The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• Nothing won't launch a new phone this year in its budget-focused CMF Phone series due to RAM prices (Ben Schoon/9to5Google) [23d]
• DOJ says two brothers pleaded guilty to robbing a Minnesota family of $8M+ in cryptocurrency after holding them at gunpoint for over eight hours in 2025 (Naga Avan-Nomayo/The Block) [23d]
• Sources: Abu Dhabi's MGX is exploring buying Singapore-based data center operator DayOne; last month, sources said DayOne planned a US IPO at a $20B valuation (Reuters) [23d]
• Docs: OpenAI burned through $3.7B in Q1, on revenue of $5.7B, and ended the quarter with $73B+ in cash and marketable securities vs. $40B at the end of December (Erin Woo/The Information) [23d]
• The departure of John Jumper, a key member of Google's AI coding development team, further strains Google's efforts to compete with Anthropic and OpenAI (Bloomberg) [23d]
• South Korean media: Hyundai plans to buy SoftBank's remaining 9.65% stake in Boston Dynamics for $325M to make the US robotics company a wholly owned subsidiary (Reuters) [23d]
• Trump says he saw Anthropic last week as a national security threat, but signals relations have since improved because Dario Amodei was "nice" and "smart" at G7 (Maria Curi/Axios) [23d]
• Oura Ring 5 review: impressive thinness, live activity tracking, and conversational AI, but not very durable, LEDs are distracting, and the app is confusing (Samantha Kelly/Bloomberg) [23d]
• John Jumper, who won the Nobel Prize "for protein structure prediction", says he is leaving Google DeepMind after nearly nine years to join Anthropic (John Jumper/@johnjumpersci) [23d]
• ASML says claims that one of its EUV lithography systems has ended up in China are inaccurate, after a report on Howard Lutnick's questions to ASML's leadership (Anton Shilov/Tom's Hardware) [23d]
• Norway imposes a near ban on gen AI use by elementary school children and restricts its use in older kids' education, to prevent a negative impact on learning (Terje Solsvik/Reuters) [23d]
• Amazon MGM Studios drops Luca Guadagnino's mostly finished movie on Sam Altman; Amazon struck a major deal with OpenAI in February, including a $50B investment (Variety) [23d]
• John Edwards, UK Information Commissioner and chair of the ICO, the country's data and AI regulator, resigned following a workplace investigation (Liv McMahon/BBC) [23d]
• Sources: England and Wales' attorney general tells his office to stop posting on X, a first for the UK government, amid worries about X inciting violence (Peter Walker/The Guardian) [23d]
• The US FERC approves new orders to fast-track data center power requests, aiming to handle them in 90 days, while bringing new requirements for AI hyperscalers (Bloomberg) [23d]
• Siemens expects Xcelerator revenue to more than double in 2026, aiming to make the platform an industrial app store integrating software and hardware offerings (Marilen Martin/Bloomberg) [23d]
• Turkey approves Uber's $335M deal to buy Getir's delivery business, tied to a $500M investment pledge in Turkey; Uber is also paying $100M for a 15% Getir stake (Ana-Maria Stanciuc/The Next Web) [23d]
• Filing: Jio Platforms, India's largest wireless operator with 526M+ subscribers, files for an IPO; the deal is expected to be one of India's biggest IPOs ever (Priyanka Salve/CNBC) [23d]
• Sources: Chinese autonomous driving company Momenta has reached a ~$9B valuation as it gears up to raise ~$1B in an upcoming Hong Kong IPO (Jiahui Huang/Wall Street Journal) [23d]
• How hacker group TeamPCP exploited the open source trust model and distribution method to compromise and inject malware into over 1,000 software packages (Matt Kapko/CyberScoop) [23d]
• Sources detail how Google is using Nvidia's playbook to build an AI chip business, including providing $3.2B to fund a NY data center renting TPUs to Anthropic (Wall Street Journal) [23d]
• Barret Zoph leaves OpenAI again five months after rejoining in January; Zoph initially left OpenAI in 2024 to serve as Thinking Machines Lab co-founder and CTO (Hayden Field/The Verge) [23d]
• Sources: about 200 companies accessing Mythos Preview through Project Glasswing have preserved their access despite a recent US government shutdown order (Bloomberg) [23d]
• The CFTC permanently bans Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky from trading in markets it oversees as part of a settlement resolving its 2023 lawsuit against him (Jesse Coghlan/Cointelegraph) [23d]
• Sources: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick questioned ASML leaders on concerns China acquired one of its EUV machines, violating US-led export restrictions (Bloomberg) [23d]
• Source: Elastic has agreed to acquire the AI site reliability engineering startup Deductive AI for up to $85M; CRV led Deductive AI's $7.5M seed round in 2025 (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch) [23d]
• Appfigures: daily downloads of major VPN apps in India rose 49% on June 16 after India announced its Telegram ban; Proton and Turbo recorded largest increases (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch) [23d]
• Sources: SpaceX plans to raise $20B in a bond sale as soon as next week; the funds would be used to pay back a $20B bridge loan taken out after the xAI merger (Financial Times) [24d]
• Doc: SpaceX says the EU's plan to reserve satellite spectrum for European operators risks disrupting connectivity, including for emergency services in Ukraine (Financial Times) [24d]
• A US circuit court overturned an injunction against Ohio, allowing the state to implement a law forcing platforms to seek parental consent if a user is under-16 (Nate Raymond/Reuters) [24d]
• A profile of Meta President Dina Powell McCormick, who has become one of Silicon Valley's top power brokers as she helps oversee Meta's AI infrastructure push (Financial Times) [24d]