The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• A US judge grants Anthropic's request for a preliminary injunction in its suit against the Trump administration over the DOD's decision to blacklist the company (Ashley Capoot/CNBC) [18d]
• In an interview, David Sacks says he has relinquished his role as AI and crypto czar after using up his time as a special government employee (Bloomberg) [18d]
• Sources: Anthropic executives have discussed an IPO as soon as Q4, and bankers vying to take the company public expect it to raise more than $60B (The Information) [18d]
• OpenAI has surpassed $100M in annualized revenue from ChatGPT ads, has expanded to 600+ advertisers, and plans to launch self-serve advertiser access in April (Stephanie Palazzolo/The Information) [18d]
• Google releases new tools for its Gemini AI assistant that let users upload chat history and context from other AI apps, making it easier to switch from them (Natalie Lung/Bloomberg) [18d]
• Apple discontinues the Mac Pro and says it has no plans to offer future Mac Pro hardware (Chance Miller/9to5Mac) [19d]
• Sources: Apple granted out-of-cycle bonuses worth several hundred thousand dollars to iPhone hardware designers, as OpenAI and others poach its engineers (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg) [19d]
• X limits X Pro access to subscribers of the $40/month Premium+ plan without notifying users in advance; it was previously available in the $8/month Premium plan (Juli Clover/MacRumors) [19d]
• Xona, which aims to build a commercial alternative to GPS by launching a low-Earth orbit satellite constellation, raised a $170M Series C (Sandra Erwin/SpaceNews) [19d]
• Meta plans to increase its investment in a data center in El Paso, Texas, to more than $10B, a significant rise from the initial $1.5B commitment (Riley Griffin/Bloomberg) [19d]
• Netflix raises US prices following a January 2025 hike; standard with ads rises $1 to $8.99/month; standard with no ads and premium rise $2 to $19.99 and $26.99 (Todd Spangler/Variety) [19d]
• Sources: X let go of 20+ staffers in nontechnical roles ahead of a SpaceX IPO; X staff have been told to focus on growing revenue since xAI brought on a CRO (Wall Street Journal) [19d]
• Italy-based Subbyx, which builds infrastructure that lets businesses offer access-based subscriptions, raised a €30M Series A (Tamara Djurickovic/Tech.eu) [19d]
• Fannie Mae will accept crypto-backed mortgages for the first time; Coinbase launches a mortgage product allowing buyers to pledge bitcoin or USDC as collateral (Wall Street Journal) [19d]
• Sources: Apple plans to open up Siri to run any AI service via App Store apps in iOS 27, dropping ChatGPT as exclusive partner in Apple Intelligence and Siri (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg) [19d]
• The China Computer Federation calls for a boycott of AI conference NeurIPS after organizers barred submissions from US-sanctioned companies like Huawei (Vincent Chow/South China Morning Post) [19d]
• Google expands Search Live, its AI conversational search feature previously limited to the US and India, to all languages and regions where AI Mode is available (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch) [19d]
• Meta stock falls 6%+ to a 10-month low after juries in two US trials found the company failed to adequately warn or protect young users (Harshita Mary Varghese/Reuters) [19d]
• Cohere launches Transcribe, its first voice model; the 2B-parameter, open-source speech recognition model handles tasks like notetaking and speech analysis (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch) [19d]
• The US FCC opens a comment period for a proposal to help return outsourced call center jobs to the US; critics say the plan could drive companies to automation (Patience Haggin/Wall Street Journal) [19d]
• ByteDance launches its Dreamina Seedance 2.0 audio and video model in its CapCut editing platform, supporting clips up to 15 seconds across six aspect ratios (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch) [19d]
• A US federal judge dismisses X's antitrust lawsuit that accused the World Federation of Advertisers and a group of major companies of illegally boycotting X (Mike Scarcella/Reuters) [19d]
• Google launches Gemini 3.1 Flash Live, an audio model with improved tonal understanding and lower latency for real-time dialogue, watermarked with SynthID (Valeria Wu/The Keyword) [19d]
• Wikipedia bans using AI for writing or rewriting articles on its English-language site, citing AI-written articles' tendency to violate "core content policies" (Emma Roth/The Verge) [19d]
• Cents, which makes operating and payments software for laundromats, raised a $110M Series C, following a $40M Series B in 2024 (Lucinda Shen/Axios) [19d]
• Apple expands its American Manufacturing Program, bringing in Bosch, Cirrus Logic, TDK, and Qnity Electronics to make components in the US for sale worldwide (MacKenzie Sigalos/CNBC) [19d]
• The European Parliament votes to delay EU AI Act deadlines, including pushing compliance for high-risk AI systems back to December 2027, and to ban nudify apps (Robert Hart/The Verge) [19d]
• WhatsApp rolls out features and updates: an AI tool to suggest replies based on a user's conversations, the ability to touch up photos with Meta AI, and more (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch) [19d]
• Mistral launches Voxtral TTS, an open-source enterprise text-to-speech model that supports nine languages, including Hindi and Arabic, based on Ministral 3B (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch) [19d]
• Defense tech startup Shield AI raised $2B at a $12.7B valuation, up from $5.3B after raising $240M in March 2025; half of its business is autonomous software (Michael J. de la Merced/New York Times) [19d]
• Interviews with 37 Anduril sources detail safety concerns and project challenges at Anduril's manufacturing operations; Anduril calls the claims "inaccurate" (Paresh Dave/Wired) [19d]
• The European Commission launches a DSA investigation into Snapchat for failing to protect children, including assessing its age verification measures (Eliza Gkritsi/Politico) [19d]
• The EU accuses Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX, and XVideos of failing to protect kids from exposure to pornographic content, in preliminary DSA investigation findings (Barbara Moens/Financial Times) [19d]
• As US lawmakers struggle to pass online safety laws, LA and New Mexico juries take the lead, holding social media companies accountable for harming young users (Cecilia Kang/New York Times) [19d]
• Meituan reports Q4 revenue up 4.1% YoY to ~$13.3B and a ~$2.2B adjusted net loss, vs. ~$1.9B est., amid an intense food delivery fight with Alibaba and JD.com (Luz Ding/Bloomberg) [19d]
• OpenAI puts plans for an erotic chatbot on hold "indefinitely" as it refocuses on its core products, sources say after concerns from staff and investors (Financial Times) [19d]
• Revolut says it aims to base 40% of its global workforce in India by the end of 2026, increasing its local headcount to 5,500; Revolut has 12,000 staff globally (Haripriya Suresh/Reuters) [19d]
• Sources: Chinese chipmaker CXMT hit ~$8B in 2025 revenue, up 130% YoY, and projects ~$435M in adjusted net income, excluding one-time items, ahead of an IPO (Bloomberg) [19d]
• Melania Trump appeared alongside Figure AI's Figure 3 humanoid robot at the White House to promote integrating more tech and AI into US children's education (Katie Rogers/New York Times) [19d]
• Book excerpt: how Google acquired DeepMind for $650M in 2014, beating Facebook to the deal; Mustafa Suleyman used poker-style bluffing to secure a safety board (Sebastian Mallaby/Wall Street Journal) [19d]
• Sources: Google's top India counsel Bijoya Roy resigned after 16 months to start a new venture, a high-profile exit in a market where it faces regulatory issues (Aditya Kalra/Reuters) [19d]
• Pony AI reports 2025 revenue up 20% YoY to ~$90M, total annual losses down 72% YoY to ~$76.8M, and a $75.5M net income in Q4, its first profitable quarter ever (Bloomberg) [19d]
• The US Army selects Carlyle and KKR to build two data centers on military bases, set to cost $2B each, as its token usage rises 8x during the US' war in Iran (Steff Chávez/Financial Times) [19d]
• Uber partners with China's Pony AI and Croatia-based, Rimac-spinoff Verne to launch Europe's first commercial robotaxi service, initially debuting in Zagreb (Andrew J. Hawkins/The Verge) [19d]
• An oral history of Apple's earliest days told by people who lived it, including Steve Wozniak, Ronald Wayne, Mike Markkula, and Liza Loop, as Apple turns 50 (Harry McCracken/Fast Company) [19d]
• The $6M LA social media verdict is a win for the plaintiffs bar, not kids or society; parenting helps limit such harms, and most kids don't face severe issues (Wall Street Journal) [19d]
• How Theia, a satellite imaging startup that raised $250M+ by 2020, collapsed after the founder and four other execs were indicted on federal fraud charges (Brent Crane/Bloomberg) [19d]
• Ruling in the LA bellwether case could impact Meta and other platforms, opening up a flood of litigation challenging product design and bypassing Section 230 (Wall Street Journal) [19d]
• The US DOJ charged a Chinese national and two Americans for allegedly trying to smuggle ~$62M worth of export-controlled A100 and H100 Nvidia chips into China (Michael Kan/PCMag) [19d]
• Deccan AI, which supplies post-training data and evaluation work, raised a $25M Series A led by A91 Partners; most of its workforce of experts is based in India (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch) [19d]
• Leaked memo: Meta's Reality Labs is reorganizing staff into AI-native "pods" focused on specific outcomes, flattening the organization's leadership structure (Charles Rollet/Business Insider) [19d]
• Sources: Reflection AI, which is developing open foundation models, seeks to raise $2.5B at a pre-money valuation of $25B; JPMorgan is in talks to participate (Wall Street Journal) [19d]
• Filing: Apple settled its lawsuit against former Vision Pro designer Di Liu, who agreed to return confidential documents to Apple and pay monetary damages (Chance Miller/9to5Mac) [19d]
• OpenRouter data: lower-cost Chinese AI models by groups such as DeepSeek and MiniMax have surpassed US rivals in token consumption since last month (Zijing Wu/Financial Times) [19d]
• San Francisco has become a laboratory for police surveillance after early resistance; SFPD recorded 700 drone flights last month, up from 93 in February 2025 (Cyrus Farivar/The San Francisco Standard) [19d]
• Isara, which aims to build software that can coordinate the work of thousands of AI agents, raised $94M and says OpenAI backed the startup at a $650M valuation (Berber Jin/Wall Street Journal) [19d]