The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

Waymo suspends freeway rides and pauses its Atlanta operations, as it updates software to improve performance around construction zones and flooded roadways (Reuters) [54d]
Adobe, Canva, and CapCut announce Gemini integrations to let users access the companies' image and video editing tools within the Gemini app (James Peckham/PCMag) [54d]
ElevenLabs, which aims to build an all-in-one AI voice app, licensed 200K human-voiced audiobooks from major publishers, available in ElevenReader for $11/mo. (Ashley Carman/Bloomberg) [54d]
Source: Cursor reached $3B in annualized revenue in late April and now has 3,000+ customers paying at least $100K each for its software on an annualized basis (Rachel Metz/Bloomberg) [54d]
Spotify closes up 13% after announcing new features and 2030 guidance, forecasting a compound annual growth rate in the mid-teens and gross margins of 35%-40% (Samantha Subin/CNBC) [54d]
Zoom reports Q1 revenue up 5.5% YoY to $1.24B, vs. $1.22B est., AI Companion paid users up 184%, forecasts FY 2027 revenue above est.; ZM jumps 8%+ after hours (Brody Ford/Bloomberg) [54d]
Take-Two reports Q4 bookings flat YoY at $1.58B, forecasts FY 2027 bookings below est., reiterates GTA VI's November 19 launch date; TTWO jumps 6%+ after hours (Zaheer Kachwala/Reuters) [54d]
Workday reports Q1 revenue up 13% YoY to $2.54B vs. $2.52B est., and lifts its full-year forecast, saying its AI strategy is working; WDAY jumps 9%+ after hours (Jordan Novet/CNBC) [54d]
Texas AG Ken Paxton sues Meta, accusing WhatsApp of marketing its services as secure but failing to "deliver on those promises" by accessing encrypted messages (Ryan Autullo/Bloomberg Law) [54d]
Meta joins TikTok, Snap, and YouTube in settling with a Kentucky school district to avoid a trial over claims the platforms were designed to addict kids (Erin Mulvaney/Wall Street Journal) [54d]
Sources: Starbucks shut down an AI program for automating inventory counts, nine months after deploying it, after it frequently miscounted and mislabeled items (Waylon Cunningham/Reuters) [54d]
Modal Labs, which offers a serverless cloud platform to build AI apps and run AI inference, raised a $355M Series C at a $4.65B valuation, up from $1.1B in 2025 (Deepa Seetharaman/Reuters) [54d]
Gavin Newsom signs an EO mandating state agencies work with the AI industry and others to study subsidies for companies that don't replace workers with AI (Cecilia Kang/New York Times) [54d]
Sources: OpenAI generated about $5.7B in revenue in Q1, nearly $1B more than Anthropic (Sri Muppidi/The Information) [54d]
Sources: the EU will propose temporarily lifting sanctions, imposed in April, on a major Chinese semiconductor supplier after automakers warned of shortages (Alberto Nardelli/Bloomberg) [54d]
August Robotics, which makes autonomous robots for construction and industrial applications, raised $30M led by Big Pi Ventures (Kyt Dotson/SiliconANGLE) [54d]
Apple plans to broadcast an MLS game on Saturday shot entirely on 15 iPhone 17 Pros, the first major live sports event to be captured using only smartphones (Todd Spangler/Variety) [54d]
Source: smart ring maker Oura filed confidentially for a US IPO, set for later in 2026; SF- and Finland-based Oura had an $11B valuation in September 2025 (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg) [54d]
Spotify and UMG plan to let Premium users create AI covers and remixes using music from participating UMG artists as a paid add-on, without giving a launch date (Jem Aswad/Variety) [54d]
London Mayor Sadiq Khan blocks the Met police's £50M Palantir deal to automate intelligence analysis, citing a "clear and serious breach" of procurement rules (Robert Booth/The Guardian) [54d]
Spotify partners with Live Nation to launch Reserved, a new feature that sets aside tickets for the most dedicated fans, starting with Premium users in the US (Ethan Millman/The Hollywood Reporter) [54d]
Spotify says it has 1M+ subscriptions to Audiobook+, which is on track for $100M in ARR, and unveils an ElevenLabs-powered audiobook self-publishing tool (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch) [54d]
Spotify Labs launches Studio, a NotebookLM-like desktop app to generate private, AI-powered podcasts, in research preview across 20+ markets (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch) [54d]
Crypto exchange Blockchain.com confidentially files for a US IPO; the UK-based company founded in 2011 was once valued at $14B (Logan Hitchcock/Decrypt) [54d]
Note: the White House postpones a planned ceremony this afternoon for Trump to sign a new EO on AI and cybersecurity; major tech CEOs were invited to attend (Ashley Gold/Axios) [54d]
Federal records: Grok was utilized in only 3 of 400+ publicly identified federal AI use cases in 2025, behind 234 for ChatGPT, 33 for Gemini, 26 for Claude (Reuters) [54d]
Waymo suspends operations in Atlanta and San Antonio as its robotaxis struggle with flooded roads and says it has yet to develop a "final remedy" for flooding (Sean O'Kane/TechCrunch) [54d]
Hark, founded by Figure AI CEO Brett Adcock to build AI-powered devices, raised a $700M+ Series A led by Parkway Venture at a $6B post-money valuation (Samantha Kelly/Bloomberg) [54d]
Sources: Anthropic is in talks to rent servers powered by Microsoft-designed chips; source: Anthropic has steadily increased its Azure usage since November 2025 (The Information) [54d]
Anthropic, Blackstone, and Hellman & Friedman's unnamed enterprise services JV buys Fractional AI, its first deal; sources say Fractional ends its OpenAI deal (Preeti Singh/Bloomberg) [54d]
Flipper unveils the Flipper One, a pocketable open Arm Linux computer with similar performance to a Raspberry Pi 5, and welcomes feedback to get it market-ready (Mark Tyson/Tom's Hardware) [54d]