☕️ Apple hikes MacBook and iPad prices, warns of more

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In today's Techpresso:

💻 Apple hikes MacBook and iPad prices, warns of more

🕵️ Anthropic accuses Alibaba of biggest-ever Claude theft

💾 IBM claims world's first sub-1 nanometer chip

🔋 Tesla teams up to build largest US power plant

🧠 AI researchers continue to leave Google for its rivals

🎁 + 12 other news you might like

🧰 + 6 trending tools

📚 + 3 trending papers

💻 Apple hikes MacBook and iPad prices, warns of more LINK

Apple raised prices on multiple MacBook and iPad models after saying surging memory and storage costs have made it impossible to keep prices unchanged.

The company blamed the AI boom for creating unprecedented demand for memory chips, causing component prices to soar and forcing Apple to pass some of those higher costs on to consumers.

Apple's stock fell about 5% following the announcement, and the company warned that additional price increases across other products could happen if component costs remain elevated.

🕵️ Anthropic accuses Alibaba of biggest-ever Claude theft LINK

Anthropic accused Alibaba of carrying out its largest known AI "distillation" attack, alleging the company used around 25,000 fraudulent accounts to generate 28.8 million interactions with its AI models.

The AI startup says the campaign was an attempt to illegally extract its technology and has urged the U.S. government and the AI industry to work together to better protect American AI capabilities.

The allegations come as AI security and export controls become a bigger focus, with Anthropic also facing recent U.S. government restrictions on access to some of its latest AI models.

💾 IBM claims world's first sub-1 nanometer chip LINK

IBM unveiled the world's first sub-1 nanometer chip technology, featuring a new 0.7 nm "nanostack" architecture that nearly doubles transistor density compared to its previous 2 nm chip.

The new design is expected to deliver up to 50% better performance or 70% greater energy efficiency, making it well suited for AI, cloud computing, and next-generation electronic devices.

IBM believes the breakthrough can extend chip scaling for at least another decade, with commercial production of the technology potentially beginning within the next five years.

🔋 Tesla teams up to build largest US power plant LINK

Sunrun, Renew Home, and Tesla announced a partnership to combine millions of home batteries, smart thermostats, and EV systems into a virtual power plant capable of delivering more than 16 gigawatts of flexible electricity.

The companies say the system can help power AI data centers and other large electricity users within months, reducing strain on the grid without requiring major new infrastructure.

By using existing home energy devices more efficiently, the partnership aims to lower electricity costs for households, improve grid reliability, and accelerate the rollout of new AI and data center capacity.

🧠 AI researchers continue to leave Google for its rivals LINK

Two more researchers who helped build Google's Gemini model, Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel, are leaving the company for Anthropic, according to a Bloomberg report on their departures.

These exits add to a worrying pattern at Google, which last week saw researcher Noam Shazeer leave for OpenAI and DeepMind Director John Jumper announce his own move to Anthropic.

The article suggests the trend may keep going as OpenAI and Anthropic prepare to go public, giving both companies a strong chance to recruit top AI talent by offering equity.

Other news you might like

• Qualcomm plans China-specific data center chips — new Dragonfly lineup will include nerfed AI accelerators that comply with export thresholdsLINK

• White House warms to Anthropic after replacing "weirdo" Dario Amodei in talksLINK

• Europe is pushing back on Washington’s chip warLINK

• UN enforces global safety rules for fully autonomous vehicles, effective January 2027LINK

• The US government wants a working quantum computer by 2028 and quantum-resistant encryption by 2031LINK

• Trump’s Postponement of Housing Bill Stalls Federal CBDC Ban Until 2030LINK

• Qualcomm lands Meta as first named customer for its Dragonfly data centre chipsLINK

• Introducing computer use in Gemini 3.5 FlashLINK

• Morgan Stanley raises its target for China’s humanlike robot shipments to 50,000LINK

• AI was supposed to kill engineering jobs, but new data suggests they’re the most resilientLINK

• OpenAI's free GPT-5.5 model makes ChatGPT better at understanding contextLINK

🧰 Trending tools

Oxlo.ai: a single API giving access to 35+ AI models with cost-predictable subscriptions, helping teams compare and choose the right model per use case.LINK

Milestones: a personal portfolio tool that consolidates life updates and social media posts in one place, cutting through platform noise.LINK

BrowserAct: lets AI agents navigate real websites, handle logins, fill forms, bypass blocks, and extract clean data for automated browser workflows.LINK

Zaro: connects your Gmail, Slack, and notes to automatically build and maintain apps from your existing work, without writing code.LINK

Figma Motion: a Figma plugin that lets designers add and preview animations directly within their design files, eliminating the need to switch tools.LINK

Brain² by ClickUp: combines task management, docs, goals, and team chat into one workspace, with built-in AI to speed up your workflow.LINK

📚 Trending papers & reports

Coding with pictures and text is now possible in a new programming language that lets developers mix visual, interactive elements directly into their code without breaking existing tools or workflows.LINK

Coding assistants help strong beginner programmers go faster but make struggling ones worse, widening the gap between students who already understand what they're building and those who don't.LINK

Wikipedia edits by activists directly shape what AI systems say about animal welfare, with just 125 edits across 115 pages proving enough to dominate model responses, making up 68 percent of top-attributed sources.LINK

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