The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• An interview with OnlyFans CEO Keily Blair about plans to offer financial services to its 2.5M active creators, a potential IPO, and more (Emma Hinchliffe/Fortune) [17d]
• Google says it is rolling out Personal Intelligence for Gemini on Android Auto now and to cars with Google built-in in the coming months as an opt-in feature (Abner Li/9to5Google) [17d]
• Pigment, a French startup that makes AI-powered software to help businesses forecast finances, spin up slide decks, and more, raised $250M at a $2.3B valuation (Dina Bass/Bloomberg) [17d]
• PHP development team plans to release updates tomorrow to address two vulnerabilities, each rated 9.2; security researchers at watchTowr say they are RCE flaws (Lawrence Abrams/BleepingComputer) [17d]
• Elon Musk says Tesla and SpaceX have formed special committees to discuss a possible merger and calls the possibility of a Tesla-SpaceX merger a "good idea" (Andrew J. Hawkins/The Verge) [17d]
• Eight intermediate TLS certificates from eMudhra with private key sizes of just 3 to 8 bits were compromised; browser makers and major apps have blocked them (Dan Goodin/Ars Technica) [17d]
• Super Micro reports preliminary Q1 revenues of $18.5B to $19.5B, vs. $15B est., and gross margins of 12% to 12.5%; SMCI jumps 11%+ after hours (Dina Bass/Bloomberg) [17d]
• SpaceX reports Q3 capex of $19.6B, up from $6.9B a year earlier, and Q3 connectivity revenue, which includes Starlink, up 69% YoY to $5.2B (Becky Peterson/Wall Street Journal) [17d]
• Report: Anthropic's draft S-1 shows it spent ~$9B on compute and infrastructure in H1, up from $2.3B a year earlier, and could spend $750B in the coming years (David Morris/Bloomberg) [17d]
• Netflix says it expects FY 2026 ad revenue of ~$2.7B, under its ~$3B forecast, and its Q4 operating margin will be impacted due to costs associated with layoffs (Todd Spangler/Variety) [17d]
• Sources: Elon Musk ordered Starshield slowdown in Ukraine and discussed it with Trump after the issue became public; some US officials say he acted unilaterally (Wall Street Journal) [17d]
• SpaceX reports Q3 revenue up 161% YoY to $14.58B, vs. $12.72B est., AI revenue up 830% to $7.56B, and AI operating income of $431M, up from a loss of $1.7B (Lora Kolodny/CNBC) [17d]
• Netflix says despite investor concern about its view-hours growth, its engagement is "healthy" and it will try to bring more third-party content to its service (Nicole Sperling/New York Times) [17d]
• Netflix reports Q3 revenue up 12% YoY to $12.87B, vs. $12.87B est., net income up 44% to $3.66B, due to the timing of expenses; NFLX drops 4%+ after hours (Sarah Whitten/CNBC) [17d]
• Anthropic's IPO prospectus: H1 2026 revenue of $16.3B, ~20% of it from two customers, vs. $1.1B YoY, with a net loss of $80.7B, due to accounting adjustments (Anissa Gardizy/Wall Street Journal) [17d]
• A profile of Xbox CEO Asha Sharma; sources: Xbox plans a major Game Pass overhaul, a next-gen handheld device by late 2027, and next-gen console by late 2028 (Sebastian Herrera/Fortune) [17d]
• Amazon plans to hire 300K+ US workers for seasonal, part-time, and full-time roles for the upcoming holiday season, up 20% from 2025, paying $20/hour on average (Spencer Soper/Bloomberg) [17d]
• Google launches TorchTPU, an open-source version of PyTorch to let AI apps run on TPUs and Google Cloud via simple configuration changes without rewriting code (Julie Bort/TechCrunch) [17d]
• Oro Mobility, a Hertz-owned fleet management business that has a deal to manage Uber's planned Lucid robotaxi fleet starting in San Francisco, raised $80M (Joann Muller/Axios) [17d]
• A US judge dismisses a civil sexual abuse lawsuit brought against Sam Altman by his sister, after she refused to appear for an independent medical examination (Luc Cohen/Reuters) [17d]
• OpenAI acquires Orchestra Bio, which builds AI agents for managing drug development, and plans to integrate its tech into OpenAI life sciences suite Rosalind (Madison Mills/Axios) [17d]
• Foursquare co-founder says the company was acquired a month ago in a deal resulting in a $0 payout for equity holders, and faults leadership installed in 2021 (Dennis Crowley/Teendrama Snippets) [17d]
• Sources: Sam Altman told OpenAI staff of three AI endgames: an IAEA-style regulator, a CERN-like lab merger, or one lab using RSI to "melt everyone else's GPUs" (The Information) [17d]
• Sensor Tower: Muse had 10.9M downloads since its September debut, 10.2M of those in the US, becoming the 12th app to hit 10M US downloads in its first 40 days (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch) [17d]
• Sources: Polymarket investors pressured CEO Shayne Coplan to add stricter financial and operational controls; Elon Musk's lawyer, Alex Spiro, joined its board (Bloomberg) [17d]
• Mark Zuckerberg says Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer and his top DC adviser for 15+ years, is set to leave in 2027; Kaplan had close Trump ties (Mike Allen/Axios) [17d]
• ASI, which makes AI tools for the military and air traffic controllers, raised a $325M Series C at a $3B valuation, after winning an $875M FAA contract in June (Bloomberg) [17d]
• Daytona, which is building cloud infrastructure for AI agents, raised a $60M Series B led by FirstMark at a $1B valuation, bringing its total funding to $91M (Jeremy Kahn/Fortune) [17d]
• Firefly, whose AI software connects with existing cameras, radios, and sensors to detect incidents and coordinate real-time responses, raised a $20M Series A (Chris Metinko/Axios) [17d]
• Sources: OpenAI has retreated from advocating for strict US chip export controls to China ahead of the lame-duck session, aligning closer with President Trump (Politico) [17d]
• TikTok staff depositions: TikTok executives ignored internal warnings over child sexual exploitation on Live, where staff said minors appeared in livestreams (Katie McQue/NPR) [17d]
• Arda, which develops AI software and agents to accelerate assembly line programming and manufacturing automation, raised $230M at a $1.5B valuation (Kate Rooney/CNBC) [17d]
• Eka Robotics, which is developing a "vision-force-action" architecture for its physical AI models, raised a $150M Series A at a $1.45B post-money valuation (Tim Fernholz/TechCrunch) [17d]
• DeepSeek open-sources DeepInfer, its internal production stack designed to accelerate inference, optimize chip performance, and reduce energy and compute costs (Saritha Rai/Bloomberg) [17d]
• Salesforce agrees to acquire AI-powered marketing platform Braze for nearly $5.7B in enterprise value, paying $47.50 per share, set to close from February 2027 (Dana Wollman/Bloomberg) [17d]
• Spotify launches paid podcast memberships in 34 markets, including the US; creators can offer perks like bonus content or fewer ads and keep 90% of revenue (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch) [17d]
• Apple commits up to $100M over three years to Pennsylvania-based Perryman Company, a titanium supplier for the iPhone Duo, and expands its Qnity partnership (MacKenzie Sigalos/CNBC) [17d]
• Chinese state media: China inaugurates the National Data Group, a new state-owned enterprise that will focus on developing and utilizing data resources (Reuters) [17d]
• Note-taking tool Otter.ai raised $320M in non-dilutive capital from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund; PitchBook says it raised $50M prior to this round (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch) [17d]
• Four Z.ai founders participated in a 2018 to 2021 research project co-funded by CGTRI, which the UK's MI5 said had "very strong ties" to China's main spy agency (Bloomberg) [17d]
• Alibaba, Tencent, and Huawei are pouring billions into data centers in Shaoguan, a hinterland region with cheap power and a cool climate, angering some locals (Financial Times) [17d]
• Google says Cloud in its London region is "experiencing issues" starting on Monday at 23:08 PDT; a source says a major Revolut outage is due to Google Cloud (Bloomberg) [17d]
• Anthropic's leaked federal AI bill draws widespread criticism from AI safety advocates for being significantly weaker than the bipartisan FRONTIER Act (Shakeel Hashim/Transformer) [17d]
• The UK CMA proposes measures requiring Apple to provide easier access to its contactless tech and reduce access fees, with a consultation until November 17 (Paul Sandle/Reuters) [17d]
• Estonia-based web traffic security company Blackwall raised a $100M Series C led by AVP at a $2.2B valuation, after raising a $49.2M Series B in March 2025 (Ram Iyer/TechCrunch) [17d]
• Sources: ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent ordered 3M+ of Nvidia's new RTX PRO 5500 GPUs worth $35B+, in a rush to secure less powerful, export-compliant chips (Reuters) [17d]
• Survey: 20% of US adults regularly consume news on TikTok, up from just 3% in 2020; 39% of those aged 18 to 29 and 25% of those aged 30 to 49 do so regularly (Katerina Eva Matsa/Pew Research Center) [17d]
• Amazon pledges to spend €16B+ in Germany in 2027 on AWS and AI data centers, its Leo satellite program, Prime Video media production, and a Berlin robotics lab (Mark Bergen/Bloomberg) [17d]
• Analysis: London fell from 7th to last place out of 18 European capitals for median mobile download speed from 2021 to 2026; 5G adoption has outrun 5G capacity (Luke Kehoe/Ookla) [17d]
• OpenAI says its new models show major performance leaps in low-resource legacy languages like COBOL, Fortran, and Visual Basic, used by banks and governments (OpenAI) [17d]
• The US sanctions MiraclePlus, a Chinese VC firm founded by ex-Microsoft executive Lu Qi, over alleged ties to Zhisuan, accused of stealing Google's AI secrets (Bloomberg) [17d]
• Ant-backed Mynt, which runs mobile wallet app GCash, rose as much as 2.4% in Manila after raising $841M in the Philippines' largest-ever IPO, valuing it at ~$7B (Kimberley Kao/Wall Street Journal) [17d]
• Leaked documents detail ECHOTRIBBLE, a nascent US Army Cyber Command program for agentic AI to autonomously spread across networks to find and eliminate targets (Sam Biddle/The Intercept) [17d]
• Chinese robovan maker Neolix raised a $400M Series E led by Boyu, taking total funding to $1.4B+; it operates 30K+ vehicles in 300+ cities across 20 countries (Saritha Rai/Bloomberg) [17d]
• An Australian minister says the eSafety Commissioner plans to sue Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube over alleged breaches of the under-16 social media ban (Angus Whitley/Bloomberg) [17d]
• Mercury CEO Immad Akhund says the fintech hit $1B in annualized revenue, up ~50% YoY, has more than 450K customers, and is launching a payroll service (Eric Newcomer/Newcomer) [17d]
• Inception launches Mercury 3, a diffusion-based LLM it claims is "comparable to Luna and Haiku models" but 4x to 8x faster, generating ~1,000 tokens per second (Jason Hiner/The Deep View) [18d]
• Korean data-center company Elice falls 30%+ in Kosdaq trading debut; sources: Australian data center operator AirTrunk delays real estate investment trust IPO (Bloomberg) [18d]