Brian McCullough (0:04)

Welcome to the Techmeme write home for Monday, July 21st, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, serious zero day has been uncovered that is affecting everybody all around the world. There is a patch though. Mark Gurman dishes on the foldable iPhone. TSMC joins the trillion dollar club. If you're an expert in a given field, you too can join the AI Gold rush. And did we just take a big step toward AGI or is this just the latest in the hype cycle? Here's what you missed today in the world of tech hey admins and security folks. You've had some work to do today that would be installing a patch from Microsoft after a huge SharePoint zero day RCE flaw that was actively being exploited globally on thousands of on prem servers was revealed. Quoting Bloomberg Vulnerabilities in the software have allowed hackers to access file systems and execute code, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned on Sunday. While Microsoft said over the weekend that it had released a new patch for customers to apply to their SharePoint servers to mitigate active attacks targeting on premises servers, the company was still working to roll out others to address ongoing security flaws. Cybersecurity teams cautioned that a broad section of organizations may be affected by the breach. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of businesses and institutions worldwide use SharePoint in some fashion to store and collaborate on documents, Microsoft said. Hackers are specifically targeting clients running sharep servers from their own on premise networks, as opposed to being hosted and managed by the tech firm. That could limit the impact to a subsection of customers. Silas Cutler, a researcher at Michigan based cybersecurity firm Census, estimated that more than 10,000 companies with SharePoint servers were at risk. The US had the largest number of those companies, followed by the Netherlands, the UK and Canada, he said. It's a dream for ransomware operators, and a lot of attackers are going to be working this weekend as well, he said. Microsoft has been trying to shore up its cybersecurity after a series of high profile failures, hiring new executives from places like the US Government and holding weekly meetings with senior executives to make its software more resilient. The company's tech has been subject to several widespread and damaging hacks in recent years, and a 2024 US government report described the company's security culture as in need of urgent reforms. Palo Alto Networks warned that the SharePoint exploits are real and in the wild and pose a serious threat. Google Threat Intelligence Group said in an email statement it had observed hackers exploiting the vulnerability, adding it allows persistent, unauthenticated access and presents a significant risk to affected organizations when they're able to compromise the fortress that is SharePoint. Everybody is kind of at their whim because that is one of the highest security protocols out there, said Gene Yu, CEO of Singapore based cyber incident response firm Black Panda. The Washington Post reported that the breach had affected US Federal and state agencies, universities, energy companies and an Asian telecommunications company, citing state officials and private researchers. Researchers said the vulnerability allows hackers to access SharePoint servers and steal keys that can let them impersonate users or services even after the server is patched. It said hackers can maintain access through backdoors or modified components that can survive updates and reboots of the system. End quote Mark Gurman Apple Scoop Monday Yes, Mark says a foldable iPhone is coming next year. Here are the deets Quote when the company introduces its first foldable iPhone at the end of next year, it will be entering a product category that is already seven years old, pioneered and dominated by its biggest hardware rival, Samsung Electronics. And this time, Apple won't be debuting a radically new interface or transformative hardware. Instead, the device will offer a similar design as Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold line and use many of the same core components, including foldable OLED screens sourced from Samsung Display. Samsung, meanwhile, continues to plow ahead. Just last week, we reviewed Samsung's latest Z Fold 7 and called it the first foldable phone with a true mainstream potential. That device is a remarkable feat of engineering, with a wider front screen and a refined design that you'll have to experience firsthand to truly appreciate. Already, sales are outpacing the prior generation to a significant degree, I'm told. That means Apple's first foldable won't break any technological barriers or redefine the category. Samsung has already taken care of much of the heavy lifting, but here's the twist that may not matter. Apple's unmatched ability to market premium hardware to consumers, Vision Pro aside, could make it the dominant player in the foldables market within months of launch. There's a sizable group of iPhone loyalists, myself included, who have long wanted a foldable device but weren't willing to switch to Android to get it. That pent up demand is real, and Apple knows it. In a way. Samsung has spent the past seven years setting up Apple for success. The format is finally ready for primetime just as the iPhone enters the market. But this isn't necessarily bad news for Samsung. Its component divisions will benefit from an iPhone sales surge, and the excitement may get more Android users to try a Foldable Galaxy in fairness to Apple, its foldable phone won't be a carbon copy. As I reported months ago, the company is focused on addressing a few of the foldable categories long standing weaknesses. The company aims to make the inner display crease less visible and dramatically improve the hinge mechanism. And as part of the development of iOS27, which formally kicks off soon, Apple will prioritize software features tailored specifically to this new form factor. Another reason why Apple is embracing foldables now is the format has become especially popular in China, a market where the company is eager for a turnaround. Local brands like Xiaomi, Honor, Huawei and Vevo have all launched foldables, and consumers in the region have shown a particular preference for the book style form factor, the one Apple is pursuing over the emerging flip phone style design. The new foldable iPhone is also expected to cost at least $2,000, giving Apple a relatively easy lever to boost iPhone revenue even if unit sales aren't high. Ultimately, Apple's foldable won't revolutionize the category, at least not on day one, but it will still be a big moment for the industry. With its brand power, marketing muscle and engineering refinements, Apple could once again turn a niche product into a global hit. It just won't be the innovation breakthrough that we're used to. End quote at the 2025 RISC V Summit in China, Nvidia said CUDA will now be compatible with RISC V's instruction set architecture, making RISC V a viable x86 and ARM rival. Quoting Tom's hardware, the announcement makes it clear that RISC V can now serve as the main processor for CUDA based systems, a role traditionally filled by x86 or ARM cores. While nobody even barely expects RISC V in hyperscale data centers anytime soon, RISC V RISC V can be used on CUDA enabled edge devices such as Nvidia's Jetson modules. However, it looks like Nvidia does indeed expect RISC V to be in the data center someday. A diagram shown at the session illustrated a typical configuration. The GPU handles parallel workloads while a RISC V CPU executes CUDA system drivers, application logic, and the operating system. This setup enables the CPU to orchestrate GPU computations fully within the CUDA environment. Given Nvidia's current focus, the workloads must be AI related, yet the company did not confirm this. However, there is more. Also featured in the diagram was a DPU handling networking task rounding out a system consisting of a GPU for compute CPU for orchestration and data movement. This configuration clearly suggests Nvidia's vision to build heterogeneous compute platforms where RISC V CPUs can be central to managing workloads, while Nvidia's GPUs, GPUs and networking chips handle the rest of the Whether or not this signals Nvidia's readiness to diversify its ecosystem beyond proprietary host platforms is something that is not exactly clear. Nonetheless, if the stars align, Nvidia has just positioned RISC V as a viable alternative in future AI and HPC processor designs across data centers. This is something that no one expected, but it may influence other companies to follow suit End quote Further proof the AI buildout is continuing, or at least proof Wall street believes it is continuing On Friday, TSMC closed above a $1 trillion market cap in Taiwan, a first for them. It also makes TSMC the first Asian stock worth more than $1 trillion since PetroChina back in 2007. The stock of TSMC is up nearly 50% just from an April low. Quoting Bloomberg, TSMC's stock surge reflected growing investor confidence that the world's top chipmaker will ride the AI boom to even greater dominance. The company raised its full year revenue growth forecast to about 30% last week, signaling TSMC may benefit in a tightening race for AI manufacturing capacity. We think that TSMC's tone towards advanced node demand is even more positive, with AI customers showing no signs of demand slowdown, wrote Goldman Sachs Group analysts, including Bruce Lu. After TSMC's quarterly earnings, we expect to see a higher magnitude of price hike in 2026. TSMC's American depository receipts were valued at around $1.2 trillion as of the close on Friday. Owning ADR shares have been more convenient for foreign investors, as converting the Taipei listed stock into the US equivalent needs regulatory approval. Strong AI spending by TSMC's customers and the upside of wafer prices will help mitigate the negative impact of a strong Taiwan dollar and help add to the company's gross margins, jpmorgan Chase and company analysts including Gokul Harahan wrote in a note late last week. End quote While single AI agents can handle specific tasks, the real power comes when specialized agents collaborate to solve complex problems. There is, however, a fundamental gap. We have no standardized infrastructure for these agents to discover, communicate with and work alongside each other. That's where agency agntcy comes in. The agency is an open source collective building the Internet of Agents, a global collaboration layer where AI agents can work Together, it will connect systems across vendors and frameworks, solving the biggest problems of discovery, interoperability and scalability for enterprises. With contributors like Cisco, Crewai, LangChain and mongodb, Agency is breaking down silos and building the Future of interoperable AI shape the future of enterprise innovation. Visit agency.org to explore use cases now that's a G N T C Y.org.