The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• Source: UK robotics startup Humanoid raised $150M in the first tranche of a Series A at a $1.2B pre-money valuation and seeks another $80M-$100M by September (Rocket Drew/The Information) [56d]
• Source: PayPal's board sees Stripe and PE firm Advent International's $53B takeover bid as undervaluing the company and facing regulatory and financing hurdles (Reuters) [56d]
• A New York State school district is piloting a humanoid robot teacher by the company Realbotix to help students with summer school classes (Chase DiBenedetto/Mashable) [56d]
• US Homeland Security says it seized 30k+ SIM cards in June and July in a nationwide operation it claims dismantled infrastructure used in telephone fraud (Lorelei Smillie/Bloomberg) [56d]
• Netflix says roughly 300 titles used generative AI this year, mostly in post-production, "to deliver higher quality output more quickly and at a lower cost" (Emma Roth/The Verge) [57d]
• An NYT reporter finds AI-generated, unauthorized biographies of herself and other journalists on Amazon, where AI-made books with elusive "authors" proliferate (Kashmir Hill/New York Times) [57d]
• Netflix reports Q2 revenue up 13% YoY to $12.56B, vs. $12.59B est., and says it will give fewer engagement updates starting in 2027; NFLX drops 7%+ after hours (Lillian Rizzo/CNBC) [57d]
• Kimi-K3 is now #1 on the Frontend Code Arena benchmark, surpassing Claude Fable 5; the model scored 88.3 on Terminal Bench 2.1, only below GPT-5.6 Sol's 88.8 (Michael Nuñez/VentureBeat) [57d]
• DoorDash launches a limited beta of DoorDash CLI, which lets users place orders via an AI agent, available by waitlist to macOS developers in the US and Canada (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch) [57d]
• Google updates its AI video editor Vids with Gemini Omni and a feature that lets users create custom digital avatars using a selfie and voice recording (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch) [57d]
• Moonshot AI releases Kimi K3, a 2.8T-parameter AI model that it says rivals Opus 4.8 and GPT 5.5, and plans to release model weights by July 27 (Kimi) [57d]
• After reports of GPT-5.6 deleting files, OpenAI says the issue most often occurs in full-access mode without sandboxing and it is working to mitigate the risk (Tibo/@thsottiaux) [57d]
• Crypto.com raised $400M from Citadel Securities in its first institutional funding round, valuing the Singapore-based crypto exchange at $20B (CoinDesk) [57d]
• Sources: Google is months behind schedule on delivering Gemini 3.5 Pro because the company has been trying to improve its capabilities, particularly in coding (Bloomberg) [57d]
• Beehiiv launches Community, which lets subscribers chat with each other, adds programmatic ads and an AI tool that helps creators manage their audiences (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch) [57d]
• Meta's Oversight Board says top AI models may be restricting free expression in its first evaluation of LLMs, as it seeks to expand its influence beyond Meta (Karissa Bell/Engadget) [57d]
• Google says users in the US can now link to and interact with some apps in AI Mode, including Instacart, Canva, and YouTube Music (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch) [57d]
• Roblox unveils Build, which lets users create basic games through text prompts directly within its mobile app, powered by Roblox's models and open-source models (Jay Peters/The Verge) [57d]
• Fora, which connects travel agents with travelers and offers agents AI tools, raised a $60M Series D at a $1B valuation led by Forerunner and Tactile Ventures (Dominic-Madori Davis/TechCrunch) [57d]
• Google renames NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook and rolls out an update giving every notebook a secure cloud computer, letting it write and execute code natively (Josh Woodward/Google) [57d]
• San Diego-based Self Inspection, which uses AI to assess body damage on a car with as little tech as a smartphone camera, raised $10M led by Sheryl Sandberg (Sean O'Kane/TechCrunch) [57d]
• Filing: a Chinese company says a fund in which its unit invested paid ~$420M for an indirect 0.8265% stake in DeepSeek, implying DeepSeek is valued at ~$52B (Eduardo Baptista/Reuters) [57d]
• Visa launches the Visa Stablecoin Platform, an internal system for its network of about 15,000 financial institutions and 200M+ merchants to use stablecoins (Camila Grigera Naón/Fortune) [57d]
• OnePlus confirms it will no longer operate in North America or Europe but will continue in China, while Realme, another Oppo sub-brand, will exit China (CNET) [57d]
• China, Russia, Brazil, and 26 other countries sign an agreement to establish the World AI Cooperation Organization in Shanghai (Reuters) [57d]
• A hacker claims to have accessed Suno user info and source code, showing how it scraped music; Suno says no sensitive info was compromised in a November hack (Jason Koebler/404 Media) [57d]
• Runta, which provides isolated sandboxes and guardrails for AI agents to prevent operational risks, raised a $20M seed led by a16z at a $100M+ valuation (Stephanie Palazzolo/The Information) [57d]
• Sources: Moonshot plans to launch Kimi K3, China's largest model to date with 2T-3T parameters, in the coming days; it's expected to outperform Claude Opus 4.8 (Financial Times) [57d]
• Sources: Apple is prepping an iPad overhaul, including an iPad mini with an OLED screen by October and refreshed versions of entry-level iPad and Airs in 2027 (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg) [57d]
• Sable, which is building an AI agent named Aiden that lives on a company's website to run live product demos and more, raised $45M from Sequoia and 8VC (Lily Mae Lazarus/Fortune) [57d]
• Grubhub parent Wonder raised a $650M+ Series D at a $9B valuation, bringing its total raised to $3B+ since its founding in 2018, and plans to go public in 2027 (Lily Mae Lazarus/Fortune) [57d]
• 1Password launches a new Claude integration for Mac that lets Anthropic's AI agent sign in to websites without seeing the user's password or 2FA code (Zac Hall/9to5Mac) [57d]
• Fireworks, which helps developers access AI chips and open-source models, raised $1.5B at a $17.5B valuation and says it has exceeded $1B in annualized revenue (Jordan Novet/CNBC) [57d]
• TMTG plans to launch Truth API on August 1 to provide real-time data from top Truth Social accounts to financial news organizations and trading firms (Sara Fischer/Axios) [57d]
• Bunkerhill Health, which uses AI agents for hospital tasks like managing wait times, raised a $25M Series B led by Khosla, bringing its total funding to $55M (Allie Garfinkle/Fortune) [57d]
• Sources detail how xAI has been slowed down by internal chaos as Musk pushed for Grok to match Claude, amid signs it is turning a corner under Michael Nicolls (Carmen Arroyo/Bloomberg) [57d]
• London-based Applied Computing, which is developing AI models for energy operations, raised $20M led by KBR, with participation from Databricks Ventures (Tamara Djurickovic/Tech.eu) [57d]
• Munich-based Microagi, which collects factory and household data to train humanoid robots, raised $55M led by Hummingbird in Germany's largest ever seed round (Éanna Kelly/Sifted) [57d]
• Ocado stock drops 14%, hitting a 13-year low, after it failed to show tangible progress in talks to secure new US partners for its warehouse automation tech (Sarah Young/Reuters) [57d]
• The EU issues two decisions under the DMA, requiring Google to provide rival AI assistants and search engines comparable access to Android and some Search data (Robert Hart/The Verge) [57d]
• Two Scattered Spider members who pleaded guilty in the UK to an August 2024 cyberattack on Transport for London are jailed for five and a half years (Joe Tidy/BBC) [57d]
• Nvidia unveils Cosmos 3 Edge, a world model designed for robots and vision AI agents to perceive and navigate physical environments in real time (Jenny Lee/CNBC) [57d]
• Beacon Security, which offers an agentic security platform, raised a $13M seed and says it has "tens" of large enterprise customers including Cerebras (Chris Metinko/Axios) [57d]
• Meta will now notify parents if teens discuss suicide or self-harm with Meta AI and is working on alerts to emergency services for users at risk of self-harm (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch) [57d]
• Vital Signals launches the $399 Signal Ring, which provides systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings without the need for the traditional arm cuff (Chris Welch/Bloomberg) [57d]
• Filings: Dario Amodei gave $1M in May to Public First, a super PAC advocating for AI safety regulations, seemingly his first seven-figure political donation (Brendan Bordelon/Politico) [57d]
• Alpaca, which offers brokerage and financial infrastructure, raised $135M in equity and $300M in debt, following a $150M Series D in January (Bernard Goyder/Bloomberg) [57d]
• Ofcom report: VPN users in the UK jumped to 2.2M, up from 1.2M before the introduction of laws enforcing age limits on pornography sites in July 2025 (Daniel Thomas/Financial Times) [57d]
• Demis Hassabis, Sam Altman, and Dario Amodei have published detailed memos in recent weeks, basically agreeing on the need for a US-led AI regulatory framework (Axios) [57d]
• Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs launch a bioresilience program to leverage AI models for pathogen surveillance, vaccine design, and outbreak response (Madison Mills/Axios) [57d]
• Ofcom launches a probe into TikTok over Online Safety Act compliance, citing doubts about the effectiveness of using age inference to determine users' ages (Mizy Clifton/Politico) [57d]
• A US official says TSMC plans to spend an additional $100B to build four new US chip fabs, bringing total pledge to $265B as part of a broader US-Taiwan deal (Bloomberg) [57d]
• TSMC raises its 2026 capex projections from $52B-$56B to $60B-$64B, and ups revenue growth projection from 30%+ to 40%+ YoY in USD terms, citing "AI megatrend" (Debby Wu/Bloomberg) [57d]
• Uber agrees to acquire Delivery Hero in a deal that values the German food delivery company at ~$14.8B, offering €41.50 per share and buying out Prosus' stake (Edwin Chan/Bloomberg) [57d]
• A US federal judge rules the State Department engaged in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination by denying visas to researchers studying misinfo and disinfo (Mike Masnick/Techdirt) [57d]
• xAI sues a South Carolina man for allegedly using Grok to generate CSAM, in one of the first cases of its kind brought by an AI company against one of its users (Blake Brittain/Reuters) [57d]
• TSMC reports Q2 revenue up 36% YoY to ~$39.45B, net income up 77.4% YoY to ~$21.9B, both above est., and says chips 7nm or smaller were 77% of its wafer revenue (Jenny Lee/CNBC) [57d]
• Data center company Csquare raises $1.05B in its US IPO, selling 50M shares at $21 each, below its marketed range of $23 to $27, valuing the company at ~$3.25B (Reuters) [57d]
• Hyundai says it would make Boston Dynamics a wholly owned subsidiary by acquiring SoftBank's ~10% stake; Hyundai bought an 80% stake in Boston Dynamics in 2021 (Reuters) [57d]
• Filing: AST SpaceMobile delays the launch of its satellite-to-phone service to 2027 after the Blue Origin mishap and plans to raise $1B in convertible notes (Michael Kan/PCMag) [57d]
• AI execs are bolstering personal security amid rising AI opposition; Liferaft: digital threats against execs and data centers grew 7x from late February to May (Wall Street Journal) [57d]
• Filing: Elon Musk quietly bought Jacksonville, FL-based APR Energy, which operates mobile gas and diesel turbines similar to those used in Colossus 2, for ~$1B (Fred Lambert/Electrek) [57d]
• SpaceXAI open-sources Grok Build under an Apache 2.0 license after the tool had uploaded user repositories to a Google Cloud bucket, causing a severe backlash (Simon Willison/Simon Willison's Weblog) [57d]