☕️ Ferrari reveals its first EV, with help from Jony Ive

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In today's Techpresso:

🏎️ Ferrari reveals its first EV, with help from Jony Ive

🛰️ Pentagon clashes with SpaceX over Starlink price hike

📦 Dropbox CEO Drew Houston steps down after 19 years

🇨🇳 China restricts travel for top AI researchers

💶 EU to fine Google hundreds of millions

Plus: 🎁 10 other news you might like, 🧰 6 tools, and 📚 3 papers.

🏎️ Ferrari reveals its first EV, with help from Jony Ive LINK

Ferrari has pulled the covers off the Luce, its first electric vehicle, designed inside and out in collaboration with Jony Ive and Marc Newson's LoveFrom studio, who shaped the project's direction from the start.

The Luce is also Ferrari's second four-door car and first five-seater, packing four motors and 1,035 horsepower, with a sound system that picks up and amplifies vibrations from the rear motors instead of being synthesized.

Engadget's Tim Stevens, who saw the car in person, said it feels more like an SUV than a sports car, and noted that while there's no US price yet, it starts at €550,000 in Italy, making it the priciest Ferrari ever.

🛰️ Pentagon clashes with SpaceX over Starlink price hike LINK

The Pentagon got into a fight with SpaceX after the company demanded five times more money for Starlink connections on U.S. kamikaze drones striking Iran, pushing the per-terminal fee from $5,000 to $25,000 a month.

SpaceX argued the LUCAS suicide drones were really using its aviation tier, and the Pentagon agreed to pay despite officials saying the price was meant for aircraft, not drones connected for just minutes or hours.

A second dispute covers a plan to give Iranian citizens Starlink direct-to-cell service during the internet blackout, with SpaceX proposing a $500 million launch fee plus $100 million per month, alarming defense officials.

📦 Dropbox CEO Drew Houston steps down after 19 years LINK

Drew Houston is stepping away from the CEO job at Dropbox after 19 years, moving into an executive chairman role while sharing the co-CEO title with product chief Ashraf Alkarmi, who will eventually run the company alone.

Houston, who started Dropbox at 24 after losing USB sticks at MIT, built the file-sharing service to over 18 million paying users and past $2 billion in yearly revenue, though sales dipped slightly in 2025.

The 43-year-old, worth over $2 billion and a Meta board member since 2020, plans to start something new in AI, saying he won't be "racing sailboats" and sees no better time for building things.

🇨🇳 China restricts travel for top AI researchers LINK

China is now requiring top AI researchers at private firms like Alibaba and DeepSeek to get official permission before traveling abroad, with the rule applying to people working on strategically important AI projects, Bloomberg reports.

The policy builds on a March 2025 move when Beijing told AI executives to avoid trips to the U.S., citing worries about data leaks, technology theft, and rival companies poaching talent from Chinese firms.

The travel rule fits a wider push to shield China's AI sector and cut reliance on foreign tech, with domestic chip makers now holding 41 percent of the local AI accelerator market, according to IDC.

💶 EU to fine Google hundreds of millions LINK

The European Union plans to hit Google with a fine in the high triple-digit millions of euros as part of an antitrust case under the Digital Markets Act, according to a Handelsblatt report citing commission sources.

The decision, expected before the summer break, stems from a March 2025 investigation into concerns that Google favours its own services in search results, and would be the largest penalty yet handed down under the DMA.

A Google spokesperson said changes already made to Search under the DMA are the "biggest downgrade in the product's history," while the Commission said it is more focused on securing compliance than imposing penalties.

Other news you might like

• Heavy losses and weak revenue: xAI’s brutal numbersLINK

• Motorola phones have started hijacking the Amazon app to insert affiliate codes [Video]LINK

• Pony AI raises year-end fleet goal to 3,500 robotaxis after a strong Q1LINK

• Uber president says AI spending is getting ‘harder to justify’LINK

• Wall Street is paying $25,000 a day for AI trainers who used to work thereLINK

• China's first credible gaming GPU sells 30,000 units in 48 hours, despite RTX 3060-level performance at nearly $500LINK

• Y Combinator founder Paul Graham says AI-written founder emails feel like being lied toLINK

🧰 Trending tools

Ferrari Luce: a concept car designed with LoveFrom, unifying exterior, interior, and interface through a cohesive, minimalist design language.LINK

Brew: lets you describe email campaigns in plain English and instantly generates copy, design, audience targeting, and automation logic ready to send or export.LINK

Rezonant: a collaborative workspace that transforms rough ideas into structured specs and tasks ready for AI coding agents to execute.LINK

Parrot Speech-to-text API: converts Hindi-heavy, noisy audio into accurate transcripts with low-latency inference, built for production voice agent workflows.LINK

QuakPit: a macOS menu bar app that sends an animal-piloted plane across your screen as a visual meeting reminder you won't ignore.LINK

SelectPrism: automates candidate screening by conducting AI interviews and delivering ranked shortlists, freeing recruiters to focus on closing hires.LINK

📚 Trending papers & reports

Prompt politeness affects how accurately large language models answer questions, meaning the way you phrase a request, politely or rudely, changes the quality of the AI's responses.LINK

Political fact-checking with AI works far more reliably when large language models are given carefully selected, relevant context rather than being left to rely on their own built-in knowledge.LINK

AI model fine-tuning data can be secretly recovered by comparing how two versions of a model respond to text, without ever accessing the model's internal weights.LINK

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