THE RUNDOWN

Apple's annual iPhone event is streaming live today, and all signs point to the company finally unveiling its long-rumoured foldable device. Alongside that, iOS 27 is coming with meaningful upgrades — a smarter Clean Up tool in Photos that removes unwanted objects, and a refreshed HomeKit experience baked with AI improvements. If you've been holding off on an upgrade, today's announcement is worth watching closely.

OpenAI says it has cracked the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem, a mathematical puzzle that's gone unsolved for nearly a century and carries a $1 million prize. The New York Times and Wired both covered it, but an NYU mathematician is pushing back hard, accusing OpenAI of playing dirty in how credit for the work is being assigned. The controversy raises real questions about how AI labs handle scientific discovery — and who gets the glory when a machine does the maths.

Meta has unveiled Muse, a personal AI assistant that wants access to your email, calendar, payments, and health services all at once. It's framed as bringing AI to anyone, not just power users — but the depth of access Meta is requesting is making a lot of people nervous. Whether consumers will hand over that much of their digital life to the same company that runs Facebook and Instagram is the real question here, and it's one worth thinking about carefully before you tap 'allow.'

It's been a rough week for Anthropic. First, hackers were found stealing Claude API tokens from subscribers — one user noticed his account burning through tokens even when he wasn't using it, and Anthropic has since issued a warning. Now, a separate group of power users is taking the company to court, claiming Anthropic misled them about what their premium subscriptions actually covered. For a company that positions itself as the 'safe and trustworthy' AI lab, the reputational hits are stacking up. Worth keeping an eye on if you use Claude for any serious AI work.

On a lighter note, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Images 2.5, and the standout feature is something called Sketch — you draw a rough doodle, and ChatGPT turns it into a detailed image. It sounds gimmicky, but for anyone doing quick creative mockups or visual brainstorming, this could genuinely speed up the process. The tool is rolling out now.

Cognition, the company behind the Devin AI coding agent, has reached a $48 billion valuation — a multiple even higher than Cursor's before it was acquired by SpaceX. Investors are clearly betting that the AI coding space won't be winner-takes-all, and there's room for multiple serious players. That's good news for developers who don't want one company controlling how AI writes their code.

The Exploration Company, a European startup building reusable spacecraft, has pulled in $450 million in what it calls the largest-ever Series C by a European space company. They're going after the same commercial cargo and logistics market that SpaceX has dominated, and this kind of capital signals that European investors are serious about not ceding the entire space economy to American firms. For Africa, where space access is increasingly tied to connectivity and earth observation, more competition in this sector is a genuinely good thing.

Microsoft's security team has pushed out an unusually large set of patches this month, and they're doing it proactively — specifically ahead of what they're calling an expected wave of AI-assisted cyberattacks. If you run Windows machines in your business or for clients, don't put off this update cycle. The threat model is shifting, and the security stakes are higher than a typical patch Tuesday.

In the week's most unexpected story: the Trump administration briefly launched an arcade game called 'Build the Wall' that was essentially a Tetris clone with immigration-policy branding. The Tetris Company wasn't amused, sent a copyright infringement notice, and the game vanished almost immediately. It's a small story, but a reminder that even the White House has to respect IP law.

Sony confirmed it's still killing physical game discs in January 2028, but it's winding down production more gradually than earlier reports suggested. If you're a disc collector or you buy games in physical format, you've got a bit more runway — but the direction of travel is clear. The disc era for PlayStation is ending; the timeline is just a little kinder than feared.

That's your Rundown for September 9. Apple's event is the one to watch today — and depending on what drops, we may be talking about a genuinely new chapter for the iPhone.