The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• Illinois Legislature passes SB 315, a bill requiring annual independent third-party safety audits of leading AI companies; the bill heads to the governor's desk (Jared Perlo/NBC News) [47d]
• The US DOD announces a $9.7B five-year deal with Dell to provide Microsoft 365, advanced cloud subscriptions, and on-premises licensing to the US military (Garrett Downs/CNBC) [47d]
• US prosecutors charge Google engineer Michele Spagnuolo with using inside information to make $1.2M on Polymarket bets about Google's Year in Search results (ABC News) [47d]
• Sources: Uber has increased its stake in Delivery Hero to ~37% by acquiring Aspex Management's 14.6% share at a €12B valuation, after a takeover offer last week (Financial Times) [47d]
• HP reports Q2 revenue up 9% YoY to $14.4B, vs. $14B est., Personal Systems revenue up 13% to $10.2B, and forecasts Q3 adjusted EPS above estimates (Dina Bass/Bloomberg) [47d]
• Salesforce reports Q1 revenue up 13% YoY to $11.13B, vs. $11.05B est., Agentforce annual recurring revenue up 205% to $1.2B, and forecasts Q2 revenue below est. (Jordan Novet/CNBC) [47d]
• Snowflake reports Q1 revenue up 33% YoY to $1.39B, vs. $1.32B est., and commits to spending $6B on AWS over five years; SNOW jumps 29%+ after hours (CNBC) [47d]
• The UK's GCHQ head says the UK and allies have a "narrowing window" to counter cyber threats from China and Russia, as Russia intensifies "daily" hybrid warfare (Chloe Taylor/CNBC) [47d]
• Amazon MGM Studios announces the GenAI Creators' Fund, greenlights three AI animated series for Prime Video, and launches an AI production platform with AWS (Todd Spangler/Variety) [47d]
• Valve raises Steam Deck OLED prices due to "rising memory and storage costs"; the 512GB model is now $789, up from $549, and the 1TB model is $949, up from $649 (Jay Peters/The Verge) [47d]
• Meta rolls out Plus plans for Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp globally, will test $7.99/mo. and $19.99/mo. Meta AI plans, a $49.99/mo. creator plan, and more (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch) [47d]
• OpenAI announces partnerships to combat election misinformation, offering cybersecurity products to state officials and backing legislation to curb deepfakes (Maria Curi/Axios) [47d]
• Starlette, an open-source Python framework underpinning FastAPI, has a vulnerability, called BadHost, that can allow hackers to bypass authorization (Dan Goodin/Ars Technica) [47d]
• OpenAI Foundation says it is committing an initial $250M for grants, partnerships, and direct work aimed at helping workers and economies navigate AI disruption (Reuters) [47d]
• Tensormesh, whose inference platform uses KV caching to reduce costs, raised a $20M seed extension, bringing its total funding to $24.5M (Chris Metinko/Axios) [47d]
• NYC-based Pace, whose AI agents automate back-office operations for insurance companies, raised a $46M series B led by Thrive and Sequoia at a $375M valuation (Anna Tong/Forbes) [47d]
• AI coding startup Cognition AI raised more than $1B at a $26B valuation, and says its revenue run rate has increased to $492M from $37M in May 2025 (Rebecca Torrence/Bloomberg) [47d]
• Opendoor Co-Founder Eric Wu's NavigateAI, which is building an expert AI coach for construction workers, raised a $25M seed led by Elad Gil at a $225M valuation (Anna Tong/Forbes) [47d]
• ElevenLabs launches Music v2, which can switch genres mid-track and handle complex vocal compositions, built on licensed data and cleared for commercial use (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch) [48d]
• Trajectory, founded by ex-DeepMind, Apple, and OpenAI staff to train "continual learning" models on user interactions, raised a $15M seed at a $115M valuation (Maxwell Zeff/Wired) [48d]
• Roku launches its first major homescreen overhaul in over a decade, including a large "marquee" ad spot to tout apps or shows, in a bid to drive more engagement (Alex Weprin/The Hollywood Reporter) [48d]
• Amazon says it is making the "architecture, starter code, and learnings" from Alexa for Shopping available to third-party retailers, starting with Kate Spade (Annie Palmer/CNBC) [48d]
• The EU proposes new satellite access rules to let non-European companies like SpaceX bid for the airwaves, while preserving 33%+ of licenses for local companies (Paula Doenecke/Bloomberg) [48d]
• DC-based Airis Labs, which uses AI to convert visual data to law enforcement intelligence, emerges from stealth with a $31M Series B, for $60M in total funding (Chris Metinko/Axios) [48d]
• Polymarket is making it harder to use VPNs to access its service, blocking some IPs and suspicious accounts, and is asking some customers to identify themselves (Michael Roddan/The Information) [48d]
• YouTube makes its AI content labels more prominent on desktop and mobile, and will apply them automatically if it detects "significant photorealistic AI use" (Todd Spangler/Variety) [48d]
• Robinhood launches a feature to let users link AI agents, such as Claude or Cursor, to separate, dedicated investment accounts to trade stocks autonomously (Hannah Erin Lang/Wall Street Journal) [48d]
• Biohub, the Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan-funded institute, releases a protein-structure prediction model and more, calling it "a world model" of proteins (Ina Fried/Axios) [48d]