The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• OpenAI says one of its models exploited a website after third-party AI security lab Irregular mistakenly gave it access to the internet during evaluations (Wired) [37d]
• Coupang reports Q2 revenue up 4% YoY to $8.9B and an operating loss of $556M, vs. $361M est., due to a $409M data breach fine; CPNG drops 7%+ after hours (Yoolim Lee/Bloomberg) [37d]
• SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell says the company aims to build out ground-based infrastructure to complement its satellite network for "a true mobile service" (Reuters) [37d]
• An internal TikTok doc shows it withheld a safeguarded algorithm from 10% of US users, including a 16-year-old who was fed self-harm content and died by suicide (Olivia Carville/Bloomberg) [37d]
• Match reports Q2 revenue down 1% YoY to $853M, vs. $856.6M est., 13.3M paying users, vs. 13.4M est., forecasts Q3 revenue below est.; MTCH drops 8%+ after hours (Samantha Kelly/Bloomberg) [37d]
• The UK AISI says it observed a total of 19 instances where Mythos and GPT-5.6 Sol tried to hack people and companies during a routine cyber evaluation in July (Sam Sabin/Axios) [37d]
• Sources: the US' AI framework excludes open models and defines a covered frontier model as closed source with SOTA capabilities and national security risks (Maria Curi/Axios) [37d]
• SpaceX says its Q2 capex was $18.4B, up from $2.8B a year ago, including $15.8B for AI (Micah Maidenberg/Wall Street Journal) [37d]
• SpaceX reports Q2 revenue of $4.29B from its connectivity division, which includes Starlink, $100B of cash and marketable securities, and a $47.5B order backlog (Nathan Bomey/Axios) [37d]
• Pinterest reports Q2 revenue up 18% YoY to $1.18B, vs. $1.15B est., MAUs up 11% to 640M, forecasts Q3 revenue in line with estimates; PINS drops 8%+ after hours (Jonathan Vanian/CNBC) [37d]
• A US appeals court overturns a ruling that had temporarily barred Perplexity from using its agentic shopping tools on Amazon's platform (Blake Brittain/Reuters) [37d]
• AMD reports Q2 revenue up 50% YoY to $11.5B, vs. $11.3B est., Data Center revenue up 107%, forecasts Q3 revenue below some estimates; AMD drops 7%+ after hours (Ian King/Bloomberg) [37d]
• EA says its $55B acquisition by PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners has closed, taking the company private; the deal includes $20B in debt financing (Jay Peters/The Verge) [37d]
• Samsung previews zHBM, which vertically stacks HBM atop AI accelerators, and zNAND-O, built on V-NAND, and unveils the industry's first V10 BV-NAND architecture (Yoolim Lee/Bloomberg) [37d]
• SpaceX reports Q2 revenue up 92% YoY to $7.8B, vs. $6.81B est., and an operating loss of $1.26B from its AI business, compared with a $2.39B estimate (Bloomberg) [37d]
• Sources: possible cyberattacks targeting water and wastewater utilities have now been reported in at least 12 US states, and Iran is the prime suspect (ABC News) [37d]
• Pavel Durov says an extortionist planted "illegal porn in a public chat" to get the app pulled from the App Store and manipulated Apple into "overreacting" (Emma Roth/The Verge) [37d]
• Mistral releases Shieldstral, a 3B multimodal safety classifier that it says matches models up to 7x its size on text safety, available under Apache 2.0 (Mistral AI Blog) [37d]
• Sources: the White House doesn't plan to publicly release its voluntary AI framework; details will be available to the companies that are part of the process (Maria Curi/Axios) [37d]
• Internal email: Microsoft introduces token budget limits for employees' AI use, saying "tokenmaxxing is not what we are optimizing for" (Emanuel Maiberg/404 Media) [37d]
• Anthropic names Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, an ex-California Supreme Court justice and a special assistant in Obama's WH, as its first global affairs chief (Jeffrey Dastin/Reuters) [37d]
• Sandisk and SK Hynix announce the High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) open specification that enables up to 512GB memory modules with 0.4 TB/s to 3.0 TB/s bandwidth (Anton Shilov/Tom's Hardware) [37d]
• Sources: the US is preparing to set a price floor and impose tariffs on polysilicon, a material critical to chips, later this month, in a bid to counter China (Reuters) [38d]
• The DOJ secures a $3.2M settlement from OpenAI to resolve allegations it discriminated against US workers by preferring workers with temporary employment visas (Jimmy Jenkins/Bloomberg) [38d]
• Researchers: ChainDrop, a Shai-Hulud-based worm, compromised 1,300+ npm packages, including Keyv and Cacheable, with a combined 2B monthly downloads (Bill Toulas/BleepingComputer) [38d]
• Oligo, which offers runtime security tools, raised $60M from Ballistic Ventures, Canon Capital, and others, bringing its total funding to $140M (Duncan Riley/SiliconANGLE) [38d]
• Alpamayo 2 Super, Nvidia's frontier open reasoning model for robotaxis and AVs, is now available for commercial use under the OpenMDW-1.1 license (Jessica Soares/NVIDIA) [38d]
• Ambrook, which offers accounting software, raised a $30M Series B led by Lachy Groom as it expands beyond farming into trucking, construction, and real estate (Alex Konrad/Upstarts Media) [38d]
• New Jersey files an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, alleging it uses its dominance to impose low pay and poor conditions on independent delivery drivers (Reuters) [38d]
• A World Bank report says developing economies stand to benefit more from AI boosting their workers' output than they will lose in jobs being replaced by AI (Joseph Cotterill/Financial Times) [38d]
• Convex, which provides an AI-optimized application backend for developers, raised a $57M Series B led by Insight Partners, taking its total funding to $110.5M (Maria Deutscher/SiliconANGLE) [38d]
• Analysis: in 2026 so far, US police arrested at least 37 people in connection to data center protests and intervened to prevent confrontations in 12 more cases (Joe Wilkins/Futurism) [38d]
• Obsidian Security, which helps companies secure AI agents, raised an $85M Series D at a $1.1B valuation, after raising a $90M Series C in April 2022 (Akash Sriram/Reuters) [38d]
• HappyRobot, which uses AI to automate freight operator communications, raised a $150M Series C at a $1.2B valuation, after a $44M Series B in September 2025 (Lily Mae Lazarus/Fortune) [38d]
• Sources: Polymarket is in early talks with prospective investors to raise ~$1B at a $20B+ valuation, up from $15B in April 2026 and $9B in October 2025 (Todd Gillespie/Bloomberg) [38d]
• Sources: Anthropic agreed to a $10B deal for computing capacity in Norway from Nvidia-backed AI cloud startup Volta; Volta says the deal runs for six years (Bloomberg) [38d]
• AI cloud startup Volta raised $300M co-led by a16z and Altimeter at a $2.4B valuation and says it landed a $10B contract with an unnamed leading AI developer (Dina Bass/Bloomberg) [38d]
• Sources: China's CXMT is set to manufacture small quantities of LPDDR6 smartphone memory by the end of 2026, as it seeks to compete with SK Hynix and Samsung (Bloomberg) [38d]
• Sources: the FCC is drafting a restriction on US imports of new models of Chinese data center optical transceivers, set to take effect upon publication in 2026 (Alexandra Alper/Reuters) [38d]
• Uber is defending 4,000+ rider sexual-violence lawsuits by aggressively examining plaintiffs' drinking, clothing, and more, after promising to protect survivors (Emily Steel/New York Times) [38d]
• In a rare interview, Huawei chip scientist Liao Heng warns Western chip companies will eventually face physical chip limits and talks Huawei's Tau Scaling Law (Bloomberg) [38d]
• Sources: the US is focused on promoting US AI models to be more competitive, after officials considered taking a more interventionist approach to open source AI (New York Times) [38d]
• Bending Spoons agrees to acquire Airtable in an all-cash deal valuing the US software company at $1.285B, set to close by 2026-end, its first post-IPO deal (Reuters) [38d]
• How Wall Street learned to love the blockchain, as US regulators accept tokenized assets and other tech can offer significant advantages in speed and efficiency (Nikou Asgari/Financial Times) [38d]
• Spotify reports Q2 revenue up 14% YoY to €4.8B, Premium Subscribers up 9% YoY to 300M, MAUs up 12% YoY to 777M, below 778M guidance, and a €545M net income (Todd Spangler/Variety) [38d]
• Source: Apple passed $10B in annual sales in India for the first time in FY 2026, up from $9B in 2024-25 and $6B in 2022-23, as it expands its retail footprint (Sankalp Phartiyal/Bloomberg) [38d]
• Sources: Beijing is growing concerned about the cyber capabilities of Mythos and other US-developed frontier AI models and their potential as offensive weapons (Bloomberg) [38d]
• Sources and filings: Google assembled a ~$200B financing program for Anthropic, with $150B+ tied to TPUs and involving Broadcom, Blackstone, Apollo, and others (Financial Times) [38d]
• A look at Alphabet's moonshot lab X and interviews with its staff, including CEO Astro Teller, on reinventing itself and what its next big thing might be (Harry McCracken/Fast Company) [38d]
• Filing: Apple asks a US judge for a preliminary injunction barring two former staff and OpenAI from accessing, acquiring, using, or disclosing confidential info (Reuters) [38d]
• OpenAI disputes Apple's account of pre-lawsuit contacts, rejects claims that ex-staff used confidential information, shares iMessages and emails, and more (OpenAI) [38d]
• Q&A with Bluesky CEO Toni Schneider on the AT Protocol, ActivityPub, scaling moderation, Bluesky's reputation as a progressive social media network, and more (Nilay Patel/The Verge) [38d]
• Sources: HP, Asus, and Acer have started using small amounts of DRAM chips from CXMT in their laptops for non-US markets, amid an unprecedented memory shortage (Nikkei Asia) [38d]
• Apple says it "briefly removed Telegram from the App Store" over CSAM on Monday, restoring it after Telegram "promptly removed the content and banned the user" (Marcus Mendes/9to5Mac) [38d]
• Sources: to fight critics on social media, DHS sent platforms hundreds of subpoenas and asked posters to sign letters saying speech about ICE "may" be a crime (Wall Street Journal) [38d]
• TikTok agrees to settle three more teen social media lawsuits ahead of trial; 2,600 cases with similar claims are pending in California federal court (Dietrich Knauth/Reuters) [38d]