The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• Valve announces changes to Steam's review process, as a surge in game submissions pushes review times to "up to 12 business days", instead of the usual 3-5 days (Jay Peters/The Verge) [3d]
• Traversal, which provides AI agents for site reliability engineering, raised $120M co-led by Kleiner Perkins, Redpoint, and Khosla at a $1B valuation (Rashi Shrivastava/Forbes) [3d]
• Block reports Q3 revenue up 10% YoY to $6.7B, above est., Cash App gross profit up 27% to $2.07B, raises its full-year profit outlook; XYZ jumps 5%+ after hours (Reuters) [3d]
• Canva says it is restructuring, which will impact 1,271 workers, or 22% of its workforce, as it merges its product, growth, and platform teams (David Swan/The Age) [3d]
• Revolut says it cut AI coding inference costs by ~90% in less than a year by making self-hosted GLM models its default over commercial tools like Claude Code (Tobias Mann/The Register) [3d]
• Super Micro reports Q1 revenue up 298% YoY to $19.95B, vs. $16.39B est., and forecasts Q2 revenue above estimates; SMCI jumps 7%+ after hours (Reuters) [3d]
• AMD reports Q3 revenue up 45% YoY to $13.38B, vs. $13.09B est., Data Center revenue up 97% to $8.5B, forecasts Q4 revenue above est.; AMD jumps 7%+ after hours (Katie Tarasov/CNBC) [3d]
• Sources: Ubisoft and at least two other gaming companies made offers to Microsoft to acquire the French game developer Arkane Studios (Jason Schreier/Bloomberg) [3d]
• Anthropic releases FlashProve, open-source code that cryptographically verifies an AI response came from a given model, not a cheaper one swapped in by a router (Anthropic) [3d]
• OpenAI hires Jill Hazelbaker, Uber's president and chief corporate affairs officer, as its new chief corporate affairs officer, reporting to Greg Brockman (Mike Allen/Axios) [3d]
• Apple launches iOS 27.3 beta, adding Apple Intelligence in China with an Alibaba-powered content filter, and watchOS 27.3 beta, with Siri Recap and Live Rewind (Bloomberg) [3d]
• Sources: US has held up approval for American chipmaking equipment needed by SK Hynix to expand in China, complicating its plans for new plants in New York (Karen Freifeld/Reuters) [3d]
• CrowdStrike launches an AI kill switch in Falcon Guardian to stop rogue internal agents, and announces a Falcon Guardian integration with Claude Cowork (Samantha Subin/CNBC) [3d]
• Apple opens Siri AI to all developers with iOS 27.3 and other 27.3 OS betas, letting any app bring its content and actions into Siri AI by using App Intents (Apple Developer) [3d]
• A look at efforts by OpenAI, Anthropic, and others to prevent anyone from using their AI tools to disrupt midterms, including Anthropic's first-ever "war room" (Steven Lee Myers/New York Times) [3d]
• Sources: Meta eyes at least $20B from a potential cross-border bond offering, the company's first major debt sale in six months and its debut offering in euros (Bloomberg) [3d]
• AI inference startup Fal raised $1.3B led by Bessemer at a $16B valuation, up from $8B in April; a source says it hit $800M in annualized revenue this year (Natasha Mascarenhas/Bloomberg) [3d]
• Sources: UK-based Google DeepMind staff urge leaders to drop non-disparagement clauses barring public warnings about AI risks even after they leave the company (Gerrit De Vynck/Washington Post) [3d]
• Microsoft updates Windows 11 to make PCs with 8GB of RAM up to 20% more responsive and multitasking up to 40% faster in lab tests, utilizing memory compression (Lance Whitney/ZDNET) [3d]
• Rockstar plans to let users pre-load GTA VI on November 10, ahead of its November 19 launch, and says the game requires up to 212GB "depending on your device" (Emma Roth/The Verge) [3d]
• Binance says North Korean hackers stole $6.3B through a months-long scheme with fake LinkedIn job interviews and an ad campaign to deliver malicious software (Jeff John Roberts/Fortune) [3d]
• ChatGPT consumer product lead Adam Fry says ChatGPT has hit 1.2B WAUs, adding 200M over the past two months, and its search volume is ~20% of Google's (Alex Kantrowitz/Big Technology) [3d]
• Google plans to make it easier to restrict its AI tools for students early next year but says schools that block AI entirely will lose student access to Search (New York Times) [3d]
• CrowdStrike agrees to buy Fiddler AI, which helps monitor AI agents, for ~$400M, and Dreadnode, an automated security AI testing tool, for ~$95M, mostly in cash (James Rundle/Wall Street Journal) [3d]
• Sources: Anthropic tells investors that its 15-person chip design team is already using Claude for engineering and design work on its custom chips (The Information) [3d]
• iPad mini (2026) review: great OLED display, waterproof and dustproof, and fast A20 Pro chip, but it is expensive, no 120Hz display, and still lacks Face ID (David Pierce/The Verge) [3d]
• New England-based autonomous submarine startup Corridian emerges from stealth with a $38M seed led by Point72 Ventures and plans to unveil its first AUV in 2027 (Colin Demarest/Axios) [3d]
• Shopify reports Q3 revenue up 32% YoY to $3.74B, vs. $3.75B est., GMV up 29% to $119.1B, net income up 75% to $462M, and adjusted EPS of $0.49, above $0.47 est. (Adriano Marchese/Wall Street Journal) [3d]
• US data center operators and power developers are repurposing jet engines to secure power in as little as two years, bypassing multi-year grid-connection delays (New York Times) [3d]
• John Ternus' first earnings call was a timid, scripted affair, as Apple faces a challenging Christmas quarter and a difficult 2027; AAPL falls 4%+ pre-market (Dave Lee/Bloomberg) [3d]
• Chainalysis and Elliptic expect North Korean hackers to take months to launder the Binance proceeds, utilizing scripted automation and DeFi lending protocols (Financial Times) [3d]
• OpenAI hires former US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to oversee national security modernization, as it pushes to secure government contracts and shape policy (Gareth Vipers/Wall Street Journal) [3d]
• China plans to roll out broad AI safety standards covering development through deployment, targeting domestic AI model makers, after global security incidents (Bloomberg) [3d]
• The UK NCSC says AI is "transforming cyber operations" and expects China and Russia to "routinely use AI cyber to achieve their geopolitical goals" by 2028 (Tom Wilson/Financial Times) [3d]
• Google severs ties with and bans Android TV box maker Videostrong after discovering it intentionally preloaded a malware backdoor to control the XCPE botnet (Ben Schoon/9to5Google) [3d]
• Apple expects Q1 revenue to rise 7%-10% YoY, above 6% est., and gross margins of 45%-46%, below 47% est., as John Ternus says memory costs are "unprecedented" (Michael Acton/Financial Times) [3d]
• UK energy company Drax partners with Brookfield and neocloud Radiant to develop an AI data center in North Yorkshire, targeting 100MW of capacity by Q1 2028 (Kai Nicol-Schwarz/CNBC) [3d]
• How Alex Bores' Who Decides seeks to make AI safety a standard Democratic position, like being pro-choice, in 2028, as tech-funded rivals vie for influence (David Freedlander/New York Magazine) [3d]
• OpenAI partners with Cathedral to test its security defenses and revamps its Security Bug Bounty program, including quadrupling rewards for critical findings (OpenAI) [3d]
• Sources: Nvidia verbally told cloud compute clients to sell 51%+ of their services to non-Chinese companies, imposing new limits on China's access to AI chips (Financial Times) [3d]
• Google expands Dreambeans to India, its first market outside the US, offering AI-generated visual stories from users' digital activity in 13 local languages (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch) [3d]
• Sources: Huawei recently told some clients that a large share of its upcoming flagship, Ascend 960DT, will run largely on HBM made by Samsung and SK Hynix (The Information) [3d]
• Larridin, which helps companies track how AI affects employee output and identifies areas for better AI adoption, raised a $30M Series A led by Pelion Ventures (Aditi Bharade/Business Insider) [3d]
• Salesforce announces plans to acquire Cresta, a provider of AI-powered contact center automation software; source: Salesforce agreed to pay $2.7B for Cresta (The Information) [3d]
• John Ternus says Apple expects memory costs to increase into December and beyond; Apple's inventory grew to $14.54B in Q4, up 31.1% QoQ and 154.3% YoY (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch) [3d]
• Match Group reports Q3 revenue fell 3% YoY to $891M, below estimates, and total paying users fell 5% to 13.8M; Q4 forecast has adjusted EBITDA below estimates (Samantha Kelly/Bloomberg) [4d]
• Trajectory, which is developing AI model post-training tools for nontechnical customers, raised a $45M Series A led by Sequoia at a $300M valuation (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch) [4d]