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1.	Trump Signs Sweeping Quantum Executive Orders By Leo Schwartz Source: The Information

President Trump signed two long-awaited executive orders on Monday focused on quantum technology, a focus area for the administration that has often taken a back seat to AI. The first order, whose draft has been circulating for months, encourages different agencies to invest in research, including developing a government-hosted quantum computer and coordinating public-private partnerships. The second is focused on building safeguards against cryptographic attacks as quantum capabilities accelerate.

The signing comes on the heels of the White House’s AI-focused executive order, which also built up cybersecurity protections while ensuring that the United States remains a technological leader. “Leadership in quantum is not dissimilar to being able to be the leader in the world’s cutting-edge large language model,” said VJ Sahi, a partner at the strategic advisory firm Clark Street Associates. “This administration in particular is very attuned to the optics of wanting to be in that leadership position.”

The two orders are the latest developments in the Trump administration’s efforts to boost quantum technology. In May, the Commerce Department announced $2 billion in grants that included the government taking equity stakes in quantum-computing companies.

2.	SpaceX to Lease Compute to Reflection for $150 Million Per Month By Theo Wayt Source: The Information

Open source AI startup Reflection will pay SpaceX $150 million per month for access to compute from its Colossus 2 data center, a person with direct knowledge of the deal said on Monday.

The deal begins on July 1 and runs through 2029 but can be canceled by either company with 90 days’ notice, the person said. SpaceX also has deals to lease compute to Anthropic for $1.25 billion per month and to Google for $920 million per month. Those deals also run through 2029 but can be canceled on similarly short notice.

The move comes as SpaceX, which went public last week, has been burning cash in its xAI division, which has poured billions of dollars into data centers in Memphis. SpaceX shares were trading down 10% on mid-day on Monday at around $167.

3.	Meta Announces New WhatsApp Leader By Jyoti Mann Source: Bloomberg

Meta Platforms is backing Indian fintech startup Cred with a $900 million investment and tapping its founder to lead WhatsApp.

Bloomberg first reported the news, including that Cred’s founder and CEO Kunal Shah will take over running WhatsApp from Will Cathcart. According to the report, Meta’s investment will give it a 20% stake in the startup, which allows people to manage their bills and get rewards for making payments through its app.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg thanked Cathcart for leading the app in a Facebook post on Monday, crediting him for bringing its user base to over 3 billion people during his seven-year tenure. In an X post on Monday, Shah said the messaging platform still has room for growth and that he looks forward to working with Meta’s leadership “for the next step in WhatsApp’s journey.”

The move signals Meta’s ambitions to push deeper into digital payments. With Shah taking over running the platform, Meta could look to expand its payments capabilities through WhatsApp Pay, a feature that allows users to send and receive money directly inside chats.

4.	ByteDance Unveils Seedance 2.5 Video Model By Juro Osawa Source: The Information

ByteDance on Tuesday unveiled Seedance 2.5, its new AI video generation model, at a conference in Beijing. The model upgrades its predecessor, Seedance 2.0, which was widely hailed as a major breakthrough for AI videos.

The Chinese tech giant said Seedance 2.5 can generate a video up to 30 seconds long. It allows users to include up to 50 reference materials—such as images, videos and audio files—in a prompt, compared to 12 for Seedance 2.0. More reference materials give users more precise control over the videos they want to create.

ByteDance, which is best known globally for its TikTok app, said it plans to release Seedance 2.5 in China next month. The company hasn’t disclosed international launch dates for the model.

ByteDance’s previous video model, Seedance 2.0, faced legal disputes with major U.S. entertainment companies including Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Skydance and Netflix, after hyperrealistic videos generated by the model featuring Hollywood celebrities and other copyrighted content went viral on social media in February.

5.	Japan’s Sakana AI Says Its New Tool Rivals Anthropic’s Fable 5 By Henry Siu Source: The Information

Sakana AI, a Tokyo-based startup founded by former Google researchers, has launched Fugu, a new artificial intelligence service that coordinates multiple AI models through one interface.

Fugu uses various proprietary and open-source models to perform tasks, but Sakana packages it as a single AI model that users can access through a single application programming interface. Sakana said Fugu and its more advanced version, Fugu Ultra, are “shoulder-to-shoulder” with Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos Preview models based on benchmarks for coding, engineering, scientific tasks and reasoning.

On LiveCodeBench, for example, Fugu Ultra scored 93.2, while Fable 5 scored 89.8, Sakana said. On GPQA-D, a scientific reasoning benchmark, Fugu and Fugu Ultra scored 95.5, slightly above Mythos Preview’s 94.6, it said.

Sakana, which means fish in Japanese, was founded in 2023 by former Google researchers David Ha and Llion Jones. Its backers include Khosla Ventures, New Enterprise Associates and Lux Capital, as well as many Japanese companies including banking giant Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. In its most recent fundraising in November, Sakana was valued at $2.6 billion.