The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• YouTube rolls out changes to Shorts, including adding a setting to double playback speed, eliminating the "dislike" button, and more (Lucas Ropek/TechCrunch) [16d]
• Doc: the DOD has quietly revised its doctrine on how the US military picks its targets, envisioning "systems where AI initiates actions with human monitoring" (Katrina Manson/Bloomberg) [16d]
• NHTSA proposes eliminating the mandate for manual brake pedals in "vehicles designed to be driven exclusively by automated driving systems" (Sean O'Kane/TechCrunch) [17d]
• Apple says it removed VK's apps from the App Store to comply with sanctions; VK says they were removed without warning and it has never been under US sanctions (Reuters) [17d]
• Patronus AI, which builds simulated digital environments for evaluating AI agents, raised a $50M Series B led by Greenfield, bringing its total funding to $70M (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch) [17d]
• Om Malik, a longtime technology writer, founder of Gigaom, and a partner at True Ventures, died on Wednesday at 59 (Om Malik/On my Om) [17d]
• Source: Google is asking publishers that test new AI features in Google News to grant it broad rights to their content, including to potentially train AI models (Ann Gehan/The Information) [17d]
• Chipmaker Onsemi agrees to buy Synaptics in a nearly $7B all-stock deal expected to close in the middle of 2027; ON drops 9%+ and SYNA jumps 11%+ after hours (Samantha Subin/CNBC) [17d]
• Source: Muon Space, which operates satellite networks for climate and national security monitoring, is raising $250M; it has raised ~$181M since its 2021 launch (Alan Neuhauser/Axios) [17d]
• Sources: OpenAI leans toward holding off its IPO until 2027 after warnings that Sam Altman's desired $1T valuation may not be met in current market conditions (New York Times) [17d]
• Sources: Sam Altman told staff the US government asked OpenAI to stagger the release of GPT 5.6 over security concerns, approving "access customer by customer" (The Information) [17d]
• Apple stock closed down 6.15% on Thursday after the company raised some product prices, its worst fall since April 2025 (MacKenzie Sigalos/CNBC) [17d]
• Story Protocol, a blockchain-based IP ownership network that raised $140M, rebrands as Data Foundation to build an on-chain registry for AI training data (Olivier Acuna/CoinDesk) [17d]
• The US awarded $250M under the CHIPS program to a startup co-founded by billionaire Robert Friedland to develop silicon-carbide chips and pulsed-power tech (James Attwood/Bloomberg) [17d]
• Microsoft quietly extends the Extended Security Updates program for Windows 10 consumers by a year, letting eligible users get updates through October 12, 2027 (Zac Bowden/Windows Central) [17d]
• Netris, which helps neoclouds automate network configuration to bring their data centers online faster, raised a $15M Series A from a16z (Ram Iyer/TechCrunch) [17d]
• Sources: Kraken is in talks to acquire a 15% stake in DeFi protocol Aave at a $385M valuation, investing 35,000 ETH in return for 250,000 AAVE tokens (Will Canny/CoinDesk) [17d]
• Notion plans to shut down its Gmail client Notion Mail on September 22 and go "all in" on AI agents to run inboxes, saying 50%+ of users do not open the inbox (Zac Hall/9to5Mac) [17d]
• Microsoft says the price of Xbox consoles will increase on August 1 by $100 for 512GB models and $150 for 1TB models, the third price increase since 2025 (Kenneth Shepard/Kotaku) [17d]
• Google launches a Google Finance app for Android, with market data, financial news, and an AI-powered "Key Moments" feature, and plans an iOS version this year (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch) [17d]
• Nebulock, which helps security teams proactively find and remediate threats across a company's security stack, raised a $25M Series A led by FirstMark (Chris Metinko/Axios) [17d]
• Sources: Bumble explores a sale amid slowing growth in the online dating sector; its shares fell 48% over the past 12 months, giving it a market cap of $388M (Milana Vinn/Reuters) [17d]
• Sources: Apple plans to skip higher-end M6 chips and launch its next Pro and Max chips in 2027 as part of the M7 lineup, to boost on-device AI capabilities (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg) [17d]
• Memo: Meta Superintelligence Labs is hiring three founders and other team members behind AI security startup Virtue AI; two founders report to Nat Friedman (Madison Mills/Axios) [17d]
• General Intuition, which trains AI agents in spatial reasoning via gameplay footage, raised $320M led by Khosla at a $2.3B valuation, for $454M in total funding (Rebecca Bellan/TechCrunch) [17d]
• Anthropic hires French telecom group Orange's Chief AI Officer Steve Jarrett to help Anthropic "better understand and adapt" its products to Europe and Africa (Gianluca Lo Nostro/Reuters) [17d]
• Sources and a draft document: the US proposes that the EU sign on to an AI partnership to help secure chip supply chains; the one-page statement had few details (Alberto Nardelli/Bloomberg) [17d]
• Sony's Bungie says it is laying off a "significant number of employees", including "most of the Destiny team"; Bungie has an estimated headcount of 800 (Ethan Gach/Kotaku) [17d]
• Sources: Google expands the scope of its months-old AI coding strike team to "midtraining" to better compete with Anthropic, after key executive departures (Erin Woo/The Information) [17d]
• Sail, whose software optimizes how AI models run on existing chips, emerges from stealth with $80M in seed and Series A led by Kleiner at a $450M valuation (Lily Mae Lazarus/Fortune) [17d]
• Apple says "the rapid expansion of AI data centers has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage"; the MacBook Neo rises to $699 from $599 (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg) [17d]
• Apple raises Mac prices by 15% to 20% and iPad prices by 15% to 25%, saying it has "never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly" (Rolfe Winkler/Wall Street Journal) [17d]
• Australian payments startup Airwallex raised $320M led by Lee Fixel's Addition at an $11B valuation, and is incubating blockchain payments startup Metal (Jeff Kauflin/Forbes) [17d]
• Scaled Cognition, a reliability-focused lab that develops the Agentic Pretrained Transformer model, raised a $100M Series A led by Khosla at a $750M valuation (Steven Rosenbush/Wall Street Journal) [17d]
• Exponential View: global AI sales, excluding China, hit $25B in Q1, exceeding an estimated $21B in data center and chip depreciation costs; margins remain thin (Jacob Reid/Bloomberg) [17d]