The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• Several npm packages for the TanStack web development tools were compromised in the Mini Shai-Hulud supply chain attack; Mistral packages were also affected (Socket) [2d]
• GM plans to lay off IT workers in an effort to trim costs and bring in staff with skills in other tech areas; sources: the cuts will affect 500 to 600 employees (David Welch/Bloomberg) [2d]
• OpenAI launches Daybreak, a cybersecurity initiative integrating AI models and Codex Security to help organizations patch vulnerabilities (Alexey Shabanov/TestingCatalog AI News) [2d]
• Thinking Machines Lab details interaction models, which can think and respond in real time, letting users and AI interact continuously for better collaboration (Thinking Machines Lab) [2d]
• Source: Robinhood has filed confidentially for its second publicly traded venture fund, Robinhood Venture Fund II, focusing on early-stage startups (Lucinda Shen/Axios) [2d]
• Digg relaunches as an aggregator of AI news and social media commentary, with plans to expand to other topics; its previous reboot shut down in March (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch) [2d]
• GitLab announces layoffs, saying they are "not an AI optimization or cost cutting exercise", and plans to cut the number of countries it operates in (Sarah Frier/Bloomberg) [2d]
• Musk v. Altman: Satya Nadella says Elon Musk never contacted him with concerns that Microsoft's investments in OpenAI violated any special terms or commitments (CNBC) [2d]
• Musk v. Altman: Ilya Sutskever testifies that his OpenAI stake is worth ~$7B and he had concerns about Altman for a year before Altman's brief ouster as CEO (Rachel Metz/Bloomberg) [2d]
• Google's TIG says it has likely thwarted efforts to use AI for a "mass exploitation event" and warns that tools like OpenClaw are being used to find exploits (Samantha Subin/CNBC) [2d]
• Sources: the White House's Office of the National Cyber Director and Commerce Department's CAISI are fighting over which agency should lead AI model evaluations (Washington Post) [2d]
• An Anthropic engineer argues HTML is a better output format for AI agents than Markdown, citing information density, ease of sharing, and two-way interaction (@trq212) [2d]
• Apple releases iOS 26.5, introducing end-to-end encryption for RCS messaging in beta with supported carriers; the setting is enabled by default (Chance Miller/9to5Mac) [2d]
• Texas AG Ken Paxton sues Netflix for allegedly spying on consumers by collecting their data without consent, and designing its platform to be addictive (Jonathan Stempel/Reuters) [2d]
• Sources: German defense tech startup Helsing is set to raise $1.2B led by Dragoneer and Lightspeed at a valuation of about $18B, up from $14B in June 2025 (Financial Times) [2d]
• curl founder Daniel Stenberg says Mythos identified five vulnerabilities in curl, but a manual review found three were false positives and one was a bug (Daniel Stenberg/daniel.haxx.se) [2d]
• Agentic inference is set to be different than today's inference, and will change compute infrastructure because speed won't matter when humans aren't involved (Ben Thompson/Stratechery) [3d]
• Israeli startup Frame Security, which protects organizations from AI-powered social engineering attacks, emerges from stealth with $50M led by Index and others (CTech) [3d]
• Venmo is implementing a major privacy update to set new users' posts to "friends only" by default during onboarding; in 2021, a reporter found Joe Biden's Venmo (Jay Peters/The Verge) [3d]
• Cowboy Space, led by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt to build data centers in orbit, raised a $275M Series B led by Index Ventures at a $2B valuation (Bruce Einhorn/Bloomberg) [3d]
• OpenAI launches the OpenAI Deployment Company with a $4B+ investment to help organizations build and deploy AI systems, and acquires AI consulting firm Tomoro (Reuters) [3d]
• Google's TIG reports the first confirmed instance of "prominent cybercrime threat actors" using AI to find and weaponize a zero-day in a web-based admin tool (Dustin Volz/New York Times) [3d]
• Discord launches Nitro Rewards, giving Nitro subscribers access to offers from gaming services like Xbox Game Pass and hardware like Logitech G at no extra cost (Amanda Silberling/TechCrunch) [3d]
• Sources: Masayoshi Son has held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron about unveiling a multibillion-dollar AI data center project in the coming weeks (Bloomberg) [3d]
• In a two-week UK High Court trial, Shein accuses Temu of "industrial scale" copyright infringement of its photos; Temu says Shein is suing to stifle competition (Sam Tobin/Reuters) [3d]
• SEC filing: Cerebras upsizes its IPO to 30M shares at $150-$160 each, up from 28M shares at $115-$125, aiming to raise up to $4.8B at an up to $34.4B valuation (Carmen Reinicke/Bloomberg) [3d]
• Sources: Kuaishou plans to spin off its Kling AI video unit for an IPO in 2027 and is seeking a $20B valuation in pre-IPO funding talks with potential investors (The Information) [3d]
• The European Commission says it is in ongoing discussions with OpenAI and Anthropic to access their latest AI models; OpenAI is "proactively offering" access (Inti Landauro/Reuters) [3d]
• Microsoft's Playground Games accidentally uploads unencrypted pre-load files for Forza Horizon 6 to Steam, leaking the PC version before its release next week (Jez Corden/Windows Central) [3d]
• Circle raised $222M via the presale of its native Arc token at a $3B valuation; a16z led with a $75M investment, with participation from BlackRock and others (Tanaya Macheel/CNBC) [3d]
• Filing: Wise plans to debut on the Nasdaq as WSE, and relist in London for its secondary listing; Wise reports year-to-March net revenue up 19% YoY to $2.5B (Aisha S Gani/Bloomberg) [3d]
• Musk v. Altman: profiles of US judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, an Obama-nominated blunt and efficient operator, and Elon Musk's and OpenAI's attorneys (Angel Au-Yeung/Wall Street Journal) [3d]
• Turkish mobile gaming startup Grand Games raised a $70M Series B led by Balderton Capital, after raising $30M in 2025, taking its total funding to $103M (Tugce Ozsoy/Bloomberg) [3d]
• Dua Lipa files a $15M lawsuit against Samsung, alleging that it used her likeness to sell TVs without paying her and without permission starting in 2025 (Gene Maddaus/Variety) [3d]
• TikTok plans to roll out TikTok Ad-Free, a £3.99-per-month subscription for UK accounts aged 18 or older in the coming months, after testing the option in 2023 (Sean Keach/The Sun) [3d]
• The 90-day vulnerability disclosure policy is dead, as LLMs compress bug finding and exploit development time, and critical issues must be patched immediately (Himanshu Anand) [3d]
• Brookings: clerical and administrative workers, 85%+ of whom are women, are among the most exposed to AI-driven displacement and least equipped to navigate it (Taylor Telford/Financial Times) [3d]
• A look at "YouTube whisperers" like Paddy Galloway and Mario Joos, a booming class of advisers that help popular YouTube creators grow their audiences (CNBC) [3d]
• Chinese state media: CAS Cold Atom Technology has built the 200-qubit Hanyuan-2, the world's first dual-core quantum computer, with a core for error correction (Luke James/Tom's Hardware) [3d]
• SoftBank partners with South Korea's Cosmos Lab and DeltaX to mass produce next-gen data center batteries in Japan at the scale of one GWh per year in FY 2027 (Min-Jeong Lee/Bloomberg) [3d]
• Sources: OpenAI facilitated a $6.6B secondary share sale in October 2025 for 600+ current and ex-employees; over 75 people cashed out the maximum cap of $30M (Berber Jin/Wall Street Journal) [3d]
• Nvidia embraces its role as an AI investor in 2026, committing $40B+ to equity investments including a $30B stake in OpenAI, $3.2B in Corning, and $2.1B in IREN (CNBC) [3d]
• Q&A with Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon on 2026 as "year of agents", the end of the smartphone-centric world, 6G turning humans into "walking cameras", and more (Fortune) [3d]
• Corporate lawyers say AI-transcribed meeting notes may not have attorney-client privilege, making otherwise protected conversations discoverable in lawsuits (Sarah Kessler/New York Times) [3d]