The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

Apple's H1 2027 plans reportedly include an iPhone 18e, A20 iPhone 18, A20 Pro iPhone Air 2, OLED iPad Air, A19 Pro MacBook Neo, and M6 MacBook Air (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg) [53d]
London-based Jack & Jill, which offers Jack, an AI agent for job seekers, and Jill, an agent for companies, raised a $40M Series A, after raising $20M in 2025 (Chris Metinko/Axios) [53d]
Cornelis, spun off from Intel in 2020 to build networking tech that helps AI chips communicate more effectively, raised $205M led by IAG Capital (Dominic-Madori Davis/TechCrunch) [53d]
Source: defense tech startup Shield AI is in talks to raise new funds at a valuation of at least $20B; Shield raised $2B at a valuation of $12.7B in March (The Information) [53d]
Nuance Labs, which builds low-latency AI avatars that can have face-to-face conversations, raised a $50M Series A led by Lightspeed, with Nvidia participating (Shubhangi Goel/Business Insider) [53d]
Sources: Trump met privately with Sam Altman backstage at the GOP midterm convention, where they discussed AI and its growing power, at Altman's request (MS NOW) [53d]
Anthropic debuts Claude for Financial Advisors, with connectors to investment analytics and wealth-management tools from BlackRock, Addepar, Schwab, and others (Harshita Mary Varghese/Reuters) [53d]
Sources: OpenAI bought Glass Imaging, which is developing AI-powered smartphone camera tech, in a deal valuing it at $300M+; it was valued at ~$100M last year (Wall Street Journal) [53d]
House Speaker Johnson says there's "potentially" a role for Congress in creating AI guardrail legislation and that he plans to hold a meeting with AI executives (Erik Wasson/Bloomberg) [53d]
Nvidia announces the RTX Pro 5500 Blackwell Workstation Edition, offering comparable specs to the RTX 5090 but with 84GB of GDDR7 memory, vs. RTX 5090's 32GB (Zhiye Liu/Tom's Hardware) [53d]
iOS 27 review: a marked improvement over iOS 26 and Siri AI is very impressive with some "wow" moments but it can sometimes misunderstand or hallucinate (Dan Moren/Six Colors) [53d]
Valve says the Steam Frame is priced at $1,059 for the 256GB model and $1,299 for the 1TB version, both of which come with a copy of Half-Life: Alyx (Adam Vjestica/The Shortcut) [53d]
Review of Valve's Steam Frame: comfortable to wear, supports multiple ways to play games, but it doesn't feel like a finished product and has short battery life (Sean Hollister/The Verge) [53d]
Apple rolls out iOS 27, watchOS 27, iPadOS 27, visionOS 27, and macOS 27 Golden Gate, all with Siri AI (Tom Warren/The Verge) [53d]
Internal OpenAI docs detail contractors evaluating anonymized prompts and chats to improve the models; model training is turned on by default for consumer plans (Joseph Cox/404 Media) [53d]
Stockholm-based Tandem Health, which offers clinicians an AI copilot that generates medical notes during patient consultations, raised a $100M Series B (John Reynolds/Tech.eu) [53d]
Nvidia and Booz Allen Hamilton restrict their use of Fable due to a lack of ZDR assurances; source: Palantir hasn't made Fable available via its own software (The Information) [53d]
Riyadh-based BNPL company Tabby raised a $233M Series F led by Blue Pool Capital at a $6.5B valuation, up from $4.5B in October 2025 after a share sale (Federico Maccioni/Reuters) [53d]
Tom Duff Gordon, OpenAI's EMEA policy head, calls on the UK to introduce binding AI rules to "establish durable, mandatory, capability-based requirements" (Joseph Bambridge/Politico) [53d]
Filing: X and SpaceXAI move to dismiss their federal antitrust lawsuit in Texas against Apple, resolving accusations of Apple monopolizing smartphone markets (Mike Scarcella/Reuters) [53d]
Temporal, which makes open-source software that helps apps, including AI agents, recover from failure, raised $550M led by Lightspeed at a $12.55B valuation (Anhata Rooprai/Reuters) [53d]
Trump slams Dario Amodei, saying "the only control or 'guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the USA has that, in spades!" (Ryan Chua/Bloomberg) [53d]
A profile of Mark Zuckerberg, based on interviews with him, his parents, and dozens of others, looking at his MMA training, AI pivot, management style, and more (Jeremy Stern/Colossus) [53d]
OpenAI employees need to oppose its support for Leading the Future, which seeks to chill federal regulation, and Congress should hold hearings on AI risks (Matthew Yglesias/Slow Boring) [53d]
Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube launch the Streaming Access and Choice Alliance, led by trade group TechNet, to advocate for "technology-neutral policies" (Sara Fischer/Axios) [53d]
Microsoft publishes a 37-page "humanist AI code of conduct", establishing that "people matter more than AI", rejecting legal personhood for AI, and more (Tom Warren/The Verge) [53d]
US-Israeli startup Buildots, which uses AI to speed up construction of mega-projects like data centers and chip factories, raised $130M at a near-$1B valuation (Marissa Newman/Bloomberg) [53d]
President Trump expresses support for Flock "because of law enforcement", while acknowledging some people consider the surveillance technology "an infringement" (Aoife Walsh/Washington Post) [53d]
Paris-based digital asset data provider Kaiko extends a funding round to $110M led by S&P Global to support 24/7 continuous market data and asset tokenization (Anna Irrera/Bloomberg) [53d]
Documents: the European Commission plans to propose an EU KIDS Act on Thursday to set a minimum age for accessing social media, video platforms, games, and more (Politico) [53d]
The IFPI says music companies and distributors agreed on new rules to combat the use of AI-generated music to defraud streaming services and divert royalties (Daniel Thomas/Financial Times) [53d]
China's Foreign Ministry criticizes warnings about AI risks, saying "fearmongering, confrontation, and vicious competition ... serve the interests of no one" (Bloomberg) [53d]
In its first statement on AI, China's Ministry of State Security warns AI poses risks to the nation's political and social security, including cyber defenses (Eleanor Olcott/Financial Times) [53d]
Z.ai says it plans to raise $5B+ via equity and debt to fund its AI investments, including ~$2B through a share placement, after raising $4B in July (P.R. Venkat/Wall Street Journal) [53d]
Sources: Australian data center provider Firmus is seeking to raise up to $5B in an IPO at the end of October, in one of the largest-ever IPOs in Australia (Julia Fioretti/Bloomberg) [53d]
How hyperscalers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are siding with consumers on data center power costs and sweetening offers for communities to gain support (Ann Davis Vaughan/The Information) [54d]
Filing: San Jose-based Chinese optical module maker Ligent seeks ~$727M in a Hong Kong IPO, after its rival Zhongji Innolight's $6.8B Hong Kong debut in July (Sangmi Cha/Bloomberg) [54d]
The US Senate digital assets subcommittee releases a revised "final offer" of the Clarity Act with Trump-backed ethics provisions, ahead of a September 15 vote (Felix Ng/Cointelegraph News) [54d]
AI-connected Asian stocks fell sharply after US tech leaders' call for pacing AI development, with SoftBank, Kioxia, SK Hynix, Minimax, and Z.ai down 5%+ (Gregor Stuart Hunter/Reuters) [54d]
Sam Altman says "we welcome a federal framework" but "do not believe we need to wait" for an antitrust exemption or a law to pace AI development responsibly (Sam Altman/@sama) [54d]
Document: Samsung and SK Hynix rejected KEPCO's proposal to prepay ~$18.7B of chip cluster power bills, citing uncertainty over long-term chip demand (Reuters) [54d]
Sources: SoftBank sealed a two-year loan facility to support its OpenAI investment, securing $11.87B in commitments from ~20 banks, above its $10B target (Janice Huang/Bloomberg) [54d]
Current and former officials: the US NSA plans major restructuring to form five new units for AI, China, cybersecurity, warfighting, and global intelligence (Washington Post) [54d]
Source: Anthropic signed a $13.7B, six-year deal to lease compute from Rum Group's upcoming Georgia data center; Rum operates Rumble and hosts Truth Social (The Information) [54d]
Report: former EPA officials identify 30 federal actions since January 2025 that they say exacerbate health risks stemming from data center pollution (Justine Calma/The Verge) [54d]
Sources: Anthropic told investors it will be profitable for a second straight quarter, with 80%+ gross margins before partner revenue sharing and training costs (Financial Times) [54d]