The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• A deep dive into Meta's Hyperion data center campus in Louisiana, expected to reach 5 GW of compute capacity; source: Meta plans to spend $200B+ on the project (Riley Griffin/Bloomberg) [56d]
• Procurement records: the FBI seeks a vendor that can provide access to automated license plate readers nationwide; Flock and Motorola are among the few options (Joseph Cox/404 Media) [56d]
• A CISA contractor maintained a now-offline GitHub repo that exposed credentials to AWS GovCloud accounts and CISA systems; CISA is investigating the situation (Brian Krebs/Krebs on Security) [56d]
• Internal memo: Meta is reassigning 7,000 workers to four new units focused on building AI tools, two days before it is set to lay off 10% of its workforce (Eli Tan/New York Times) [56d]
• Sources: AI chip designer Tenstorrent has drawn takeover interest from Intel and Qualcomm; Tenstorrent could be valued at more than $5B in a potential deal (Bloomberg) [56d]
• Anthropic last week began letting Mythos users share cybersecurity threats with others who may face similar vulnerabilities, modifying its previous stance (Amrith Ramkumar/Wall Street Journal) [56d]
• Musk v. Altman: Elon Musk says the judge and jury "never actually ruled on the merits of the case, just on a calendar technicality" and he will file an appeal (Elon Musk/@elonmusk) [56d]
• Akamai is seeking to raise $2.6B in a convertible bond offering, and plans to use $350M of the offering to buy back its common stock from buyers of the bonds (David Morris/Bloomberg) [56d]
• Cloudflare tests Mythos against 50+ repositories, highlights its ability to chain bugs into a single exploit, and details a vulnerability discovery harness (Grant Bourzikas/Cloudflare) [56d]
• Anthropic acquires NYC-based Stainless, which generates SDKs from APIs, and plans to wind down its hosted products, after reportedly discussing a $300M+ deal (Kirsten Korosec/TechCrunch) [57d]
• X quietly limits users who didn't pay for verification to "50 original posts and 200 replies per day", down from 2,400 posts per day (Jackson Chen/Engadget) [57d]
• Uber increases its stake in Delivery Hero to 19.5%, up from 7% in April, and says it "has no intent to acquire 30% or more" of Delivery Hero's voting rights (Natalie Lung/Bloomberg) [57d]
• Seagate shares drop 9%+, leading a group-wide sell-off after comments from its CEO raised concerns it won't be able to meet demand fueled by the AI buildout (CJ Haddad/CNBC) [57d]
• Sigma, which sells a cloud-native analytics platform that sits on top of data warehouses, raised an $80M Series E led by Princeville Capital at a $3B valuation (Cristian Dina/The Next Web) [57d]
• Musk v. Altman jury unanimously rejects Elon Musk's claims against Sam Altman (CNBC) [57d]
• Cursor releases Composer 2.5, saying it's better at sustained work on long-running tasks and follows complex instructions more reliably; it's built on Kimi K2.5 (Cursor) [57d]
• NextEra's $67B deal to buy Dominion, the largest utility merger in US history, signals a new era of utility consolidation to accommodate AI-driven power demand (Emily Forgash/Bloomberg) [57d]
• Sony is hiking the starting price of one-month and three-month PlayStation Plus subscriptions in "select regions", blaming "ongoing market conditions" (Jay Peters/The Verge) [57d]
• Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin Depot, North America's largest bitcoin ATM operator, files for bankruptcy, blaming "increasingly stringent compliance obligations" (Omkar Godbole/CoinDesk) [57d]
• Internal chats: in March, xAI offered employees $420 in exchange for completed tax filings as training data for Grok, but the bonuses haven't been paid out (Carmen Arroyo/Bloomberg) [57d]
• Amazon's Alexa+ now produces AI-generated "podcasts" on various topics in the US, featuring chats between two AI "co-hosts", using content from media outlets (Todd Spangler/Variety) [57d]
• Arkham: Iran's largest crypto exchange, Nobitex, processed $2.3B+ since 2023 via Tron and BNB Chain, including $23M+ since the Iran war started in February (Reuters) [57d]
• Iranian media: Iran launches "Hormuz Safe", a Bitcoin-backed insurance service for shipping companies transiting the Strait of Hormuz; ~1,500 ships are trapped (Golnar Motevalli/Bloomberg) [57d]
• The Vatican says Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah will join Pope Leo on May 25 to launch the pope's first encyclical, setting out his views on the AI age (Flavia Rotondi/Bloomberg) [57d]
• Decart, which offers real-time generative video and GPU optimization tech, raised $300M at a ~$4B valuation, up from $3.1B after raising $153M in August 2025 (Robbie Whelan/Wall Street Journal) [57d]
• Strategy acquired 24,869 bitcoin for ~$2.01B at an average price of $80,985 between May 11 and May 17, taking its holding to 843,738 BTC, or 4% of total supply (James Hunt/The Block) [57d]
• Sources: internal competition among Google staff and researchers for TPUs intensified as it prioritizes cloud customers and flagship AI products over research (Julia Love/Bloomberg) [57d]
• Dust, which helps enterprises design and deploy specialized AI agents that work alongside humans, raised a $40M Series B led by Abstract and Sequoia (Chris Metinko/Axios) [57d]
• Steve Bannon and 60+ Trump allies sign a Humans First-led letter urging Trump to mandate government testing and approval of powerful AI models before release (Ashley Gold/Axios) [57d]
• How gambling companies like FanDuel and DraftKings, as well as Meta and a16z's founders, are pouring millions into state-level election campaigns via super PACs (Emily Birnbaum/Bloomberg) [57d]
• Eric Schmidt faced loud boos during his University of Arizona commencement speech while discussing "rational" fears over the impact of AI and automation on jobs (Lauren Edmonds/Business Insider) [57d]
• Baidu reports Q1 revenue down 1.1% YoY to ~$4.7B, above ~$4.5B est., and net profit down 55% YoY to ~$506.6M, above ~$462.5M est., amid a slow AI payoff (Tracy Qu/Wall Street Journal) [57d]
• A college senior at Stanford describes how AI changed classes: cheating using AI "has become omnipresent" with students "fudging just about everything" (Theo Baker/New York Times) [57d]
• How Amazon, which took a measured tone to AI, went from an AI also-ran to a real contender, thanks to $200B in spending, custom AI chips, and savvy deals (Tim Higgins/Wall Street Journal) [57d]
• Polymarket and Kalshi continue to operate in India despite a government advisory on April 25, directed at VPN providers, labeling prediction markets "illegal" (Bloomberg) [57d]
• After EV maker Fisker's collapse, ~4,000 car owners formed a nonprofit to keep their cars working by reverse-engineering software and building open-source tools (Fred Lambert/Electrek) [57d]
• In his weekly Linux kernel post, Linus Torvalds says "AI tools are great" but the flood of duplicate AI bug reports has made the security list "unmanageable" (Simon Sharwood/The Register) [57d]
• A look at a new class of jobs created by AI companies, including AI storytellers or "evangelists", forward deployed engineers, AI chiefs, and AI gig workers (Brent D. Griffiths/Business Insider) [57d]
• Companies running bug bounty programs are tightening background checks and building AI agents to triage a flood of low-quality reports generated by AI (Jamie John/Financial Times) [57d]
• A look at how the AI industry's intense pressure and high rewards are creating "walls of resentment" between Silicon Valley workers and their spouses (Alessandra Ram/Wired) [57d]
• Security researcher Peter G. Neumann, who criticized lax industry attitudes toward computer security and digital privacy, died on May 17 at the age of 93 (John Markoff/New York Times) [57d]
• Microsoft says it's retiring Teams' Together Mode, debuted in 2020, and plans to simplify meeting layouts and focus on video quality, stability, and performance (Terrence O'Brien/The Verge) [57d]
• Pwn2Own Berlin 2026: participants earned a total of ~$1.3M for 47 vulnerabilities, with successful exploits of AI products like Codex, Cursor, and LM Studio (Eduard Kovacs/SecurityWeek) [57d]
• Sources: Anthropic agrees to brief the Financial Stability Board on global financial system vulnerabilities found by Mythos, following a request by FSB's Chair (Financial Times) [57d]
• Samsung's shares jumped as much as 6.7% after the company resumed talks with its union and a court partially granted an injunction against illegal union actions (Yoolim Lee/Bloomberg) [57d]
• Chinese chipmaker CXMT reports Q1 revenue up 719% YoY to ~$7.5B, net profit up 1,688% to $3.6B, and says Omdia ranks it No. 4 in DRAM with a 7.67% global share (Cheng Ting-Fang/Nikkei Asia) [57d]
• Sources: US authorities in recent months have issued multiple information requests to Kalshi and Polymarket, many tied to wagers on events in Iran and Venezuela (Wall Street Journal) [57d]
• Quebec-based telecom software startup Gaiia raised a CA$54.8M Series B led by JMI Equity, bringing its total funding to ~CA$90M from backers including YC (Madison McLauchlan/BetaKit) [57d]
• A look at Apple's ongoing strategy to repurpose "binned" chips for cheaper devices; sources: Apple placed new A18 Pro orders for MacBook Neo amid its popularity (Wall Street Journal) [57d]
• New York City-based GovWell, which uses AI to streamline government processes like permitting and licensing, raised a $25M Series A led by Insight Partners (Chris Metinko/Axios) [57d]
• AI sales automation startup Monaco raised a $50M Series B led by Benchmark, bringing its total funding to $85M after raising a $25M Series A in February 2026 (Ben Bergman/Business Insider) [57d]