The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• Anthropic says Claude subscriptions will no longer cover usage on third-party tools like OpenClaw starting April 4 at 12pm PT, to better manage capacity (Boris Cherny/@bcherny) [26d]
• Filing: Anthropic has formed AnthroPAC, a new PAC that will be funded exclusively and voluntarily by its employees and is expected to be bipartisan (Miranda Nazzaro/The Hill) [26d]
• Sources: Meta's "Project Walleye" Ohio data center seeks $3B in loans in a first-of-its-kind deal where lenders will fund both the building and the power assets (Financial Times) [26d]
• Sources: Meta has paused its work with Mercor while it investigates a security breach at the data vendor; OpenAI says it is investigating the security incident (Wired) [26d]
• Utah launches a one-year pilot program allowing Legion Health's AI chatbot to renew prescriptions for 15 low-risk psychiatric maintenance medications (Robert Hart/The Verge) [26d]
• Internal memo: Iranian strikes have rendered two AWS zones "hard down" in Dubai and Bahrain and Amazon expects them to be "unavailable for an extended period" (Alex Kantrowitz/Big Technology) [26d]
• Interviews with Codex lead Alexander Embiricos, OpenClaw's Peter Steinberger, and others about OpenAI's upcoming superapp that combines ChatGPT with Codex (Alex Heath/Sources) [26d]
• OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap is transitioning to a special projects role reporting to Sam Altman; Fidji Simo is taking medical leave for several weeks (Shirin Ghaffary/Bloomberg) [26d]
• Sources: Mercor asked professionals in fields like entertainment to sell their prior work materials for AI training, even if the IP could belong to ex-employers (Katherine Bindley/Wall Street Journal) [26d]
• Sources: Elon requires banks seeking roles in SpaceX's IPO to subscribe to Grok and advertise on X; some banks are spending tens of millions integrating Grok (Maureen Farrell/New York Times) [26d]
• Chinese semiconductor companies like SMIC reported record 2025 revenue, driven by AI demand and China's self-sufficiency push as a result of US restrictions (Arjun Kharpal/CNBC) [26d]
• Tower Semiconductor's market cap tops $20B, four years after a near-sale to Intel for $5B; shares are up ~60% over the past month and ~525% over the past year (CTech) [26d]
• Sources: Huawei's Ascend 950PR chip, set for mass production soon, saw prices rise 20% after Chinese tech giants placed bulk orders to run DeepSeek's V4 model (Qianer Liu/The Information) [26d]
• Docs: Israeli AI chip startup Hailo is pursuing an urgent IPO via a SPAC merger at a valuation of less than $500M; it was last valued at $1.2B in 2024 (Meir Orbach/CTech) [26d]
• A US bill seeks to ban exports of DUV lithography tech to China, whose imports of chipmaking equipment reportedly grew from $10.7B in 2016 to ~$51.1B in 2025 (Jared Perlo/NBC News) [26d]
• Some startups and researchers who can't access the most advanced chips are adopting a "frugal AI" approach, building smaller models on open-weight systems (Rina Chandran/Rest of World) [26d]
• The US NLRB rules that Amazon must negotiate with the Amazon Labor Union, which represents ~5K workers at its Staten Island warehouse; Amazon plans to appeal (Greg Bensinger/Reuters) [27d]
• Matt Mullenweg says EmDash, while open source, is designed "to sell more Cloudflare services" and lacks the cross-platform democratization of WordPress (Matt Mullenweg) [27d]
• Sources: Chinese companies move to cement their role in humanoid robot supply chains as Tesla and others turn to China for components the US sees as strategic (Raffaele Huang/Wall Street Journal) [27d]
• Arcee AI releases Trinity-Large-Thinking, a 399B-parameter MoE AI model under an Apache 2.0 license, allowing full customization and commercial use (Carl Franzen/VentureBeat) [27d]
• Anthropic researchers find that an AI model's representations of emotion can influence its behavior "in ways that matter," such as driving it to act unethically (Nat Rubio-Licht/The Deep View) [27d]
• Noon, an AI-native product design tool, emerges from stealth with $44M in funding from Chemistry, First Round Capital, Scribble Ventures, and others (Vaibhavi Khanwalkar/The Economic Times) [27d]
• Microsoft partners with SoftBank and Sakura Internet to build AI data infrastructure in Japan, investing $10 billion over four years and training 1M engineers (Takashi Mochizuki/Bloomberg) [27d]
• Alcatraz, which develops AI-powered facial-recognition security systems for building access, raised a $50M Series B, bringing its total funding to $100M+ (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE) [27d]
• Sources: Supabase is in talks to raise ~$500M at a ~$10B valuation, roughly doubling its October 2025 valuation; GIC is expected to lead the funding round (Katie Roof/The Information) [27d]
• Sony Interactive Entertainment acquires Cinemersive Labs, a UK startup developing tools to convert 2D photos and videos into 3D volumetric photographs (Ian Carlos Campbell/Engadget) [27d]
• A domestic shortage of electrical equipment such as transformers and switchgear is forcing the US to rely on Chinese imports, delaying data center construction (Bloomberg) [27d]
• Sources: Sarvam AI is close to raising $300M-$350M at a ~$1.5B valuation, which could close as soon as next week; Bessemer Venture Partners is expected to lead (Saritha Rai/Bloomberg) [27d]
• Source: Anthropic has acquired Coefficient Bio, which was developing a platform that enables AI to run biotech tasks such as planning drug research, for ~$400M (The Information) [27d]