The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• SK Hynix reports Q3 revenue up 328% YoY to ~$78.8B, vs. ~$74.07B est., and operating profit up 632% to ~$62.76B, vs. ~$57.78B est. (Jenny Lee/CNBC) [10d]
• Anthropic expands its US GSA partnership to give federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments a 40% discount on Claude, estimated to save $1B (Anthropic) [10d]
• Infisical, which helps companies use AI agents without handing over their private credentials, raised a $40M Series B led by Elad Gil at a $600M valuation (Rashi Shrivastava/Forbes) [10d]
• NXP reports Q3 revenue up 19% YoY to $3.79B, vs. $3.76B est., and forecasts Q4 revenue below estimates; NXPI drops 7%+ after hours (Christina Kyriasoglou/Bloomberg) [10d]
• Source: Apple has discussed charging $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro with an OLED XDR touch screen and M5 Pro chip, $400 more than the current M5 Pro model (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg) [10d]
• Discord says it will let public-channel messages from servers listed in Server Discovery appear in web search from mid-December; admins and members can opt out (Lauren Forristal/TechCrunch) [10d]
• Anthropic details early drug development work with six partners and says it has acquired Mithril, a one-person company working on muscular dystrophy (Anthropic) [10d]
• Robinhood reports Q3 revenue up 12% YoY to $1.42B, in line with est., crypto revenue down 55% to $120M, and profit down 14% to $476M; HOOD drops 5%+ after hours (Reuters) [10d]
• Sources: AI robotics startup Physical Intelligence is in talks to raise $1B+ led by Avenir and Lux Capital at a ~$20B valuation, up from $11.5B earlier in 2026 (Bloomberg) [10d]
• Sources: Meta's $25B share sale was oversubscribed 5x as it seeks $98B for AI spending; the 15 largest investors in the sale accounted for ~70% of shares (Anthony Hughes/Bloomberg) [10d]
• Memo: Amazon says measuring AI adoption solely by token usage or code generation is "deeply flawed," as it discourages staff from tokenmaxxing (Annie Palmer/CNBC) [10d]
• GM plans to switch from the NYSE to Nasdaq on November 17 as part of its push under Tesla veteran Sterling Anderson to use AI to speed up its development cycle (Financial Times) [10d]
• Avante, which builds an AI platform to help companies manage employee healthcare and other benefits, raised a $30M Series A, following a $10M seed in 2024 (Kurt Schlosser/GeekWire) [10d]
• Oracle adds ChatGPT and Codex to its app stack and expands Oracle Cloud Infrastructure lineup with Google TPUs, OpenAI's Jalapeño chip, and Cerebras hardware (Seema Mody/CNBC) [10d]
• Google launches Genie 4, a world model powered by Gemini 3.8 Flash designed to generate interactive AI simulations, initially as a preview to trusted testers (Jay Peters/The Verge) [10d]
• Anthropic's S-1 shows an 85% gross margin in H1 from running its models, a reality check for skeptics who said pay-as-you-go model sales wouldn't be profitable (Stephanie Palazzolo/The Information) [10d]
• London-based Machenta, which is building an AI model that can teach robots new physical tasks after seeing them performed just once, raised a $40M seed (Rya Jetha/Business Insider) [10d]
• Apple adds a beta AI assistant built on Apple and OpenAI models to Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and Logic Pro, plus MCP support to Keynote, Pages, and Numbers (Emma Roth/The Verge) [10d]
• Dallas-based Disruptive raised $10B to invest in AI, defense, and software, doubling its AUM, and pivots from single-deal SPVs to a discretionary fund structure (Natasha Mascarenhas/Bloomberg) [10d]
• Neocloud General Compute, which specializes in bare-metal infrastructure, raised a $100M Series A led by Blackbird and Abstract at an $800M post-money valuation (Tim Fernholz/TechCrunch) [10d]
• Anduril and Qualcomm unveil BlueChip, a line of laptops designed and assembled in the US for defense and government; Anduril will begin taking orders in 2027 (Bloomberg) [10d]
• Apple updates the 24-inch iMac with an M6 chip, with up to a 12-core CPU, up to a 12-core GPU, and a dual 16-core Neural Engine, from $1,499 on November 6 (Apple) [10d]
• Apple unveils the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6, with a 12-core CPU and a 12-core GPU, up to 32GB of unified memory, and Wi-Fi 7, from $1,999 on November 6 (Apple) [10d]
• The FCC warns TP-Link that three routers exceeded power limits and it may have submitted "false or incorrect information", a move that could allow further bans (Bloomberg) [10d]
• Study: non-English languages can consume far more AI tokens, with the most expensive using 1.5x-5x more than the cheapest, resulting in a "tokenizer tax" (Ananya Bhattacharya/Rest of World) [10d]
• Sources: Trend Micro's TrendAI found Israeli adtech company Discover-Tech heavily targeted Starlink users in 100+ countries, likely to geolocate or surveil them (Raphael Satter/Reuters) [10d]
• PayPal reports Q3 revenue up 2% YoY to $8.58B, below $8.71B est., TPV up 6% to $487.14B, and raises full-year adjusted EPS guidance to ~$5.60, above $5.39 est. (Elias Schisgall/Wall Street Journal) [10d]
• Hyphenate, which develops reinforcement-learning-driven AI agents to automate corporate finance tasks, raised a $45M Series A, taking its total funding to $54M (Saritha Rai/Bloomberg) [10d]
• Analysis: AI political groups have spent $78.5M on US federal candidates during the 2026 cycle; AI accelerationists spent $34M and safeguard-focused groups $39M (Luke Fountain/CNBC) [10d]
• Anthropic's S-1 excludes Labs co-lead Ben Mann from its "Continuing Founders" and Founder LLC; Anthropic says "it's still fair to refer to him as a co-founder" (Zara Stone/The San Francisco Standard) [10d]
• Sources: UK stealth AI startup 22one, which is building law enforcement tools, hit a nearly $400M valuation after raising funds from Sequoia, Lux, and others (Financial Times) [10d]
• A US federal judge orders the Trump administration to halt a ban prohibiting the Pentagon from doing business with companies lobbying for Alibaba (Peter Blumberg/Bloomberg) [10d]
• S-1: Anthropic spent ~$2.50 on compute and infrastructure for every $1 of revenue in Q1 2025, falling to under 50 cents in Q2 2026, as it seeks profitability (Financial Times) [10d]
• Sources: Broadcom CEO Hock Tan held 11th-hour talks and agreed to higher rates and loan guarantees to secure bank participation in the $63B Anthropic debt deal (Wall Street Journal) [10d]
• Nvidia and Meta expand their Muse partnership, including Meta deploying more Vera Rubin and Vera CPUs; Nvidia will invest $3B in Meta's planned equity fundraise (Wall Street Journal) [10d]
• Microsoft patches a severe flaw in its Android Authenticator app that could let untrusted apps impersonate Microsoft apps and obtain delegated account tokens (Abinaya/Cyber Security News) [10d]
• Experts: since June, $100M+ in US data center freight has been stolen; in two successful heists, robbers struck escorts protecting trucks hauling $10M+ in goods (Lisa Cavazuti/NBC News) [10d]
• China's Star 50 index of AI and chip leaders is down by 40% in under four months, losing ~$480B in market value; chipmaker CXMT is down ~25% in the past month (Reuters) [10d]
• Ahead of US midterms, ChatGPT draws images "depicting election interference or that may discourage voting" in a cartoon style, ignoring photorealism requests (Katelyn Chedraoui/CNET) [10d]