The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• Democrats and Republicans proposed many bills to address major AI threats over the past two years, but they remain stymied by partisan disputes and lobbying (New York Times) [52d]
• Q&A with Matt Sheehan, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, on US-China AI race, distillation, US chip export controls, and more (New York Times) [52d]
• Mark Zuckerberg says AI labs have the responsibility and incentive to train models safely and that any lab that doesn't focus on alignment will fall behind (Mark Zuckerberg/@finkd) [52d]
• Sources: Meta plans to release a camera-free pair of smart glasses this fall; the new model has six mics to let users speak with Meta's AI chatbot and Muse (Jyoti Mann/The Information) [52d]
• TypeSafe AI, which is developing a model that outputs numerical responses with probability estimates to help businesses assess reliability, raised a $40M seed (Rashi Shrivastava/Forbes) [52d]
• Sources: OpenAI has held early conversations with investors about raising another private funding round at a $1.2T valuation before its planned IPO (Financial Times) [52d]
• At a US House hearing, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said AI labs should get no liability exemptions and called for more open-source models built in the US (Matt Bracken/FedScoop) [52d]
• OpenRouter users spent more on OpenAI's models than on Anthropic's in the week of September 7, the first time that happened since the week of February 26, 2024 (@openrouter) [52d]
• Pulley, which offers cap table management software, says it will cease operations after December 8; it had raised $50M+ from investors, including Founders Fund (Melia Robinson/Business Insider) [52d]
• At the Future of Life Institute's Pro-Human Assembly, Bernie Sanders, Steve Bannon, and others called for tighter restrictions on AI and denounced tech CEOs (New York Times) [52d]
• During a Salesforce event, Jensen Huang says the AI industry doesn't need any new laws or regulations and market forces will help companies safely innovate (Brody Ford/Bloomberg) [52d]
• Crypto exchange CoinEx says it is closing, citing a lengthy downturn and rising compliance costs; a report said it moved $3B+ for Iran-linked wallets since 2019 (Dylan Tokar/Wall Street Journal) [52d]
• The Senate fails to advance the Clarity Act, dealing a major blow to the crypto industry's push for a comprehensive market structure framework (CNBC) [52d]
• CADDi, which sells AI tools to help manufacturers organize engineering and production data, raised a $114M Series D at a $1.2B valuation, up from $470M in 2025 (Jeremy Kahn/Fortune) [52d]
• Google launches Gemini 3.8 Live and Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking, its "most advanced live dialogue models yet", to more effectively enable voice agents (Google) [52d]
• Some developers are using the Claude Code harness to access cheaper non-Anthropic models, including GPT-5.6 Sol, via proxies and services like OpenRouter (Alix Coutures/The Information) [52d]
• Thatch, a healthcare plan marketplace where employers set a fixed budget that employees can use for individual plans, raised a $108M Series C at a $1B valuation (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch) [52d]
• UMG sues DistroKid, alleging it distributes AI-generated music masquerading as artist-backed releases and knowingly "proliferates" copyright-infringing tracks (Tim Ingham/Music Business Worldwide) [52d]
• Factory, whose AI coding agents, called Droids, switch between models depending on a task's complexity, raised $200M at a $5B valuation, up from $1.5B in April (Angel Au-Yeung/Wall Street Journal) [52d]
• Sources: Palmer Luckey-backed Erebor Bank ended its free stablecoin-to-cash redemption offer after trading firms like Wintermute exploited it for arbitrage (The Information) [52d]
• DoorDash agrees to acquire Wonder's Grubhub Campus Dining business, formerly Tapingo, for $300M, and will add $125M to Wonder's $650M Series D announced in July (Amanda Silberling/TechCrunch) [52d]
• Sources: the US Commerce Department last month ordered Kalshi to take down an AI compute futures product, citing national security concerns; Kalshi complied (Semafor) [52d]
• AWS facilities in Abu Dhabi and Bahrain remain mostly offline more than six months after being damaged by Iranian drones, complicating the region's AI ambitions (Wall Street Journal) [52d]
• Elon Musk says top US AI labs and "three or four of the leading Chinese companies" should let rivals run a "test harness" on their models to evaluate safety (Annie Palmer/CNBC) [52d]
• Meta rolls out its Meta One subscription bundle globally, with expanded Meta AI capabilities powered by Muse, and $7.99/month and $19.99/month individual plans (Stevie Bonifield/The Verge) [52d]
• GM plans to add Apple CarPlay and Android Auto to its latest infotainment system, three years after upsetting some consumers by removing them from its EVs (David Welch/Bloomberg) [52d]
• India's UPI, which has been free for merchants, will impose a 0.4% merchant fee on certain payments above ₹2,000, or $21, from October 15 in a major shift (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch) [52d]
• OpenAI says it has been working with Anthropic and Google for several weeks on AI safety, and it does not need an antitrust waiver to coordinate on safety (Maggie Eastland/Bloomberg Law) [52d]
• Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company, which offers audits and safety certifications for AI agents, raised a $40M Series A, bringing total raised to $55M (Julie Bort/TechCrunch) [52d]
• Meta says it plans to deploy MTIA 450, its third-generation custom AI chip, in data centers in H1 2027, followed by a broad rollout of MTIA 500 by end of 2027 (Dina Bass/Bloomberg) [52d]
• The US DOJ says several companies used Binance to relay payments of around $1.5B for black-market Iranian oil from Chinese buyers; Binance says it took action (Wall Street Journal) [52d]
• At Dreamforce, Salesforce announces Koa, a specialized CRM reasoning model built on Nvidia's Nemotron architecture, designed to power AI agents in Agentforce (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE) [52d]
• OpenAI backs a provision of the FRONTIER Act, a bipartisan House proposal, that would require AI companies to embed outside evaluators to ensure model safety (Brendan Bordelon/Politico) [52d]
• Altera, which makes chips for AI, automation, and more, files confidentially for an IPO; Intel acquired it for ~$16.7B in 2015, and Silver Lake took 51% in 2025 (David Morris/Bloomberg) [52d]
• The Gates Foundation pledges $1B+ over two years to expand global access to AI and use it to tackle social inequalities; Gates says "we can harness AI for good" (Claire Moses/New York Times) [52d]
• Apple says iCloud+ now includes Apple TV and Arcade at no extra charge in 100+ countries, plus Music Select, a set of ad-free radio stations, in some markets (Benjamin Mayo/9to5Mac) [52d]
• Sources: ByteDance's H1 2026 net profit dropped by a single-digit percentage YoY to $20B and revenue rose ~30% to $120B; its 2025 revenue rose 29% to ~$200B (The Information) [52d]
• New York-based AI marketing startup Profound raised a $180M Series D led by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins at a $1.8B valuation, taking its total funding to $335M+ (Rebecca Torrence/Bloomberg) [52d]
• Agility unveils Digit 5, a humanoid robot to safely work alongside humans without physical barriers by utilizing AI collision-avoidance software and new sensors (Samantha Kelly/Bloomberg) [52d]
• HTC Vive Eagle smart glasses review: useful controls, lightweight, and focused on privacy, but inessential, expensive at $499+, and imaging needs to improve (Daniel Cooper/Engadget) [52d]
• Grab agrees to acquire a 60% stake in Singapore-based BNPL platform Atome from Advance Intelligence Group and others for $1.49B; Atome had $470M in 2025 revenue (Olivia Poh/Bloomberg) [52d]
• New York State Assemblyman Alex Bores launches Who Decides, a nonprofit that raised $10M and aims to raise another $20M in 2027 to shape Democratic AI policy (New York Times) [52d]
• Amazon says its India quick delivery service, Amazon Now, crossed $1B in annualized gross revenue, with orders doubling QoQ since its launch in summer 2025 (Sankalp Phartiyal/Bloomberg) [52d]
• MediaTek unveils the Dimensity 9600 Pro, its first phone SoC on TSMC's 2nm node, and the 3nm 9600M, with boosted AI performance, as it competes with Qualcomm (Wen-Yee Lee/Reuters) [52d]
• Microsoft rolls out emergency fix for critical issues caused by its September Patch Tuesday update, which addressed ~1,000 vulnerabilities but introduced bugs (Tom Warren/The Verge) [52d]
• China tightens overseas travel controls for citizens via exit bans and fines in a sweeping new law, as Beijing moves to secure state secrets and advanced tech (Financial Times) [52d]
• Google DeepMind AI Safety and Alignment researcher Bilal Chughtai publicly resigns, saying "I earnestly believe that AI has the potential to kill us all" (Debby Wu/Bloomberg) [52d]
• Apple rolls out child safety tools with iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27, such as blocking gore and violent content in FaceTime calls and Safari's Ask to Browse (Apple) [52d]
• Jensen Huang took a surprise call from President Trump onstage at the All-In Summit on Monday in LA, where the two dismissed fears of an AI takeover (New York Times) [52d]
• Google gives all of its engineers Claude Opus 5 access via Antigravity, and says "Gemini remains our primary and foundational model for internal development" (Hugh Langley/Business Insider) [52d]
• A deep dive into on-device and data center inference for robots, including a primer on robot models, deployments, supply chains, the "network wall", and more (SemiAnalysis) [52d]
• Netherlands-based inference chip startup Euclyd raised a €200M+ Series A co-led by Samsung, Somerset Capital, Scaleup Europe Fund, and Innovation Industries (Kai Nicol-Schwarz/CNBC) [52d]
• Sources: Tokyo-based memory maker Kioxia is considering raising $10B+ through a 2027 US ADR listing as it seeks liquidity after billions in share buybacks (Bloomberg) [53d]
• Rome-based Exein, which offers cybersecurity tools for connected devices including cars and home routers, raised $270M led by Headline at a $1.7B valuation (Tom Wilson/Financial Times) [53d]
• OpenAI researcher: top models are becoming so situationally aware humans "are losing the ability to evaluate them" while humans rely more on AI to lead research (Daniel Kokotajlo/@dkokotajlo) [53d]
• A look at iLands, a company that's like Fiverr for agents, which email annoying and unsolicited pitches to people, usually for services costing ~$25 (Ernie Smith/Tedium) [53d]
• Thoughts on AI labs' safety concerns: a coordinated slowdown may look like an antitrust conspiracy to limit output that would preserve frontier model margins (Matt Levine/Bloomberg) [53d]
• Cybersecurity stocks were the top performers in the S&P 500 on Monday amid escalating AI fears; CrowdStrike rose 14%, Palo Alto Networks 13%, and Fortinet 9% (Britney Nguyen/MarketWatch) [53d]
• Vera Rubin NVL72 inference tests show up to 7x better token throughput per MW vs. Blackwell on a 1.6T DeepSeek model, above Huang's 3x claim for 1T-3T LLMs (Bryan Shan/SemiAnalysis) [53d]