Industry News #1: AI, Scraping & Proxy Trends You Need to Know

July was an exciting month. From AI regulation and web scraping lawsuits to proxy-driven personalization and military contracts, we’ve seen major developments that impact the way businesses gather and use data.

In our first-ever industry news round-up, we break down the biggest recent stories. These cover everything from AI and data infrastructure to web scraping strategies and proxy use cases. But more importantly, we’ll look into what they mean for professionals who rely on scalable, compliant access to public data.

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1. United States Embrace State-Level AI Laws

The U.S. Senate recently voted to drop a 10-year moratorium on state-level AI laws, paving the way for a fragmented legal model. This change creates an increasingly complicated landscape for AI and data-driven businesses, especially in terms of compliance.

Teams that gather and analyze user-generated information now face regional demands, which means proxy infrastructure has to support compliance at the jurisdictional level. This includes state-specific IP targeting, data governance policies, and more. Knowing where your servers are located is no longer enough - it’s also essential to know the origin of the data and how it’s accessed.

2. Legal Spotlight on Web Scraping

July also brought two high-profile legal developments surrounding web scraping. One lawsuit was resolved through a settlement over scraping public data, while the other involved unauthorized use of scraped content to train an AI model.

These two cases show two sides of the issue. One suggests that scraping publicly available content remains legally viable in most cases. The other highlights the ongoing pressure from platforms to control how their data is used for AI training.

Both of them reveal a critical shift: web scraping is no longer just a technical task, but a compliance strategy. In other words, it’s essential to use infrastructure that respects website policies and adapts to the legal landscape while gathering data.

3. Cloudflare Blocks AI Crawlers by Default

Cloudflare, which handles over 20% of internet traffic, recently announced it will block AI crawlers by default . The company is also launching a pay-per-crawl marketplace, signaling a shift in how access to public data will be monetized in the future.

For a long time, AI companies scraped websites freely. Now, they’ll have to pay or find ways to adapt, as traditional scraping methods won’t work anymore. Fingerprint-rotating browsers, dynamic headers, and session-aware proxy pools are becoming essential. More importantly, ethical crawling will no longer be just good PR, but a fundamental approach to accessing data at scale.

4. Google Launches Gemini CLI for Developers

Google’s recently-launched Gemini CLI is an open-source tool that brings AI straight to your command line. You can use it to generate code, search files, and ask natural language questions - all without leaving your terminal. It’s a clear sign that generative AI is becoming a part of developer workflows, not just a layer on top of them.

Of course, the quality of these tools is only as good as the data used for their training. To stay relevant, these tools need fresh, real-world data, especially from sources like StackOverflow, GitHub, and developer docs. Ethical scraping backed by reliable proxy networks makes that type of targeted, real-time data access possible.

5. Meta Invests $68 Billion in Superintelligence

Meta is making a massive bet on the future of AI. Zuckerberg recently announced a $68 billion investment in a new AI lab focused on developing superintelligent models. The initiative aims to push the limits of AI and rival the capabilities of OpenAI and Google DeepMind.

Training models at this scale requires constant access to diverse, dynamic, real-world web data. This includes everything from global news to product reviews and social media chatter - all in different languages. For reliable data sourcing, Meta and similar companies depend on serious infrastructure, including distributed proxy networks that support ethical, scalable, and jurisdiction-aware scraping.

6. Oracle Signs a $30 Billion AI Infrastructure Deal

Oracle just signed a $30 billion cloud infrastructure deal . Although the client hasn’t been confirmed, insiders suspect it’s OpenAI or ByteDance. This announcement helped Oracle’s stock jump 4%, highlighting investor enthusiasm for large-scale AI infrastructure development.

While storage and compute are often in the spotlight, access infrastructure is just as critical. Without clean, real-time public data, even the most powerful AI models risk stagnation. The need for consistent access makes proxies a core requirement for serious AI development. The reason is simple - enabling consistent, reliable connections at scale, across regions, and with minimal downtime.

7. AI Agents Are Changing E-Commerce

E-commerce is changing fast thanks to autonomous AI agents that can browse websites in real time. They can learn about user behavior, preferences, and inventory patterns. The goal? Enhancing personalization. To reach their full potential, however, these agents need access to the same data that the users see.

Since most platforms limit or ban automated traffic, proxies (primarily mobile and residential proxies ) become essential. They enable these agents to collect data without blocks, which helps them anticipate user needs. As AI personalization becomes standard in online shopping, the demand for this kind of proxy-powered data continues to grow among developers and platforms worldwide.

8. OpenAI’s $200 Million Deal with the U.S. Department of Defense

OpenAI recently signed a $200 million deal with the U.S. Department of Defense, aiming to support enhanced cybersecurity operations. According to the Verge, it will provide the Pentagon with new AI tools for data collection, administration, and cyber defense.

Proxies play a surprising (but critical) role here. They enable cybersecurity teams to simulate international attacks, anonymize traffic, and test response protocols without exposing sensitive IP addresses. Just like firewalls and threat detection, the access infrastructure is a crucial layer in any modern cyber defense strategy , especially with AI being a part of the equation.

9. xAI Raises $9.3 Billion for Real-Time AI

Elon Musk’s AI-focused startup, xAI, recently raised over $9 billion in funding - $4.3 billion in equity and $5 billion in debt. The startup expects to spend more than $13 billion by the end of the year, much of it going toward infrastructure and data acquisition efforts aiming to deliver real-time, personalized AI across X and similar platforms.

Delivering personalization at this scale means capturing live public web signals - trending topics, user sentiment, behavioral data, and more. This is only possible with a resilient scraping infrastructure backed by rotating proxies, session persistence, and adaptive throttling.

10. AI M&A: $1.67 Trillion in Deals

Mergers and acquisitions in the AI space have skyrocketed, with the total deal volume reaching $1.67 trillion. Data infrastructure leads the charge with a growing interest in providers and solutions that manage, move, and access data.

That includes scraping platforms, data orchestration layers, and proxy providers. These tools are quickly transforming from technical side notes to strategic assets. Owning reliable access to real-time online data is now perceived as equally valuable to computing power or storage. As a result, data access infrastructure is becoming a key part of the AI M&A strategy.

11. AI-Driven Ad Intelligence at Cannes Lions

Nielsen’s Matt Devitt highlighted a major industry trend at Cannes Lions 2025 - advertisers are moving away from intuition toward ad intelligence based on verifiable data . Instead of relying on guesswork, marketers now want data-backed insights into where and how their competitors run campaigns.

However, this level of intelligence isn’t freely available. Most of the data is locked behind user segmentation, paywalls, and regional filters. That’s where proxy-supported web scraping comes into play. With the right tools, advertisers can gather data on formats, placement, timing, and creative strategies across regions. It’s a must for attribution modeling and competitive benchmarking.

Final Thoughts

From legal challenges to billion-dollar deals, it’s clear that access to clean, compliant, real-time web data is a strategic necessity. Whether you’re building next-gen AI, improving ad intelligence, or developing cyber defense tools, your success depends on the quality of the data powering your systems.

IPRoyal provides the proxy infrastructure that makes this access possible. Our solutions are built to support scale, compliance, and performance, so your team can stay ahead in a rapidly changing data landscape.