The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

Texas halts approval of data center grid connections until audits are performed; projects representing 474+ GW are in the queue, over 5x the grid's peak demand (The Texas Tribune) [38d]
Amazon becomes the fifth company to reach a $3T market cap, joining Nvidia, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Apple; its stock closed up 4.58% on Monday (Jeran Wittenstein/Bloomberg) [38d]
Snap reports Q2 revenue up 19% YoY to $1.6B, vs. $1.54B est., DAUs up 5% to 493M, vs. 487M est., forecasts Q3 revenue above est.; SNAP jumps 10%+ after hours (Jonathan Vanian/CNBC) [38d]
Palantir reports Q2 revenue up 93% YoY to $1.94B, vs. $1.8B est., US commercial revenue up 149%, and raises FY 2026 revenue guidance; PLTR jumps 9%+ after hours (Samantha Subin/CNBC) [38d]
Samsung says it's restricting app registrations and removing apps with SDKs that can turn smart TVs into residential proxy exit nodes, after a similar ban by LG (Zack Whittaker/TechCrunch) [38d]
Court docs: an FBI agent has been charged with amassing ~$1M worth of cryptocurrency, largely by making unauthorized withdrawals from a criminal target overseas (Devlin Barrett/New York Times) [38d]
US satellite internet provider Hughesnet files for Chapter 11 after losing subscribers to Starlink and plans to focus on business and government customers (Michael Kan/PCMag) [39d]
Leaked doc: Microsoft plans to bring Xbox 360 games to PC, and the games will be able to run on the next-gen Project Helix console, "Xbox PCs", and handhelds (The Verge) [39d]
The White House says it has met its deadline to establish a voluntary framework for evaluating advanced AI models; it did not provide details of the framework (Maria Curi/Axios) [39d]
China has revised regulations to tighten protection of chip layout designs, including punitive damages for serious infringement, taking effect on October 15 (Eduardo Baptista/Reuters) [39d]
Valar, which is making small modular nuclear reactors to power data centers, raised a $1B Series B led by Sequoia at a $6B post-money valuation (Bloomberg) [39d]
Mariana Minerals, which builds and operates mines using its MarianaOS software platform, raised a $310M Series B, bringing its total funding to $400M (Allie Garfinkle/Fortune) [39d]
India proposes extending tax exemptions until 2041 for foreign companies that provide machinery to contract manufacturers, something Apple had lobbied for (Reuters) [39d]
Sources: the Trump administration invites staffers from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and others to the White House on Tuesday to review the AI oversight framework (The Information) [39d]
UK court filing: in July, Apple launched a new legal challenge against the UK government's attempt to create a "backdoor" to access encrypted customer data (Tim Bradshaw/Financial Times) [39d]
Zenity, which develops a platform for securing AI agents, raised a $125M Series C led by Norwest Venture Partners, taking its total funding to ~$185M (Meir Orbach/CTech) [39d]
Visa plans to acquire Israeli company BioCatch, which uses AI to detect fraud and distinguish legitimate users from attackers in real time, for $2.4B in cash (Katherine Hamilton/Wall Street Journal) [39d]
Horizon3, whose AI penetration testing platform NodeZero helps find and exploit attack paths in production systems, raised a $250M Series E at a $2B valuation (Kate Park/TechCrunch) [39d]
Michael Saylor's Strategy sold 1,638 bitcoin for ~$104.7M, reducing its holdings to 842,138, or ~4% of total supply, with a $10.9B paper loss at current prices (James Hunt/The Block) [39d]