Hello everyone, As many of you just saw in today’s State of Play, pre-orders for Phantom Blade Zero will open this summer! At the same time, I want to share another update: Phantom Blade Zero will now launch on October 29, 2026, moved from its previous date of September 9, 2026. First of all, I want to offer my sincere apologies to all the players who have been following and supporting us. This was not an easy decision. More than anyone, we understand the expectations our players have placed on us. And precisely because of those expectations, we do not want to release Phantom Blade Zero knowing there is still an opportunity to take it one step further. Looking back over the past few years, the development of Phantom Blade Zero has been a thrilling journey of evolution. As we built the game, we continued learning, refining our technology, and expanding the scale and resources behind the project. From its first reveal in 2023, to its first offline hands-on demo in 2024, to the Seven-Star Sword Formation, Lion Dance, and Drunken Sword showcased in 2025, Phantom Blade Zero has continued to evolve year after year, with each new showing representing a clear leap forward from the last. And we have shared that evolution with players around the world every step of the way. Over the past few months, we have been streamlining content and focusing our efforts on polishing the areas that matter most. During this process, I saw one final opportunity for Phantom Blade Zero to make another meaningful leap forward. We have upgraded a number of character models and reworked many environments across the game, pushing them toward the highest standard we can currently achieve. We have also spent additional effort preserving as much of this visual impact as possible even without relying on ray tracing. Of course, ray tracing will further enhance the visuals, but our priority is to make sure the core look, atmosphere, and intensity of Phantom Blade Zero come through at full force for as many players as possible. A 50-day delay cannot solve everything. But it does give us enough time to complete a number of clearly defined and genuinely important improvements. These refinements will directly affect how the game feels when players first step into the world of Phantom Blade Zero. We could have delivered some of them through post-launch updates, but for the players who choose to join us on day one, we believe they deserve the best version of Phantom Blade Zero we can deliver from the very beginning. I am truly sorry for the delay, and I want to thank everyone who has continued to follow and support Phantom Blade Zero. This summer, we will have much more to show you. I believe every extra day of waiting will be worth it. I'd also like to share what you can expect next: 1. A new trailer that will release alongside pre-orders, featuring entirely new in-game footage. 2. After pre-order opens, we will also have a dedicated State of Play focused entirely on Phantom Blade Zero: a 15-to-20-minute deep dive into the game’s world, combat, exploration, and character progression systems. The vast majority of what we show there will be brand-new. We will share the exact dates in upcoming announcements! Once again, thank you all for your continued support! Soulframe S-GAME CEO / Creator of Phantom Blade Zero

A US senator walked up to an airport checkpoint and refused to have his face scanned. His name is Jeff Merkley. He is the senator from Oregon. He has spent three years trying to get the TSA to tell travelers something the TSA already admits on its own website. The face scan at the checkpoint is optional. Almost nobody is told. There is one sentence that stops it. Here is the sentence, and everything the TSA does not want you to know about saying it. First, the TSA's own words. From the TSA website: "Travelers who do not wish to participate in the facial recognition technology process may decline the optional photo, without recourse, in favor of an alternative identity verification process, which does not use facial recognition technology to verify their identity." Optional photo. Without recourse. Those are their words, not mine. The TSA also says this on the same page: "Travelers will not lose their place in line for security screening." And using the alternative method "does not take longer." So the two things a TSA agent might tell you at the checkpoint, that you will hold up the line or take longer, are ruled out by the TSA's own website. Now the sentence. When you get to the checkpoint, before the scan, say this: "I do not consent to the scan and would like to have my ID manually verified." That is it. The officer will take your physical ID, either a driver's license or a passport, and check the photo against your face the way they did for the last twenty years. Merkley has documented himself doing this on flights between DC and Portland. Here is why almost no one knows. Senator Merkley has been pushing this since July 2023. He went to Reagan Washington National Airport that summer to publicly demonstrate the opt-out and to challenge the TSA on how the program is being run. The Washington Post covered it. In May 2025, Merkley introduced the Traveler Privacy Protection Act with Senators John Kennedy of Louisiana, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, and Roger Marshall of Kansas. Two Republicans, two Democrats. The bill is endorsed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Public Citizen, and three other watchdog groups. Merkley's own words from that press release: "Folks don't want a national surveillance state, but that's exactly what the TSA's unchecked expansion of facial recognition technology is leading us to." And: "Americans have the right to opt out of using TSA's facial recognition at the airport, and we need to protect that right. Our Traveler Privacy Protection Act safeguards the freedoms and privacy of all Americans by making sure no one is required to have their face scanned to travel." Here is what the TSA is planning. Facial recognition is currently at more than 84 US airports. The TSA plans to expand it to more than 430. That is nearly every commercial airport in the country. And per the bill's findings, the TSA is "eventually planning to make this technology mandatory for all travelers." Right now it is optional. That window is closing. The TSA says the technology is not being abused. Their exact wording: "Biometrics are not used for surveillance. Facial recognition technology is solely used to automate the current manual ID credential checking process and will not be used for surveillance or any law enforcement purpose." Take them at their word. The point is not that the TSA is doing something illegal. The point is you get to choose. Here is the 5-minute action you can take tonight, before your next flight. - Memorize the sentence: "I do not consent to the scan and would like to have my ID manually verified." - Have your physical ID out and ready. Driver's license or passport. Not a screenshot on your phone. - When you get to the podium, hand the agent your ID and say the sentence in a normal tone. Do not apologize. - If the agent pushes back or tells you it will take longer, calmly repeat the sentence. If they still refuse, ask for a supervisor. - This applies to TSA checkpoints only. International arrivals into the US go through Customs and Border Protection, which is a different agency with different rules. For most US domestic flights, the sentence above is what you need. Here is the last thing. The TSA already admits, on its own website, that this is optional. A sitting US senator has spent three years asking them to put that in plain sight at the checkpoint. They have not. The signs at the podium do not tell you. The agents often do not tell you. The airline app does not tell you. Congress is being lobbied by the airlines to keep it that way. Reuters reported in July 2025 that the airline industry publicly opposed Merkley's bill. Right now, before the 430 airport rollout, you still have a one-sentence way out. Say the sentence. Show your ID. Walk through.

SITUATION ANALYSIS: SpaceXAI acquires Cursor Today, SpaceXAI completed its $60 billion acquisition of AI coding company Cursor, one of the largest tech deals in history. Both xAI and Cursor were founded less than five years ago. Cursor began in 2022 as Anysphere, a project led by four MIT students — Michael Truell, Sualeh Asif, Aman Sanger, and Arvid Lunnemark — building tools around nascent AI models. They started out building tools for mechanical and CAD engineering, which failed due to their lack of domain expertise, before pivoting to software engineering. In March 2023, the same month GPT-4 was released, Anysphere published the first version of Cursor, then just a fork of Microsoft Visual Studio Code optimized for large language models. Very few people knew at the time how big agentic coding would be, or how quickly it would take over. Cursor raised an $8M seed round in October 2023 led by the OpenAI Startup Fund, then a $60M Series A in August 2024 led by a16z, Thrive, OpenAI, and multiple top angels. It grew rapidly, taking just over a year (Oct 2023 to Jan 2025) to scale from $1M to $100M ARR, and nine months to scale to $1B ARR (Oct/Nov 2025). The company forecasts over $6B ARR by the end of 2026. All of this scaling was heavily reliant on frontier labs like OpenAI and Anthropic, who provided the models used in Cursor’s products. This was especially problematic given that both companies started developing products — Claude Code and Codex — that directly competed with Cursor on agentic coding. In October 2025, Cursor released Cursor 2.0, pivoting to more fully autonomous coding, and Composer, their first model. Composer was slightly less intelligent than top frontier models like GPT-5 and Claude Sonnet 4.5, but much faster and more efficient, helping Cursor retain its independence. xAI’s origins go much further back. In 2015, fearful of potential Google dominance over superintelligence, Elon Musk and Sam Altman co-founded OpenAI as an open-source AI research nonprofit. Musk provided most of OpenAI’s early funding. In 2018, frustrated by its perceived lack of progress, Musk attempted to take direct control of the company. The other co-founders rejected the proposal, and Musk resigned. Under Sam Altman, it converted to a for-profit company, took a major investment from Microsoft, and began developing paid products: first the GPT-3 API in 2020, and then the unexpectedly successful “research preview” of ChatGPT in 2022. Not wanting to allow Altman to win the race to superintelligence, Musk founded xAI in March 2023. In November 2023, the first version of Grok was released, fully integrated with the X app. It was later open-sourced. In May 2024, xAI raised a $6 billion Series B. That summer, they moved at breakneck speed to build Colossus 1, then the largest data center in the world, in just 122 days. Grok 3, trained on Colossus, was released the following February. The next month, xAI acquired X. Four months later, they released Grok 4, the largest model ever trained. But despite the enormous amounts of capital and compute and the hardcore work culture, not all was well. xAI’s models lagged substantially behind OpenAI and Anthropic, and almost the entire founding team had left by the beginning of 2026. Musk conceded that the company was not built right the first time around, and needed to be rebuilt from the foundations. He needed a team with a proven track record of building great models. So he turned to Cursor. On April 21, xAI and Cursor announced a partnership on model training, plus a deal: either SpaceX (xAI’s parent company) would acquire Cursor for $60 billion, or walk away for a $10 billion breakup fee. Cursor Composer 2.5 was released in May, performing very close to the frontier at a fraction of the cost. Grok 4.5, released in July, was the best Grok model ever by far. And Grok 4.6, released earlier this week, is the best model in the world other than Opus 5, Fable, and Sol. The SpaceXAI-Cursor acquisition ended up saving both companies: Cursor is no longer directly threatened by coding model competitors, and SpaceXAI now has a world-class model team once again. Elon Musk has said that SpaceXAI is currently training a 10T parameter Grok model. When it comes out, we’ll be monitoring. Written by @theojaffee. Read more at our link in bio.

In 2023, more than 5,000 attended the 30th Annual "OWN IT!" Baron Conference at New York's iconic Met Opera House. The 2024, 31st Annual "Building Legacy" Baron Conference on November 15th at The Met… features exceptional executives of SpaceX...MSCI...Arch Capital...and Red Rock Resorts...the Baron Capital team...incredible entertainment...and an ice cream cone served by former ice cream truck driver Ron... Oh yeah...good luck winning one of three awesome Tesla Y door prizes. All expenses, including door prizes...are paid by @BaronCapital...not our clients... Investors should consider the investment objectives, risks, and charges and expenses of the investment carefully before investing. The prospectus and summary prospectuses contain this and other information about the Funds. You may obtain them from the Funds’ distributor, Baron Capital, Inc., by calling 1-800-99-BARON or visiting Please read them carefully before investing. Portfolio holdings as a percentage of net assets as of June 30, 2024 for securities mentioned are as follows: Space Exploration Technologies Corporation - Baron Asset Fund (2.9%), Baron Fifth Avenue Growth Fund (0.9%), Baron Focused Growth Fund (10.3%), Baron Global Advantage Fund (6.1%), Baron Opportunity Fund (2.8%), Baron Partners Fund (13.2%*); Tesla, Inc. - Baron Fifth Avenue Growth Fund (3.2%), Baron Focused Growth Fund (8.6%), Baron Global Advantage Fund (3.3%), Baron Opportunity Fund (3.5%), Baron Partners Fund (28.9%*), Baron Technology Fund (2.5%); MSCI Inc. - Baron Asset Fund (0.5%), Baron Durable Advantage Fund (2.1%), Baron FinTech Fund (2.5%), Baron Focused Growth Fund (3.1%), Baron Growth Fund (9.8%), Baron Partners Fund (1.8%*); Arch Capital Group Ltd. - Baron Asset Fund (4.8%), Baron Durable Advantage Fund (2.1%), Baron FinTech Fund (3.0%), Baron Focused Growth Fund (6.4%), Baron Growth Fund (12.7%), Baron International Growth Fund (2.8%), Baron Partners Fund (9.5%*); Red Rock Resorts, Inc. - Baron Discovery Fund (1.6%), Baron Focused Growth Fund (3.9%), Baron Growth Fund (1.5%), Baron Partners Fund (1.5%*), Baron Real Estate Fund (1.7%), Baron Small Cap Fund (3.6%). *% of Long Positions. Portfolio holdings are subject to change. Current and future portfolio holdings are subject to risk. All expenses associated with this conference are paid by Baron Capital, Inc. No conference expenses are paid by Baron Funds. BAMCO, Inc. is an investment adviser registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Baron Capital, Inc. is a broker-dealer registered with the SEC and member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA).

As generative AI tools continue to evolve, we believe it's more important than ever to know what's AI-generated and what isn't. That’s why @GoogleDeepMind launched SynthID in 2023—a technology that adds a hidden digital watermark to AI content. Here’s a summary of SynthID’s journey and where the provenance technology (the documented history and origin of digital content) is today: — SynthID watermarking was originally built for images, but now supports video, audio, and text. — The technology has watermarked over 100 billion images and videos, alongside 60,000 years of audio. — You can now verify content with SynthID directly in Google Search, Gemini in Chrome, and the @GeminiApp, where it has been utilized over 50 million times. — We’ve also adopted C2PA Content Credentials across a growing number of our generative AI tools. This includes the images and videos created within the Gemini app. So now, in addition to the SynthID watermark, you can also see where an image or video originated and how it’s been altered. — We have open-sourced our text watermarking technology, and we are working with companies like @OpenAI, @NVIDIA, and @Apple to apply SynthID to generative media. Let us know what you think of the tool so far!

Every dispute comes down to the facts. Finding them is often the most manual, most expensive part of legal work. @WeAreLegora is acquiring Wexler, the fact intelligence platform used by leading litigation and disputes teams, and by in-house legal teams at some of the world's largest companies. It will be our fifth acquisition in 2026. This matters because of where the work is heading. Agentic systems will not just handle more legal work. They will generate far more fact queries along the way. Most tools return summaries or loosely sourced excerpts. Wexler does something different: it runs documents through a gated pipeline that isolates discrete, verifiable happenings, who said what, to whom, when, and why it matters to the case, across more than 1,000,000 documents per matter. Founded in January 2023, Wexler built a team of 18, grew revenue eightfold year on year, and hit over 400% net revenue retention. They will become the founding team of Legora's new London engineering hub, and combined with our platform, Wexler's engine will become a fact layer underneath Legora's agentic workflows, from case chronologies for litigation teams to catching factual exposure before it becomes a claim. We'll be excited to welcome them to the team.