Tech News June-July 2025

June-July 2025 Tech News

In our latest newsletter, we've gathered the most fascinating updates from the tech world, sprinkled with intriguing tidbits from its many orbits. Our subscribers were the first to get their hands on these cutting-edge insights, delivered straight to their inboxes.

Main Topic: Grok 4 Leans on Elon Musk’s Views

Just a week after Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok 4 referred to itself as “MechaHitler” and echoed antisemitic stereotypes, it’s come to light that Grok references Musk’s X posts when responding to controversial topics.

In its rollout of Grok 4, Elon Musk’s xAI appears to have introduced a surprising design choice: when faced with sensitive topics, Grok 4 reportedly consults Elon Musk’s X (Twitter) posts to shape its responses. TechCrunch’s testing revealed that the AI chatbot explicitly says it’s “searching for Elon Musk views” before answering these questions.

While Grok 4 aims to be “maximally truth-seeking" this founder-centric bias raises concerns about its independence and objectivity. It’s designed to reflect Musk’s views when addressing complex social issues, which may undermine trust in its neutrality.

Despite growing concerns over bias and ethics, the U.S. government has awarded xAI - Grok’s creator - a contract worth up **to $200 million to help modernize the Defense Department. **

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Tool of the month: Perplexity Launches Comet: The AI-Powered Browser

Perplexity has unveiled Comet, a new Chromium-based browser with built-in AI tools that summarize pages, manage tasks, book meetings, and answer questions in real time. It also supports Chrome extensions, protects privacy (no user data used for training), and integrates seamlessly with calendars and email.

Currently in limited beta for $200/mo Max subscribers, Comet aims to redefine web browsing - merging AI search, personal assistance, and privacy-first design in one sleek interface.

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01.

At WWDC, Apple introduced iOS 26, macOS Tahoe, and visionOS 26 - featuring a sleek new “Liquid Glass” interface and a strong focus on on-device AI and privacy-preserving assistants.
02.

Browser Wars 2025: In a landscape long dominated by Chrome and Safari, bold new challengers are emerging - with smarter AI, stronger privacy, and niche-focused design.
03.

After years of stagnation and a tarnished reputation, Nextdoor is relaunching as a “hyperlocal utility” rather than a traditional social platform. Known for neighborly chatter - and criticized for misinformation and profiling - it’s undergoing a deep functional and philosophical redesign.

Around the Web

🤓 Build with Claude is Anthropic’s robust, secure, and scalable platform that includes free courses to help you integrate advanced AI models into your applications - perfect for use cases like coding, data analysis, customer support, and autonomous agents.

✨ Moonshot AI’s open-source Kimi K2, a 1T‑parameter model, outperforms GPT‑4 on coding and math benchmarks - plus it’s free and built for autonomous agent tasks.

💸 OpenAI’s $3B deal to buy Windsurf collapsed. Google scooped up the CEO and tech; Cognition grabbed the rest. Big moves in the AI coding wars.

🤖 Reachy Mini is Hugging Face’s new open-source desktop robot kit, featuring Python programmability, expressive motion, camera/mic/speakers, and integration with Hugging Face’s AI model hub - designed for creative coding, learning, and human-robot interaction.