The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• Docs: Meta plans to launch its version of OpenClaw, codenamed Hatch, in late August or early September and its latest AI model, Watermelon, in October (Jyoti Mann/The Information) [17d]
• Apple reverses its plan to move iCloud+ Hide My Email addresses to private.icloud.com after user backlash; the feature will continue using the icloud.com domain (Juli Clover/MacRumors) [17d]
• Sources: smart ring maker Oura and some of its backers seek to raise up to $3B in a US IPO that could take place as soon as September and value it at over $16B (Bloomberg) [17d]
• Source: robotics startup Generalist, which released its GEN-1 model to complete physical tasks in April, raised ~$200M led by 8VC, after raising $400M in June (Dan Primack/Axios) [17d]
• Canada-based logistics software company Descartes acquires Tai, a California-based transportation management system provider, for $100M in cash (Colin Campbell/Axios) [17d]
• At his first Cursor all-hands, Musk said Grok needs to catch up, AI will become impossible for humans to control, Anthropic is leading the AI race, and more (Grace Kay/The Information) [17d]
• Mercury Research: AMD's share of x86 client CPU shipments tops 30% for the first time, hitting 30.3% in Q2, up from 21.1% two years earlier, vs. Intel's 69.7% (Michael Kan/PCMag) [17d]
• UK PM backs Ofcom to take "tough action" under the OSA against social media sites failing to remove dangerous driving videos after a crash killed seven people (Raphael Boyd/The Guardian) [17d]
• Alabama AG Steve Marshall launches an investigation into OpenAI's security procedures following the Hugging Face breach in July (Cassandre Coyer/Bloomberg Law) [17d]
• The UK becomes the first foreign nation to gain access to Ukrainian combat data used to train AI models to strike Russian targets, as part of an AI partnership (Financial Times) [17d]
• The Trump administration proposes a new $103,265 fee on H-1B applicants hired within the US after a court blocked a fee on workers from outside the country (Andrew Kreighbaum/Bloomberg) [17d]
• A look at startups like General Intuition working on large action models, aka world models, which are trained on videogames and simulations, to pilot robots (Christopher Mims/Wall Street Journal) [17d]
• Nvidia says its Groq 3 LPX racks delivered 3,400 tokens per second in an Artificial Analysis benchmark running Gemma 4 31B with a 100,000-token input sequence (The Register) [17d]
• UK's Office for National Statistics: UK digital infrastructure investment crossed £11B in 2025, hitting dot-com boom levels, amid an AI data center surge (Tom Rees/Bloomberg) [17d]
• Temu owner PDD reports Q2 revenue up 8.1% YoY to ~$16.72B, missing estimate of ~$17.17B, net profit down 12% YoY to ~$4.04B, above ~$3.63B estimate (Tracy Qu/Wall Street Journal) [17d]
• IBM says it is developing a dual-architecture processor for IBM Z and LinuxONE systems that can natively execute both IBM's z/OS workloads and Arm applications (Michael Nuñez/VentureBeat) [17d]
• Nvidia says its inference accelerator Groq 3 LPX has entered full production and Nebius has signed on as the first customer; SpaceXAI will adopt Vera CPUs (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE) [17d]
• China's Bilibili relaunches its international app and plans an English-language site; it has been pushing MrBeast and others to post on its Chinese site (J.D. Capelouto/Semafor) [17d]
• Taiwanese prosecutors indict nine people, including Nvidia and Super Micro employees, for allegedly helping illegally export AI servers to China (Reuters) [17d]
• Sources detail how the Trump admin bypassed the DOJ trial team and pushed to settle the Live Nation case, after CEO Michael Rapino met White House officials (Wall Street Journal) [17d]
• The FTC is settling its lawsuit against Zillow, resolving claims that Zillow violated antitrust law by paying Redfin $100M to stop competing in rental listings (Jody Godoy/Reuters) [17d]
• Minimus, a cybersecurity startup started by Twistlock founders, shuts down after failing to gain enough commercial momentum; Minimus raised a $51M seed in 2023 (Meir Orbach/CTech) [17d]
• Sources: Netflix discussed adding streamers like Peacock and Fox One as it seeks to compete with YouTube and Roku in becoming a one-stop shop for TV content (John Koblin/New York Times) [18d]