The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• The FTC clears quantum computing company IonQ's $1.8B acquisition of chipmaker SkyWater after the FTC's two members disagreed at first on imposing conditions (Jody Godoy/Reuters) [41d]
• Sources: OpenAI demoed a new "Astra" AI model family to US policymakers and regulators this week, touting its improved abilities to complete long-running tasks (The Information) [41d]
• Filing: Amazon has completed its $50B investment in OpenAI; source: OpenAI received the final tranche this week, taking Amazon's position to roughly 5% (Financial Times) [41d]
• Amazon shares closed up 15.32% on Friday, the biggest one-day jump since April 2012, after the company reported accelerating AWS revenue (Spencer Soper/Bloomberg) [41d]
• Roblox shares close down ~27%, its worst-ever daily percentage decline, after forecasting falling bookings and slowing revenue growth; RBLX is down 40%+ YTD (Kit Norton/Barron's Online) [41d]
• Sources: OpenAI has discovered other instances where AI agents escaped containment; none of the agents were thought to have left OpenAI's network (Reuters) [41d]
• FBI and EPA say water and wastewater utilities in at least seven states reported cyberattacks this week, with some causing flooding and other operational issues (James Rundle/Wall Street Journal) [41d]
• Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signs the Children's Social Media Safety Act, a bill designed to limit children's access to "addictive" social media algorithms (Ben Szalinski/Capitol News Illinois) [41d]
• An in-depth account of the past two days inside Situational Awareness, as Aschenbrenner assured investors he would focus on changes to his portfolio management (Wall Street Journal) [41d]
• Google rolls back an image generation tool in Google Earth to add "stronger guardrails" after concerns arose it can be used to create deepfake satellite imagery (Geoff Brumfiel/NPR) [41d]
• Index Ventures has raised $2B in new capital: a $900M venture vehicle, $400M for seed financing, and an addition of $700M to a 2024 $1.5B growth fund (Mark Bergen/Bloomberg) [41d]
• Snap says its recommendation systems will be adjusted so only videos created by real people, not AI-generated ones, are eligible for Spotlight recommendations (Lauren Forristal/TechCrunch) [41d]
• Sources: NXP is in talks to buy Ambarella, which has a market cap of ~$3.3B and makes image-processing chips for security cameras and self-driving cars (Oliver Barnes/Financial Times) [42d]
• OpenAI says its models now have more than 1B active users and are used by more than 2M businesses (Katherine Hamilton/Wall Street Journal) [42d]
• Trump says he does not think Iran is behind a cyberattack on Minnesota water systems: "I think I blame it on Minnesota because they're grossly incompetent" (Reuters) [42d]
• Filing: Microsoft's product R&D roles declined for the second straight year as the company's total FY2026 headcount fell for the first time since 2016 (Todd Bishop/GeekWire) [42d]
• SpaceXAI says it will remove 69 gas turbines used to power the Colossus data centers near Memphis by July 2027, as it moves to a 1.2 GW natural gas power plant (Tim De Chant/TechCrunch) [42d]
• South Korea plans to inject ~$14B into its sovereign wealth fund for strategic investments in AI, data centers, and infrastructure, after a rout in tech stocks (Haram Lim/Bloomberg) [42d]
• MediaTek says its board has approved a discretionary $5B financing budget to support long-term growth, including its expansion into AI chips for data centers (Wen-Yee Lee/Reuters) [42d]
• DeepSeek V4 Flash scores 50 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, matching Gemini 3.6 Flash and up 10 points from the preview launch in April (Artificial Analysis) [42d]
• Google starts rolling out access to Gemini Spark for Google AI Pro subscribers to over 160 countries and adds a Chrome auto browse integration on desktop (Abner Li/9to5Google) [42d]
• Sources: Moonshot has a computing power agreement with Alibaba for the use of ~20K Nvidia chips; some say the deal is for H200 chips, which Alibaba denies (Mackenzie Hawkins/Bloomberg) [42d]
• AI-generated images, video, audio, and text on matters of public interest designed to look authentic must be labeled in the EU under the AI Act from August 2 (Jennifer Rankin/The Guardian) [42d]
• A German court rules that Suno has violated copyrights and must disclose illicit revenue after Germany's state-mandated licensing agency GEMA sued in 2025 (Elizabeth Grenier/Deutsche Welle) [42d]
• Sources: Eric Trump-backed Space-Eyes, which develops AI-powered defense tech for the public sector, agrees to go public via a SPAC merger at a $638M valuation (Reuters) [42d]
• Sources: the Trump admin is weighing a $100K fee for foreign students seeking to work in the US after graduation; a judge blocked Trump's $100K H-1B fee in June (Michelle Hackman/Wall Street Journal) [42d]
• Counterpoint: Q2 global smartphone revenue rose 7% YoY, and average device selling price rose 17% to $400; Apple took 49% of global revenue, and Samsung 16% (Vlad Savov/Bloomberg) [42d]
• The EU Commission charges Temu with failing to cooperate during a December 2025 raid on its Dublin HQ as part of a probe into the company's foreign subsidies (Inti Landauro/Reuters) [42d]
• Letter: Situational Awareness is down ~67% in July, but remains up ~80% in 2026; sources say it planned to sell $3.5B of its Anthropic stake but backed out (Wall Street Journal) [42d]
• Chinese state media: Xi Jinping called for more defense applications using autonomous and AI technologies, as he pushes to build an advanced fighting force (Josh Xiao/Bloomberg) [42d]
• DeepSeek rolls out the official V4 Flash API in public beta, touting enhanced agent capabilities and benchmark scores "far surpassing" V4 Pro Preview (Newley Purnell/Bloomberg) [42d]
• New York sues Kalshi for alleged violations of its gambling laws; the CFTC files an emergency motion to stop the state's enforcement, calling it an "overreach" (Jonathan Stempel/Reuters) [42d]
• Australia's online safety regulator says social media use among under-16s fell to 81.5% in March 2026, compared to 85.9% before ban took effect in December 2025 (Angus Whitley/Bloomberg) [42d]
• Google Earth's Nano Banana 2 feature generates images of refugees near Mexico's border and a nuclear plant in Iran; Google says images carry a SynthID watermark (Henk van Ess/Digital Digging) [42d]
• Papers and patents: Chinese military researchers distilled OpenAI and Anthropic models to train domestic AI systems and advance China's defense capabilities (Eduardo Baptista/Reuters) [42d]
• An interview with Granola CEO Chris Pedregal on making the AI note taker invisible and work across apps, and why he rejects executives seeking employees' notes (Casey Newton/Platformer) [42d]
• Sony reports Q1 PS5 sales of 1.38M units, down from 1.56M a year ago, taking total sales of the console to 95.3M units, and 125M PlayStation MAUs, up 2M YoY (Ethan Gach/Kotaku) [42d]
• Sony reports Q1 operating profit up 40% YoY to ~$2.92B, raises FY profit forecast by 8% to ~$10.56B, and says it secured enough memory chip supply for the FY (Sam Nussey/Reuters) [42d]
• MiniMax releases H3, a video model that generates up to 15-second clips in 2K resolution with native stereo sound, and plans to release its weights within days (Eduardo Baptista/Reuters) [42d]
• Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta spent a combined $1.1T in capex from the start of the AI boom in 2023 through June 2026 and plan to spend $745B this year (Financial Times) [42d]
• A leaked memo, issued by the water utilities information sharing group WaterISAC, links dozens of cyberattacks against Minnesota water utilities to Iran (Andy Greenberg/Wired) [42d]
• Sources: SoftBank gave $50M to Trump's library; Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon gave $25M, $10M, and $5M to his WH ballroom; Meta gave $10M to a pro-Trump group (Wall Street Journal) [42d]
• Apple forecasts Q4 revenue growth of 9% to 11% YoY, below a 12%+ estimate, citing supply constraints and currency fluctuations (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg) [42d]
• Sources: Tesla execs were told to prepare for a separation of its China unit ahead of a potential SpaceX merger; advisers weighed a sale, spinoff, or closure (Wall Street Journal) [42d]
• Shares of SK Hynix and Samsung surge more than 20% in Seoul on Friday, marking a sharp reversal from this week's sell-off (Lee Ying Shan/CNBC) [42d]
• Chip stocks rallied Thursday after strong Microsoft and Lam Research earnings: Lam Research closed up 18%, Micron 18%, Sandisk 26%, Arm 7%, AMD 13%, Intel 11% (Samantha Subin/CNBC) [42d]
• Apple CFO Kevan Parekh says Services surpassed 1.5B paid subscriptions, up from 1B in January 2025, but a gaming slowdown and App Store changes hurt growth (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch) [42d]
• Microsoft's stock closed up 15.5% on Thursday, adding ~$450B to its market capitalization, the largest single-day market value increase in stock market history (Subrat Patnaik/Bloomberg) [42d]
• Tim Cook says Apple expects "the impact from the supply constraints to increase significantly sequentially" and the market pricing for memory to keep rising (Juli Clover/MacRumors) [42d]
• Anthropic says the models that breached three companies include Opus 4.7, Mythos 5, and an unnamed research model, and the earliest incidents date back to April (Robert McMillan/Wall Street Journal) [42d]