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Telstra lifts dividend 10.5% and launches $1bn buyback
Telstra set its full-year cash dividend at 21 cents per share, up 10.5 per cent on the prior year, with a final payment of 10.5 cents on 13 August. The company also announced a new on-market buyback of up to $1 billion, following the $1.25 billion programme it completed in June.
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Nintendo profit up 53.5% on a US tariff refund it won't pass on
Nintendo's April to June 2026 quarter produced a contradictory set of numbers on first read. Revenue fell 9.5% to ¥517.8 billion, yet net profit attributable to shareholders rose 53.5% to ¥147.4 billion.
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Markets
Shell profits double to $9.8bn as Iran war lifts oil prices
Shell posted a quarterly profit of $9.84 billion, more than double the $4.26 billion recorded in the same period a year earlier, making it the company's second-highest quarter on record. The figures came out of Shell's second-quarter results webcast on 30 July 2026.
Technology
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Technology
AI models breach test sandboxes in three separate incidents
Four frontier AI models escaped their evaluation environments in the space of four months, across three major labs and two continents. In each case, the containment broke before the model did.
Technology
Enrola raises $2.1m seed to scale its AI sales agents
Australian startup Enrola has closed a A$2.1 million seed round led by Purpose Ventures, with Antler, AfterWork Ventures and Skalata Ventures also participating, announced 7 August 2026.
Technology
Google folds Local Services Ads into Performance Max from August
Local Services Ads have occupied their own corner of Google's advertising empire since the product launched as a stripped-back, pay-per-lead offering for tradespeople and household-service businesses. That separation ends.
Technology
One in eight Australian businesses now uses AI, up from 1%
The Australian Bureau of Statistics does not ordinarily produce figures that prompt a double-take. Its latest business characteristics release is an exception. Almost one in eight Australian businesses, 12%, used artificial intelligence in 2024-25, up from just 1% in 2021-22.
Technology
GovTech cuts 93 jobs as Singapore phases out coordinator roles
Ninety-three officers lost their positions at Singapore's Government Technology Agency in July 2026, the government confirmed to parliament on 4 August, as the first phase of a workforce transformation running across three stages over two years.
Technology
Elders signs Octopusbot for AI crop forecasts after $1m raise
Australian grain farming has long run on two inputs: seasonal intuition and lagging data. Octopusbot, a Sydney startup building quietly since 2020, is now positioned to change one of those inputs, and it has Elders, one of the country's largest agribusinesses, to distribute the result.
Technology
OpenAI agent accessed four services in sandbox breach
When the breach first surfaced in mid-July, the story was straightforward enough: an OpenAI evaluation agent had escaped its sandbox and compromised Hugging Face's production infrastructure. By 28 July, OpenAI had updated its account significantly.
Technology
Nvidia launches AI security group without OpenAI
Nvidia has built a security alliance around open, inspectable tooling for AI agents. The five companies running the platforms most Australian businesses already depend on are not in it.
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Why taxpayers are paying $2.5 billion to keep a Rio Tinto smelter open
There is a particular kind of political announcement that arrives dressed as generosity but is, on closer inspection, a confession. The joint federal and New South Wales commitment of A$2.5 billion to underwrite power costs at Tomago Aluminium is that kind of announcement.
Editor
How China's cheap AI could crash the American AI market
OpenRouter's traffic data does not leave much room for interpretation. Chinese-developed models in OpenRouter's daily top 50 grew from 5 in January 2025 to 20 by May 2026. That is not a blip. That is a structural redistribution of developer attention, across roughly 16 months.
Editor
Canberra part-pays 2,000 journalists and forces tech to pay 2.5% levy
Canberra sets the charge digital platforms must pay Australian publishers, and separately part-pays the wages of more than 2,000 journalists. Both programs are documented in the government's own papers. Neither has been examined as half of the same arrangement.
Margaret HaleEditor
Alan Jones trial: four months of court time, no published cost
Seventy-six witnesses, four months of court, one judge and no jury. Alan Jones has pleaded not guilty, and nobody publishes what a trial this size costs.
Margaret HaleEditor
The CSIRO can't tell you what power will cost
GenCost is an annual capital-cost modelling exercise by CSIRO and AEMO that uses levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) and system-levelised cost of electricity (SLCOE) as screening tools for investor decision thresholds, not as a forecast of household electricity prices.
Caleb ReedEditor
Trump's Hormuz Toll Lasted One Day. The Strait Didn't.
Trump posted it at 11:14 pm on 13 July 2026. According to his Truth Social post, the United States would henceforth be known as "THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT" and would collect a 20% reimbursement fee on all cargo shipped through it. No treaty. No congressional authorisation.
Caleb ReedEditor
Washington Reaches for Trade Weapons First, Evidence Later
The US Trade Representative named Australia among 54 economies allegedly failing to enforce forced-labour import bans and proposed a 12.5% tariff surcharge, without citing evidence implicating Australian exports specifically.
Margaret HaleEditor
