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Apple’s Ternus era begins as Nvidia bets on the whole AI stack
Apple's John Ternus becomes CEO as Tim Cook steps down; Nvidia expands across the AI stack while a16z launches a $1.1B Machine Age fund.
Tim Cook stepped down as Apple CEO, handing the company to former hardware chief John Ternus, with Cook staying as Executive Chairman focused on policy relationships. TechCrunch's Equity podcast also unpacks Nvidia's moves to own the entire AI stack, including its Hugging Face acquisition, a MediaTek investment, and deeper compute deals. Other items include robotaxi competition (Tesla Cybercab, Waymo expansion, Zoox paid rides), Andreessen Horowitz's new $1.1 billion 'Machine Age' fund, and the $285 million GoPro acquisition.
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Revolut Exposed KYC Data After Fraudulent Government Email Passed Security Checks
Revolut handed over KYC documents, selfies, and Bitcoin transaction histories to attackers after a fraudulent email from a genuine government domain passed authentication checks.
Revolut confirmed on September 12, 2026 that it disclosed sensitive customer KYC data to an unauthorized third party after a fraudulent information request was sent from an email account operating inside a real government agency's domain, carrying valid domain authentication credentials. The exposed data included identity documents (passports, driver's licenses), verification selfies, birth dates, contact details, IBANs, account statements, and full transaction histories including Bitcoin. Revolut discovered the fraud only after independently verifying with the agency, blocked the sender, and notified law enforcement and financial regulators, but did not disclose the number of affected customers or the agency involved. Researcher ZachXBT assessed the operation was targeted at high-net-worth users, useful for fraud, impersonation, or extortion.
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Revolut confirms customer data breach through fake government requests
Revolut disclosed customer identity data, including passports and possibly selfies, to an attacker using a legitimate government email domain.
Attackers impersonating a government agency used a legitimate agency email domain to submit fraudulent information requests, prompting Revolut to disclose customer identity and contact data to an unauthorized third party. Exposed data included birth dates, postal and email addresses, phone numbers, passport and driver's license copies, and possibly verification selfies, account statements, and transaction histories. Revolut said a limited number of customers were affected, blocked the email address, and notified the agency, law enforcement, and regulators, adding that systems and customer funds were unaffected. Security researcher ZachXBT reported the scam appeared to target high net worth users of the fintech, which serves over 80 million customers.
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A WhatsApp zero-day exploit can cost several million dollars
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ID verification giant IDScan confirms data breach with more than 150 million driver’s licenses stolen
ID verification firm IDScan confirms hackers stole over 150 million driver's license records, including names and license numbers, from its cloud.
IDScan confirmed that threat actors stole driver's license records — full names, license numbers, and other government ID numbers — from the company's cloud systems during a roughly year-long intrusion. Brian Krebs previously reported a dark web service exposing data on over 150 million US and Canada residents, including license photos and records of high-profile individuals such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The FBI is investigating, and IDScan indicated hackers apparently demanded payment for full access to the stolen cache; the investigation is ongoing.
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Cognition hits $48B valuation, signaling investors believe AI coding is far from a winner-take-all market
Cognition, maker of Devin, raised $2 billion at a $48 billion valuation led by a16z, Accel, and Founders Fund, with revenue at $900M annualized.
Cognition raised $2 billion at a $48 billion valuation, four months after a $26 billion round, led by Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, and Avenir. Its annualized run-rate revenue grew from $492 million to $900 million since May, with projected $4-5 billion by end of 2026, while compute costs could push 2026 burn to $800 million. The startup, founded by Scott Wu, counts Mercedes-Benz, NASA, Goldman Sachs, and Citi as customers and is training its own model to cut reliance on OpenAI and Anthropic.
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Mistral raises €3B as sovereign AI becomes big business
Mistral AI raised a €3B Series D at a €21B+ valuation, led by Samsung Electronics, to scale European compute capacity and sovereign AI services.
French AI lab Mistral AI raised €3 billion (~$3.58B) at a post-money valuation above €21 billion, which it calls the largest equity round ever completed by a European technology company. Samsung Electronics led the round, with EQT's Scaleup Europe Fund and PSG Equity as co-leads; a16z, Nvidia, Salesforce Ventures, Advent, BlackRock, and Luxembourg also participated. The company plans to build 1 GW of European compute capacity by 2030, offer region-selectable query processing, and host third-party open-weight models as part of a sovereign AI strategy. Mistral operates in 20 countries and targets governments and enterprises seeking control over AI models and data residency.
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It sure looks like hackers breached a major ID card verification service
Suspected breach of ID verification firm IDScan exposed over 150 million US and Canadian driver's licenses and passports, sold via dark web site Nexus.
Independent journalist Brian Krebs reported that a dark web site called Nexus is selling searchable access to more than 150 million driver's licenses and passports belonging to people in the United States and Canada, adding roughly 500,000 documents daily from a 'major identity verification company.' Krebs and researcher Zach Edwards identified Louisiana-based identity verification service IDScan as the likely source; Krebs' own license and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's records appeared in the database. The FBI confirmed it is looking into the incident and IDScan says it is investigating; Nexus went offline shortly after the report went live.
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Salesforce and Nvidia’s new reasoning model is everything the AI labs should fear
Salesforce and Nvidia launch Koa, Salesforce's first reasoning model, built on Nvidia's open-weight Nemotron and post-trained on synthetic sales and support data.
Salesforce announced Koa at Dreamforce, its first reasoning model, built on Nvidia's open-weight Nemotron and post-trained with synthetic data mimicking sales and customer-support scenarios rather than real customer data. Koa will be offered through the Agentforce platform's AI gateway as a cheaper, token-efficient alternative to closed frontier models like Claude and ChatGPT for enterprise tasks. Salesforce simultaneously announced a ClaudeForce partnership with Anthropic keeping customer data inside Salesforce's infrastructure.
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Apple Warns Users in 110 Countries They May Be Targets of Mercenary Spyware
Apple sent mercenary spyware threat notifications to users in 110 countries, including Ukrainian military members, in what researchers call an unprecedented notification wave.
Apple notified an unspecified number of users in 110 countries that they may have been targeted by mercenary spyware attacks, bringing total notifications to over 150 countries since the program began in late 2021. Apple does not attribute the attacks but describes the alerts as high-confidence indicators of individual targeting against journalists, activists, politicians, and diplomats. Citizen Lab's John Scott-Railton called the geographic scale unprecedented, and Access Now reported a record number of help requests, with recipients including members of Ukraine's military. Apple advised users to update devices, enable 2FA and Lockdown Mode, and use Stolen Device Protection.
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Coruna iOS Exploit Kit Uses 23 Exploits Across Five Chains Targeting iOS 13
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