The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

A US judge grants Anthropic's request for a preliminary injunction in its suit against the Trump administration over the DOD's decision to blacklist the company (Ashley Capoot/CNBC) [35d]
In an interview, David Sacks says he has relinquished his role as AI and crypto czar after using up his time as a special government employee (Bloomberg) [35d]
Sources: Anthropic executives have discussed an IPO as soon as Q4, and bankers vying to take the company public expect it to raise more than $60B (The Information) [35d]
OpenAI has surpassed $100M in annualized revenue from ChatGPT ads, has expanded to 600+ advertisers, and plans to launch self-serve advertiser access in April (Stephanie Palazzolo/The Information) [35d]
Google releases new tools for its Gemini AI assistant that let users upload chat history and context from other AI apps, making it easier to switch from them (Natalie Lung/Bloomberg) [35d]
Apple discontinues the Mac Pro and says it has no plans to offer future Mac Pro hardware (Chance Miller/9to5Mac) [35d]
Sources: Apple granted out-of-cycle bonuses worth several hundred thousand dollars to iPhone hardware designers, as OpenAI and others poach its engineers (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg) [35d]
X limits X Pro access to subscribers of the $40/month Premium+ plan without notifying users in advance; it was previously available in the $8/month Premium plan (Juli Clover/MacRumors) [35d]
Xona, which aims to build a commercial alternative to GPS by launching a low-Earth orbit satellite constellation, raised a $170M Series C (Sandra Erwin/SpaceNews) [35d]
Meta plans to increase its investment in a data center in El Paso, Texas, to more than $10B, a significant rise from the initial $1.5B commitment (Riley Griffin/Bloomberg) [35d]
Netflix raises US prices following a January 2025 hike; standard with ads rises $1 to $8.99/month; standard with no ads and premium rise $2 to $19.99 and $26.99 (Todd Spangler/Variety) [35d]
Sources: X let go of 20+ staffers in nontechnical roles ahead of a SpaceX IPO; X staff have been told to focus on growing revenue since xAI brought on a CRO (Wall Street Journal) [35d]
Italy-based Subbyx, which builds infrastructure that lets businesses offer access-based subscriptions, raised a €30M Series A (Tamara Djurickovic/Tech.eu) [35d]
Fannie Mae will accept crypto-backed mortgages for the first time; Coinbase launches a mortgage product allowing buyers to pledge bitcoin or USDC as collateral (Wall Street Journal) [35d]
Sources: Apple plans to open up Siri to run any AI service via App Store apps in iOS 27, dropping ChatGPT as exclusive partner in Apple Intelligence and Siri (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg) [35d]
The China Computer Federation calls for a boycott of AI conference NeurIPS after organizers barred submissions from US-sanctioned companies like Huawei (Vincent Chow/South China Morning Post) [35d]