The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• London-based Xapien, which uses AI for background checks and due diligence, raised a $56M Series B led by Spectrum Equity (Lucinda Shen/Axios) [57d]
• Sources: the Pentagon is in talks to lend roughly $5B to neocloud Fluidstack; Fluidstack is being advised on its loan application by Palmer Luckey's Erebor Bank (Wall Street Journal) [57d]
• Sources: Microsoft plans to expand its data center capacity from 12 GW today to 38+ GW by 2032, with about a third of the 38 GW centered on AI-specific chips (Bloomberg) [57d]
• Adobe reports Q3 revenue up 13% YoY to $6.76B, vs. $6.7B est., AI-first annual recurring revenue up 150% YoY, and forecasts Q4 revenue slightly below estimates (Anzar Mehraj/Reuters) [57d]
• California Gov. Gavin Newsom signs bills restricting "addictive" social media features for under-16s and limiting minors' interactions with chatbots (Colin Lecher/CalMatters) [57d]
• Oracle reports Q1 revenue up 30% YoY to $19.35B, vs. $19.14B est., cloud infrastructure revenue up 121% to $7.4B, vs. $7.09B est.; ORCL jumps 6%+ after hours (Jordan Novet/CNBC) [57d]
• Sources: Altera is preparing to confidentially file for an IPO in the coming weeks; the offering could raise over $2B, with a listing as early as this year (Reuters) [57d]
• ID verification service IDScan confirms that a data breach involved the theft of driver's licenses from its systems after hackers offered 153M licenses for sale (Zack Whittaker/TechCrunch) [57d]
• OpenAI says it will pause new $200/month ChatGPT Pro subscriptions amid "unprecedented" Astra demand; existing accounts, other plans, and API are unaffected (Tibo/@thsottiaux) [57d]
• Universal Music Group partners with ElevenLabs to launch a new AI-powered platform that will let users create song remixes, mashups, and more from its catalog (Emma Roth/The Verge) [57d]
• OpenAI unveils ChatGPT for Financial Services, a version of ChatGPT Work made with "design partners" Morgan Stanley and Evercore to research like an analyst (CNBC) [57d]
• Anthropic details distillation efforts by Chinese companies, like Moonshot and DeepSeek, sending user queries to Claude via "transfer stations" outside China (Wall Street Journal) [57d]
• Anthropic says it disrupted several potential plots this year by scientists using its models for research that could have helped develop biological weapons (Dustin Volz/New York Times) [57d]
• Anthropic publishes a threat intelligence report on how it disrupted efforts to misuse Claude for cyberattacks, influence operations, surveillance, and more (Anthropic) [57d]
• Sources: PIF is considering combining EA with Savvy Games to better coordinate its gaming assets, but not before Savvy closes its $6B Moonton acquisition (Bloomberg) [57d]
• Interview with mathematician Tristan Buckmaster on being drawn into the OpenAI-Anthropic fight; OpenAI says it made progress on another Millennium Prize problem (Kenneth Chang/New York Times) [57d]
• Sources: SpaceX shifts its data center strategy to redesign existing facilities and prioritize power and cooling redundancy, potentially slowing new build-outs (Grace Kay/The Information) [57d]
• Maven Robotics, whose wheeled robots travel up to 10 mph and lift up to 30kg using two arms, emerges from stealth after raising $100M (Tim Fernholz/TechCrunch) [57d]
• TAR, which builds off-grid power systems for data centers, raised a $120M Series A led by Spark Capital at a ~$1B valuation (Mark Chediak/Bloomberg) [57d]
• Positron, which is designing an AI processor called Asimov with a "memory-first architecture" and up to 2.3TB of memory, raised $875M at a $5B valuation (Robbie Whelan/Wall Street Journal) [57d]
• Amazon partners with OpenAI to let users of Amazon's DSP run ads in ChatGPT in a pilot program limited to the US; ChatGPT Ads hit $1B in ARR last month (Peter Adams/Marketing Dive) [57d]
• Mach Industries, which makes unmanned military vehicles and weapons, raised $600M in an extension to its $300M Series C, doubling its valuation to $3.7B (Julie Bort/TechCrunch) [57d]
• Bending Spoons agrees to acquire Miro in an all-cash transaction valuing the workplace-collaboration platform at $1.36B (Sonia Sirletti/Bloomberg) [57d]
• Ant International, Visa, and Mastercard plan a new standard for payments made via AI agents, citing McKinsey's projection of $3T to $5T in commerce by 2030 (Evelyn Cheng/CNBC) [57d]
• Sources: Nasdaq is investing $100M in Kraken parent Payward, valuing the cryptocurrency exchange at $21B; Kraken will distribute Nasdaq's tokenized stocks (Katherine Doherty/Bloomberg) [57d]
• Paris-based Arlequin AI, which is developing proprietary models based on topological neural networks, raised a €28M Series A co-led by redalpine and OTB (Tamara Djurickovic/Tech.eu) [57d]
• Anthropic gives EU cybersecurity agency ENISA testing access to Mythos 5 after months of talks that began in late May; ENISA still lacks access to Mythos 5.1 (Gian Volpicelli/Bloomberg) [57d]
• Sources: Moonshot AI is exploring dual Hong Kong and Shanghai listings for greater capital and exposure, amid the weaker performance of AI stocks in Hong Kong (Coco Feng/South China Morning Post) [57d]
• DeepSeek debuts DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash, its smallest model built on a new Causal Encoder-Decoder architecture, with 552B backbone parameters and 1M-token context (Reuters) [57d]
• Letter: the Senate disaster management subcommittee, led by Sen. Josh Hawley, is probing OpenAI's handling of the Hugging Face breach, calling it "reckless" (Axios) [57d]
• A look at why the oft-discussed predictions that AI will deliver double-digit GDP growth in advanced economies are extremely unlikely over the next 10-15 years (Ghosts of Electricity) [58d]
• The AI boom is fueling a resurgence in VC bets in "moonshot" sectors such as BCI; Dealroom says non-AI deeptech funding has topped $150B since the start of 2024 (Tim Bradshaw/Financial Times) [58d]
• Sources: Grab is in talks to buy a majority stake in Advance Intelligence Group's Singapore-based BNPL platform Atome Financial at a $2B+ valuation (Bloomberg) [58d]
• How Amazon's Zoox, which has ~100 AVs in its fleet, is utilizing social media influencers, community events, and ad campaigns to compete with Waymo in SF (Emmy Martin/New York Times) [58d]
• Chinese tech giants are hiring skilled professionals as specialized AI trainers to build high-quality datasets, mirroring efforts by US platforms like Mercor (Viola Zhou/Rest of World) [58d]
• Q&A with AI researcher Jacob Coxon, who quit Anthropic, on the need for industry-wide, international coordination to limit recursive self-improvement, and more (Maxwell Zeff/Wired) [58d]
• Sources: Chinese AI chipmakers Huawei, Cambricon, MetaX, and Iluvatar CoreX have raised prices for current and next-gen chips by 20%-50% due to rising HBM costs (Reuters) [58d]
• Sources including French public officials detail how Mistral's rise over the past three years owes much to the privileged relationship it built with Macron (Océane Herrero/Politico) [58d]
• OpenAI Foundation board member Paul Christiano says the AI industry is currently not on track to reduce the acute loss-of-control risk to an "acceptable" level (Paul Christiano/@paulfchristiano) [58d]
• Sources: Alibaba is set to lead a $300M round in AI model testing startup UniPat AI at a $2.5B valuation; UniPat founder Li Kuan worked at Alibaba's Tongyi Lab (Bloomberg) [58d]
• Amazon names Mandiant founder Kevin Mandia to its board of directors, noting his extensive experience "combating cyber threats" in public and private sectors (Annie Palmer/CNBC) [58d]
• New Mexico, the only US state taking the Cambridge Analytica case to trial, accused Meta of failing to protect Facebook user data in its opening statements (Mikella Schuettler/Associated Press) [58d]
• Paul Christiano, an AI researcher and advisor at CAISI, is joining the OpenAI Foundation board of directors and its Safety and Security Committee (Tim Fernholz/TechCrunch) [58d]
• Kepler Computing, which claims its 3D stacking and new material can increase HBM and SRAM density without relying on EUV, emerges from stealth with $468M (Lauren Goode/Wired) [58d]
• Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signs an EO requiring data centers above 25MW of peak demand to bring their own power and meet 100% of demand with clean energy (Tim De Chant/TechCrunch) [58d]
• Sources: DOJ is investigating whether Nvidia tried to skirt antitrust scrutiny of its 2025 Groq deal, described by Groq as a "nonexclusive licensing agreement" (New York Times) [58d]
• AI researcher Jacob Coxon says he quit Anthropic after four months, two months before his equity would have vested; he still has equity in prior employer OpenAI (Madison Mills/Axios) [58d]
• California Gov. Gavin Newsom signs into law two bills, backed by Anthropic and OpenAI, regulating how outside groups evaluate AI for safety (Christine Mui/Politico) [58d]
• Apple unveils AppleCare One Family, extending AppleCare coverage to every eligible device in an Apple Family Sharing group of up to 6 people for $49.99/month (Hartley Charlton/MacRumors) [58d]
• Sources: Jeffrey Katzenberg, ex-OpenAI Sora head Bill Peebles, and ex-Dropbox CFO Sujay Jaswa plan to launch a startup to train AI video models for filmmakers (The Information) [58d]