The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

Sources: Anthropic is in talks to raise between $30B and $50B in a funding round that would value it at up to $950B (Mike Isaac/New York Times) [63d]
Princeton faculty votes to require proctoring in all in-person exams starting this summer, reversing an 1893 policy amid concerns about AI-fueled cheating (Douglas Belkin/Wall Street Journal) [63d]
Google DeepMind details a Gemini-powered mouse pointer that understands what it is pointing at, allowing users to perform tasks without using text-heavy prompts (Google DeepMind) [63d]
Vancouver-based quantum computing startup Photonic raised an additional $70M after a $130M raise announced in January, giving it a $2B post-money valuation (Josh Scott/BetaKit) [63d]
Foxconn says some of its North American factories suffered a cyberattack in recent days; ransomware group Nitrogen claims it stole 8TB of data (Lily Hay Newman/Wired) [63d]
Source: Anthropic is in advanced talks to acquire New York-based Stainless, which helps developers generate SDKs from APIs, for at least $300M (The Information) [63d]
Sources: Anthropic is in early talks to raise at least $30B at a $900B+ valuation; the round is expected to close as soon as the end of this month (Bloomberg) [63d]
Qualcomm closed down 11.46% on Tuesday as chip stocks pull back from record AI-driven rally; Intel closed down 6.82%, Sandisk dropped 6%, and Micron 3.61% (Samantha Subin/CNBC) [63d]
Samsung and its South Korean labor union fail to reach a pay deal; the union has said workers will strike for 18 days from May 21 if its demands are not met (Reuters) [63d]
Meta schedules its annual Connect event for September 23-24 and says the event will focus on "the latest in VR, wearables, metaverse, and AI" (Ben Lang/Road to VR) [63d]
Meta offers to give rival AI chatbots free access to WhatsApp for a month while it discusses commitments with EU antitrust regulators to address their concerns (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters) [63d]
CME Group and Silicon Data announce a futures market for computing capacity, with contracts based on daily GPU benchmarks for on-demand rental rates (Tobias Burns/CNBC) [63d]
Sources: Apple plans to make the Camera app fully customizable in iOS 27, along with noticeable design changes across Siri, Safari, Weather, and more (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg) [63d]
Musk v. Altman: Altman faced an intense cross-examination from Musk's attorney, who asked "are you completely trustworthy?"; Altman replied "I believe so" (Business Insider) [63d]
The US FCC approves EchoStar's sale of approximately 65MHz of spectrum to SpaceX and 50MHz to AT&T (Christian Martinez/Reuters) [63d]
Google says it is hiring a team of "forward deployed engineers", a source says in the hundreds, to help customers use its business-focused AI products (Erin Woo/The Information) [63d]
Musk v. Altman: Altman testified that in 2017 Musk demanded complete control of a proposed OpenAI for-profit arm, musing that he would pass it to his children (Bloomberg) [63d]
Anthropic names eight unauthorized secondary market sellers of its shares, including Hiive and Forge Global, warning that any share transactions there are void (Yazhou Sun/Bloomberg) [63d]