The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• Data center shares fall as investors expect slower AI buildout after Democrats win Congress; Hut 8 drops 23%, IREN 11%, Core Scientific 10%, Applied Digital 7% (Reuters) [2d]
• Figma reports Q3 revenue up 43% YoY to $391.4M, above est., gross margin of 80%, below 81% est., and lifts its 2026 revenue outlook; FIG drops 6%+ after hours (Deborah Mary Sophia/Reuters) [2d]
• Snap reports Q3 revenue up 14% YoY to $1.72B, in line with est., and DAUs up 4% to 495M, vs. 499M est.; SNAP drops 9%+ after hours (Spencer Soper/Bloomberg) [2d]
• Arm reports Q2 revenue up 27% YoY to $1.44B, vs. $1.38B est., royalty revenue up 8% to $670M, vs. $720.8M est., and licensing revenue up 50% to $773M (Reuters) [2d]
• Qualcomm reports Q4 revenue down 8% YoY to $10.3B, vs. $10.1B est., and handsets revenue down 26% to $5.14B, vs. $5.25B est.; QCOM drops 5%+ after hours (Ian King/Bloomberg) [2d]
• Meta raised €9B from its debut euro bond sale that drew a record €53B of orders, paying ~1.4x the risk premium Alphabet offered for similar bonds this week (Bloomberg) [2d]
• Sources: Apple cut some engineers' daily AI spending cap to $200 from $300 and plans cuts to as little as $100, as cost cutting stokes staff fears of layoffs (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg) [2d]
• Filing: AMD will pay ~$2.9B in cash and stock for AI chip startup Taalas, with $1.4B dependent on unspecified conditions; the deal was announced in August (Murad Hemmadi/Globe and Mail) [2d]
• Apple says it will check iCloud items shared to "Anyone with the link" for "harmful content" in 27.3 OS versions, and may delete the content or disable accounts (Ryan Christoffel/9to5Mac) [2d]
• Meta acquires Conductor, which lets developers run multiple AI coding agents in parallel; CEO Charlie Holtz says the team will join Meta Superintelligence Labs (Madison Mills/Axios) [2d]
• Shares of US tech giants jump after Democrats' midterm sweep as investors bet that a Democrat-controlled Congress will slow AI capex that's draining cash flow (Bloomberg) [2d]
• Sequoia raised ~$10B in new funds, and announces it is shutting down its Arc accelerator and Scouts program, merging its early-stage and growth teams, and more (Connie Loizos/TechCrunch) [2d]
• Pangram releases Pangram Image 1.0, which it says is state-of-the-art in AI image detection, and Image Flash 1.0, which powers its AI video detection (Isaac Kasahara/Pangram) [2d]
• Titan OS, which monetizes smart TVs via ads and FAST deals, raised $46M in equity and debt, for a total funding of $110M, says it has 30M users, up from 18M YoY (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch) [2d]
• EloElo Group, the company behind Indian microdrama app Story TV, raised an $80M Series C co-led by NBCUniversal and Hornbill, bringing its total raised to $130M (Naman Ramachandran/Variety) [2d]
• Democrats' sweep of Congress raises the likelihood of strong frontier AI legislation passing in early 2027, including mandatory testing and developer liability (Shakeel Hashim/Transformer) [2d]
• CoreWeave's stock and unsecured bonds fall after sweeping Democratic midterm victories, as Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa calls for a data center moratorium (Katherine Schwartz/Bloomberg) [2d]
• Sources: Tron, Tether, Binance, and TRM Labs' T3 Financial Crime Unit quietly dissolved in August due to slow response times, after freezing $250M in assets (Ryan Weeks/Bloomberg) [2d]
• Circle reports Q3 revenue up 17% YoY to $875M, driven in part by ARC token sales, net income up 5% YoY to $226M, and says it is cutting 5% of its staff (Yueqi Yang/The Information) [2d]
• TeraWulf secures a credit backstop agreement with Google to support financing for its data center project with Anthropic in Kentucky, set to come online H2 2027 (Deborah Sophia/Reuters) [2d]
• Crypto and AI super PACs spent $250M in 2026 midterms, but lost 9/12 competitive races called so far, spending $74.7M on losing candidates and $28.3M on winners (Molly White/Citation Needed) [2d]
• Sources: Singapore-based, Nigeria-focused payments company OPay halts its $300M US IPO hours after pricing it due to 11th-hour inquiries from Chinese regulators (Bloomberg) [2d]
• Revolut hits a $115B valuation, up from $75B in November 2025, after a secondary share sale led by Glade Brook, Coatue, and others, as it plans a US launch (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch) [2d]
• UK AI Minister Kanishka Narayan says AI is set to add £55B to £140B to the economy by 2030, below a £400B estimate from a Google-led report touted by officials (Ben Gartside/Wired) [2d]
• The French Blood Establishment says external providers' blood cold storage units were hacked to raise temperatures, in a wave of refrigeration cyberattacks (Sawdah Bhaimiya/CNBC) [2d]
• Sequoia says it is closing its London office after six years and consolidating operations back to the Bay Area, citing a lack of need for a local presence (Mike Butcher/Pathfounders) [2d]
• Qualcomm signs a multiyear SpaceX deal to supply Dragonwing hardware and network software for "tens of thousands of cell sites" for a US-wide network in 2027 (Bloomberg) [2d]
• Waymo plans to end its exclusive robotaxi partnership with Uber in Austin and Atlanta in January 2028 and switch to its own app to improve consistency for users (Bloomberg) [2d]
• Sentra, which helps restrict and monitor data access for AI agents, raised a $150M Series C led by Capital One Ventures, taking its total funding to $250M+ (Duncan Riley/SiliconANGLE) [2d]
• AI sales automation startup Nooks secures a $500M commitment from General Catalyst's CVF, which will take a share of the returns generated by the capital (Reuters) [2d]
• Uber reports Q3 revenue up 10% YoY to $14.8B, Gross Bookings up 20% to $59.8B, trips up 16% to 4B, and plans to scale its autonomous fleet to 2,000+ in 2027 (Rafe Rosner-Uddin/Financial Times) [2d]
• US voters in 29+ jurisdictions overwhelmingly pass data center bans or restrictions; S&P says 145+ US projects were delayed or canceled through early August (Washington Post) [2d]
• HP names former GSK CEO Emma Walmsley as its new CEO, effective January 4, permanently filling the role after HP's Enrique Lores departed in February 2026 (Bloomberg) [2d]
• Democrats running on AI regulation and anti-data center platforms won key races, including Sherrod Brown in Ohio, as leadership signals aggressive AI oversight (Politico) [2d]
• OpenAI acquires developer tools startup Pierre Computer for an undisclosed amount and plans to integrate Pierre's Code Storage feature directly into Codex (Madison Mills/Axios) [2d]