The Brutalist Report

A look at the challenges facing incoming Google DeepMind head Koray Kavukcuoglu, who joined DeepMind in 2012 and will oversee Gemini and frontier AI research (Kai Nicol-Schwarz/CNBC) [5m]
Former Alibaba star researcher Junyang Lin launches Shanghai-based Pragmatik Labs to build digital and physical AI agents; Pragmatik hit a $2B valuation in June (Juro Osawa/The Information) [20m]
Foxconn reports Q2 revenue up 41% YoY to ~$78.4B, with cloud and networking products contributing 50%+ for the first time, and net profit up 35% to ~$1.86B (Sherry Qin/Wall Street Journal) [30m]
Tencent reports Q2 revenue up 11% YoY to ~$30.4B, above ~$30B est., and net income of ~$8.3B, driven by surging WeChat advertising and resilient game spending (Bloomberg) [45m]
Stockholm-based AI coding startup Lovable raised $400M at a $13.3B valuation, up from $6.6B in December 2025, becoming one of Europe's most valuable startups (Ben Dummett/Wall Street Journal) [58m]
Sources: AI coding startup Cognition is in early talks with investors to raise $1B+ at a $40B+ valuation, after raising $1B at a $26B valuation in May (Rebecca Torrence/Bloomberg) [2h]
Some health and fitness obsessives are using AI for hyperpersonalized training, building custom dashboards and tools to analyze their sleep, workouts, and diet (Wall Street Journal) [4h]
Briter: Africa-focused startups raised $3.3B in H1 2026, up 73% YoY, driven by Zipline's $950M raise; US- and UAE-incorporated entities raised half the capital (Nduka Orjinmo/Bloomberg) [4h]
Bengaluru-based Yulu, which gets ~95% of its revenue from renting e-bikes to gig workers, raised a $93M Series C, sources say at a ~$170M post-money valuation (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch) [5h]
Sources: Singapore-based data center operator DayOne confidentially files for a US IPO, aims to list as soon as next quarter, and is considering raising ~$5B (Bloomberg) [5h]
Researchers say suspected Chinese hackers used open-source AI agents to build an autonomous hacking tool that compromised Taiwanese government websites in July (Tom Wilson/Financial Times) [5h]
OpenAI VP of Global Policy Ann O'Leary says AI policy in the US is anchored in the states and informed by California's AI transparency law passed last year (Chase DiFeliciantonio/Politico) [5h]
A look at Candy Crush's continued popularity 15 years after its launch, with an estimated 81.5M MAUs and in-app revenue of $876.5M in fiscal year 2025 (Alanna Okun/Bloomberg) [9h]
A profile of Suno, which has been used by more than 100M people since 2023 and has 2M+ paid subscribers, as it faces copyright lawsuits from UMG and Sony Music (Bloomberg) [10h]
OpenAI launches a ChatGPT desktop app for Linux in preview, supporting ChatGPT Work, Codex, and more; Computer Use outside the in-app browser is not available (Frederic Lardinois/The New Stack) [11h]
The CFTC uses its "emergency authority" to order Kalshi to continue operating in New York after the state filed a lawsuit in July seeking to shutter Kalshi (Nikhilesh De/CoinDesk) [11h]
Source: Kalshi's annualized revenue topped $4B in July, up from $2B+ two months earlier, and its operating expenses totaled $300M in June (Yueqi Yang/The Information) [12h]
Accel raised $3.5B in funds for early-stage investments, including a $1.35B global expansion fund for larger early-stage rounds and rapid follow-on investments (Natasha Mascarenhas/Bloomberg) [12h]
Researchers find that feeding a frontier model's encrypted reasoning traces to a weaker model from the same provider can make it output the traces in plaintext (Will Knight/Wired) [13h]
Sources: former OpenAI Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil is aiming to raise $150M for a new AI science startup, seeking a valuation of at least $750M (Business Insider) [13h]
CoreWeave reports Q2 revenue up 112% YoY to $2.58B, vs. $2.56B est., and a $104B revenue backlog, with 1.5 GW of contracted power; CRWV jumps 9%+ after hours (Jordan Novet/CNBC) [13h]
Super Micro reports Q4 revenue up 93% YoY to $11.1B, vs. $11.3B est., and forecasts Q1 and FY 2027 revenue above estimates; SMCI jumps 9%+ after hours (Dina Bass/Bloomberg) [14h]
Filings show Uber divested from long-time partner Serve Robotics in Q2, as the companies clash over how to deploy delivery robots; Serve has a DoorDash deal (Natalie Lung/Bloomberg) [14h]
Similarweb: Bluesky's mobile MAUs fell 27% YoY to 10.4M in June and DAUs fell 26% to 3M in July; X's mobile MAUs fell 3% to 302M and DAUs fell 7% to 123.7M (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch) [15h]
Royal Bank of Canada and Bank of Montreal agree to sell payments company Moneris to PE firm Francisco Partners for CA$2B in cash, splitting proceeds equally (Bloomberg) [15h]
Sources: David Sacks' Craft Ventures is targeting around $1B for a new fund, its first since Sacks stepped down as the White House AI and crypto czar (The Information) [16h]
SpaceXAI rolls out Grok Bot AI agent app in beta on Mac, iOS, Windows, and Linux, initially for SuperGrok Heavy, Cursor Ultra, and Cursor Teams Premium users (Zac Hall/9to5Mac) [16h]
Sources: Nvidia is developing a Nemotron 4 model with 1T+ parameters, up from Nemotron 3 Ultra's 550B parameters but smaller than leading Chinese open models (The Information) [17h]
Sundar Pichai says Gemini has hit 1B+ MAUs, the company's fastest-growing product ever and its 14th product to hit the 1B-user mark (Sundar Pichai/@sundarpichai) [17h]
Brad Lightcap, who most recently led OpenAI's special projects division and formerly was its COO, says he is leaving the company "to start something new" (Stephanie Palazzolo/The Information) [18h]
Flight tracking platform FlightAware sues Kalshi in New York, alleging Kalshi is using its data without permission to let users bet on flight cancellations (Jack Morphet/Wall Street Journal) [18h]
Sources: Phia co-founders Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni pushed for and were aware for seven months of using "cookie stuffing" to claim affiliate commissions (Bloomberg) [18h]
eToro agrees to acquire US-focused online brokerage TradeZero for up to $231M in cash and stock; TradeZero had ~$80M in revenue over the 12 months ended June 30 (Daniel Kuhn/The Block) [19h]
Source: Trajectory, founded by ex-DeepMind, Apple, OpenAI, and Meta staffers to build continual learning models, raised $40M led by Sequoia at a $300M valuation (Stephanie Palazzolo/The Information) [20h]
River Markets, which gives professional traders a single place to trade across multiple prediction markets, raised an $8.5M seed led by Haun Ventures (Camila Grigera Naón/Fortune) [20h]
Manus says it will "soon return to operating as an independent company", implying it is close to finalizing the reversal of its acquisition by Meta (Jing Yang/The Information) [20h]
TSMC and Sony plan to establish Advanced Vision Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp, a $4.69B JV in Japan to make next-gen smartphone image sensors from 2029 (Reuters) [21h]
Nvidia releases Nemotron 3.5 Lightning, an open 30B-parameter MoE model that it says delivers up to 4x faster output speeds, and an agentic AI model router (Kyt Dotson/SiliconANGLE) [21h]
Spotify plans to roll out AI Persona labeling in mid-September for profiles that do "not represent a real person"; the system uses human review and AI tools (Emma Roth/The Verge) [21h]
Bumble rolls out a global update letting any user send an opening message after matching, a major reversal from its signature women-go-first model (Samantha Kelly/Bloomberg) [21h]
Apple's iOS 27 beta 5 contains references to six unreleased iPhones: iPhone Air 2, iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, iPhone 18, iPhone Ultra, and iPhone 18e (Filipe Esposito/Macworld) [21h]
IBM and Together AI sign a $240M, multi-year deal to build an AI inference cluster on IBM Cloud, using Nvidia's HGX B300 systems, to support open-source models (Anhata Rooprai/Reuters) [21h]
Big Tech's AI boom echoes the 1870s railroad expansion, and Nvidia shifting risk to institutional capital may expose investors if revenues fail to materialize (Ben Thompson/Stratechery) [22h]
An NYC bill, backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, calls for Amazon, FedEx, and others to directly employ thousands of delivery workers; the bill could pass this fall (Bloomberg) [23h]
xAI co-founder Igor Babuschkin's River AI raised $1B led by General Catalyst to build home or small business computer servers capable of running AI locally (Cade Metz/New York Times) [23h]
How India's IT services sector, which employs 6M people, contributes ~7% of GDP, and generates $300B+ annually, is shedding jobs as AI automates formulaic work (Financial Times) [23h]

Cloudflare Blog

Cloudflare DDoS Threat Report H1 2026: 1 Tbps attacks soar as DNS floods and geopolitical tensions drive a new wave [21h]