The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• In a letter to senators in January, Apple said it notified X that Grok could be removed from the App Store over Grok's ability to generate sexualized deepfakes (David Ingram/NBC News) [14d]
• Uber CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga says the company's surging use of AI coding tools has maxed out its full-year AI budget just a few months into 2026 (Laura Bratton/The Information) [14d]
• Sources: Microsoft ended production of its Surface Hub 3 collaborative touch displays and scrapped plans for a Hub 4; Hub 3 debuted in 2023 in 50" and 85" sizes (Zac Bowden/Windows Central) [14d]
• Anthropic recently changed Claude Enterprise pricing; customers now pay $20/month per user plus consumption-based charges, instead of a fixed subscription (The Information) [14d]
• Anthropic details using AI agents to accelerate alignment research on "weak-to-strong supervision", where a weak model supervises the training of a stronger one (Anthropic) [14d]
• Meta and Broadcom announce an expanded partnership to co-develop multiple generations of Meta's MTIA chips; Broadcom CEO Hock Tan plans to leave Meta's board (CNBC) [14d]
• The FCC grants Netgear a conditional approval to import its future consumer routers, cable modems, and cable gateways into the US through October 1, 2027 (Sean Hollister/The Verge) [15d]
• US-based Credo, which specializes in data center connectivity, agrees to acquire Israeli chip company DustPhotonics in a cash-and-stock deal worth up to $1.3B (CTech) [15d]
• AWS launches Amazon Bio Discovery, a new AI-powered application designed to speed up drug development, giving scientists access to biological foundation models (Reuters) [15d]
• Users accuse Anthropic of degrading the performance of Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude Code; employees publicly deny the company degrades models to manage capacity (Carl Franzen/VentureBeat) [15d]
• Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi says the crypto exchange has confidentially filed for a US IPO; it was valued at $13.3B this month, down from a $20B peak in late 2025 (Cory Schouten/Semafor) [15d]
• OpenAI is rolling out GPT-5.4-Cyber to some participants in its Trusted Access for Cyber program, a week after Anthropic announced Mythos (Rachel Metz/Bloomberg) [15d]
• Anthropic redesigns Claude Code on desktop, adding a sidebar for managing multiple sessions, a drag-and-drop layout, an integrated terminal, and a file editor (Claude) [15d]
• Source: Anthropic is preparing to release Claude Opus 4.7, along with a new AI-powered tool for designing websites and presentations, as soon as this week (Stephanie Palazzolo/The Information) [15d]
• Nvidia stock rose 18%+ over the past ten days, its longest winning streak since 2023; Jensen Huang said in March that Nvidia has $1T of GPU orders through 2027 (Katie Tarasov/CNBC) [15d]
• Bluefish, which helps brands manage visibility across AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Claude, raised a $43M Series B, bringing its total funding to $68M (Trishla Ostwal/Adweek) [15d]
• Microsoft agrees to rent 30,000 Nvidia Vera Rubin chips from Nscale at a site in Norway that was initially intended for OpenAI and marketed as part of Stargate (Bloomberg) [15d]
• Anthropic launches a repeatable routines feature for Claude Code as a research preview, allowing developers to schedule and automate software development tasks (Zac Hall/9to5Mac) [15d]
• Google launches Skills, repeatable AI prompts users can run in Chrome with a keyboard shortcut; users can set up their own Skills or choose from 50+ presets (Reece Rogers/Wired) [15d]
• Glydways, a robocar startup backed by Sam Altman, Khosla, and others, says it is in talks to raise $250M at a $1B+ valuation, following a ~$170M Series C (Min-Jeong Lee/Bloomberg) [15d]
• Microsoft debuts MAI-Image-2-Efficient, a faster version of its flagship text-to-image model, which it says offers production-ready quality at ~50% the cost (Michael Nuñez/VentureBeat) [15d]
• Pillar, which helps businesses driven by commodities, like metals, manage financial risk, raised a $20M seed led by a16z, bringing its total funding to $23M (Dominic-Madori Davis/TechCrunch) [15d]
• Sygaldry, which wants to design AI data center servers that integrate quantum hardware and classical chips, raised a $34M seed and a $105M Series A (Allie Garfinkle/Fortune) [15d]
• A malicious Ledger Live app clone available via Apple's App Store appears to have drained about $9.5M from over 50 victims between April 7 and April 13 (Oliver Knight/CoinDesk) [15d]
• Source: US Treasury CIO Sam Corcos aims to gain access to Mythos as soon as this week, and directed the Treasury's cybersecurity team to prepare for AI threats (Bloomberg) [15d]
• YouTube livestreams will show fewer ads to users who support creators with Super Chat, Super Sticker, or gift purchases, and disable ads during peak engagement (Andrew Romero/9to5Google) [15d]
• Anthropic opposes an Illinois bill backed by OpenAI that would shield AI labs from liability, even for "critical harms" like 100+ deaths or $1B+ in damage (Maxwell Zeff/Wired) [15d]
• Sources: cloud-computing startup Fluidstack is in talks to raise ~$1B at an $18B valuation, up from $7.5B when it raised money earlier in 2026 (Bloomberg) [15d]
• Google expands Personal Intelligence, which lets users connect their Google accounts for tailored Gemini answers, to India, initially for AI Pro and Ultra users (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch) [15d]
• Nvidia announces the Ising AI models, which it says are the first open models aimed at quantum computing calibration and error correction (Kyt Dotson/SiliconANGLE) [15d]
• Adobe patches a zero-day in Acrobat DC, Reader DC, and Acrobat 2024, which hackers have been actively exploiting for at least four months (Zack Whittaker/TechCrunch) [15d]
• Anthropic appoints Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan to its board, its second board addition in recent months as it eyes an IPO and pushes further into healthcare (Kate Clark/Wall Street Journal) [15d]
• Samsung quietly increases US prices of the Galaxy S25 Edge, S25 FE, Z Flip 7, Tab S11, Tab S11 Ultra, and more; the 1TB Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra jumps by $280 (Adrian Diaconescu/PhoneArena) [15d]
• Polymarket is auditing its Builders Program, which gives up to $2.5M in grants, after concerns that some participating startups are facilitating insider trading (Michael Roddan/The Information) [15d]
• Q&A with New York Assembly member and ex-Palantir staffer Alex Bores on running for Congress, Palantir, opposition from super PAC Leading the Future, and more (Katie Drummond/Wired) [15d]
• Amazon agrees to pay $11.57B to acquire Globalstar, or $90 per share; the deal requires Globalstar to meet certain HIBLEO-4 replacement satellite milestones (Reuters) [15d]
• Amazon agrees to buy satellite operator Globalstar, set to close in 2027, to expand Leo; Amazon and Apple agree for Leo to power some iPhone and Watch services (About Amazon) [15d]
• EV maker Lucid says Uber agreed to buy 35K+ additional Lucid vehicles for its robotaxi fleet and invest $200M, taking its total investments in Lucid to $500M (Connor Hart/Wall Street Journal) [15d]
• Kraken parent Payward is raising $200M from Frankfurt stock exchange operator Deutsche Börse for a 1.5% fully diluted stake, valuing Kraken at $13.3B (Emily Nicolle/Bloomberg) [15d]
• Sources: Chinese chipmaker YMTC plans to build two more factories in addition to one that will be completed in 2026, more than doubling its production capacity (Reuters) [15d]
• Iran's internet blackout enters a record 45th day, per NetBlocks, amid the war; the country's 90M people now rely on the domestic National Information Network (Financial Times) [15d]
• OpenAI's economic agenda is oddly socialist and wildly hypocritical, and is largely undermined by OpenAI's support for Republicans who attack welfare programs (Eric Levitz/Vox) [15d]
• US affidavit: the man charged with attacking Sam Altman's home had a document that "identified views opposed" to AI and listed addresses of other AI executives (New York Times) [15d]
• Sources: Amazon is in advanced talks to acquire satellite operator Globalstar in a deal that could be announced as soon as Tuesday; GSAT jumps 15%+ pre-market (Bloomberg) [15d]
• Google designates "back button hijacking" as malicious, saying sites interfering with a browser's back button function may be demoted in Search starting in June (Abner Li/9to5Google) [15d]
• A profile of Jeffrey Yan and his startup Hyperliquid, a $10B crypto exchange that never took VC money and generated $900M+ in profit in 2025 with 11 employees (Dom Cooke/Colossus) [15d]
• OpenAI acquires personal finance startup Hiro Finance for an undisclosed sum; Hiro stops new signups, will shut down on April 20 and delete all data on May 13 (Julie Bort/TechCrunch) [15d]
• Regulators in Europe were largely left out of the loop as Anthropic limited the release of its latest model Mythos to select companies and organizations (Politico) [15d]
• Voters in Festus, Missouri, ousted all four incumbent council members running for reelection last week, days after the council's approval of a $6B data center (Jeff Tomich/Politico) [15d]