The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• How AI is transforming the pharma industry, with most gains so far from back-office streamlining and faster manufacturing rather than breakthrough drug research (Peter Loftus/Wall Street Journal) [9d]
• Lattice Semiconductor agrees to acquire AMI for $1.65B in cash and stock; Georgia-based AMI provides firmware and infrastructure manageability for cloud and AI (Mike Rogoway/Oregonian) [9d]
• Grab reports Q1 revenue up 24% YoY to $955M, above est., and a $154M adjusted EBITDA, vs. $146.3M est., helped by resilient demand for ride hailing and delivery (Olivia Poh/Bloomberg) [9d]
• New Mexico child safety trial: New Mexico asks a judge to declare Meta a public nuisance and to order it to pay $3.7B and overhaul its apps to protect children (Diana Novak Jones/Reuters) [9d]
• Crypto stocks jump after lawmakers struck a compromise on the CLARITY Act to preserve stablecoin rewards under certain conditions; Circle's stock closed up ~20% (Tanaya Macheel/CNBC) [9d]
• Duolingo reports Q1 revenue up 27% YoY to $292M, vs. $288.5M est., bookings up 14% to $308.5M, and expects slower growth in Q2; DUOL drops 12%+ after hours (Akash Sriram/Reuters) [10d]
• Musk v. Altman: Greg Brockman testifies that his OpenAI stake is now worth ~$30B; a Musk attorney asks why he hasn't donated $29B to OpenAI's nonprofit arm (Bloomberg) [10d]
• Palantir reports Q1 revenue up 85% YoY to $1.63B, vs. $1.54B est., US government revenue up 84% to $687M, and US commercial revenue up 133% to $595M (Jaspreet Singh/Reuters) [10d]
• Elon Musk agrees to pay $1.5M to settle SEC allegations that he cheated Twitter shareholders in 2022 by failing to disclose the 5%+ stake he had in the company (Nicola M White/Bloomberg) [10d]
• Pinterest reports Q1 revenue up 18% YoY to $1B, vs. $966M est., MAUs up 11% YoY to 631M, and forecasts Q2 revenue above estimates; PINS jumps 17%+ after hours (Jonathan Vanian/CNBC) [10d]
• Musk v. Altman: Stuart Russell, Musk's only AI expert witness, warned of AI risks but his concerns about AI's existential threats were excluded by the judge (Tim Fernholz/TechCrunch) [10d]
• Sources: the Trump administration is discussing an EO to create an AI working group to examine AI oversight procedures, including vetting models before release (New York Times) [10d]
• Former Trump and Biden AI advisers Dean Ball and Ben Buchanan urge bipartisan action on AI security risks, including tighter export controls and safety audits (New York Times) [10d]
• Why there is a 60%+ chance of AI systems autonomously building their own successors by the end of 2028, and a look at the consequences of fully automated AI R&D (Jack Clark/Import AI) [10d]
• Sources: Apple prepares a "Create a Pass" feature for iOS 27, which lets users take a QR code and generate a custom pass around it for concerts and other venues (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg) [10d]
• Intel taps Alex Katouzian, an ex-Qualcomm EVP, to lead Client Computing & Physical AI group, and names Pushkar Ranade as CTO, after serving on an interim basis (Dylan Martin/CRN) [10d]
• Ex-iRobot CEO Colin Angle launches Familiar Machines & Magic and unveils Familiar, a dog-like, "emotionally intelligent" robot that reacts to owner's feelings (Christopher Mims/Wall Street Journal) [10d]
• Nearly 20 US state-run health insurance exchanges include ad trackers that send user data like race and citizenship info to companies like Meta, TikTok, Google (Bloomberg) [10d]
• Sources: more than two dozen prediction-market ETFs have been pushed back as the SEC seeks more information; they were originally expected to launch this week (Suzanne McGee/Reuters) [10d]
• Filing: Blackstone's data center acquisition vehicle seeks to raise as much as $1.75B in its IPO, and will target newly built data centers valued at $250M-$1.5B (Subrat Patnaik/Bloomberg) [10d]
• Cisco agrees to acquire Astrix Security, which helps companies monitor and control the permissions granted to AI agents, a source says for approximately $400M (Meir Orbach/CTech) [10d]
• Investment and tech firm Long Lake says it will buy corporate travel operator Amex GBT for $6.3B, citing AI's ability to modernize the business travel sector (Reuters) [10d]
• Inside Palantir Foundation's Atlantic and Pacific Forum at Yale for invited students: State Dept. and Palantir staff share a vision of mixing AI and state power (Alex Bronzini-Vender/New York Magazine) [10d]
• Panthalassa, which aims to power floating data centers using energy generated by ocean waves, raised $140M led by Peter Thiel, source says at a $1B valuation (Tim Bradshaw/Financial Times) [10d]
• How "emotion AI", the use of facial and sentiment analysis tools to track workers' moods, is seeping into white-collar jobs amid concerns over privacy and bias (Ellen Cushing/The Atlantic) [10d]
• SAP to acquire Dremio, an open data lakehouse provider, and Prior Labs, which it pledges to invest €1B in over four years, hoping to create a frontier AI lab (Larry Dignan/Constellation Research) [10d]
• Katie Haun raises $1B for two funds split between early and later-stage investments, looking at startups blending financial services, AI, and alternative assets (Natasha Mascarenhas/Bloomberg) [10d]
• Bret Taylor's Sierra, which sells AI customer service agents, raised a $950M Series E led by Tiger and GV at a $15.8B post-money valuation, up from $10B in 2025 (Kate Rooney/CNBC) [10d]
• Trump's World Liberty Financial countersues Tron founder Justin Sun, alleging defamation, contract violations, and more (Ben Weiss/Fortune) [10d]
• The jury-less bench trial phase of Meta's child safety case in NM begins today to determine if Meta's actions were a public nuisance and warrant product changes (Jonathan Vanian/CNBC) [10d]
• eBay's stock jumps 6%+ to ~$111, below GameStop's $125/share acquisition offer, in a sign investors see hurdles to completing a deal; GameStop's stock drops ~4% (Bloomberg) [10d]
• Filing: Elon Musk texted Greg Brockman about settling days before trial; after being denied, he said Brockman and Altman "will be the most hated men in America" (Ashley Capoot/CNBC) [10d]
• Source: OpenAI has raised over $4B at a $10B pre-money valuation for The Deployment Company, a new joint venture to help businesses adopt OpenAI tools (Seth Fiegerman/Bloomberg) [10d]
• Enzo Health, whose AI tools help home health and hospice agencies automate tasks like patient intake and documentation review, raised a $20M Series A led by N47 (Brock E.W. Turner/Axios) [10d]
• How AI tools such as Naver's Talking Buddy and SuperBrain are helping South Korea's elderly ease loneliness, detect emergencies, and slow cognitive decline (Choe Sang-Hun/New York Times) [10d]
• Amazon debuts Supply Chain Services, allowing other companies to use its logistics network to move, store, and deliver raw materials, final products, and more (Deborah Sophia/Reuters) [10d]
• Instructure reported a data breach on April 30; ShinyHunters added Instructure to its victims list and claims it has 3.65TB of data from ~9K institutions (Ionut Arghire/SecurityWeek) [10d]
• Jensen Huang said Nvidia's market share of AI accelerators in China has "now dropped to zero" and that US export policy "has already largely backfired" (Anton Shilov/Tom's Hardware) [10d]
• Source: Cerebras is expected to price its shares at between $115 and $125 and go public with the "CBRS" ticker; Cerebras is targeting a $40B valuation (Reuters) [10d]
• Legislators and experts criticize the EU's €20B sovereign compute data center plan, questioning whether there is demand and the plan's reliance on Nvidia GPUs (Pieter Haeck/Politico) [10d]
• An analysis of 1.6M Polymarket accounts since November 2022: 0.1% of users take 67% of profits, with the highest-frequency traders seeing the most success (Wall Street Journal) [10d]
• A profile of William Savitt, Sam Altman's lead lawyer against Elon Musk, who represented Twitter against Musk in 2022 and helped OpenAI's for-profit transition (Jacob Shamsian/Business Insider) [10d]
• Chinese state media: AI-generated Chinese microdramas to be worth $3B+ in 2026, out of a $14B+ total microdrama market, boosted by tools like Seedance 2.0 (New York Times) [10d]
• Sources: some lenders are exploring private deals to sell their data center debt, and some banks are seeking to offload their Oracle-linked loans at a discount (Financial Times) [10d]
• Sources: SoftBank plans to make lithium- and cobalt-free data center batteries in Japan as soon as FY2027, as Japan tries to cut its reliance on Chinese metals (Natsuki Yamamoto/Nikkei Asia) [10d]
• China's Linkerbot, which holds 80%+ of global dexterous robotic hands market, raised a Series B+ at a $3B valuation and seeks a $6B valuation in its next round (Laurie Chen/Reuters) [10d]
• Sources: Anthropic is finalizing a deal for a $1.5B JV with Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Hellman & Friedman, and others to sell AI tools to PE-backed companies (Wall Street Journal) [10d]
• Apple's handling of vibe coding apps draws complaints from startups like Replit and Anything that iOS App Store rules for their apps are applied erratically (Michael Acton/Financial Times) [10d]
• How music streaming services are adapting to the rise of AI-generated music by labeling, deranking, and demonetizing tracks, using AI detection tools, and more (Terrence O'Brien/The Verge) [10d]