Business, Deals & Funding
TechCrunch AI
Monday.com is the latest tech company to blame AI for layoffs — here are 20 others
Monday.com announced layoffs of about 20% of its workforce (over 600 employees), citing its AI-driven growth strategy, becoming the latest in a growing list of over 20 major tech companies to blame AI for job cuts in 2026. According to Financial Times analysis, U.S. tech companies have cut nearly 140,000 jobs since the start of the year, with Amazon, Oracle, Meta, and Microsoft accounting for almost 50,000 of those. Notably, companies citing AI as a factor in layoffs have underperformed the Nasdaq by almost 10% in the 30 trading days following their announcements. However, AI-focused companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are hiring rapidly, and some companies like Meta are shifting headcount into AI-focused roles even as they cut other positions. Oracle disclosed cutting 21,000 employees (13% of workforce) over 12 months partly due to AI, while Microsoft cut about 4,800 roles primarily in…
Why it matters
This article paints a concerning but nuanced picture of AI's impact on the tech workforce. The most telling data point is that companies citing AI as a reason for layoffs have actually underperformed the market afterward, suggesting that 'AI transformation' is being used as convenient cover for cost-cutting and restructuring that investors see through. Monday.com's co-founder claiming the cuts are 'not to replace people with AI' while simultaneously describing an 'AI-first vision' is a contradi…
NY Times
Sally the Robot Was Coming to a New York School. Then the Plug Was Pulled.
Students at a New York school in Salamanca helped design an AI-powered robot named Sally, envisioned as a young female with dark hair and an upbeat personality. However, the project was canceled after public outrage over the robot's introduction into the school.
Why it matters
This article highlights the growing tension between technological innovation in education and public concerns about AI in schools. While student involvement in designing the robot suggests a promising educational collaboration, the backlash likely reflects legitimate worries about AI replacing human interaction in learning environments, data privacy, or the implications of anthropomorphizing robots for children. The cancellation seems like a missed opportunity for nuanced dialogue rather than a…
Guardian AI
Mega datacentre planned for outer Melbourne will be six times bigger than a large shopping centre
A mega datacentre described as an AI hub is planned for outer Melbourne, projected to be nearly six times the size of a large shopping centre. The proposal has sparked community concern, with over 3,600 people signing a petition calling for careful assessment of the project. The developer, Syncline, has been reaching out to residents via letters and door-knocking to explain the plans. The project has become a flashpoint in a broader national debate about the datacentre boom in Australia.
Why it matters
This story highlights the growing tension between the rapid expansion of AI and cloud infrastructure and the communities that must host these massive facilities. Datacentres of this scale raise legitimate concerns about energy consumption, water usage, noise, environmental impact, and strain on local infrastructure. The community's demand for careful assessment is entirely reasonable. While datacentres are essential to modern digital economies, their siting and scale should involve genuine comm…
Lenny's Newsletter
🧠 Community Wisdom: Staying on a client’s radar during pilot purgatory, pairing Linear with a discovery tool, the limits of what AI can automate, whether Techstars is worth it, and more
This is a subscriber-only 'Community Wisdom' post from Lenny's Newsletter (edition 194, dated July 25, 2026) that highlights helpful conversations from their members-only Slack community. The topics covered include: strategies for staying on a client's radar during 'pilot purgatory,' pairing Linear with a discovery tool, understanding the limits of what AI can automate, evaluating whether Techstars is worth it, and other community discussions. However, the actual content is behind a paywall and not accessible without a paid subscription.
Why it matters
The teased topics are genuinely relevant and practical for product managers, founders, and startup operators — pilot purgatory navigation, tooling decisions around Linear, AI automation boundaries, and accelerator ROI are all timely questions. Community-sourced wisdom can be especially valuable because it draws on diverse real-world experiences rather than a single author's perspective. That said, since the full content is paywalled, there's nothing substantive to evaluate here. Lenny's Newslet…
TechCrunch AI
Librarians are hosting viral ‘Avoiding AI’ workshops for people who are fed up with Big Tech
Librarians across the country are hosting 'Avoiding AI' workshops that have gone viral, teaching people how to disable AI features like Apple Intelligence and Gemini on their devices. Started by Hannah Cyrus, a librarian in Maine, and replicated by Charlie Bailey in Philadelphia and dozens of others, these workshops cover how consumer AI tools work and provide step-by-step instructions for turning them off. The workshops have seen unprecedented demand, with registration filling up quickly, waitlists forming, and Zoom livestreams added to accommodate interest. Bailey framed the effort as advancing digital literacy and helping people reclaim autonomy over whether they use AI tools, noting widespread frustration with AI being forced into everyday technology.
Why it matters
This is a genuinely heartwarming story that highlights the enduring relevance of librarians as trusted community educators. The overwhelming demand for these workshops signals something important: many ordinary people feel that AI features are being imposed on them without consent, and they want practical help pushing back. It's notable that this grassroots movement is happening in public libraries rather than through tech media or corporate channels. The framing around digital literacy and aut…
TechCrunch AI
One fallen power line exposed a growing AI data center problem. Here’s how to fix it.
A fallen power line near Washington, DC this week caused over 3 gigawatts of data centers in Northern Virginia to simultaneously disconnect from the PJM grid, triggering voltage spikes from Virginia to Chicago. The incident, which took over 10 minutes to stabilize, highlighted how concentrated AI data center loads can destabilize the electrical grid when they all switch to backup power at once. Experts warn these events will become more frequent as data center capacity grows. Solutions proposed include sequencing data center disconnections/reconnections rather than having them all react simultaneously, and building data centers that can absorb grid disruptions rather than immediately disconnecting. The disconnected data centers represented about 3% of PJM's total demand, but even that relatively small percentage caused significant grid instability because the electrical grid requires ne…
Why it matters
This is an important and well-reported piece that highlights a genuinely underappreciated infrastructure risk. The irony is striking: data centers designed with robust backup systems to ensure their own reliability are collectively undermining the reliability of the grid they depend on. It's a classic tragedy of the commons — each facility acts rationally in isolation, but the aggregate effect is destabilizing. The proposed solutions of sequential disconnection protocols and grid-ride-through c…
Guardian AI
The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn’t coming anytime soon
The article discusses the possibility that AI may not cause the massive job displacement that many have predicted. It references an Anthropic analysis on AI's impact on employment and mentions Dario Amodei's previous claims about AI potentially eliminating half of jobs. The piece suggests that while AI promises vast economic opportunity, the costs and practical realities may prevent the feared 'jobs apocalypse' from materializing anytime soon, questioning whether AI will truly redefine human labor demand at a pace and price society is willing to accept.
Why it matters
This article appears to be dated July 2026, which is beyond my knowledge cutoff, so I cannot verify its authenticity or the specific claims made within it. However, the skepticism about imminent AI-driven mass unemployment aligns with a reasonable perspective: while AI is transforming many industries, the pace of actual job displacement has historically been slower than predicted by both optimists and pessimists. Technology adoption faces practical barriers including cost, reliability, regulati…
From Reddit/HN/YC
- [Hacker News] OpenStrap lets you use a WHOOP 4.0 band without paying for the subscription.
- [Hacker News] Turns out Claude Code has a hardcoded instruction telling Opus 5 not to use subagents — found buried in the system prompt.
- [Hacker News] Claude Code cut their system prompt by 80%. Antigma tested whether that works for small models too.
- [Hacker News] Anthropic's status page confirms elevated errors for Opus 5 — timing lines up with reports of degraded coding performance.
- [Hacker News] Ruff v0.16.0 jumps from 59 to 413 default rules, the biggest single release the Python linter has shipped.
- [Hacker News] Open course walks through building a self-scaling OCR pipeline with Qwen 3.5 and Kubernetes.