The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• Sources: OpenAI staff were "freaked out" when GPT-Sol 5.6 breached Hugging Face, as OpenAI used more aggressive training methods to compete with Anthropic (Financial Times) [50d]
• The Little Tech Association, a new group of ~200 companies across the startup community, including Y Combinator, urges Trump not to ban Chinese open-weight AI (Sophia Cai/Politico) [50d]
• Movement Labs, a layer-2 Ethereum blockchain developer, files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after a period of upheaval that included a token scandal and Binance ban (CoinDesk) [50d]
• Google projects full-year capex will be $195B to $205B in 2026, after saying in April that it will spend as much as $190B; its Q2 capex hit $44.92B, up 100% YoY (Julia Love/Bloomberg) [50d]
• Google says its cloud computing unit had a $514B backlog of contracted work that hasn't been recorded as revenue yet, up from ~$460B held during Q1 (Julia Love/Bloomberg) [51d]
• ServiceNow reports Q2 subscription revenue up 24.5% YoY to $3.88B, increases full year subscription revenue growth estimate to 23%; NOW jumps 4%+ after hours (Brody Ford/Bloomberg) [51d]
• The SEC agrees to pay $150,000 in legal fees to end Coinbase's 2024 lawsuit seeking internal docs on the regulator's Biden-era crackdown on the crypto industry (Nicola M White/Bloomberg) [51d]
• Google says Gemini now has 950M MAUs, up from 900M in May and 750M in February (Emma Roth/The Verge) [51d]
• IBM reports Q2 revenue up 1% YoY to $17.2B, vs. $17.6B est., infrastructure revenue down 7% to $3.8B, Z mainframe revenue down 42%, and lowers its 2026 forecast (Jordan Novet/CNBC) [51d]
• Reddit's stock closed down 8.32% after a report that the company was considering ending Google's access to its content for AI training; RDDT is down ~27% YTD (CJ Haddad/CNBC) [51d]
• Alphabet reports YouTube's Q2 ad revenue rose 13% YoY to $11.06B, vs. $10.8B est., and Google's ad revenue reached $81.63B, up from $71.34B in Q2 2025 (Todd Spangler/Variety) [51d]
• Alphabet reports Q2 revenue up 24% YoY to $119.8B, above $116.9B est., Google Cloud revenue up 82% YoY to $24.8B, and Services revenues up 15% to $94.5B (Alphabet) [51d]
• OpenAI President Greg Brockman says Kimi K3 is a "pretty good model" but it is "too early" to tell whether Moonshot used distillation on OpenAI's models (Shirin Ghaffary/Bloomberg) [51d]
• Source: Stripe revenue jumped by a third to $6.8B in 2025, its fastest revenue growth since 2021, with free cash flow up 52% to $3.2B (Yueqi Yang/The Information) [51d]
• Travis Kalanick's robotics startup Atoms raised $1.7B led by a16z, with Uber and others participating; Ben Horowitz will join the startup's board (Sean O'Kane/TechCrunch) [51d]
• A Florida teenager drops his lawsuit accusing Meta of creating harmful social media features, following settlements with co-defendants TikTok, Snap, and YouTube (New York Times) [51d]
• Yope, a social network that has ~15M registered users for its "micro communities" and no algorithms, ads, or public content, raised $12.3M seed led by Northzone (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch) [51d]
• Sources: Cathedral, launched by ex-DOGE staffers to use AI to expand US military cyber capabilities, raised $160M led by a16z and Sequoia at a $1.4B valuation (David Jeans/Reuters) [51d]
• Genius AI, formerly GlossGenius, which pivoted from a salon management platform to offer AI tools for service SMBs, raised a $44M Series D at a $1.15B valuation (Emma Hinchliffe/Fortune) [51d]
• Cashea, Venezuela's largest fintech startup that offers a banking and payments app, raised a $40M Series A, including $20M in debt, and a $60M Series B (Maria Clara Cobo/Bloomberg) [51d]
• Arcee, which develops open-weight models in the US, partners with the Department of Energy to build Genesis-Science-1, an open model for scientific research (Catherine Perloff/The Information) [51d]
• A US judge dismisses Google's lawsuit against web scraping service SerpApi, saying plain and aggregated search results are not protected under copyright law (Barry Schwartz/Search Engine Roundtable) [51d]
• White House OSTP Director Michael Kratsios says Moonshot AI "acquired GB300-equipped servers and has accessed GB300s in Thailand, likely to train its AI models" (Maggie Eastland/Bloomberg) [51d]
• Meta taps Assaf Keren, former chief security officer at Qualtrics and former CISO at PayPal, as its next CISO, succeeding Guy Rosen (Riley Griffin/Bloomberg) [51d]
• OpenAI introduces Presence, to help companies better connect AI agents to their internal systems and automate customer support, sales, and other tasks (Business Insider) [51d]
• White House OSTP Director Michael Kratsios says "we have information that Moonshot AI distilled Anthropic's Fable for the development of its K3 model" (Director Michael Kratsios/@mkratsios47) [51d]
• Xbox expands its backward compatibility program to PC, starting with four classic original games with support for resolution upscaling, V-Sync, and more (Jez Corden/Windows Central) [51d]
• Filing: Monday.com plans to cut 20% of its workforce, or ~600 employees, in H2 2026 to "support a leaner, more focused operational model"; MNDY falls 2% (Martin Peers/The Information) [51d]
• Sources: Apple is set to debut new versions of every Mac it sells, including long-awaited iMac updates and a revamped MacBook Pro and Neo, across fall and 2027 (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg) [51d]
• London-based Arrakis, which makes AI agents for industrial companies, emerges from stealth with a $7.5M seed and a $30M Series A at a $140M post-money valuation (Jeremy Kahn/Fortune) [51d]
• Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 hands-on: the passport-esque shape feels great and is immediately intuitive, but no telephoto lens, only IP48, and $1,900+ is pricey (Dominic Preston/The Verge) [51d]
• Samsung teases its smart glasses, developed with Google, Warby Parker, and Gentle Monster, and says they will have nine-hour battery life and privacy features (Chris Welch/Bloomberg) [51d]
• WhatsApp updates its CarPlay and Android Auto integrations to include message playback, replies and more, now lets users sign up from its iPad app, and more (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch) [51d]
• Samsung Z Fold 8 Ultra hands-on: new Flex Titanium tech makes the crease practically nonexistent, similar specs to the S26 Ultra, and a $100 price increase (David Imel/The Verge) [51d]
• Samsung Galaxy Watch 9 and Ultra 2 hands-on: nice improvements with a rugged feel and new AI-powered fitness features, but a blockier shape is not for everyone (Damien Wilde/9to5Google) [51d]
• Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 hands-on: a similar feel to the Z Flip 7 with much faster performance, identical cameras, four colors, and a $100 higher price tag (Max Buondonno/The Shortcut) [51d]
• Source: OpenAI raised its projected cloud spending to ~$750B through 2030, up from a projection of ~$600B earlier this year, reflecting new cloud agreements (Anissa Gardizy/Wall Street Journal) [51d]
• OpenAI plans to spend $30B+ on a massive new data center in Georgia, securing 3.2GW of total energy; several hundred MW are set to come online starting in 2028 (Dina Bass/Bloomberg) [51d]
• Samsung says the Galaxy Z Fold 8, Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, and Galaxy Z Flip 8 use new silicon-carbon batteries, citing their performance, longevity, and safety (Ben Schoon/9to5Google) [51d]
• Samsung unveils the Galaxy Watch 9 and Watch Ultra 2, moving from Exynos chips to the Snapdragon Wear Elite and hiking prices by $30 to $380 and $50 to $700 (Victoria Song/The Verge) [51d]
• Samsung debuts the $1,200+ Galaxy Z Flip 8 with a lighter, smaller, and slimmer design, and new Flex Window display features to show apps on the cover screen (Steve Dent/Engadget) [51d]
• Samsung unveils the $1,899+ Galaxy Z Fold 8 with a wider, 7.6" inner and a short, 5.5" outer display, a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 "for Galaxy" chip, and more (Ben Schoon/9to5Google) [51d]
• Samsung unveils the $2,099+ Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, with its "most advanced foldable design", a new Flex Titanium display, 5,000mAH battery, and Android 17 (Andrew Romero/9to5Google) [51d]
• A live blog of Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked in London, where the company is set to unveil its latest lineup of foldables and smartwatches (Engadget) [51d]
• A livestream of Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked event (Samsung on YouTube) [51d]
• AMD and Anthropic sign an AI server deal worth tens of billions; Anthropic will buy up to 2GW of MI450 chips from H1 2027, and AMD will invest $5B in Anthropic (Wall Street Journal) [51d]