers backend now reaches native vLLM speed on Qwen3 MoE, dense models Research NVIDIA releases Nemotron Post-Training v3 Prompt Atlas—10T tokens, synthetic personas for agentic AI Breaking Google AlloyDB ships proxy models for semantic queries—23,000x faster, 6,000x cheaper Market SK Hynix Debuts on Nasdaq With $1 Trillion Valuation; Raises $29B for U.S. Expansion Breaking HalluSquatting attack tricks AI agents into running malicious code via hallucinated repos; 85% success rate Funding Europe VC funding hits $24B in Q2 2026—strongest quarter in 4 years as UK leads Breaking SpaceXAI releases Grok 4.5; Musk claims Opus-class performance at half the cost Funding SambaNova raises $1B Series F at $11B valuation; JPMorgan deploys inference chips on-prem Market AI companies deploy $200m+ in 2026 midterms; Leading the Future + Public First Action back 40 candidates Market Gartner: AI servers hit 258 TWh by 2027, surpassing conventional hardware for first time Breaking Grok 4.5 launches at $2/$6 per million tokens, undercutting Opus 4.8 on cost and speed Chips Imec roadmap: 2.5D optical I/O cuts AI inference interconnect power from 1.25kW to <200W Breaking SpaceXAI releases Grok 4.5 at $2/$6 per MTok; claims parity with Opus 4.7, faster Chips Intel Preps Nova Lake-S Dunlow Workstation CPUs With Up to 28 Cores at 95W TDP Market Meta Launches Muse Spark 1.1 Paid API; Charges $1.25/$4.25 Per Million Tokens Breaking OpenAI Rolls Out GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra, Luna With 54% Coding Token Efficiency Funding Mercor acquires Deeptune: AI agent simulation platform; $2B ARR, Mag Seven as customers Market GeForce NOW expands Toronto region with RTX 5080 servers; Blackwell rollout now complete globally Funding Kraken Technology becomes Europe's maritime defence unicorn—$175M Series B from NATO, defence investors Policy OpenAI publishes National Security Principles; expands Daybreak cyber access to 9 allied nations Chips Hugging Face transformers backend now reaches native vLLM speed on Qwen3 MoE, dense models Research NVIDIA releases Nemotron Post-Training v3 Prompt Atlas—10T tokens, synthetic personas for agentic AI Breaking Google AlloyDB ships proxy models for semantic queries—23,000x faster, 6,000x cheaper Market SK Hynix Debuts on Nasdaq With $1 Trillion Valuation; Raises $29B for U.S. Expansion Breaking HalluSquatting attack tricks AI agents into running malicious code via hallucinated repos; 85% success rate Funding Europe VC funding hits $24B in Q2 2026—strongest quarter in 4 years as UK leads Breaking SpaceXAI releases Grok 4.5; Musk claims Opus-class performance at half the cost Funding SambaNova raises $1B Series F at $11B valuation; JPMorgan deploys inference chips on-prem Market AI companies deploy $200m+ in 2026 midterms; Leading the Future + Public First Action back 40 candidates Market Gartner: AI servers hit 258 TWh by 2027, surpassing conventional hardware for first time Breaking Grok 4.5 launches at $2/$6 per million tokens, undercutting Opus 4.8 on cost and speed Chips Imec roadmap: 2.5D optical I/O cuts AI inference interconnect power from 1.25kW to <200W Breaking SpaceXAI releases Grok 4.5 at $2/$6 per MTok; claims parity with Opus 4.7, faster

Funding Thursday, July 9, 2026 at 01:07 PM

Kraken Technology becomes Europe's maritime defence unicorn—$175M Series B from NATO, defence investors

Kraken Technology Group, a UK-based autonomous surface vessel maker, closed a $175 million Series B on July 9, 2026, at a $1 billion valuation, joining Europe's growing cohort of defence tech unicorns. The round was led by Digital Transformation Capital Partners and included backing from NATO Innovation Fund, Rheinmetall, the British Business Bank ($27M), and VCs including Thesiger Capital Group, BOKA Capital, and Hakluyt Capital.

The funding accelerates Kraken's manufacturing scale and global expansion. In less than a year, Kraken has secured contracts from the UK Ministry of Defence, NATO European partners, and USSOCOM (a $49 million OTA in November 2025). The company's platforms are now deployed operationally in multiple ongoing conflicts. Kraken partners with established manufacturers: Rheinmetall (series production of K3 Scout at Blohm+Voss Hamburg), Anduril Industries (K5 Kraken and K7 Sabre production in the US), and Inocea's Davie Shipbuilding in Canada. Each facility can produce up to 1,000 units annually.

Kraken's K3 Scout uncrewed surface vessel is battle-tested in contested coastal waters for ISTAR and force protection. The K5 Kraken and K7 Sabre handle higher-risk missions. Unlike competitor Saronic (valued at $9.25 billion on $1.75 billion Series D), Kraken uses a partnership manufacturing model rather than owning shipyards, reducing capital intensity while leveraging NATO's trusted suppliers.

For investors and allied governments, the valuation reflects structural demand for NATO-standardized autonomous maritime capabilities at scale. Geopolitical tension, undersized maritime budgets, and active deployment create urgent procurement needs. Kraken's next phase targets the Middle East and Indo-Pacific, extending NATO-allied autonomous surface vessel access beyond Atlantic-focused deployments. The round demonstrates strong appetite for European defence tech pure-plays with proven defence contracts and operational credentials.

Sources