The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• Apple unveils a new Health app with Apple Intelligence, featuring an Insights tab, "readiness" and Health Age metrics, and more, rolling out later in 2026 (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch) [1d]
• Consensys plans to split into two companies: MetaMask, with Joe Lubin as CEO, and a new Consensys focused on Ethereum and institutional infrastructure (Jason Shubnell/The Block) [1d]
• Slack message: Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg says CFO Mark Davies "conspired" with board members to put him on paid leave and Davies was voted to be interim CEO (Samantha Cole/404 Media) [1d]
• Source: Meta AI researcher Andrew Tulloch, who came over from Thinking Machine Lab as one of the highest paid employees last year, is leaving the company (Reed Albergotti/Semafor) [1d]
• New opt-in Apple Watch Siri audio features can listen to and transcribe conversations all day; Apple says raw audio is inaccessible and deleted after processing (Lily Hay Newman/Wired) [1d]
• Tailwind Labs, the company behind Tailwind CSS, is joining Shopify; in January, it laid off three of four engineers, citing AI's impact on documentation traffic (Supreeth Koundinya/AIM) [1d]
• Apple raises iPhone prices by $100 on all of the older models it is offering, including the iPhone 16, the iPhone 17 lineup, as well as the iPhone Air (Cameron Faulkner/The Verge) [1d]
• Anthropic details four incidents where Claude gained unauthorized access to third-party systems, including a new Opus 4.6 case; METR will investigate them (Anthropic) [1d]
• Sources: Salesforce has been in talks to buy Listen Labs, an AI-powered customer research platform for $2B; Listen Labs was valued at $500M earlier this year (Business Insider) [1d]
• iPhone Duo supports Apple Pencil and comes with iOS redesigned for multitasking on different screen sizes/orientations, with auto-adjusting controls and apps (Terrence O'Brien/The Verge) [1d]
• Apple says iOS 27, iPadOS 27, watchOS 27, and macOS 27 Golden Gate, all with Siri AI, will be released on September 14 (Igor Bonifacic/Engadget) [1d]
• Hands-on with the iPhone Duo: the folding mechanism is smooth, the crease is almost impossible to find with a finger, and the inner screen has a matte finish (The Verge) [1d]
• The iPhone Duo starts at $1,999 for 256GB, with a 2TB model costing $3,199, in star white and night sky colors; preorders start Oct. 16, and sales begin Oct. 23 (Dominic Preston/The Verge) [1d]
• Apple announces its first foldable, the iPhone Duo, with a 5.4-inch outer display, a 7.6-inch inner display, A20 Pro with a new display engine, and Touch ID (Chance Miller/9to5Mac) [1d]
• iPhone 18 Pro has a faster 48MP Fusion Main camera with variable aperture that lets in ~50% more light in low-light, along with enhanced camera app controls (Jeremy Gray/PetaPixel) [1d]
• Apple unveils the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4, with a new S11 chip, upgraded health tracking, an Audio Intelligence feature, a readiness feature, and more (Zac Hall/9to5Mac) [1d]
• Apple announces two AirPods 5 models with ANC that removes up to 50% more noise than AirPods 4, for $129 or $149 with a wireless charging case (Ryan Christoffel/9to5Mac) [1d]
• iPhone 18 Pro comes with a smaller Dynamic Island; 18 Pro starts at $1,199 and the 18 Pro Max starts at $1,299, both costing $100 more than the 17 Pro lineup (Devindra Hardawar/Engadget) [1d]
• Apple adds a Reference Image feature to the iPhone 18 Pro, which digitally authenticates that photos taken with its camera haven't later been altered by AI (Benjamin Mayo/9to5Mac) [1d]
• Apple unveils the 2nm A20 Pro, featuring a 6-core CPU with two "desktop class" super cores, a 7-core GPU up to 40% faster, and 32 Neural Engine cores in total (Hartley Charlton/MacRumors) [1d]
• Apple announces the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, with a similar design to 17 Pro and a new A20 Pro chip, in deep black, silver, glacier, and burgundy (Jay Peters/The Verge) [1d]
• A livestream of Apple's "Surprise and Shine" event (Apple on YouTube) [1d]
• A live blog of Apple's "Surprise and Shine" event, where new iPhone 18 Pro, Apple's first foldable phone, new Apple Watches, and AirPods are expected (The Verge) [1d]
• Florida AG sues Netflix, alleging it misleads parents about how it collects data on minors and harms children with features that lead to binge watching (Kimberly Leonard/Politico) [1d]
• Researchers: OpenAI's agents used 10+ previously undisclosed sites for unsanctioned communications earlier in 2026; the behavior was closer to spam than hacking (Reuters) [1d]
• AI CRM software startup Lightfield raised a $47M Series A led by a16z; formerly Tome, it had raised $80M across earlier Series A and B rounds (Alex Konrad/Upstarts Media) [1d]
• Anthropic releases an interactive tool that lets users explore how AI might affect US economic growth, jobs, wages, and more by 2030 (Scott Horsley/NPR) [1d]
• The American Federation of Teachers and Microsoft agree on AI privacy standards for schools, with legal protections that hold Microsoft liable for breaches (Madina Touré/Politico) [1d]
• UK PM Andy Burnham declines to support a data center moratorium, saying it is "important" local communities see the benefits of building data centers (Jacob Reid/Bloomberg) [1d]
• Enterprise AI security startup Cymphony emerges from stealth with $30M, including a $25M Series A co-led by Sequoia and SMBC, at a $100M+ post-money valuation (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch) [1d]
• Sources: Dell seeks to raise ~$4B via an investment-grade bond sale to refinance outstanding notes due in 2026, amid the AI-driven demand for servers (Bloomberg) [1d]
• Latitude, a Texas-based payments infrastructure company founded by Stripe, Uber, Coinbase and Meta alumni, raised a $35M Series A led by Oak HC/FT (Camila Grigera Naón/Fortune) [1d]
• Sources: Iran's central bank has quietly relaxed foreign currency controls and encouraged traders to repatriate funds via cryptocurrencies to bypass sanctions (Najmeh Bozorgmehr/Financial Times) [1d]
• Analog Devices agrees to buy privately held Alif Semiconductor, which makes low-power AI processors, for $1.35B in cash, with contingent payments up to $200M (Anhata Rooprai/Reuters) [1d]
• Euno, whose platform reconstructs data flow, meaning, health, and more across data environments to give agents context, raised a $23M Series A led by N47 (Chris Metinko/Axios) [1d]
• AI sales and marketing startup Clay raised $115M led by Wellington Management at a $7.1B valuation, up from $3.1B when it raised $100M in August 2025 (Michael J. de la Merced/New York Times) [1d]
• OpenAI says it is working with Samsung on its next-gen chips, and Samsung is one of the "largest-scale deployments of ChatGPT globally" (Heekyong Yang/Reuters) [1d]
• Savvy Wealth, which provides RIA software for independent financial advisors, raised a $100M Series C led by Halo Fund, taking its total funding to $200M+ (Ryan Lawler/Axios) [1d]