Whatnot's acquisition of Shaped tackles the core tension in live commerce: helping shoppers find products when inventory, auctions, and intent shift second by second. By integrating Shaped's real-time recommendation tech, Whatnot aims to push personalization from minutes to near-instant, leveraging 500K+ hours of live video weekly.

Apple Intelligence gets approved in China thanks to a partnership with Alibaba's Qwen AI, after failed attempts with Baidu and DeepSeek. Chinese iPhone users finally get text and image generation features, but the delay cost Apple a year of momentum in a $20.5 billion quarterly market.

Reelful uses AI to automatically turn camera roll photos and clips into polished social media videos. Founder Kate Deyneka, a former Snapchat ML engineer, built it for busy people who want to post but lack editing time. The app handles scripting, voice cloning, captions, and even animates still images—all from a text prompt.

Hinge founder Justin McLeod has raised $18 million for his new company, Overtone, which he insists is not a dating app. The announcement arrives at a moment when 78% of dating app users report feeling burnt out, according to a 2024 Forbes Health survey, and users spend an average of 51 minutes per day on these platforms without forming fulfilling connections. McLeod himself criticizes the current model: opaque algorithmic feeds trained on split-second impulses, and the exhausting juggling of likes, matches, and chats.