NVIDIA started shipping Vera, its first CPU built specifically for AI agents rather than general compute, marking the company's furthest push yet into custom silicon beyond GPUs. Same week, Intel's CFO says 14A defect density is falling faster than planned, the best process health the company has seen since 22nm, and SK hynix broke ground on its first US HBM plant, targeting 2029 production to onshore a key AI memory component.

BepiColombo began its arrival at Mercury after a seven-year journey, while Ariane 6 completed its MTG-I2 weather satellite launch and SpaceX recovered a Starship from the Indian Ocean a month after launch, now headed back to Texas. On the ground, ESA opened its first contracts under the European Launcher Challenge, spreading launch capability bets across more startups.

A federal judge ruled the Pentagon's blacklisting of Anthropic was unlawful, a win that lands right after Anthropic's rough week with Claude's 700GB deletion incident. Elsewhere in security: researchers found three separate backdoor-like implants in Chinese-made router firmware sold worldwide, Meta added a limit on nonconsensual recording to its AI glasses, and Luanti got pulled from Google Play over what its maintainers call a baseless AI-generated copyright notice.