The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• SK Hynix reports Q1 revenue up 198% YoY to ~$35.55B, vs. ~$36.2B est., and operating profit up 405% YoY to ~$25.4B, vs. ~$25.6B est., as memory prices rise (Dylan Butts/CNBC) [7d]
• Alibaba launches Qwen3.6-27B, an open-weight dense model with 27B parameters, saying it surpasses Qwen3.5-397B-A17B on major coding benchmarks (Qwen) [7d]
• Dune Analytics: Polymarket's global trading volumes have fallen behind Kalshi in recent months; sources: product delays are contributing to Polymarket's decline (Bloomberg) [7d]
• Kalshi suspends and fines congressional candidates Mark Moran of Virginia, Matt Klein of Minnesota, and Ezekiel Enriquez of Texas for political insider trading (Dan Mangan/CNBC) [7d]
• IBM reports Q1 revenue up 9% YoY to $15.92B, vs. $15.62B est., software revenue up 11% to $7.05B, and maintains FY 2026 guidance; IBM drops ~6% after hours (Jordan Novet/CNBC) [7d]
• ServiceNow reports Q1 subscription revenue up 22% YoY to $3.67B, vs. $3.65B est., says conflict in the Middle East weighed on growth; NOW drops 12%+ after hours (Lola Murti/CNBC) [7d]
• Texas Instruments reports Q1 revenue up 19% YoY to $4.83B, vs. $4.52B est., and forecasts Q2 revenue above estimates; TXN jumps 8%+ after hours (Ian King/Bloomberg) [7d]
• Sources: xAI held talks in recent weeks with Mistral and Cursor about a potential three-way partnership; Mistral co-founder Devendra Chaplot joined xAI in March (Grace Kay/Business Insider) [7d]
• Sean Plankey, President Trump's pick to lead CISA, withdraws from consideration after resistance from Sen. Rick Scott stalled his nomination for over a year (Politico) [7d]
• OpenAI releases Privacy Filter, an open-weight model for masking personally identifiable information in text, with 1.5B total and 50M active parameters (OpenAI) [7d]
• Meta unveils Live Chats on Threads for real-time conversations during cultural events, launching first within the NBA Threads community during the playoffs (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch) [7d]
• Sources: SpaceX isn't acquiring Cursor immediately because the deal could delay its IPO; Cursor is no longer proceeding with its reported $2B funding round (Bloomberg) [7d]
• OpenAI announces workspace agents in ChatGPT, letting teams create Codex-powered shared agents for complex tasks, and says they are "an evolution of GPTs" (OpenAI) [7d]
• Google says 75% of new code created inside the company is now generated by AI and reviewed by human engineers, up from 50% last fall (Hugh Langley/Business Insider) [7d]
• Core Automation, co-founded by ex-OpenAI VP Jerry Tworek, launches to build "the world's most automated AI lab" with talent from OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind (Business Insider) [7d]
• LinkedIn names COO Daniel Shapero as its new CEO, succeeding Ryan Roslansky, who will retain his position as EVP at Microsoft (Jordan Novet/CNBC) [7d]
• Monk, which automates accounts receivable workflows, raised a $25M Series A co-led by Footwork and Acrew Capital, bringing its total funding to $29M (Ryan Lawler/Axios) [7d]
• The UK FCA says it has carried out its first joint operation to disrupt illegal peer-to-peer crypto trading, targeting eight premises across London (Naga Avan-Nomayo/The Block) [7d]
• The UK's GCHQ believes ~100 countries have procured cyber intrusion software, such as Pegasus, suggesting the barrier to get access to the tech is dropping (Mason Boycott-Owen/Politico) [7d]
• Sony AI says its autonomous ping pong robot is the first robot to attain expert-level performance in a physical sport after beating some top-level human players (Will Dunham/Reuters) [7d]
• Substack adds translation tools, and says ~100K publishers earn on the platform, including ~30K outside the US; European creators earn $90M+/year collectively (On Substack) [7d]
• Sooth Labs, founded by ex-Meta employees to build AI models that let businesses forecast geopolitical events, is raising ~$50M at a ~$335M valuation (Rebecca Torrence/Bloomberg) [7d]
• Vast Data, which makes software infrastructure for managing large amounts of data with a focus on AI applications, raised a $1B Series F at a $30B valuation (Kai Nicol-Schwarz/CNBC) [7d]
• Google Cloud and Wiz debut new AI security agents at Next '26, including Threat Hunting and Detection Engineering agents, to combat automated zero-day exploits (Frederic Lardinois/The New Stack) [7d]
• Air permit docs: new gas projects linked to just 11 US data center campuses could emit 129M+ tons of greenhouse gases per year, more than some small countries (Molly Taft/Wired) [7d]
• Sources: Micron is pushing the US Congress to pass the "MATCH Act", which would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese rivals use to make chips (Karen Freifeld/Reuters) [7d]
• Google says Meet's Gemini-powered Take Notes for Me feature can now be used for in-person meetings and adds support for Teams and Zoom (Abner Li/9to5Google) [7d]
• Source: Mira Murati's TML signed a deal with Google Cloud, valued in single-digit billions, to access Google's latest AI systems built on Nvidia's GB300 chips (Rebecca Bellan/TechCrunch) [7d]
• Google unveils Workspace Intelligence, which understands "complex semantic relationships" between data in Workspace apps to provide personalized context (Abner Li/9to5Google) [7d]
• Google announces the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, a revamped developer tool built on Vertex AI that manages the full lifecycle of AI agent fleets (Radhika Rajkumar/ZDNET) [7d]
• Google unveils a new TPU lineup consisting of the TPU 8t for AI training and the TPU 8i for inference, with general availability scheduled for later in 2026 (Ian King/Bloomberg) [7d]
• The UK's High Court rules that London's Metropolitan Police can keep using live facial recognition; police say the tech has led to 2,100+ arrests since 2024 (Connor Jones/The Register) [7d]