The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

Trump urges Congress to pass the Clarity Act at a White House event with execs including the CEOs of Coinbase and Robinhood; the bill has stalled in the Senate (Bloomberg) [22d]
Sources: YouTube is offering top creators millions to post videos exclusively on YouTube for a period and will penalize those that post to Netflix concurrently (Lucas Shaw/Bloomberg) [22d]
Former Meta engineering director Arturo Béjar testifies that Mark Zuckerberg prioritized growth and engagement over child safety on Facebook and Instagram (Reuters) [22d]
Google announces new study tools, including a student hub, notebooks, and interactive 3D visualizations in Gemini, plus student offers for Google AI plans (Amanda Caswell/Tom's Guide) [22d]
Letter: Stripe told investors January 1 marked the "beginning of the singularity", a major inflection point in long-term trends, and H1 revenue rose 41% YoY (Axios) [22d]
Sources: SpaceX approached AI coding startup Cognition about a potential acquisition; deal talks are inactive, but the companies are discussing working together (Bloomberg) [22d]
Sources: OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told employees at an all-hands that OpenAI "will be a public company in 2027", or sooner if "our business continues to inflect" (CNBC) [22d]
Sources: AI chip startup Fractile is in talks to raise ~$600M at a $6.5B pre-money valuation, up from ~$1B in May, and has an initial ~$250M deal with Anthropic (Bloomberg) [22d]
Source: Nvidia has discussed an investment in Mercor as part of a round valuing the startup at $20B; Nvidia paid Mercor tens of millions of dollars last quarter (The Information) [22d]
Stripe agrees to buy New York-based OpenRouter; a source says Stripe is paying $7.5B, with $1.5B going to the startup's founders and $6B to investors (Erin Griffith/New York Times) [22d]
The FTC says businesses must disclose when they use personalized pricing and it will "deploy enforcement resources" against companies that do not disclose it (Dave Michaels/Wall Street Journal) [22d]
Stripe agrees to buy New York-based OpenRouter for an undisclosed amount; Stripe had reportedly agreed to pay more than $7B for OpenRouter (Bloomberg) [22d]
Meta launches a Mac app for Meta AI and says Meta AI can now work directly with Instagram and Facebook accounts, Meta ad campaigns, and Google Workspace (Emma Roth/The Verge) [22d]
OpenAI is testing Private Safety Processing, a new technique to identify misuse patterns while preserving zero data retention protections, with early customers (Ina Fried/Axios) [22d]
The US CFTC bans Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang from trading for five years, as part of a settlement over their roles at FTX (Nicola M White/Bloomberg) [22d]
Nielsen rolls out changes to make its ratings more accurate, including using data from smartwatch-like devices worn by its panelists without requiring logins (Loree Seitz/The Wrap) [22d]
Google Pixel 11 review: great design, nice camera features, and shares many features of the Pro phone but the hardware is unchanged and very expensive at $899 (Cameron Faulkner/The Verge) [22d]
Google Pixel 11 Pro review: Magic Capture and the voice-to-text Rambler features are very useful but subpar gaming performance and HiLight is useless (Julian Chokkattu/Wired) [22d]
Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold review: tougher body with IP68 rating and a decent triple rear camera but an iterative hardware upgrade with design that feels dated (Dominic Preston/The Verge) [22d]
Google Pixel Watch 5 review: Improved GPS is good, gesture controls are great, but the new health features haven't rolled out yet and it is $50 more expensive (Victoria Song/The Verge) [22d]
Memo: GOP asks AI companies to stem the backlash against data centers, saying the issue could kill the party's chances of holding a vital Senate seat in Ohio (Alex Isenstadt/Axios) [22d]
Rivian spinout Also, which is developing autonomous driving tech, raised a $150M Series D led by Prysm Capital, after announcing a $200M round in March 2026 (Kirsten Korosec/TechCrunch) [22d]
Network Bio, which is developing an AI foundation model from datasets of patient tissue and blood samples created by pooling access to biobanks, raised $50M (Brian Gormley/Wall Street Journal) [22d]
Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal's fintech startup Navi raised $100M from Prosus, its first institutional capital raise, sources say at a ~$1.3B valuation (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch) [22d]
Amazon makes its AI-powered Alexa+ free on all compatible Fire TV devices in the US, automatically upgrading users even if they don't subscribe to Prime (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch) [22d]
Sources: Veeda, which is developing world models and is led by ex-Nvidia VP of AI Research Sanja Fidler, raised a $90M+ seed and is backed by Khosla and Radical (Murad Hemmadi/The Logic) [22d]
Sources: Nvidia is working as a matchmaker to connect companies holding its GPUs with Nordic data center operators that have available capacity to deploy them (Kai Nicol-Schwarz/CNBC) [22d]
A hacker known as Cyberleek leaks two GTA VI gameplay clips and the full map in protest of Rockstar Games' digital-only release; Rockstar issues DMCA takedowns (Jowi Morales/Tom's Hardware) [23d]
Marvell and Google expand their chip development deal, with Marvell granting Google a warrant to buy up to 58M+ shares at $206.58 each, totaling up to $12.2B (Dana Wollman/Bloomberg) [23d]
Cybersecurity data company Prevalent AI raised $22M from Integrity Growth Partners, marking the nine-year-old startup's first-ever outside capital raise (Duncan Riley/SiliconANGLE) [23d]
Amazon appears to have leaked Jason Statham's new film Mutiny, streaming it in full on Prime Video in the US, two days before it was supposed to hit theaters (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge) [23d]
Reconstructed code from Flock's login pages shows a new AI-powered system, called OS Investigate, that integrates license plate scans, case files, and more (Wired) [23d]