The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• The Los Angeles Unified School District's board votes to require screen time limits, making it the first major American school system to do so (Tyler Kingkade/NBC News) [8d]
• Anthropic appears to have removed access to Claude Code from its $20/month Pro plan; Anthropic says it is "running a small test on ~2% of new prosumer signups" (Ed Zitron/Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At) [8d]
• Filing: Anthropic spent $1.6M and OpenAI $1M on lobbying in Q1, vs. $360K and $560K in Q1 2025, respectively; Meta topped Big Tech lobbying spending with $7.1M (Ashley Gold/Axios) [8d]
• AcuityMD, which provides AI tools that automate sales call recaps, CRM data entry, and more for medtech companies, raised an $80M Series C at a $955M valuation (Brock E.W. Turner/Axios) [8d]
• Sources: SpaceX has agreed to buy Cursor for $50B+; SpaceX says it is working with Cursor to "create the world's best coding and knowledge work AI" (New York Times) [8d]
• Trump Media & Technology Group names Kevin McGurn as interim CEO effective immediately; McGurn previously worked as an executive at Hulu, Vevo, and T-Mobile (Todd Spangler/Variety) [8d]
• Source: a handful of unauthorized users in a private Discord channel have been accessing Anthropic's Mythos model since the day the company announced it (Rachel Metz/Bloomberg) [8d]
• Google now offers two research agents: Deep Research, replacing its December preview release, and Deep Research Max, both available via Gemini API paid tiers (The Keyword) [8d]
• Reliable Robotics, which is developing autonomous aircraft systems for cargo flights, raised $160M led by Nimble Partners, pushing its valuation to ~$1B (Cailley LaPara/Bloomberg) [8d]
• Adobe announces a $25B stock repurchase program through April 30, 2030; Adobe shares have fallen around 30% so far this year (Zaheer Kachwala/Reuters) [8d]
• Roblox reaches settlements totaling $35.8M with the AGs of West Virginia, Alabama, and Nevada over child-safety protections (Cecilia D'Anastasio/Bloomberg) [8d]
• An interview with Sam Altman and Greg Brockman on OpenAI's restructuring, cutting Sora, "personal AGI", Anthropic's "fear-based marketing" for Mythos, and more (Core Memory) [8d]
• Core Scientific plans to raise $3.3B via a junk bond sale to finance its shift from crypto mining to building AI data centers and leasing them to CoreWeave (Francisco Rodrigues/CoinDesk) [8d]
• Sources: following Manus probe, Chinese authorities ordered at least one other prominent AI startup, MiroMind, not to send talent and research out of China (Washington Post) [8d]
• Mozilla says its Firefox 150 release includes fixes for 271 vulnerabilities identified using early access to Anthropic's Mythos Preview (Lily Hay Newman/Wired) [8d]
• NeoCognition, which wants to build AI agents that self-learn like humans, emerges from stealth with a $40M seed co-led by Cambium Capital and Walden Catalyst (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch) [8d]
• ChatGPT Images 2.0 is available globally to ChatGPT and Codex users, with a more powerful version for paying subscribers; its knowledge cutoff is December 2025 (Reece Rogers/Wired) [8d]
• OpenAI says ChatGPT Images 2.0 comes in Instant and Thinking variants and can generate images of up to 2K resolution and in multiple aspect ratios (Zac Hall/9to5Mac) [8d]
• OpenAI says that ChatGPT Images 2.0 has a stronger understanding of non-Latin text rendering in languages like Japanese, Korean, Hindi, and Bengali (Amanda Silberling/TechCrunch) [8d]
• Draft IPO prospectus: SpaceX debt grew from $14B in 2024 to $23B in 2025, tied to a $4.5B lease deal with Valor Equity for AI equipment such as chips for xAI (The Information) [8d]
• OpenAI releases ChatGPT Images 2.0 with new "thinking capabilities", allowing it to search the web to help it create multiple images from a single prompt (Emma Roth/The Verge) [8d]
• How opposition to data centers, over concerns like power demands, pollution, and water needs, has become a voting issue for many people in the 2026 US midterms (NPR) [8d]
• All-hands: Tim Cook said he's stepping down now to ensure the "best-ever transition," citing strong financials, an "incredible" pipeline, and Ternus' readiness (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg) [8d]
• New York Attorney General Letitia James sues Coinbase and Gemini, claiming their prediction markets violate state laws against illegal gambling (Jonathan Stempel/Reuters) [8d]
• Clarifai says it has deleted 3M OkCupid user photos and facial-recognition models trained on them after the US FTC settled with OkCupid over privacy violations (Jody Godoy/Reuters) [8d]
• Sources: CISA doesn't have access to Mythos Preview, even as some other government agencies use it; Anthropic says it briefed CISA before Mythos' unveiling (Sam Sabin/Axios) [8d]
• Meta is installing tracking software on US staffers' computers to capture mouse movements, clicks, and keystrokes in work-related apps for use in AI training (Reuters) [8d]
• Google's Chief AI Architect Koray Kavukcuoglu is working to unite its internal AI coding tools under the Antigravity platform, to counter Claude Code and Codex (Julia Love/Bloomberg) [8d]
• Sources: Kalshi plans to offer crypto trading in the US, offering perpetual futures, putting it in competition with exchanges like Coinbase (Yueqi Yang/The Information) [8d]
• Florida AG James Uthmeier issues criminal subpoenas to OpenAI to investigate if ChatGPT's role in planning a mass shooting constitutes criminal liability (Alex Ebert/Bloomberg Law) [8d]
• The nonprofit Consumer Federation of America sues Meta, accusing it of misleading consumers about its efforts to combat scam ads on Facebook and Instagram (Maddy Varner/Wired) [8d]
• Microsoft cuts Xbox Game Pass Ultimate price from $29.99 to $22.99/month and PC Game Pass from $16.49 to $13.99, but both tiers won't get new Call of Duty games (Tom Warren/The Verge) [8d]
• Filings: crypto PACs amassed a ~$180M war chest for the 2026 midterms, including Fairshake's $166M, giving them the ability to outspend some GOP super PACs (Bloomberg) [8d]
• Anthropic started requiring government-issued photo IDs and selfies from some users to prevent access from US adversaries like China, Russia, and North Korea (Juro Osawa/The Information) [8d]
• OpenAI enables cost-per-click ads inside ChatGPT, setting bids at between $3 and $5 per click, in addition to CPMs (Digiday) [8d]
• Humble unveils a fully electric cabless autonomous truck called the Humble Hauler and comes out of stealth with a $24M seed led by Eclipse (Lily Mae Lazarus/Fortune) [8d]
• Draft of SpaceX's confidential IPO prospectus: Elon Musk increased his stake in SpaceX last year by purchasing $1.4B of stock from current and former employees (The Information) [8d]
• Australia-based Syenta, which aims to use electrochemical "stamping" to speed up chip manufacturing, raised $26M and says Pat Gelsinger will join its board (Stephen Nellis/Reuters) [8d]
• Stripe and Paradigm-backed Tempo launches a "stablecoin advisory" for businesses and is working with DoorDash to let delivery workers get paid in stablecoins (Jack Kubinec/Fortune) [8d]
• YouTube makes its deepfake detection tool available to anyone at high risk of having their likeness abused, expanding it from public officials and politicians (Alex Weprin/The Hollywood Reporter) [8d]
• Trump says his administration had "some very good talks" with Anthropic during a WH meeting last week and "it's possible" there will be a deal with DOD (Ashley Capoot/CNBC) [8d]
• Tim Cook had an extraordinary run and impeccable timing in stepping down, with Apple in a better place than it has ever been as AI becomes its next big test (Ben Thompson/Stratechery) [8d]