The US sanctions MiraclePlus, a Chinese VC firm founded by ex-Microsoft executive Lu Qi, over alleged ties to Zhisuan, accused of stealing Google's AI secrets (Bloomberg)
Ant-backed Mynt, which runs mobile wallet app GCash, rose as much as 2.4% in Manila after raising $841M in the Philippines' largest-ever IPO, valuing it at ~$7B (Kimberley Kao/Wall Street Journal)
Leaked documents detail ECHOTRIBBLE, a nascent US Army Cyber Command program for agentic AI to autonomously spread across networks to find and eliminate targets (Sam Biddle/The Intercept)
A profile of Alona Katz, chief of Brooklyn DA's Virtual Currency Unit, who recently led an operation that seized and disrupted over 240 crypto fraud websites (Bloomberg)
Survey of 94 economists: 54% expect AI's gains to spread across the G20 over the next decade, not just the US and China; 32 see African countries falling behind (Financial Times)
Holyvolt, which develops AI tools for making and testing new battery materials, raised $45M from Zone II, CC.VC, and others, a source says at a $245M valuation (Nick Lichtenberg/Fortune)
Montevideo, Uruguay-based Scanntech, which develops market intelligence tools using POS data, raised $180M in a Series F led by L Catterton and Partners Group (FinSMEs)