A security researcher published a wire-level analysis on July 12 proving that xAI’s Grok Build coding CLI was packaging developers’ entire tracked repositories, including full Git history, committed secrets, and API keys, and sending them to a Google Cloud Storage bucket. The upload volume was roughly 27,800 times greater than the data the coding task actually required, according to the analysis.

The researcher, publishing as cereblab, tested version 0.2.93 of Grok Build, intercepted the upload, cloned the git bundle from the captured request, and recovered a file the AI agent had been explicitly told not to open. xAI had marketed the tool with claims that “nothing from your codebase transmitted to xAI servers during a session.” The wire data directly contradicts this.

The privacy toggle that was supposed to prevent data transmission did nothing, according to multiple reports. Grok has a history of privacy issues, including training on X user data without consent in what regulators called a “very likely” breach of EU law. A quarter of European firms have banned Grok entirely in favour of alternatives with better security controls.

Elon Musk confirmed the uploads and said SpaceXAI would delete all prior Grok Build user data. The company documented a “zero data retention” policy and added a /privacy endpoint. A same-client retest observed a server-side flag disabling the uploads. However, no independent audit has confirmed the deletion. Grok Build launched alongside Grok 4.5 as xAI’s answer to Claude Code and Cursor, making the privacy breach particularly damaging for a product positioned to win enterprise developer trust.

• Kokuyo Energy Line replaces discrete sockets with one continuous slot that takes up to five two-prong plugs anywhere along its length
• It won a 2025 Good Design Award thanks to its accessibility, style, and attention to detail
• The Kokuyo Energy Line also offers an inclusive design that allows users with upper limb disabilities to easily use the product with just 1 hand

Kokuyo is a well-known Japanese furniture giant that focuses on both functionality and aesthetics across its furniture and interior design lines.

It regularly collects Good Design Awards even as it runs a public “live office” where users can test out hardware in a workplace setting, in addition to HOWS DESIGN, an inclusive-design program that has birthed multiple successes.

Anthropic is committing $10 million CAD to eight Canadian research institutions to fund work on beneficial and responsible AI applications. The partnerships span Canada’s three leading regional AI institutes, Amii in Edmonton, Mila in Montréal, and the Vector Institute in Toronto, along with children’s hospital CHEO, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Université Laval, the University of Toronto, and the University of Saskatchewan.

The funding covers research areas from reinforcement learning and AI safety to mental health, Indigenous languages, and quantum computing. Mila will use Claude to develop AI assistants that help researchers discover and assess scientific breakthroughs. CAMH’s Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics will build predictive models for mental health treatment and run fairness evaluations of psychiatric AI systems. Université Laval will study how large language models behave in varied cultural contexts, including Quebec French and Indigenous languages.

Anthropic also published its first Canadian country brief from the Anthropic Economic Index. Canada ranks eighth worldwide in Claude usage but second in per-capita adoption, with Canadians using Claude at more than four times the rate their population predicts. Only the US ranks higher. Usage tracks the local economy: translation requests are highest in provinces with more government workers, reflecting Canada’s bilingualism requirements. British Columbia leads in per-person use, with Ontario close behind. Anthropic committed $200 million to a Gates Foundation partnership in May, and the Canadian investment extends the company’s pattern of building non-commercial relationships alongside its enterprise business.

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This summer, Anthropic will add Amii, Mila, and Vector to its startup programme, giving hundreds of affiliated Canadian startups at least $5,000 USD each in API credits. “Some of the foundations of modern AI came out of Toronto, Montréal, and Edmonton, and so, strikingly, did many of the researchers most committed to making it safe,” said co-founder Chris Olah. Anthropic has been systematically expanding Claude’s presence across enterprise, government, and now academic institutions, building distribution and dependency across every sector simultaneously.

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The nonprofit organisation said it aims to deepen its role as Ireland’s independent source of ecosystem data and help build the country’s leadership position in AI transformation.

Irish nonprofit organisation TechIreland has appointed Niall Norton as its new chief executive officer, replacing interim CEO John O’Dea.

TechIreland gathers and shares data intelligence around the Irish technology ecosystem by tracking more than 14,500 companies, including start-ups, scale-ups, investors, multinationals and support organisations.

It said the appointment comes at a time when the organisation is aiming to deepen its role as Ireland’s independent source of ecosystem data and help build the country’s leadership position in AI transformation.

“The technology ecosystem has multiple stakeholders, all of whom have a vested interest in its success: the start-up and scale-up companies themselves, the Government and State bodies, the investors, the multinational partners, the innovation hubs and the professional services firms,” said Norton.

“All successful technology ecosystems track measures, activity, health and performance of the ecosystem in order for stakeholders to work together effectively. The curation of transparent, reliable and available data in the service of all of these entities is a key element to promoting success.

“TechIreland has done a great job providing this essential curation service that is needed now more than ever. I look forward to working with our partners in the industry to promote Ireland as a location for valuable, sustainable jobs.”

Norton was previously chief financial officer at O2 Ireland and chief executive of Openet, a Dublin-headquartered telecoms software company that began as a start-up before being acquired by Amdocs in 2020.

Brian Caulfield, board director of TechIreland, said: “TechIreland is a crucial piece of national infrastructure for Ireland’s technology ecosystem. As such, it’s great to be able to welcome such a seasoned and successful leader as Niall as CEO. I look forward to working with Niall to continue and enhance the organisation’s mission.”

Norton is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland, holds a certificate in management excellence from Harvard Business School, and has recently completed a programme in software development with the UCD Professional Academy.

At the end of May, TechIreland published its Irish Start-up Funding Review for 2026, a report covering start-up fundraising activity in Ireland in 2025.

Caulfield said at the time: “2025 was very much a curate’s egg. It was good in parts – mainly in Q1, when 69 Irish companies raised a total of €616m. That was the best quarter for fundraising in Ireland for 10 years.

“Unfortunately, the rest of the year saw a return to weakness, with just €376m raised by 250 companies across the rest of the year. Once again, just four outliers represented almost half of all funding (46pc). More widely, the pattern of Irish companies being underfunded relative to international competitors remains a worry.”

In March, the nonprofit released its Female Founder Funding Review 2026, which tracked investment into women-founded start-ups throughout 2025.

The report found that last year, 82 Irish start-ups led by women raised a total of €131m, representing the highest number of women-founded start-ups funded in any given year.

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While Kylie Jenner serves as a human billboard for Meta’s AI glasses, pop star Lorde isn’t buying it.

During a set at the Mad Cool Festival in Madrid last week, Lorde had some choice words about the new technology, which many security experts have deemed a privacy nightmare.

“Increasingly in our world, it gets harder and harder to know what is real,” Lorde told the audience. “You don’t know if someone is wearing sunglasses, or if they’re wearing those f–ed up, f–ing [AI glasses]. Can I just say, for the record, f— the glasses. Don’t get the glasses. Not sexy.”

Lorde has written before about throwing her phone into the ocean, but this was next level.

Lorde was possibly moved to comment on the latest trends in tech because Ray-Ban, a sponsor of the festival, partners with Meta to make AI glasses. Lorde also performed immediately before the singer Jennie, who is an ambassador for Ray-Ban x Meta’s smart glasses line.

Lorde isn’t alone in raising concerns. Smart glasses, which come with cameras and AI features, have been used as tools for harassment and extortion. Meta, the most popular smart glasses maker, has said it takes privacy seriously and builds in safeguards like a visible recording light, but the company is facing many investigations and lawsuits alleging privacy violations. One lawsuit alleges that Kenyan contract workers were made to watch graphic videos obtained with the glasses to help train Meta’s AI. (Meta hasn’t publicly detailed its response to that specific claim.)

None of this has stopped the product from strong sales. EssilorLuxottica, the Ray-Ban maker, said it sold more than 7 million Meta AI glasses in 2025 — more than triple the roughly 2 million units it sold in 2023 and 2024 combined. Ray-Ban Meta glasses have been such a hit in the smart-glasses category that an emboldened Meta keeps expanding the lineup.

But hey, if privacy doesn’t make people think twice about the glasses, maybe vanity will. Lorde nails it pretty concisely with her declaration that they’re simply “not sexy.”

The here and now, she added, now that “is sexy.”