The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

Google unveils Continue On, a new feature in Android 17 that will let users move tasks between Android devices, similar to Apple's Handoff feature (Ben Schoon/9to5Google) [55d]
Google updates Project Genie, its interactive world builder, with Street View integration, and expands access to the tool to AI Ultra subscribers globally (Jessica Conditt/Engadget) [55d]
Trump signs an EO calling on regulators and the Fed to review policies that could support fintech growth, including expanding fintech access to payment accounts (Reuters) [55d]
On-demand manufacturing startup SendCutSend raised $110M co-led by Sequoia, Paradigm, and Stripe co-founders Patrick and John Collison, valuing it at $1B (Kate Clark/Wall Street Journal) [55d]
Google announces updates to Flow and Flow Music: Gemini Omni support, mobile apps, the ability to create custom tools like a video resizer or shaders, and more (Macy Meyer/CNET) [55d]
Discord says voice and video calls outside of stage channels are now end-to-end encrypted by default, after launching its encryption protocol in September 2024 (Jess Kinghorn/PC Gamer) [55d]
Google debuts Gemini for Science, a set of experimental tools that help researchers generate hypotheses, conduct testing, and understand scientific literature (Jackson Chen/Engadget) [55d]
Sources detail growing concerns inside SoftBank over Masayoshi Son's $60B+ bet on OpenAI, which some fear concentrates too much capital into a single company (Bloomberg) [55d]
Sources: Zyphra, which trains and runs inference for its open-weight models on AMD hardware, is raising a $500M Series B at a valuation of at least $5B (Anna Tong/Forbes) [55d]
Threat actors published 600+ malicious versions to npm as part of the Shai-Hulud supply chain campaign; most of the affected packages are in the @antv ecosystem (Bill Toulas/BleepingComputer) [55d]
Sources: SpaceX expects to proceed with its acquisition of Cursor 30 days after its public trading debut, which is expected to occur on June 12 (Bloomberg) [55d]
Roblox authorizes its first share buyback program, aiming to repurchase up to $3B of its stock, including $1B over the next year; RBLX is down ~45% YTD (Cecilia D'Anastasio/Bloomberg) [55d]
Analog Devices agrees to buy Empower Semiconductor, which makes chips used to regulate voltage, for $1.5B in cash (Katherine Hamilton/Wall Street Journal) [55d]
Google adds a conversational search feature to YouTube and rolls out the new Gemini Omni model in YouTube Shorts Remix and the Create app (Sanuj Bhatia/Android Central) [55d]
OpenAI introduces Guaranteed Capacity, a new offering that lets customers guarantee access to OpenAI's compute through one- to three-year commitments (OpenAI) [55d]
Meta begins laying off 8,000 employees, or 10% of staff, in a push to become an AI-first company; another 7,000 workers will be reassigned to AI initiatives (New York Times) [55d]
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has signed the nation's first law banning prediction market sites from operating in the state; the CFTC has sued Minnesota in response (Bobby Allyn/NPR) [55d]
Sources: Google DeepMind has reached a ~$100M deal to hire 20+ researchers from Contextual AI, including CEO Douwe Kiela, and license its technology (Bloomberg) [55d]
Google unveils Pics, an AI image editor in Workspace that lets users edit specific elements and modify text, rolling out this summer to AI Pro and Ultra users (Mat Smith/Engadget) [55d]
Ocean, which uses AI agents to detect email attacks, raised a $20M Series A led by Lightspeed, following an $8M seed in 2024 (Meir Orbach/CTech) [55d]
Sundar Pichai announced at Google I/O that Gemini 3.5 Pro will launch next month; attendees groaned at the model coming out later than they expected (Charles Rollet/Business Insider) [55d]
Hands-on with Google and Samsung's Android XR smart glasses from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, and with XReal's Project Aura, all set to arrive this fall (Wired) [56d]
Google unveils Universal Cart, a shopping assistant that works "across merchants", built on the Universal Commerce Protocol, rolling out in the US today (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch) [56d]
At a hearing, two of three judges of a federal appeals court appeared skeptical of Anthropic's bid to block the DOD from designating it a supply-chain risk (Jen Judson/Bloomberg) [56d]
Demis Hassabis says companies looking to replace developers with AI may be due to a "lack of imagination and a lack of understanding" of the future (Will Knight/Wired) [56d]
Google's web-based AI Studio now lets users build native Android apps; Google says the apps are for personal use only for now and publishing is on the roadmap (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch) [56d]
Google introduces Antigravity 2.0, featuring an updated desktop app that lets users orchestrate multiple agents, alongside an Antigravity CLI tool and SDK (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch) [56d]
Google says Gemini's MAUs grew to 900M+ across 230 countries, up from 400M at I/O 2025, and launches Neural Expressive, a new design language for Gemini (Josh Woodward/The Keyword) [56d]
Google teases Android Halo, which makes an AI agent's status visible via "subtle communication" at the top of the phone screen, coming later this year (Damien Wilde/9to5Google) [56d]
OpenAI adds support for Google's SynthID watermarks in AI images, and previews a public portal to let users verify if an image was generated by OpenAI's tools (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge) [56d]
Google says it is expanding access to CodeMender, an "AI agent for code security" it debuted in October, by inviting select groups of experts to test the API (Hayden Field/The Verge) [56d]
Google launches the Gemini Omni multimodal model, saying it can "create anything from any input", starting with video generation, for Google AI subscribers (Carl Franzen/VentureBeat) [56d]
Google announces Gemini Spark, a "24/7 personal AI agent" that is powered by Gemini 3.5 and supports integrations with Google Workspace apps, including Gmail (Mariella Moon/Engadget) [56d]
Google restructures its AI plans, introducing a $100/month AI Ultra plan for developers and cutting the top-tier Ultra subscription from $250 to $200/month (Lance Whitney/ZDNET) [56d]
Google overhauls its search box, letting users ask longer queries, upload photos and videos, and use Gemini 3.5 Flash-powered agents to automate searches (New York Times) [56d]
Google rolls out Gemini 3.5 Flash, its "strongest agentic and coding model yet", for tackling long-horizon agentic tasks, in the Gemini app and Search's AI Mode (The Keyword) [56d]
Sundar Pichai says Google is now processing 3.2 quadrillion tokens per month, up from 480T tokens per month a year ago and 9.7T tokens per month two years ago (Ina Fried/Axios) [56d]
Google unveils conversational features for Gmail, Docs, and Keep, letting users ask natural language questions, rolling out to AI Pro and Ultra subs this summer (Daniel Cooper/Engadget) [56d]
Spotify launches a "Verified by Spotify" badge for podcasts to help "authenticate creator identity", after releasing it for music in April (Lawrence Bonk/Engadget) [56d]
A livestream of the Google I/O 2026 keynote (Google on YouTube) [56d]
A live blog of the Google I/O 2026 keynote, where the company is set to announce the "latest AI breakthroughs and updates" in Gemini, Android, and more (Abner Li/9to5Google) [56d]
Roku launches a creator hub with licensed creator content and programming from partners like Peacock and HBO Max, alongside new FAST channels from top creators (Alex Weprin/The Hollywood Reporter) [56d]
Andrej Karpathy joins Anthropic to help launch a team focused on using Claude to accelerate pre-training research; he helped found OpenAI and worked at Tesla (Madison Mills/Axios) [56d]
Sources: Apple Chief Hardware Officer Johny Srouji is reorganizing hardware development to integrate silicon teams with product creation and speed up their work (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg) [56d]
Polymarket partners with Nasdaq to launch markets tied to private company milestones, including IPO timing, valuations, earnings, and secondary market activity (Kyle Baird/The Block) [56d]
NYSE owner Intercontinental Exchange partners with financial infrastructure company Ornn to launch USD-denominated futures contracts for computing power (Katherine Doherty/Bloomberg) [56d]
Relay, which builds banking and money management software for small businesses, raised $50M; it previously raised ~$51.5M, including a $32.2M Series B in 2024 (Ryan Lawler/Axios) [56d]
Yahoo Finance launches AlphaSpace, a customizable research dashboard with an AI assistant, for subscribers of its $479.40/year or $39.95/month Gold plan (Nick Lichtenberg/Fortune) [56d]
Andrej Karpathy says he has joined Anthropic as the "next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative" (Andrej Karpathy/@karpathy) [56d]
Plex says the price for the Lifetime tier of its Plex Pass plan will increase from $249.99 to $749.99 in July (Chance Miller/9to5Mac) [56d]
Radar, which helps retailers like American Eagle manage inventory and cut back on theft and lost merchandise, raised a $170M Series B at a $1B+ valuation (Gabrielle Fonrouge/CNBC) [56d]
Viktor, which is developing an AI agent that operates like a virtual coworker embedded inside Slack or Microsoft Teams, raised a $75M Series A led by Accel (Beatrice Nolan/Fortune) [56d]
Microsoft says it plans to bring Snapdragon X2 chips to the new Surface Pro and Laptop later in 2026; sources say the delay is due to component availability (Zac Bowden/Windows Central) [56d]
Microsoft unveils three Intel-based business laptops: a $1,950+ Surface Pro in 13", a $1,950+ Surface Laptop in 13.8" and 15", and $1,300+ Surface Laptop in 13" (Microsoft Devices Blog) [56d]
Unframe, which customizes AI apps for enterprises via pre-built modular components, raised a $50M Series B led by Highland Europe, for $100M in total funding (Chris Metinko/Axios) [56d]
Epic says Fortnite has returned to Apple's App Store globally, after its US re-launch in 2025, signaling confidence in a favorable outcome in an ongoing lawsuit (Zaheer Kachwala/Reuters) [56d]
Apple unveils Apple Intelligence-powered accessibility features, subtitles generated on device, a Vision Pro feature for controlling power wheelchairs, and more (John Voorhees/MacStories) [56d]
CertiK: physical attacks on crypto holders rose 75% YoY to 72 confirmed cases and $41M in known losses in 2025; Coinbase spent ~$7.6M to protect Brian Armstrong (Bloomberg) [56d]
OpenAI's win against Elon Musk leaves it free to continue its IPO plans, but it still faces many issues, like rising competition and dozens of other lawsuits (New York Times) [56d]
Modular data center maker Armada raised a $230M Series B co-led by Overmatch, 8090 Industries, and BlackRock at a $2B valuation, and plans a new Arizona factory (Krysta Escobar/CNBC) [56d]
Chinese flash memory chipmaker YMTC says it officially initiated a pre-listing tutoring process with local brokers, marking the first formal step toward an IPO (Bloomberg) [56d]
KPMG partners with Anthropic to embed Claude into its tax and advisory platforms; KPMG's tax and legal services unit saw revenue grow ~8% YoY to $9.3B in 2025 (Mark Maurer/Wall Street Journal) [56d]
Sources: Chinese AI startup Moonshot told investors it would revamp its corporate structure to pave the way for a Hong Kong IPO and comply with Beijing's rules (Bloomberg) [56d]
Standard Chartered plans to cut nearly 8,000 back-office positions by 2030, a 15%+ reduction in support functions in hubs like Bengaluru, amid growing AI usage (Arjun Neil Alim/Financial Times) [56d]
Elon Musk's OpenAI loss is set to speed up the AI juggernaut amid rising opposition; the case offered a rare glimpse into tech's workings, ending with a whimper (New York Times) [56d]
Monzo reports FY 2026 revenue up 39% YoY to £1.7B, pre-tax profit up 44% to £87.3M, users up 3M to 15M+, and deposits up 55% to £25.7B, as it expands lending (Aisha S Gani/Bloomberg) [56d]
Milan-based legal AI company Lexroom raised a €42.9M Series B led by Left Lane, after raising a €16M Series A in September 2025, taking total funding to €62.7M (Rahul Raj/EU-Startups) [56d]
Mistral acquires Vienna-based Emmi AI for an undisclosed sum to boost its industrial offerings in Europe; Emmi raised €15M in Austria's largest round in 2025 (Reuters) [56d]
NYC Health + Hospitals says hackers accessed its network from Nov. 2025 to Feb. 2026, exposing personal data, medical records, and fingerprints of 1.8M+ people (Zack Whittaker/TechCrunch) [56d]
Sources: Demis Hassabis was an angel investor in Anthropic; PitchBook and Dealroom: former DeepMind researchers founded 12+ companies since 2021, raising $14B+ (Financial Times) [56d]
Sources: Intel asks its leading PC partners, including those in the US, China, and Taiwan, to use more 18A CPUs, citing better supply than chips on older nodes (Nikkei Asia) [56d]
An overview of macro tech trends: capex explosion, unprecedented surge in chip demand, supply chain bottlenecks, model commoditization, AI automation, and more (Benedict Evans) [56d]
Sources: Analog Devices, one of the largest analog chip makers, is in talks to buy Empower, which makes chips used to regulate voltage, for $1.5B in cash (Bloomberg) [56d]
Vitalik Buterin says AI-assisted "formal verification" could help secure blockchain networks, smart contracts, and cryptographic systems against software flaws (Jason Nelson/Decrypt) [56d]
Sources: Google and Blackstone plan to create an AI cloud company to monetize Google's TPUs to external parties; Blackstone plans to put $5B in the venture (Wall Street Journal) [56d]