The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• Sources: the US DOJ arrested a soldier involved in the capture of Nicolás Maduro for allegedly making $400K+ on Polymarket by betting on his removal from office (ABC News) [6d]
• Texas Instruments stock rose 19% on Thursday, its best day since 2000, after upbeat Q2 guidance driven by high demand for analog chips used in AI data centers (Katie Tarasov/CNBC) [6d]
• Shenzhen-based Pudu Robotics, which makes commercial service robots, raised ~$150M, bringing its total funding to $300M+, and says its valuation exceeds $1.5B (The Robot Report) [6d]
• Intel reports Q1 revenue up 7% YoY to $13.58B, vs. $12.42B est., and forecasts Q2 revenue and adjusted EPS above estimates; INTC jumps 15%+ after hours (Katie Tarasov/CNBC) [6d]
• Music publishers including UMG, Warner Music, and Sony drop a copyright suit against Verizon following a SCOTUS decision limiting ISP liability in Cox's suit (Kyle Jahner/Bloomberg Law) [6d]
• Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and Chief Content Officer Matt Booty detail their "return of Xbox" strategy, including daily active players as its "new north star" (Tom Warren/The Verge) [6d]
• Instagram launched Instants, an app for sharing disappearing photos, in Italy this week, after rolling out an Instants feature in its main app in some regions (Sydney Bradley/Business Insider) [6d]
• OpenAI says "GPT-5.5 matches GPT-5.4 per-token latency in real-world serving, while performing at a much higher level of intelligence" (OpenAI) [6d]
• Anthropic says it has fixed three causes of recent Claude Code quality issues: reduced default reasoning, a caching bug, and a system prompt to reduce verbosity (Anthropic) [6d]
• GPT-5.5 is priced at $5/1M input tokens and $30/1M output tokens, double GPT-5.4's pricing; GPT-5.5 Pro costs $30/1M input tokens and $180/1M output tokens (Carl Franzen/VentureBeat) [6d]
• GPT-5.5 is rolling out to Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise users in ChatGPT and Codex, and GPT-5.5 Pro to Pro, Business, and Enterprise users in ChatGPT (The Verge) [6d]
• OpenAI says GPT-5.5's improvements are strongest in agentic coding, computer use, and early scientific research, which require reasoning across longer contexts (Madison Mills/Axios) [6d]
• OpenAI unveils GPT 5.5, intended to be better at completing work without much direction, saying the model "kind of figures it out, deals with ambiguity" (Rachel Metz/Bloomberg) [6d]
• At a town hall, Asha Sharma said Microsoft is returning to using Xbox for its gaming division, instead of Microsoft Gaming, as "Xbox needs to be our identity" (Tom Warren/The Verge) [6d]
• Memo: Meta plans to cut 10% of workers, or ~8,000 jobs, on May 20 and won't fill 6,000 open roles, in an effort to offset its AI spending and boost efficiency (Kurt Wagner/Bloomberg) [6d]
• Microsoft announces its first voluntary retirement program, for staff whose years of employment and age add up to 70+; source: 7% of US employees are eligible (Jordan Novet/CNBC) [6d]
• A look at Microsoft's recent wave of executive departures, as it struggles to retain talent and changes its annual rewards and performance programs in response (Tom Warren/The Verge) [6d]
• Internal memo: Amazon is replacing white-collar job titles at its Ring and Blink units with the designation "builder", and "builder leaders" for managers (Greg Bensinger/Reuters) [6d]
• Manila-based Salmon, a consumer finance app targeting underbanked Filipinos, raised $60M in equity and $40M in debt; it raised $310M to date, $160M in equity (Kate Park/TechCrunch) [6d]
• Microsoft announces the first voluntary retirement program in its 50-year history, for US staffers whose combined years of service added to their age totals 70+ (Tom Warren/The Verge) [6d]
• Sources: Thoma Bravo prepares to hand over customer experience management company Medallia to creditors, leading to a ~$5.1B wipeout for Medallia's investors (Reuters) [6d]
• Joint statement: Apple, Amazon, and others push back on stricter emissions reporting rules proposed by climate body Greenhouse Gas Protocol to cut greenwashing (Olivia Raimonde/Bloomberg) [6d]
• Vercel says some customer accounts were compromised prior to its early-April breach, potentially through social engineering, malware, or other methods (Zack Whittaker/TechCrunch) [6d]
• WhatsApp partners with PayU to roll out prepaid mobile recharges in India; it remains a marginal payments player in India despite launching payments in 2020 (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch) [6d]
• Memo: White House says it has info indicating "foreign entities, principally based in China" are engaged in "industrial scale distillation" of American AI tech (Financial Times) [6d]
• Anthropic's valuation has hit $1T on Forge Global, a leading private marketplace exchange, surpassing OpenAI's valuation on the platform of $880B (Ben Bergman/Business Insider) [6d]
• Orkes, which helps companies scale their AI and agentic systems, raised $60M, including a $40M Series B led by AVP, bringing its total funding to ~$90M (Chris Metinko/Axios) [6d]
• How Cash App founder Bob Lee's 2023 killing fed into a narrative pushed by tech leaders like Elon Musk about SF's decline until an acquaintance was convicted (Shawn Wen/Bloomberg) [6d]
• Spotify celebrates its 20th anniversary with a first-ever list of its 20 most streamed artists, albums, songs, podcasts, and audiobooks (Gil Kaufman/Billboard) [6d]
• Lyft agrees to buy London black cab app Gett, its third acquisition in the past year, as the company expands its presence beyond the US (Natalie Lung/Bloomberg) [6d]
• Petual, which automates internal audit work and generates auditor-ready workpapers, raised $20M across a pre-seed led by First Round and a seed led by a16z (Ryan Lawler/Axios) [6d]
• Beehiiv rolls out new creator tools, including metered paywalls, letting creators host webinars for up to 10,000 people, AI analytics, and more (Lauren Forristal/TechCrunch) [6d]
• Sam Bankman-Fried withdraws his request for a new trial, saying he doubts he would receive a fair hearing; his broader appeal remains pending (Olivier Acuna/CoinDesk) [6d]