The Brutalist Report - tech
system |
|
- Sources: SpaceX is in talks with at least one major cellular infrastructure firm to secure a minimum of 80K US cell sites, as it eyes a wireless carrier launch (Kelcee Griffis/Bloomberg) [35m]
- Anthropic donates the Agent Skills open standard to the Agentic AI Foundation and says 70+ platforms have integrated it, after donating MCP to the AAIF in 2025 (Anthropic) [2h]
- Sources: OpenAI nears an up to $30B round led by investors from the UAE and Coatue at a $1.25T pre-money valuation, as an "opportunistic" bridge ahead of an IPO (Kate Rooney/CNBC) [2h]
- Canva launches Craft, its first image generation model, trained on human-designed templates, available to all users, with plans to support third-party chatbots (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch) [3h]
- Microsoft and Alphabet join 14 other companies objecting to a plan by OKXICE, a venture of OKX and ICE, to trade blockchain-based versions of their shares (Camila Grigera Naón/Fortune) [3h]
- Amazon issues refunds from a 2025 settlement, crediting "President Trump's Federal Trade Commission," the first time an FTC refund has been tied to a president (Alfred Ng/Politico) [4h]
- Microsoft says its GPT-5-powered Diagnostic Orchestrator uses agents that mimic panels of experts to diagnose conditions up to 4x more accurately than doctors (Robert Hart/The Verge) [4h]
- Sources: Datadog offered to acquire Israeli cloud cybersecurity startup Upwind Security for nearly $4B; Upwind is finalizing a $300M round at a ~$3.8B valuation (The Information) [4h]
- Amazon rebrands Kindle Unlimited as Kindle+ and expands access to audiobooks, including titles narrated by AI (Maria Diaz/ZDNET) [4h]
- Sources: SoftBank's SB Energy is considering going public in December or possibly waiting until next year as it monitors Anthropic's IPO, expected next month (The Information) [4h]
- US officials say Trump asked Elon Musk to lift Starshield restrictions; Ukraine officials said it was not fully fixed Thursday but was working at higher speeds (Wall Street Journal) [4h]
- Chicago-based Formic, which provides robots-as-a-service automation to manufacturers, raised $50M, including a $40M Series B and $10M in asset-backed financing (Natalie Breymeyer/Axios) [5h]
- The Browser Company plans to shut down its Arc browser on December 22, as it shifts attention to the AI-focused Dia browser (Jay Peters/The Verge) [5h]
- Microsoft says it is closing The Garage, which gave employees around the world space and tools for side projects and ran the company's Global Hackathon (Todd Bishop/GeekWire) [5h]
- Filings: Nvidia, Anthropic, and OpenAI had their highest-spending lobbying quarter between July and September, spending $2.2M, $2.1M, and $1.5M, respectively (Lauren Feiner/The Verge) [6h]
- Atlanta-based Tractian, which uses AI and sensors to predict machine failures and recommend maintenance, raised a $130M Series D at a $1.4B valuation (Rocket Drew/The Information) [6h]
- METR says a pilot test of OpenAI's monitoring system found vulnerabilities, including an exploit that could have let AI agents hide hundreds of recent actions (Anzar Mehraj/Reuters) [6h]
- Sources: Elon Musk has invested roughly $1B in Skydance; in 2022, David Ellison's father, Larry Ellison, invested $1B in Musk's deal to take X private (Rohan Goswami/Semafor) [6h]
- Warp Sciences, founded by ex-OpenAI product chief Kevin Weil to speed up AI drug development, emerges from stealth with $215M at an $865M post-money valuation (Rebecca Torrence/Bloomberg) [6h]
- Sources: US banks are restricting third-party AI agents from accessing customer accounts, after some agents appeared to act independently of user instructions (Madison Mills/Axios) [7h]
- eMudhra says it will exit the SSL/TLS certificate business, 1% of its revenue, after its TLS certificates with private keys of just 3 to 8 bits were compromised (Abhirami G/Reuters) [7h]
- Cloudflare's Matthew Prince says PHP2Shell exploit attempts on its network rose from thousands in the 10 hours before the disclosure to millions afterward (Matthew Prince/@eastdakota) [7h]
- Maxinsights, which creates training data for robots using first-person footage from cameras worn by 5,000+ contractors, raised a $30M seed led by Peak XV (John Koetsier/Forbes) [8h]
- Nirva, which plans to launch a wearable AI personal companion that offers relationship advice and more, raised $25M, bringing its total funding to $33M (Will Maddox/Axios) [8h]
- President Trump says he called Sundar Pichai to ask Google Maps to rename the Atlantic Ocean, though he would "probably pass" following Pichai's pushback (Victoria Craw/Washington Post) [8h]
- Minneapolis-based Slingshot, which uses AI to help businesses offer embedded insurance, emerges from stealth with a $27M seed co-led by Rally and Skyward Group (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News) [9h]
- Apple is rolling out a new "Made for iPhone Duo" badge in the App Store, and touts Netflix, Prime Video, Zoom, Word, and Outlook as Duo-optimized apps at launch (Emma Roth/The Verge) [9h]
- Sources: the Pentagon quietly establishes the Technology Support Office (TSO), an agency to execute covert sabotage, cyberattacks, and supply chain disruptions (Politico) [9h]
- 1Password passes $500M in ARR, up from $400M in November 2025, driven by enterprise AI coding assistants and agents, and announces 1Password for Agents (Elias Schisgall/Wall Street Journal) [9h]
- Ukraine says the abrupt throttling of US-funded Starshield grounded dozens of drones mid-flight, costing one unit $1M+, and halted some strikes for three days (New York Times) [10h]
- Enact, which develops full-stack tech for general-purpose robots, emerges from stealth with a $30M pre-seed from Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch, Yann LeCun, and more (John Reynolds/Tech.eu) [10h]
- Sources: Visa is in late-stage talks to buy stablecoin custody and infrastructure provider Fireblocks for ~$2.5B, its first acquisition in the stablecoin sector (Lucinda Shen/Axios) [10h]
- Israeli security company Lava finds 32 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra B300 chips connected to systems linked to state-owned operator China Telecom, despite US controls (Qianer Liu/The Information) [10h]
- Xona, which plans to deploy a 258-satellite low-Earth orbit constellation as a commercial alternative to GPS, raised a $250M Series D at a $2.45B valuation (Monica Hunter-Hart/Forbes) [10h]
- Filing: Meta reports ~$825B in total future commitments for leases and contracts, up from nearly $700B in July; off-balance-sheet leases total $355.7B to 2036 (Sarah Frier/Bloomberg) [10h]
- Source: a16z plans to drop "crypto" from its flagship blockchain fund, rebranding it to "a16z frontier" and broadening its investment strategy beyond crypto (Leo Schwartz/The Information) [11h]
- Meta reports 18% YoY ad revenue growth in Europe for Q3, down from ~40% in Q1 and 24% in Q2, lagging the US and Canada, after rolling out Less Personalized Ads (Isabella Ward/Wired) [11h]
- At GTC Berlin, Jensen Huang says he urged UK-based neocloud Nscale to "work around the clock" to resolve data center delays amid investor doubts about its IPO (Bloomberg) [11h]
- How the AI boom is boosting paint maker PPG's sales: its specialized gray coatings serve critical functional needs and total $3M to $8M per data center, per JLL (Emmy Martin/New York Times) [11h]
- No new articles in the Past 12 Hours.
- Anthropic Introduces Claude Duet: A New Agentic AI App for Professionals [1h]
- FTC Imposter Scam Threatens to Unplug Your Phone Number [2h]
- Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Spangram and Answers for Friday, Oct. 23, #964 [2h]
- Unlock Your iPad’s Full Potential With Up to $190 Off Magic Keyboard Cases at Woot [2h]
- Soon You Won’t Have to Do Dishes at an Airbnb (Unless You Really Want To) [2h]
- This New Device ‘Bricks’ Your Phone When You Enter Your Bedroom [2h]
- Today’s NYT Connections Hints and Answers for Friday, Oct. 23, #1230 [2h]
- Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for Oct. 23 #760 [3h]
- This Shark Air Purifier Can Go Years Without a Filter Change, and It’s at a Record-Low Price [3h]
- Add Some New Tools to Your Kit With Up to 71% Off Milwaukee Gear at Woot [4h]
- New York and T-Mobile Settle Dispute Over 4G Plan Price Hikes. How to Get a Credit [4h]
- How to Stream Pro and College Football in 2026 With DIRECTV MySports Genre Pack [5h]
- Get Optimum Fiber Internet for $25 a Month, Its Best Price This Year [5h]
- Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Thursday, Oct. 22 [5h]
- I Tried Automating My Relationships Using AI Agents. Muse and Dots Overstepped [5h]
- Hisense PX4 Pro UST Projector: High Color Accuracy for a High Price [6h]
- This Roborock Robot Vacuum Is Half Off at $750, Its Lowest Price Yet [6h]
- Americans Say Rising Utility Costs Are Straining Their Budgets. They’re Blaming Data Centers [7h]
- Organize Your Schedules, Recipes and More With Over $150 Off This FridgeCal Smart Display [7h]
- Amazon Deals of the Day: Keep an Eye on Your Pets While You’re Away With Almost 60% Off the Blink Mini 2K Plus Cam [7h]
- Dell XPS 14 Battery Life: A Full Workday Unplugged [8h]
- The Mori Is a Mushroom-Shaped AI Lamp Companion, and I’m Smitten [10h]
- I Went From AI Prompt to 3D-Printed Armor in 18 Hours [10h]
- Ring Doorbell and Indoor Cam Bundle Is Now Just $70 [10h]
- Test Driving an iPhone Duo? 6 Things to Try at the Apple Store [11h]
- Grab the Sony LinkBuds Wireless Earbuds While They’re at Their Lowest Price Ever [11h]
Previous Day