The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• Illinois Legislature passes SB 315, a bill requiring annual independent third-party safety audits of leading AI companies; the bill heads to the governor's desk (Jared Perlo/NBC News) [47d]
• The US DOD announces a $9.7B five-year deal with Dell to provide Microsoft 365, advanced cloud subscriptions, and on-premises licensing to the US military (Garrett Downs/CNBC) [47d]
• US prosecutors charge Google engineer Michele Spagnuolo with using inside information to make $1.2M on Polymarket bets about Google's Year in Search results (ABC News) [47d]
• Sources: Uber has increased its stake in Delivery Hero to ~37% by acquiring Aspex Management's 14.6% share at a €12B valuation, after a takeover offer last week (Financial Times) [47d]
• HP reports Q2 revenue up 9% YoY to $14.4B, vs. $14B est., Personal Systems revenue up 13% to $10.2B, and forecasts Q3 adjusted EPS above estimates (Dina Bass/Bloomberg) [47d]
• Salesforce reports Q1 revenue up 13% YoY to $11.13B, vs. $11.05B est., Agentforce annual recurring revenue up 205% to $1.2B, and forecasts Q2 revenue below est. (Jordan Novet/CNBC) [47d]
• Snowflake reports Q1 revenue up 33% YoY to $1.39B, vs. $1.32B est., and commits to spending $6B on AWS over five years; SNOW jumps 29%+ after hours (CNBC) [47d]
• The UK's GCHQ head says the UK and allies have a "narrowing window" to counter cyber threats from China and Russia, as Russia intensifies "daily" hybrid warfare (Chloe Taylor/CNBC) [47d]
• Amazon MGM Studios announces the GenAI Creators' Fund, greenlights three AI animated series for Prime Video, and launches an AI production platform with AWS (Todd Spangler/Variety) [47d]
• Valve raises Steam Deck OLED prices due to "rising memory and storage costs"; the 512GB model is now $789, up from $549, and the 1TB model is $949, up from $649 (Jay Peters/The Verge) [47d]
• Meta rolls out Plus plans for Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp globally, will test $7.99/mo. and $19.99/mo. Meta AI plans, a $49.99/mo. creator plan, and more (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch) [47d]
• OpenAI announces partnerships to combat election misinformation, offering cybersecurity products to state officials and backing legislation to curb deepfakes (Maria Curi/Axios) [47d]
• Starlette, an open-source Python framework underpinning FastAPI, has a vulnerability, called BadHost, that can allow hackers to bypass authorization (Dan Goodin/Ars Technica) [47d]
• OpenAI Foundation says it is committing an initial $250M for grants, partnerships, and direct work aimed at helping workers and economies navigate AI disruption (Reuters) [47d]
• Tensormesh, whose inference platform uses KV caching to reduce costs, raised a $20M seed extension, bringing its total funding to $24.5M (Chris Metinko/Axios) [47d]
• NYC-based Pace, whose AI agents automate back-office operations for insurance companies, raised a $46M series B led by Thrive and Sequoia at a $375M valuation (Anna Tong/Forbes) [47d]
• AI coding startup Cognition AI raised more than $1B at a $26B valuation, and says its revenue run rate has increased to $492M from $37M in May 2025 (Rebecca Torrence/Bloomberg) [47d]
• Opendoor Co-Founder Eric Wu's NavigateAI, which is building an expert AI coach for construction workers, raised a $25M seed led by Elad Gil at a $225M valuation (Anna Tong/Forbes) [47d]
• ElevenLabs launches Music v2, which can switch genres mid-track and handle complex vocal compositions, built on licensed data and cleared for commercial use (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch) [47d]
• Trajectory, founded by ex-DeepMind, Apple, and OpenAI staff to train "continual learning" models on user interactions, raised a $15M seed at a $115M valuation (Maxwell Zeff/Wired) [47d]
• Roku launches its first major homescreen overhaul in over a decade, including a large "marquee" ad spot to tout apps or shows, in a bid to drive more engagement (Alex Weprin/The Hollywood Reporter) [47d]
• Amazon says it is making the "architecture, starter code, and learnings" from Alexa for Shopping available to third-party retailers, starting with Kate Spade (Annie Palmer/CNBC) [47d]
• The EU proposes new satellite access rules to let non-European companies like SpaceX bid for the airwaves, while preserving 33%+ of licenses for local companies (Paula Doenecke/Bloomberg) [47d]
• DC-based Airis Labs, which uses AI to convert visual data to law enforcement intelligence, emerges from stealth with a $31M Series B, for $60M in total funding (Chris Metinko/Axios) [47d]
• Polymarket is making it harder to use VPNs to access its service, blocking some IPs and suspicious accounts, and is asking some customers to identify themselves (Michael Roddan/The Information) [47d]
• YouTube makes its AI content labels more prominent on desktop and mobile, and will apply them automatically if it detects "significant photorealistic AI use" (Todd Spangler/Variety) [47d]
• Robinhood launches a feature to let users link AI agents, such as Claude or Cursor, to separate, dedicated investment accounts to trade stocks autonomously (Hannah Erin Lang/Wall Street Journal) [48d]
• Biohub, the Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan-funded institute, releases a protein-structure prediction model and more, calling it "a world model" of proteins (Ina Fried/Axios) [48d]
• The Shanghai Stock Exchange says memory maker CXMT cleared a listing review for the exchange's Nasdaq-like STAR Board, in what could be China's top IPO in 2026 (Wall Street Journal) [48d]
• Source: at a town hall, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei told staff they will see a 30%+ bump in their profit-sharing payouts in 2026 on average, after some staff had concerns (Bloomberg) [48d]
• Temu owner PDD reports Q1 revenue up 11% YoY to ~$15.7B, below ~$16.2B est., net profit down 15% to ~$1.85B, below ~$3.4B est., amid fierce competition in China (Wall Street Journal) [48d]
• Sources: ByteDance is discussing capex of up to $70B in 2026 as it builds out data centers and AI infrastructure, underwriting it with its $50B profit from 2025 (Bloomberg) [48d]
• Demis Hassabis says he still broadly expects AGI around 2030, though he now sees 2029 as a possibility, and 2026's "agentic era" is a "bit like a practice run" (Ina Fried/Axios) [48d]
• Milan-based social travel startup WeRoad raised a $58M Series C led by Airbnb, taking its total funding to ~$100M, to expand into the US, starting in Austin (Lauren Forristal/TechCrunch) [48d]
• Sources: Germany and Spain are leading opposition to EU plans to ban Chinese suppliers like Huawei from telecom networks as part of new cybersecurity rules (Bloomberg) [48d]
• Jensen Huang says Nvidia is spending $100B-$150B annually on its Taiwan supply chain, up from $10B-$15B four years ago, and will boost its Taiwan staff to 4,000 (Nikkei Asia) [48d]
• Datacurve releases the DeepSWE coding benchmark, a 113-task test across 91 open-source repositories and five languages, and says GPT-5.5 is the leader at 70% (Michael Nuñez/VentureBeat) [48d]
• Xreal launches a new sub-brand, X by Xreal, and the $299 a01 display glasses with micro OLED displays, 50° FOV, and 62g weight, set for July release in the US (Scott Stein/CNET) [48d]
• Sources: Taiwan suspects three people smuggled at least one Nvidia chip shipment to China after first exporting them to Japan; Taiwan detained them last week (Bloomberg) [48d]
• Amazon says it invested £15B in the UK in 2025, including new sites and expanded studio facilities, keeping it on track to invest £40B over three years by 2027 (Reuters) [48d]
• How AI is starting to dismantle the hegemony of the Big Four consultancies and other large firms, as AI agents help smaller consultancies handle big workloads (Financial Times) [48d]
• Sources: EU leaders are divided on curbing Big Tech as they weigh cloud tender rules and giving EU companies preferential access to mobile satellite spectrum (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters) [48d]
• A deep dive into how Claude Code and OpenClaw unleashed the AI agent revolution that is rapidly transforming the modern computing landscape (Steven Levy/Wired) [48d]
• Q&A with Claude Code creator and head Boris Cherny on how the title "software engineer" is disappearing, why AI may create more jobs than it destroys, and more (Casey Newton/Platformer) [48d]
• A look at the Pentagon's embrace of autonomous weapons before its fight with Anthropic over "red lines", and the debate over AI use in military operations (Hayden Field/The Verge) [48d]
• Sources and documents detail China's effort to modernize its decade-old domestic surveillance network with new generations of AI-enabled cameras and software (Eleanor Olcott/Financial Times) [48d]
• Analysis: the share of entry-level hiring in India's tech sector fell to ~15% in 2025 from 28% in 2024 as companies shifted focus to AI and automation roles (Tanya Pandey/The Economic Times) [48d]
• Sources: software-specialist PE firm Hg agrees to acquire Rightsline, whose software helps Disney, the BBC, WBD, and others manage IP licensing, for $500M (Financial Times) [48d]
• Trump says it is "critically important" that the CFTC has exclusive authority to oversee prediction markets, as some US states attempt to regulate them (Ashleigh Fields/The Hill) [48d]
• Initial benchmarks show Nvidia's Vera CPU, which features 88 in-house-designed Olympus cores, packs a heavy-hitting punch, beating Intel's and AMD's x86_64 CPUs (Michael Larabel/Phoronix) [48d]
• Document: Samsung plans to invest $1.5B to build a semiconductor testing plant focused on legacy chips in Vietnam; the plant is slated to open in November 2027 (Reuters) [48d]
• Samsung's largest union approves a pay deal that would give chip workers an average bonus of ~$340K, with ~74% of members voting in favor, staving off a strike (Yoolim Lee/Bloomberg) [48d]
• SK Hynix tops $1T in market value after shares jumped 11% on Wednesday, becoming the third Asian company to hit the mark; shares surged 900%+ in the past year (Bloomberg) [48d]
• Sources: Fireworks AI, which helps companies run AI models, is in talks to raise funding at a $15B valuation after being valued at $4B in October 2025 (Rebecca Torrence/Bloomberg) [48d]