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1.	Google Unveils Pixel 10 Lineup, New AI Features By Erin Woo Source: The Information

Google unveiled its new lineup of Pixel phones, watches and earbuds on Wednesday, touting new AI and camera capabilities in a creator-studded lineup hosted by the comedian Jimmy Fallon.

The standout new feature was “Magic Cue,” which uses Google AI to draw information from different apps on a user’s device and offer proactive suggestions in text messages. For example, if a friend texts about details for upcoming dinner plans, Magic Cue should be able to pull information about the reservation from the calendar app and suggest a response to send. Magic Cue will be available on the new Pixel 10 phones, which are available for preorder now and ship on August 28.

The hardware event, Made by Google, was the company’s chance to try to upstage Apple, which has hit roadblocks in its attempts to roll out its own AI features, Apple Intelligence. The share price of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, stayed largely unchanged after the event.

2.	Former Meta Employee Alleges Ads Misled Advertisers By Catherine Perloff Source: Adweek

Meta misled advertisers about ad performance and may have evaded Apple’s privacy restrictions, according to a complaint filed in a UK court by a former Meta employee, according to an Adweek report.

Marketers judge ad performance based on a metric called return on ad spend—how much revenue an ad generated compared to how much the ad cost. According to the complaint, Meta counted shipping and taxes as part of the revenue that their ads generated, even though companies don’t receive that money. This would make the ads seem to perform better.

The complaint only alleges Meta manipulated the ad metric around one specific type of ads, called Shop Ads, which are meant to drive purchase of a product on a brand’s website or on the shop interface of Instagram and Facebook. This year, Meta began turning off checkout on Facebook and Instagram itself.

The complaint was filed with the UK’s Central Employment Tribunal, where workers can resolve disputes about wrongful dismissal, by Samujjal Purkayastha, a former product manager on Shop ads who worked at Meta until February 2025. According to the complaint, he brought concerns about the misleading nature of the ads to senior leadership between 2022 and 2024.

The complaint also alleges that in another ad product, Meta used names, emails, phone numbers, addresses and IP addresses to link activity on Meta’s apps to activity on other websites, which Purkayastha believed violated privacy restrictions Apple placed on apps selling ads in 2021.

“We are actively defending these proceedings,“ a Meta spokesperson said. “Allegations related to the integrity of our advertising practices are without merit and we have full confidence in our performance review processes.”

3.	Canva Conducts Share Sale at $42 Billion Valuation By Natasha Mascarenhas Source: Bloomberg

Canva launched an employee stock sale that values the Australian design software startup at $42 billion, up from $32 billion in a secondary sale deal last year. The deal allows employees to cash out shares to new and existing investors including Fidelity and JPMorgan Asset Management, Bloomberg reported.

The transaction marks a more than 30% jump in valuation and comes months after The Information reported that Canva was in talks with investors about a secondary sale at around $37 billion. The stock sale is also being conducted at a valuation higher than Canva’s peak valuation of $40 billion four years ago.

Canva has been adding artificial intelligence features to its design tools, as it prepares for a possible initial public offering.

4.	Vantage Taps JPMorgan, MUFG to Finance $25 Billion Data Center Project By Miles Kruppa Source: Financial Times

JPMorgan Chase and Japanese lender MUFG are in talks to underwrite a $22 billion debt financing for a 1,200 acre data center complex being developed by Vantage Data Centers, the Financial Times reported.

Vantage’s backers DigitalBridge and Silver Lake would also invest a combined $3 billion in equity in the project, according to the newspaper. Bloomberg reported the data center will be used by Oracle, which is rapidly expanding its cloud business for AI customers like OpenAI.

The Vantage project, codenamed “Frontier,” adds to a growing list of massive artificial-intelligence data center campuses looking for project financing. Vantage said Tuesday the complex would have 10 data centers using 1.4 gigawatts of power, and it’s aiming to complete the first building in the second half of next year.

Vantage and the other firms either did not respond to requests for comment or have any immediate comment.

5.	China Considers Approving Yuan-Backed Stablecoins By Yueqi Yang Source: Reuters

China is considering approving yuan-backed stablecoins for the first time to boost the usage and influence of its currency globally, Reuters reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.

The government will study a roadmap to promote the yuan later this month, including ways to catch up with the U.S.’s push on stablecoins, the outlet said. China’s tech giants JD.com and Alibaba affiliate Ant Group have urged the central bank to authorize stablecoins pegged to offshore yuan, as more Chinese exporters have turned to dollar-pegged stablecoins to settle trade, Reuters reported in July.

For years, China has been promoting the usage of the yuan in international trade to counter the U.S. dollar’s global dominance, though with limited success. China has capital controls and its currency’s value is controlled by Beijing. There is a market for offshore yuan that are freely traded outside of the mainland.

China banned crypto trading and mining in 2021. People’s Bank of China adviser Huang Yiping told local media Yicai in July that an offshore yuan stablecoin in Hong Kong is “a possibility,” but opening up crypto and stablecoin activities in mainland China is unlikely, given concerns over financial stability. Hong Kong passed a stablecoin bill to establish a license regime in May, which took effect August 1. Most prospective applicants are interested in issuing HK dollar and US dollar-pegged stablecoins, and applicants for offshore-yuan backed stablecoins will need to specify their use cases and reserve assets, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority said in July. The Hong Kong dollar is pegged to the U.S. dollar.