The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

Sources: US National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross is leading an effort to identify security vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure that AI could exploit (Wall Street Journal) [19d]
Report: Canada's Cohere and Germany's Aleph Alpha are in talks to merge; the German government would be willing to become a key customer of a combined company (Reuters) [19d]
Sam Altman reflects on the attack on his house, OpenAI's success, personal regrets, and advocates for de-escalating rhetoric and tactics in the AI industry (Sam Altman) [19d]
Amazon Luna is dropping support for game purchases and third-party game stores and subscriptions; previously purchased games will be accessible until June 10 (Michael Kan/PCMag) [19d]
Blackstone files for an IPO of a new data center acquisition vehicle to buy already-built and leased properties, and, sources say, plans to raise ~$2B (Bloomberg) [19d]
Sources: Cisco is in talks to acquire Tel Aviv-based Astrix Security, which sells software to monitor and secure AI agents, for between $250M and $350M (The Information) [19d]
Tesla says Dutch regulators approved the use of its full self-driving software, marking the first regulatory sign-off for the feature in Europe (Reuters) [19d]
Sources: Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and other banks are testing Anthropic's Mythos model internally; JPMorgan Chase is the only bank named in Project Glasswing (Bloomberg) [19d]
Sources: a week before Mythos release, JD Vance and Scott Bessent questioned Amodei, Altman, and others about AI model security and responding to cyber attacks (Samantha Subin/CNBC) [19d]
Analysis: Trump's World Liberty Financial used 5B of its WLFI tokens to borrow $75M from a platform its adviser co-founded; WLFI falls to an all-time low (Shaurya Malwa/CoinDesk) [19d]
Source: federal prosecutors have subpoenaed Reddit to appear before a grand jury, to provide personal data on an anonymous user who criticized ICE (Ryan Devereaux/The Intercept) [19d]
Microsoft unveils plans to streamline the Windows Insider program, offering a simplified channel structure, moving between channels without wiping PCs, and more (Ed Bott/ZDNET) [19d]
Trump hails Palantir's "great war fighting capabilities", days after short seller Michael Burry said the company will lose to AI startups; PLTR is down ~25% YTD (Joe Miller/Financial Times) [19d]
Three senior executives who helped launch OpenAI's Stargate initiative are leaving, sources say to join the same new company (Anissa Gardizy/The Information) [19d]
San Francisco police arrested a suspect for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman's home and also making threats outside OpenAI's headquarters (Maxwell Zeff/Wired) [19d]
France says it plans to move government computers running Windows to Linux, to further reduce its reliance on US technology, without providing a timeline (Zack Whittaker/TechCrunch) [19d]
Jury deliberations began Friday in the Live Nation antitrust trial, after state attorneys general continued to pursue the case even as the US DOJ settled (Ben Sisario/New York Times) [19d]
Waymo and Waze launch a pilot program to send pothole data collected by robotaxi sensors to the Waze for Cities platform and Waze app, starting in five markets (Kirsten Korosec/TechCrunch) [19d]
Documents: Amazon is working on "Project Houdini", which aims to cut the time it takes to construct data centers by preassembling core server rooms into modules (Eugene Kim/Business Insider) [19d]
Snap announces a partnership between Specs, its AR glasses-focused subsidiary, and Qualcomm, whose Snapdragon XR platform will power Specs' upcoming AI glasses (TechCrunch) [19d]
CoreWeave says it has signed a multiyear deal with Anthropic, including a variety of Nvidia chips at data centers in the US; it now has 43 active data centers (Brody Ford/Bloomberg) [19d]
YouTube raises Premium prices in the US, with individual plans up $2 to $15.99 per month, family plan up $4 to $26.99, and Premium Lite up $1 to $8.99 (Dominic Preston/The Verge) [19d]
Google News is showing Polymarket bets alongside news articles in the "For you" section; in tests, Polymarket bets also appeared on the Google News homepage (Frank Landymore/Futurism) [19d]
Google rolls out end-to-end encryption for Gmail on Android and iOS devices for enterprise users, letting them read and compose emails without additional tools (Sergiu Gatlan/BleepingComputer) [19d]
Apple led global Q1 smartphone shipments for the first time with a 21% market share in Q1 2026; overall smartphone shipments fell due to memory chip shortages (Counterpoint Research) [19d]
The CIA says it recently used AI to create its first-ever autonomous intelligence report, and plans to build "AI co-workers" into all of its analytic platforms (John Sakellariadis/Politico) [19d]
HSBC and Standard Chartered obtain the first stablecoin licenses in Hong Kong, beating 34 other applicants; they are expected to issue stablecoins in H2 2026 (Kiuyan Wong/Bloomberg) [19d]
Documents: Shenzhen-based computing company Sharetronic bought hundreds of Super Micro systems containing banned Nvidia H100 and H200 chips in 2025, worth ~$92M (Bloomberg) [19d]
TSMC reports Q1 revenue up 35% YoY to ~$35.6B, above est., suggesting global chip demand remained intact during the first weeks of the war in the Middle East (Debby Wu/Bloomberg) [19d]
OpenAI backs an Illinois bill shielding AI labs from liability even for "critical harms," like 100+ deaths or $1B+ damage, if safety reports were published (Maxwell Zeff/Wired) [19d]
Sources: Alibaba appointed Cloud CTO Zhou Jingren to lead its AI unit after a pivot from open source to monetizable "MaaS" models led to Qwen exec departures (Financial Times) [19d]
AfterQuery, which sells coding and finance training data to AI labs, says it raised a $30M Series A at a $300M valuation, and has hit a $100M+ annual run rate (Anna Tong/Forbes) [19d]
Luminai, an AI-native platform for automating administrative healthcare workflows, raised a $38M Series B led by Peak XV, bringing its total funding to $60M (Seth Joseph/Forbes) [19d]
Apple is closing its Towson, Maryland store, the first US location where retail employees unionized; the union says it is "outraged" and exploring legal options (Joe Rossignol/MacRumors) [19d]
Sources: US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Fed Chair Jerome Powell warned bank CEOs about Anthropic's Mythos model's risks at an urgent meeting Tuesday (Bloomberg) [19d]
Alibaba led a ~$293M funding round for ShengShu, just two months after the creator of the Vidu AI video generator raised ~$88M (Bloomberg) [19d]
Sources: SpaceX lost just under $5B last year while generating more than $18.5B in revenue; the loss figure includes xAI (Cory Weinberg/The Information) [20d]