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Meta's AI crawlers are quietly costing publishers real money. According to an analysis by bot management firm DataDome, Meta's AI bots made nine billion requests in the second quarter of two thousand twenty six, a growth of over one hundred sixty three percent from the previous quarter, all while sending back zero traffic in return. Every crawl costs bandwidth, server resources, and CDN transactions, and publishers are absorbing those costs with nothing to show for it. Meanwhile, ChatGPT accounts for eighty eight percent of all AI-driven referrals, making the contrast with Meta's approach all the more stark.
Shifting to robotics, Agility Robotics is opening a new training center for its Digit humanoid robots in Fremont, California, which happens to be the same city where Tesla builds its vehicles. The location feels deliberate, a signal that Agility is planting itself squarely in the competitive heart of the humanoid robot race.
And in India, the AI boom is creating an unexpected squeeze in the smartphone market. The surge in demand for AI-capable hardware is driving up memory prices, which is cooling consumer demand in one of the world's largest and most price-sensitive markets, reshaping both corporate strategy and the devices people can actually afford.
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