The Brutalist Report

Sources: Mercor asked professionals in fields like entertainment to sell their prior work materials for AI training, even if the IP could belong to ex-employers (Katherine Bindley/Wall Street Journal) [16m]
Sources: Elon requires banks seeking roles in SpaceX's IPO to subscribe to Grok and advertise on X; some banks are spending tens of millions integrating Grok (Maureen Farrell/New York Times) [1h]
Chinese semiconductor companies like SMIC reported record 2025 revenue, driven by AI demand and China's self-sufficiency push as a result of US restrictions (Arjun Kharpal/CNBC) [2h]
Tower Semiconductor's market cap tops $20B, four years after a near-sale to Intel for $5B; shares are up ~60% over the past month and ~525% over the past year (CTech) [2h]
Sources: Huawei's Ascend 950PR chip, set for mass production soon, saw prices rise 20% after Chinese tech giants placed bulk orders to run DeepSeek's V4 model (Qianer Liu/The Information) [3h]
Docs: Israeli AI chip startup Hailo is pursuing an urgent IPO via a SPAC merger at a valuation of less than $500M; it was last valued at $1.2B in 2024 (Meir Orbach/CTech) [3h]
A US bill seeks to ban exports of DUV lithography tech to China, whose imports of chipmaking equipment reportedly grew from $10.7B in 2016 to ~$51.1B in 2025 (Jared Perlo/NBC News) [4h]
Some startups and researchers who can't access the most advanced chips are adopting a "frugal AI" approach, building smaller models on open-weight systems (Rina Chandran/Rest of World) [6h]
The US NLRB rules that Amazon must negotiate with the Amazon Labor Union, which represents ~5K workers at its Staten Island warehouse; Amazon plans to appeal (Greg Bensinger/Reuters) [9h]
Matt Mullenweg says EmDash, while open source, is designed "to sell more Cloudflare services" and lacks the cross-platform democratization of WordPress (Matt Mullenweg) [13h]
Sources: Chinese companies move to cement their role in humanoid robot supply chains as Tesla and others turn to China for components the US sees as strategic (Raffaele Huang/Wall Street Journal) [13h]
Arcee AI releases Trinity-Large-Thinking, a 399B-parameter MoE AI model under an Apache 2.0 license, allowing full customization and commercial use (Carl Franzen/VentureBeat) [14h]
Anthropic researchers find that an AI model's representations of emotion can influence its behavior "in ways that matter," such as driving it to act unethically (Nat Rubio-Licht/The Deep View) [15h]
Noon, an AI-native product design tool, emerges from stealth with $44M in funding from Chemistry, First Round Capital, Scribble Ventures, and others (Vaibhavi Khanwalkar/The Economic Times) [15h]
Microsoft partners with SoftBank and Sakura Internet to build AI data infrastructure in Japan, investing $10 billion over four years and training 1M engineers (Takashi Mochizuki/Bloomberg) [15h]
Alcatraz, which develops AI-powered facial-recognition security systems for building access, raised a $50M Series B, bringing its total funding to $100M+ (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE) [16h]
Sources: Supabase is in talks to raise ~$500M at a ~$10B valuation, roughly doubling its October 2025 valuation; GIC is expected to lead the funding round (Katie Roof/The Information) [16h]
Sony Interactive Entertainment acquires Cinemersive Labs, a UK startup developing tools to convert 2D photos and videos into 3D volumetric photographs (Ian Carlos Campbell/Engadget) [16h]
A domestic shortage of electrical equipment such as transformers and switchgear is forcing the US to rely on Chinese imports, delaying data center construction (Bloomberg) [17h]
Sources: Sarvam AI is close to raising $300M-$350M at a ~$1.5B valuation, which could close as soon as next week; Bessemer Venture Partners is expected to lead (Saritha Rai/Bloomberg) [17h]
Source: Anthropic has acquired Coefficient Bio, which was developing a platform that enables AI to run biotech tasks such as planning drug research, for ~$400M (The Information) [18h]
Sources detail Fidji Simo's moves at OpenAI, including spearheading the TBPN acquisition and pushing OpenAI to cut Sora and avoid other social media products (Stephanie Palazzolo/The Information) [19h]
Sources: Meta has told members of its Oversight Board that it may stop funding the board after 2028, though eliminating all funding is not its preferred option (Casey Newton/Platformer) [19h]
Amazon adds a 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge to fulfillment fees for US and Canadian third-party sellers from April 17, as the Iran war drives up oil prices (Annie Palmer/CNBC) [20h]
LinkedIn job posting data: companies added 640K AI-related jobs from 2023 to 2025 in the US, including 225K "head of AI" jobs, up 49% from the prior four years (Te-Ping Chen/Wall Street Journal) [21h]
Sources: SpaceX is floating a $2T+ valuation to prospective investors in its IPO; SpaceX's acquisition of xAI reportedly valued the combined company at $1.25T (Bloomberg) [22h]
Source: OpenAI bought TBPN, which was set to generate $30M in 2026, for "low hundreds of millions of dollars"; OpenAI says TBPN will be editorially independent (George Hammond/Financial Times) [22h]
The CFTC sues Arizona, Connecticut, and Illinois over their actions against prediction markets, saying it has the "exclusive" authority to regulate such markets (Alex Harring/CNBC) [23h]

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