The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• A look at EU efforts to cut reliance on US tech; study: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google hold ~70% of EU cloud and US vendors get 80% of enterprise software spend (Politico) [1h]
• Tim Cook reshaped Apple in his own image and exits as CEO on his own terms, seemingly picking the right successor in John Ternus, much like Jobs did with Cook (John Gruber/Daring Fireball) [3h]
• A look at transnational scam syndicates in Cambodia, running hundreds of online scam operations and call centers and infiltrating Cambodia's ruling class (Wall Street Journal) [3h]
• Chinese PCB maker Victory Giant surges ~57% in its Hong Kong trading debut after raising ~$2.6B in its IPO, the largest in the city so far this year (Eunice Xu/South China Morning Post) [5h]
• Sources: Jeff Bezos' Project Prometheus is close to a $10B fundraising deal, which includes an initial $6.2B raise in November, at a $38B post-money valuation (Financial Times) [6h]
• In an email to employees, Johny Srouji details newly combined hardware engineering and hardware technologies division, organized across five key areas (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg) [7h]
• Apple says Tim Cook, as executive chairman, "will assist with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with policymakers around the world" (Marcus Mendes/9to5Mac) [7h]
• The US Air Force cancels RTX's ground-control network for the US' next generation of GPS satellites after years of delays and cost overruns (Anthony Capaccio/Bloomberg) [8h]
• Q&A with Canva CEO Melanie Perkins on the company's growth in enterprise, competing with AI labs, token pricing, investing in its own models, and more (Nilay Patel/The Verge) [8h]
• A US jury finds Uber liable for a sexual assault by a driver in 2019, handing Uber a second consecutive defeat in its first trials of 3,000+ pending lawsuits (Emily Steel/New York Times) [9h]
• John Ternus, senior VP of Hardware Engineering, will become Apple's next CEO on September 1; Tim Cook will become executive chairman of Apple's board (CNBC) [10h]
• OpenAI rolls out Chronicle, which builds memories from screen captures to make Codex more aware of context, as a research preview for Pro subscribers on macOS (Zac Hall/9to5Mac) [10h]
• Apple says Johny Srouji, who most recently served as senior VP of Hardware Technologies, will assume an expanded role leading Hardware Engineering (Apple) [11h]
• Amazon agrees to invest up to $25B in Anthropic, on top of the $8B that it has already invested; Anthropic commits to spend $100B+ on AWS over the next 10 years (Ashley Capoot/CNBC) [11h]
• Apple announces that John Ternus, senior VP of Hardware Engineering, will become Apple's next CEO on September 1; Tim Cook will become executive chairman (Business Wire) [11h]
• Microsoft pauses new GitHub Copilot signups for Pro, Pro+, and Student tiers, tightens usage limits, removes Opus models from Pro, and limits Opus 4.7 to Pro+ (The GitHub Blog) [11h]
• Docs: Microsoft intends to pause student and paid individual tier signups for GitHub Copilot, tighten limits, and then move from request to token-based billing (Edward Zitron/Ed Zitron's Where's ...) [11h]
• RaveDAO's RAVE has lost $6.6B+ in market cap and its price has sunk ~98% since Saturday, after ZachXBT called on exchanges to probe if it was being manipulated (André Beganski/Decrypt) [12h]
• A profile of far-right influencer Nick Fuentes, who has been kicked off most mainstream social media but made ~$900K from "fanatical" donors since early 2025 (Washington Post) [13h]
• Filing in California's antitrust lawsuit: CA accuses Amazon of price-fixing by pressuring brands to ask competing retailers to increase prices on some products (David McCabe/New York Times) [14h]
• A new media company called MTS launches for "monitoring the situation" across tech, business, politics, and culture, with backing from a16z and others (a16z) [14h]
• WhatsApp says it is testing a new subscription called WhatsApp Plus, which includes features like expanded pinned chats, custom lists, and new chat themes (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch) [15h]
• Moonshot introduces Kimi K2.6, an open-weight model that it says shows strong improvements in long-horizon coding tasks, available under a modified MIT License (Kimi AI) [15h]
• Deezer says AI-generated tracks now account for 44% of daily uploads, totaling ~75K tracks per day and 2M+ per month, but account for just 1-3% of consumption (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch) [16h]
• Sources: UK-based CuspAI, which aims to use AI for discovering new materials, is in discussions to raise at least $200M, taking its valuation to over $1B (Yazhou Sun/Bloomberg) [16h]
• China's iQiyi plans to overhaul its streaming service into an AI content hub, with an app redesign and Nadou Pro AI tool handling "every aspect of film-making" (Bloomberg) [17h]
• A look at creators and organizations warning of AI's existential threats to humanity; some organizations sponsor social media posts and partner with influencers (Nitasha Tiku/Washington Post) [18h]
• Adobe introduces CX Enterprise, an AI agent-based platform that aims to help corporate customers automate digital marketing and other functions (Belle Lin/Wall Street Journal) [18h]
• Filing: Michael Saylor's Strategy bought $2.54B in bitcoin over the past seven days, its largest acquisition since November 2024; Strategy owns ~$61B in bitcoin (Matt Haldane/Bloomberg) [18h]
• Sources: Google has created strike team to improve its coding models; Sergey Brin told DeepMind staffers that they must aggressively pivot to catch up on agents (Erin Woo/The Information) [18h]
• Huawei launches the Pura X Max, a passport-style foldable with a 5.4-inch cover display and a 7.7-inch internal display, in China, starting at ~$1,613 (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge) [19h]
• A Blue Origin rocket failed to correctly place a BlueBird satellite from satellite networking company AST into its intended orbit; ASTS falls 14% pre-market (Jake Rudnitsky/Bloomberg) [20h]
• Nigerian drone startup Terra Industries raised $34M from Joe Lonsdale, Lux Capital, and others and is opening its first international factory in Accra, Ghana (Nduka Orjinmo/Bloomberg) [21h]
• In an April 8 order, India's CCI says Apple failed to submit required data after a probe found alleged app market abuse, and sets a hearing for May on penalties (Aditya Kalra/Reuters) [21h]
• LayerZero says North Korea's Lazarus is likely behind the $292M Kelp DAO exploit on April 18, which triggered $10B in outflows from Aave over bad debt concerns (Danny Park/The Block) [21h]
• Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff dismisses the idea of vibe coded CRM replacing SaaS companies, saying data security and compliance make Salesforce indispensable (Sebastian Herrera/Wall Street Journal) [23h]