The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

A look at the quant fund frenzy in China, as assets under management have more than doubled to ~$384B in less than a year amid rapid AI adoption (Bloomberg) [8d]
Meta could use its compute for its own models, ad scaling, SpaceX-like neocloud deals, and hosting 3rd-party models; it may be close to an Anthropic deal (Jeremie Eliahou Ontiveros/SemiAnalysis) [8d]
Meta getting into the cloud business has been inevitable for a long time, as it seeks to diversify beyond ad revenue and monetize its AI buildout (M.G. Siegler/Spyglass) [8d]
Instagram has been running ads promoting child sexual abuse material in India, with terms like "rape video" and "child video" and linking to Telegram channels (Divya Arya/BBC) [8d]
An interview with Sriram Krishnan, who says "there will not be an FDA for AI" under Trump, blames the AI backlash on the industry's "doomer" messaging, and more (Financial Times) [8d]
Texas AG Ken Paxton opens an investigation into StubHub following complaints of last-minute ticket cancellations for FIFA World Cup matches (Giles Turner/Bloomberg) [8d]
How Jeff Bezos' changing relationship with President Trump has impacted Bezos' companies, including increased federal contract awards during Trump's second term (Wall Street Journal) [8d]
Filing: GoDaddy challenges a New Delhi court ruling requiring domain sellers to stop offering privacy by default, saying it could expose website owners globally (Reuters) [8d]
India's IT secretary said the country is investigating a data breach at Apple supplier Tata, which exposed files that included photos of iPhone 18 Pro models (Reuters) [8d]
Pitch document: Chris Larsen and Palmer Luckey invested an undisclosed amount in APEC, a derivatives exchange founded by the son of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (Declan Harty/Politico) [8d]
Sources: Alibaba has banned employees from using Claude Code and asked them to remove all Claude models from their work computers, citing security concerns (The Information) [8d]
A look back at BitTorrent, launched by Bram Cohen 25 years ago, and how media piracy fueled its growth while its architecture shielded it from legal liability (Janko Roettgers/The Verge) [9d]
Sources: Anthropic moves to close loopholes that let Chinese firms like Ant use its models via workarounds including cloud providers and overseas subsidiaries (Financial Times) [9d]
Blackstone's QTS abandons plans to build its portion of a 2,100-acre data center campus in Virginia, following years of local opposition and legal challenges (Dawn Lim/Bloomberg) [9d]
Letter: chip sector group SEMI, including Micron and Samsung, warns Scott Bessent US policies affecting prices or production capacity would worsen the shortage (Maggie Eastland/Bloomberg) [9d]
Sources: Alexandr Wang said Meta's model currently in training, codenamed Watermelon, matches GPT-5.5 and uses an "order of magnitude more compute than Avocado" (Business Insider) [9d]
Sources: Anthropic's bankers have hired UK law firm Freshfields to advise on its IPO; it also advised on Google's acquisition of Wiz and ServiceNow's Armis deal (The Information) [9d]
Spotify removed 500K+ streams of Malcolm Todd's Earrings after a 70% surge in 24 hours sent it to #1 on Spotify USA and coincided with suspicious Kalshi wagers (Stephanie Stacey/Financial Times) [9d]