The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• French prosecutors escalate an investigation into Elon Musk and X, focused on alleged algorithmic manipulation and sexual deepfakes, to a criminal probe (Lora Kolodny/CNBC) [68d]
• Block reports Q1 revenue up 5% YoY to $6.1B, vs. $5.9B est., and raises its 2026 gross profit forecast above estimates; XYZ jumps 7%+ after hours (Isabelle Lee/Bloomberg) [68d]
• Lyft reports Q1 revenue up 14% YoY to $1.65B, vs. $1.63B est., gross bookings up 19% to $4.95B, vs. $4.91B est., and rides up 8.5% to 236.9M, vs. 241.2M est. (Kelly Cloonan/Wall Street Journal) [68d]
• CoreWeave reports Q1 revenue up 112% YoY to $2.08B, vs. $1.97B est., a $99.4B revenue backlog, forecasts Q2 revenue below estimates; CRWV drops 8%+ after hours (Jordan Novet/CNBC) [68d]
• Nvidia and data center operator IREN announce a deal to deploy up to 5 GW of AI infrastructure; Nvidia can invest $2.1B into IREN; IREN jumps 9%+ after hours (Jonathan Vanian/CNBC) [68d]
• Cloudflare reports Q1 revenue up 34% YoY to $639.8M, plans to cut 1,100+ jobs as it shifts to an "agentic AI-first operating model"; NET drops 13%+ after hours (Ignacio Gonzalez/Bloomberg) [68d]
• Airbnb reports Q1 revenue up 18% YoY to $2.68B, vs. $2.62B est., Nights and Seats Booked up 9% to 156.2M, vs. 155.77M est., lifts 2026 revenue growth guidance (Samantha Subin/CNBC) [68d]
• Coinbase reports Q1 revenue down 31% YoY to $1.41B, vs. $1.52B est., and a loss of $1.49 per share, vs. a $0.27 profit est.; COIN drops 4%+ after hours (CNBC) [68d]
• Goldman Sachs: Alphabet and Amazon generated "other income" totaling $53B in Q1, or ~60% of their Q1 income; $49B was due to equity stakes in private companies (Robin Wigglesworth/Financial Times) [68d]
• Sources: OpenAI and Broadcom discuss terms for Broadcom to finance initial custom chip production for ~$18B, conditioned on Microsoft buying ~40% of the chips (Anissa Gardizy/The Information) [68d]
• Anthropic researchers detail natural language autoencoders, which convert LLM activations, the numbers encoding a model's thoughts, into natural language text (Anthropic) [68d]
• Sources: Ramp told investors it is raising $750M co-led by Iconiq Capital and GIC at a valuation of $40B+ before the investment, up from $32B in November 2025 (Kate Clark/Wall Street Journal) [68d]
• EU legislators reach a deal to postpone restrictions on high-risk AI until December 2027 and to exempt the use of AI in industrial applications from the AI Act (Pieter Haeck/Politico) [69d]
• While Anthropic will use the Colossus 1 data center, which has a really bad environmental record, xAI retains the larger Colossus 2 for its own AI training (Simon Willison/Simon Willison's Weblog) [69d]
• Sources: AirPods with cameras reached an advanced testing stage; the cameras will feed data to Siri to help answer questions, rather than take photos or video (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg) [69d]
• OpenAI launches three new real-time voice models for reasoning, translation, and transcription, included in its Realtime API (Zac Hall/9to5Mac) [69d]
• OpenAI launches Trusted Contact, an optional safety feature for ChatGPT that lets adult users assign an emergency contact for mental health and safety concerns (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge) [69d]
• Elon Musk says SpaceX reserves "the right to reclaim the compute" from Anthropic if its "AI engages in actions that harm humanity" (Elon Musk/@elonmusk) [69d]
• Filing: OnlyFans owner Leonid Radvinsky's wife assumed significant control of OnlyFans holding company Fenix in March following the death of Radvinsky (Bloomberg) [69d]
• AWS unveils Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Payments and partners with Coinbase and Stripe to enable AI agents to execute transactions using stablecoins (RT Watson/The Block) [69d]
• Meta challenges Ofcom in UK High Court over the Online Safety Act, which calculates levies based on global, not UK, revenue, in a case scheduled for October (Sam Tobin/Reuters) [69d]
• Nova Intelligence, which is building agentic AI for SAP ahead of a 2030 migration, raised a $31.5M Series A led by Chemistry, taking its total funding to $40M+ (Lily Mae Lazarus/Fortune) [69d]
• Tessera Labs, which uses AI agents to automate enterprise IT migrations and ERP transformations, raised a $60M Series A led by a16z at a $320M valuation (Anna Tong/Forbes) [69d]
• Interview with Rishi Chandra, Google's VP for health and home, about shutting Google Fit by year's end, the rebranded Google Health app, Health Coach, and more (Julian Chokkattu/Wired) [69d]
• Spotify launches Save to Spotify, a command-line tool that allows AI agents to upload generated audio summaries and personal podcasts to a user's account (Terrence O'Brien/The Verge) [69d]
• Google rebrands Fitbit Premium as Google Health Premium, adding Gemini-powered coaching and other features, and raises its annual price from $79.99 to $99.99 (Adamya Sharma/Android Authority) [69d]
• Google launches the $100 Fitbit Air, a Whoop-like screenless wearable, with Gemini-powered features like Google Health Coach, available May 26 (Cherlynn Low/Engadget) [69d]
• Cologne-based AI translation startup DeepL plans to cut ~25% of its workforce, or ~250 staff, saying adapting to AI "means fewer layers" and "faster decisions" (Amy Thomson/Bloomberg) [69d]
• Khosla-backed robotics startup Genesis AI unveils GENE-26.5, its first model, which can control robotic hands that it designed in-house to do tasks like cooking (Anna Heim/TechCrunch) [69d]
• Kraken parent Payward agrees to buy Hong Kong-based Reap, which connects financial systems with digital assets, for $600M, and issues stock at a $20B valuation (Crystal Tse/Bloomberg) [69d]
• Kalshi raised $1B led by Coatue at a $22B valuation, its third round in seven months after raising $1B and $300M+, and hits $178B in annualized trading volume (Michael J. de la Merced/New York Times) [69d]