What's up: Startups look to hire in the U.S.; Shares of cryptoexchange Bullish soared; Tesla eyes NYC for robotaxis; Cisco earnings boosted by AI infrastructure demand

Good morning. IT departments with a lot of busy work—from answering tech support questions to giving employees access to laptops and phones.

That’s exactly why one startup, XOPS, is aiming to use artificial intelligence and a “knowledge graph” to automate those mundane IT tasks, building what it calls a “system of intelligence” that can connect multiple data systems together to provide a comprehensive overview of what’s going on inside a company’s IT department.

Along the way, it promises to replace what co-founder and CEO Mayan Mathen calls "human middleware,"—the people individuals among a company’s IT staff who manually connect data between disparate systems.

Broadcom is one company that has used the XOPS platform to manage the entire "life cycle" of employee laptops, according to Stanley Toh, its head of enterprise end-user services and experience.

“The only time I need a human is to put the laptop in a box, slap on the shipping label, and drop it at the receiving store to be shipped out,” Toh said. “The other one is when the laptop comes back, they check it back in.”

What's an important takeway for CIOs?

It's great to have new technologies, but the same underlying challenges still need to be addressed, according to Gartner. Enterprises and CIOs need to keep good track of their corporate data in order for it to be ingested by AI, and IT staff must be trained alongside it to not fear a job takeover and trust the technology, analysts say.

Read the story.

Startups look to spend and hire in the U.S. due to Trump tax change. WSJ reports that startups are dusting off U.S. hiring plans after Congress revived a popular tax deduction—and the same change could drive domestic hiring more broadly as well, executives and tax professionals say.

Part of President Trump’s “one big beautiful bill,” the provision lets companies speed up tax deductions for spending on research and development starting this year. They can take the deductions in the same year as the expense—but only for U.S. spending. U.S. tax deductions for foreign spending, where salaries and other costs are often lower, must be spread over 15 years.

For companies where most spending is research and development-related, the change could be transformational.

Bullish’s stock soars in latest test for IPO market. Shares of Bullish soared 84% in the cryptocurrency exchange’s initial public offering Wednesday, highlighting the challenge of pricing an IPO in today’s exuberant market, WSJ reports.

Bullish priced its IPO at $37, above its already increased price range, raising roughly $1.1 billion. The company allocated about 20% of the offering to individual investors—a larger chunk than is typical—in part to prevent a run-up in the stock price once shares start trading Wednesday, according to a person close to the deal. Most IPOs allocate less than half of that to individual investors.

The S&P 500 closed at a record high Wednesday, and companies that went public in the U.S. this year are up 25% on average from their IPO prices as of Aug. 12, according to Dealogic.

Tesla eyes New York City for robotaxis with test-driver job posting. The company is taking early steps to bring its robotaxis to New York City just weeks after competitor Waymo announced its own plans to test autonomous vehicles in the Big Apple, WSJ reports.

Cisco posts higher earnings, revenue on AI infrastructure demand. The tech company reported net income of $2.8 billion, or 71 cents a share, up from $2.2 billion, or 54 cents, in the year prior, WSJ reports. AI infrastructure orders exceeded $800 million, bringing the fiscal year 2025 total to $2 billion.

Amazon launches same-day fresh grocery delivery in 1,000 U.S. cities. The tech giant launched same-day grocery-delivery service in 1,000 cities, including Phoenix, Orlando, Fla., and Kansas City, Mo., and plans to more than double it to 2,300 U.S. locations by the end of the year. The company has also made the service free for Prime members, a move intended to drive orders and increase market share, WSJ reports.

Google pledges $9 billion to expand AI, cloud infrastructure in Oklahoma. The company will build a new data center campus in Stillwater and expand its Pryor facility to bolster U.S. AI and cloud capacity, alongside education and workforce programs, Reuters reports.

Democrats try to halt Silicon Valley's swing to the right. Some executives who reliably give to Democrats feel that party leaders view Silicon Valley as a piggy bank and aren’t promoting policies that help the industry. The trend is fueling concerns among Democrats that bleeding support among tech elites like OpenAI’s Sam Altman and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen is another obstacle for a party facing its lowest poll numbers in more than three decades, WSJ reports.

President Trump agreed with European leaders including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to red lines for the coming talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska and said he hoped to follow up quickly with a trilateral summit with the two warring leaders. (WSJ)

Three years on, Ukraine’s military has slipped back into a more rigid, top-down mode of fighting with roots in the Soviet era, creating mounting frustration about unnecessary casualties while hurting civilian morale and army recruitment. (WSJ)

The Trump administration is facing increasing pressure over the conditions at immigration detention centers, including at the newly constructed Florida facility known as Alligator Alcatraz. (WSJ)

The WSJ CIO Journal Team is Steven Rosenbush, Isabelle Bousquette and Belle Lin.

The editor, Tom Loftus, can be reached at thomas.loftus@wsj.com.