The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• Triomics, which is building an AI-powered platform to help oncologists automate data-heavy tasks, raised a $22M Series B, following a $15M Series A in 2024 (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch) [46d]
• Sources: Apollo Global and Blackstone are working to bring additional investors into a ~$36B debt financing deal to purchase Google TPUs for Anthropic to lease (Bloomberg) [46d]
• California AG Rob Bonta sues 23andMe, alleging it failed to protect sensitive user data in a 2023 breach that affected ~7M people across the US (Jaimie Ding/Associated Press) [46d]
• Okta reports Q1 revenue up 11% YoY to $765M, vs. $752M est., says the agentic AI build-out is spiking demand for its identity tools; OKTA jumps 7%+ after hours (Samantha Subin/CNBC) [46d]
• Sources: Amazon has shut down an internal leaderboard that tracked employees' use of AI tools after workers tried to boost their scores with needless tasks (Rafe Rosner-Uddin/Financial Times) [46d]
• Sources: Airwallex raised new funding led by Lee Fixel's Addition at a ~$12B valuation, up from $8B late last year, and hit $1.5B in ARR, up from $1B in October (Axios) [46d]
• Doc: the EU is preparing emergency powers to intervene in Europe's chip supply chains during shortages, including by forcing chipmakers to override contracts (Barbara Moens/Financial Times) [46d]
• Dell reports Q1 revenue up 88% YoY to $43.84B, vs. $35.43B est., and forecasts FY 2027 revenue above estimates; DELL jumps 15%+ after hours (Jordan Novet/CNBC) [46d]
• Autodesk agrees to buy MaintainX, a company focused on maintenance tools, in an all-cash deal that values MaintainX at $3.6B (Brody Ford/Bloomberg) [46d]
• Snowflake stock closed up 36% on Thursday, its best day ever, after the company boosted guidance and announced an AI compute deal with Amazon (Samantha Subin/CNBC) [46d]
• Fonoa, which helps enterprises manage indirect tax compliance, raised a $110M Series C led by Headline and acquired PwC's Indirect Tax Edge platform (Ryan Lawler/Axios) [46d]
• Anthropic adds dynamic workflows to Claude Code, enabling hundreds of subagents to run in parallel for complex engineering tasks such as framework migrations (Claude) [46d]
• The CFTC moves to vacate a $5M settlement with Gemini, reversing a Biden-era enforcement action, following a lobbying campaign by the Winklevoss twins (Wall Street Journal) [46d]
• Anthropic raised $65B at a $900B valuation, up from $380B three months ago and ahead of OpenAI's last valuation of $730B, says its revenue run rate crossed $47B (New York Times) [46d]
• Anthropic says it expects Mythos-class models to be available to all customers "in the coming weeks" following the development of stronger safeguards (Madison Mills/Axios) [46d]
• Corgi, which uses AI to provide insurance for startups, raised a $106M Series B1 at a $2.6B valuation, up from $1.3B on May 6, for a total funding of $378M (Dominic-Madori Davis/TechCrunch) [46d]
• Anthropic launches Opus 4.8, saying it's "more likely to flag uncertainties about its work and less likely to make unsupported claims", at the same price as 4.7 (Russell Brandom/TechCrunch) [46d]
• Elon Musk says Anthropic's Colossus deal is "a 180 day lease with 90 day notice"; SpaceX's S-1 said Anthropic "agreed to pay a monthly fee through May 2029" (Russell Brandom/TechCrunch) [46d]
• Meta's Oversight Board says Meta agreed to increase its funding by $13M, ensuring that it will be funded through 2028, reversing a planned decrease in funding (Casey Newton/Platformer) [46d]
• IBM plans to invest more than $10B in quantum computing over five years as it aims to build the first large-scale, error-free quantum computer by 2029 (Reuters) [46d]
• Waymo unveils Ojai, a vehicle designed in partnership with Zeekr for robotaxi use, initially for select riders in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix (Edward Ludlow/Bloomberg) [46d]
• YouTube launches new Premium podcast features, including an AI-powered recommendation tool, an "Auto speed" setting, and a new on-the-go listening mode (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch) [46d]
• Saris, which builds AI agents to automate back-office work for banks and credit unions, raised a $28.8M Series A led by 8VC (Ryan Lawler/Axios) [46d]
• Reactor, which says its AI platform can generate video in real-time with near-zero latency, emerges from stealth with a $59M Series A led by Lightspeed (Todd Spangler/Variety) [46d]
• Visa makes an undisclosed investment in Replit; the two will explore how Replit developers can use Visa Intelligent Commerce and the Trusted Agent Protocol (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch) [46d]
• Source: Groq is raising ~$650M from existing investors; the AI chipmaker earlier signed a $20B Nvidia licensing deal that saw much of its senior team depart (Dan Primack/Axios) [46d]
• Israel-based web development company Wix is cutting 20% of its workforce, citing the "fast evolution of AI capabilities" and currency exchange rate difficulties (CJ Haddad/CNBC) [46d]
• Intel unveils its first dedicated handheld gaming chips, the Arc G3 and Arc G3 Extreme, featuring Xe3 GPU cores, arriving first in the Acer Predator Atlas 8 (Sean Hollister/The Verge) [46d]
• Qualcomm unveils the Snapdragon C, an entry-level ARM-based SoC for Windows 11 devices starting at $300 and shipping in 2026, to compete with the MacBook Neo (Zac Bowden/Windows Central) [46d]
• Sources: at WWDC, Apple is likely to showcase how 15 years of designing custom silicon chips gives it an advantage in local AI, using a distilled Gemini model (Aaron Tilley/The Information) [46d]
• Filing: CNN sues Perplexity in New York for allegedly unlawfully copying and distributing CNN content, after failing to agree on terms with Perplexity in 2025 (Brian Stelter/CNN) [46d]
• YouTube adds a "custom feed" to its home page, letting users enter a prompt to create a constantly refreshed feed, available to signed-in users in the US (Andrew Romero/9to5Google) [46d]
• Illustrations based on sources detail Apple's Siri overhaul, including a new UI, a chatbot-style app, and other major iOS 27 changes, ahead of WWDC on June 8 (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg) [46d]
• Oura unveils the Oura Ring 5, with a 40% smaller form factor, improved sensing, and repositioned LEDs, on sale from June 4 for $399, up from the Ring 4's $349 (Bloomberg) [46d]
• Letter: US Central Command says it received "threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data" to target US personnel in war zones (Raphael Satter/Reuters) [47d]
• IBM and Red Hat commit $5B to establish a new model for open-source software, dubbed Project Lightwell, and will deploy 20,000 engineers, supported by AI (Connor Hart/Wall Street Journal) [47d]
• AWS is rolling out Resilient Network Graphs, a "quasi-random" networking architecture that uses a flat mesh design, and says it accelerates information flows (Lauren Goode/Wired) [47d]
• Source: the Shanghai Futures Exchange is in the early stages of designing futures contracts for AI tokens; US exchanges are set to launch GPU compute futures (Reuters) [47d]
• Samsung's Securities, SDS, and Card units jointly acquire a 4% stake in Dunamu, which runs South Korea's largest crypto exchange, in a ~$446M all-cash deal (Choi Yeon-jae/The Korea Herald) [47d]
• London-based Geordie AI, which builds a security and governance platform for AI agents, raised a $30M Series A led by Balderton at an estimated $180M valuation (Jeremy Kahn/Fortune) [47d]
• The Steam Deck's huge price hike, from $399 in 2022 to $789 today, is the end of an era for gaming handhelds, coming amid RAMageddon, tariffs, and the Iran war (Sean Hollister/The Verge) [47d]
• As Google plans to build a $15B AI data center hub in India's Visakhapatnam, locals and rights groups are raising concerns over "extremely high" water stress (Wall Street Journal) [47d]
• The European Commission fines Temu €200M under the DSA for allegedly failing to adequately stop the sale of illegal products; further penalties could follow (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters) [47d]
• London- and SF-based Orbital Industries, which uses its Orb model to design advanced materials and then sell them directly, raised a $50M Series B led by Plural (Jeremy Kahn/Fortune) [47d]
• Internal speech: JD.com founder Liu Qiangdong vows to protect the company's 900,000 employees from AI and automation, saying it will "do everything possible" (Bloomberg) [47d]
• The European Commission launches a full review of JD.com's €2.2B acquisition of German electronics retailer Ceconomy under its Foreign Subsidies Regulation (Bloomberg) [47d]
• UK researchers win access to Google's Willow quantum chip, which it says completes a calculation in five minutes that takes supercomputers 10 septillion years (Chris Vallance/BBC) [47d]
• Dealroom: London overtakes Paris to reclaim its position as Europe's leading tech hub, and now ranks fourth globally; London startups raised $17.7B in 2025 (Paul Sandle/Reuters) [47d]
• Mistral says it is accelerating superintelligence development to ensure Europe's independence from US tech giants, and signs deals to supply Airbus and BMW (Sam Schechner/Wall Street Journal) [47d]
• Chip design software maker Synopsys reaches a deal with Elliott, giving one board seat to the activist investor's Jesse Cohn, after roughly two months of talks (Svea Herbst-Bayliss/Reuters) [47d]
• Sources: Australia-founded Airwallex, which Keith Rabois accused of being a "Chinese backdoor", is relocating some staff out of China amid its US expansion (Financial Times) [47d]
• As the US AI boom drains venture capital from Africa, startups on the continent are pivoting to domestic funding sources, like pension funds and local VC firms (Rivaldo Jantjies/Bloomberg) [47d]
• Swedish chip optical component maker Sivers, whose stock is up ~1,700% YTD, giving it a ~$2.5B market cap, has become one of the country's most-shorted stocks (Jonas Ekblom/Bloomberg) [47d]
• Anthropic and OpenAI seem to have finally found product-market fit with coding agents, which are quickly becoming daily drivers for highly paid professionals (Simon Willison/Simon Willison's Weblog) [47d]
• Surging AI demand has caused shortages and price increases across the entire optical supply chain, from lasers and substrates to optical fibers and connectors (Nikkei Asia) [47d]
• Sources: ByteDance is developing its own CPUs to support growing AI infrastructure needs, as chip price hikes and supply shortages constrain expansion plans (Reuters) [47d]
• Record Q1 data center spending of $6.2B, up ~100% QoQ, boosted Australia's investment growth, supporting an economy strained by energy costs and high rates (James Mayger/Bloomberg) [47d]
• Analysis: the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, which tracks 30 largest US-listed chipmakers, is up ~75% YTD and on track for its biggest annual gain since 1999 (Financial Times) [47d]
• Global AI hardware demand is easing China's concerns over a stronger yuan hurting exports, as AI hardware exports surge and chip equipment imports rise (Bloomberg) [47d]
• Taiwanese tech companies have completed a record $14.5B of debt deals so far this year, as they race to secure financing to meet soaring demand for AI capacity (Aileen Chuang/Bloomberg) [47d]
• Companies are using AI at their global capability centers in India to bring more creative work in-house, cutting turnaround times and reliance on ad agencies (Reuters) [47d]
• Swiggy CEO Sriharsha Majety says his company plans to stay out of the spending war as Amazon and Flipkart ramp up their quick commerce efforts across India (Bloomberg) [47d]
• Kirkland & Ellis, the world's highest-grossing law firm, is setting aside $500M to build its own AI platform rather than rely on tools available to its rivals (Financial Times) [47d]
• Trade Desk's market cap fell ~70% from a December 2024 peak as it contends with frustrated agency partners, competition from Google, and a new entrant, Amazon (Patience Haggin/Wall Street Journal) [47d]
• Memo: Meta plans to embed engineers and product managers within large corporate customers as part of a new Enterprise Solutions unit to help deploy its AI tools (Jyoti Mann/The Information) [47d]
• Sources: the Pentagon is pursuing funding deals with US drone companies, potentially with equity stakes, to increase domestic production and lower unit costs (Wall Street Journal) [47d]
• Last.fm announces it is an independent company again, 19 years after being acquired by CBS; it plans to keep its current team and continue the service as normal (Mariella Moon/Engadget) [47d]
• Kuaishou reports Q1 revenue up 3.4% YoY to ~$5B and Kling AI revenue up 300%+ YoY to ~$96M; Kling reached a ~$500M annualized revenue run rate in March 2026 (Coco Feng/South China Morning Post) [47d]
• The CFTC files alongside Gemini to nullify Gemini's $5M settlement in January 2025, arguing that the agency's current management wouldn't have pursued the case (Jesse Hamilton/CoinDesk) [47d]
• Filing: Amazon will acquire Apple's 20% stake in Globalstar as part of its acquisition of the satellite provider and create a subsidiary to conduct the merger (Michael Kan/PCMag) [47d]
• SoFi says SoFiUSD, its US dollar-pegged stablecoin on Ethereum and Solana, is now available for members to buy, sell, hold, and convert within the SoFi app (Brian Danga/The Block) [47d]
• Mark Zuckerberg tells shareholders that a Meta cloud computing business is "definitely on the table" if it overspends on data centers and has excess capacity (Jonathan Vanian/CNBC) [47d]