A majority stake of the indie game publisher Playstack is being sold to an investment company called Integrated Media Company (IMG). As first reported by Game Developer, the owner of the publisher behind hits like Balatro and is selling an 84.5 percent stake to a subsidiary of IMG called VantageCo Limited for £112.4 million, or around $151 million. Playstack also released a brief and vague statement from its founder and CEO, Harvey Elliott, that said this step represented a change in ownership, rather than a change in who we are. IMG's portfolio didn't previously include video game publishers but the company also owns the Fandom umbrella of brands, which includes Fandom, GameSpot, metacritic and more. It's hard to say what this acquisition means for the deck-building roguelite that won the hearts of the Engadget squad after its release in 2024.

Anthropic has usurped OpenAI as the world's most valuable artificial intelligence startup, soaring to a $965bn valuation ahead of expected public listings by the rival firms. Anthropic, the maker of the Claude family of chatbots, said on Thursday that it had raised $65bn from private investors after a fundraising round led by Altimeter Capital, Greenoaks, Dragoneer and Sequoia Capital. "This funding will help us serve the historic demand we are experiencing, stay at the research frontier, and bring Claude to more of the places where work happens," Anthropic's Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao said in a statement. Altimeter Capital CEO Brad Gerstner hailed the adoption of Claude among the "world's most demanding organisations" as evidence of Anthropic's command in the field. "This momentum positions Anthropic to lead the next phase of AI innovation and capture the enormous opportunity ahead," Gerstner said.

This will be a paid add-on for Premium subscribers. Spotify just announced a partnership with Universal Music Group (UMG) to create a tool that lets fans make covers and remixes . It'll be a paid add-on for Premium subscribers, with some of that money going to the original artists whose work is being repurposed. Spotify says that artists have to opt in to the program. It's being marketed as a new way for artists and creators to make money, as the platform states the tool will open up additional revenue streams and new ways to drive discovery. Spotify co-CEO Alex Norström says the platform will evolve the music ecosystem into a richer, more beneficial experience for fans and a more rewarding outcome for artists and songwriters.

NextEra Energy is seeking to acquire Dominion Energy in an all-stock deal valued at about $67bn, creating a massive power company as the energy needs of artificial intelligence (AI) drive demand higher in the United States. It is one of the biggest proposed mergers so far this year and would create the world's largest regulated electric utility business by market capitalisation, the companies said on Monday. The region has a fast-growing population and the world's biggest data centre hub, which is in Virginia. The deal will enable a swifter build-out of power infrastructure to deliver electricity to data centres proposing to connect to NextEra and Dominion, which total about 130 gigawatts of electricity demand, the companies' executives said. One gigawatt can power about 750,000 homes. The merger builds on NextEra's efforts to tap into surging demand for supplying electricity to data centres developed by Big Tech, largely for training and rolling out AI technologies.

Shares are up more than 300% this year for the Tokyo-based company. Kioxia Holdings' shares were untraded in a glut of buy orders Monday morning after the supplier of storage for artificial intelligence data centers reported soaring profit and gave an outlook that trounced expectations. The Tokyo-based company said it expects to earn an operating profit of ¥1.3 trillion ($8.2 billion) during the June quarter, above the record profit it earned for the full year ended March. Its quarterly profit also surged past expectations, surpassing that of Toyota's, making Kioxia one of Japan's most profitable businesses. Kioxia's shares are up more than 300% this year.

Meanwhile its Audacious Project --a funding initiative that gives mature nonprofits the opportunity to pitch "moonshot" plans to a coalition of philanthropists--has raised over $1 billion in each of the last two years, in an epic Robin Hood operation for a handful of large-scale projects on climate, health, education, and criminal justice: The Audacious recipients here this year are taking this brief break from their work preventing 16 million unsafe abortions, helping governments in 20 countries prevent lead poisoning, or intercepting 5 percent of the world's river-borne plastic before it reaches the ocean.

Things have not been looking good for Spirit Airlines for years now. The budget airline known for its bare-bones approach to the sky filed for bankruptcy in 2024 and then again in 2025. And yet, its demise on Saturday felt sudden and shocking: Spirit said it would go out of business, canceling flights, shuttering its customer service lines, and laying off workers without warning. What does it mean for flyers, and for the busy summer travel season? WIRED spoke to experts to find out.

GameStop's CEO said he could turn eBay into something worth hundreds of billions of dollars. GameStop's CEO said he could turn eBay into something worth hundreds of billions of dollars. GameStop makes $55.5bn takeover offer for eBay Video game retailer's CEO warns that unsolicited bid could turn hostile if it is rebuffed by resale site's board US video games retailer GameStop has offered to buy eBay for $55.5bn (£41bn) in an unsolicited bid that its boss warned could turn hostile if the proposal is rebuffed by eBay's board. GameStop, which has quietly accumulated a 5% stake in eBay, said it was willing to pay $125 a share, split 50-50 between cash and stock. It is an ambitious move by the games company, which catapulted to fame during the meme-stock craze of 2021 but is worth far less than its takeover target.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told analysts that AI adoption has happened faster than expected. Apple CEO Tim Cook said on the company's earnings call on Thursday that it could take "several months" to meet skyrocketing demand for the Mac Mini, the company's compact but mighty, screen-free desktop computer. Cook's remarks come after coders determined in recent months that the Mac Mini was the perfect machine for agentic AI tasks. "On the Mac Mini and Mac Studio, both of these are amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools," Cook said on the earnings call, in response to analyst questions. "And customer adoption of that is happening faster than we expected." The news comes amid another record-setting quarter for the company.

Its march toward automation continues. Amazon has acquired Rivr, a startup focused on autonomous robotics. Rivr is based in Zurich and was valued at $110 million in a funding round from August 2024, which both Amazon and its CEO's Bezos Expeditions participated in. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed. Rivr's robots have four legs and wheels that allow it to maneuver on stairs and other potentially uneven surfaces.