Thirty-Nine Million
Allbirds sold its shoe business for $39M — down from a $4B+ peak in 2021. It renamed itself NewBird AI, announced an AI compute pivot, and gained 800%+ in a day. The last company to pull this move was Long Island Iced Tea Corp, which became Long Blockchain Corp in 2017 — stock up 500%, then an FBI investigation, then delisting. The question is whether the market rewarding the pivot tells you about the company or about the shortage.
Google launches a Windows desktop app with a macOS Spotlight-like search box for the web, Google Drive, local files, and installed apps, screen share, and more
After testing got underway in September, the “Google app for desktop” is now launching for “Windows users globally in English.”
A jury finds that Live Nation and Ticketmaster illegally maintained monopoly power in the ticketing market, in a case brought by state AGs after the DOJ settled
The federal government struck a settlement with Live Nation in March, requiring Ticketmaster to divest up to 13 amphitheaters …
Anthropic redesigns Claude Code on desktop, adding a sidebar for managing multiple sessions, a drag-and-drop layout, an integrated terminal, and a file editor
Today, we're releasing a redesign of the Claude Code desktop app, built to help you run more Claude Code tasks at once.
OpenAI rolls out GPT-5.4-Cyber, a fine-tuned GPT-5.4 variant for defensive cybersecurity use cases, to some participants of its Trusted Access for Cyber program
OpenAI is letting a select group of users access a new artificial intelligence model that's meant to be more adept …
Apple endorses the ~$11.6B Amazon-Globalstar deal, noting that it has a “proven track record” with Amazon infrastructure; Apple holds a ~20% stake in Globalstar
Amazon.com Inc.'s takeover of Globalstar Inc. is poised to benefit one of the company's biggest rivals in hardware devices: Apple Inc.
Anthropic recently changed Claude Enterprise's pricing, now charging $20 per month per user plus the computing capacity used, instead of $200 per month per user
Businesses whose employees are heavy users of Anthropic's Claude products are likely to pay significantly more for them after the company changed …
The US FCC grants Netgear a conditional approval to import its future consumer routers, cable modems, and cable gateways into the US through October 1, 2027
Make it make sense. Make it make sense. … The United States' foreign router ban didn't make a whole lot of sense, and today may not change that.
Meta and Broadcom announce an expanded partnership to co-develop multiple generations of Meta's MTIA chips; Broadcom CEO Hock Tan plans to leave Meta's board
Meta and Broadcom on Tuesday announced a sweeping deal that extends an existing partnership between the two companies for the design …
Google launches a Gemini Mac app, featuring a keyboard shortcut, screen sharing for better context, image generation with Nano Banana, and more
Gemini now has a native Mac app in the first expansion from Android and iOS. — This “native desktop experience” is launched via an Option + Space keyboard shortcut.
Adobe unveils Firefly AI Assistant, which can orchestrate and execute multistep tasks across Creative Cloud apps, available in public beta in the coming weeks
Last October, Adobe previewed a new assistant under the “Project Moonlight” moniker that could do tasks for you by tapping different Adobe apps …
Letter to Senators in January: Apple said it told X it may remove Grok from the App Store for not stopping the app from generating nude and sexualized deepfakes
In a letter to senators sent in January, Apple detailed how it responded to Grok's ability to generate sexualized deepfakes.
Mintlify, which uses AI to help companies generate software documentation, raised a $45M Series B led by a16z and Salesforce Ventures at a $500M valuation
It's just one of 20,000 companies that use Mintlify's AI system to generate and maintain FAQs and user guides about their software products.
Sources: Anthropic has fielded multiple VC offers valuing the startup at as much as $800B in recent weeks, up from $380B in its most recent round in February
Follow Ben Bergman … - Anthropic has recently received multiple offers from VCs to invest at valuations as high as $800 billion.
WPP, Dentsu, and Publicis settle with the FTC over claims they colluded on misinformation policies that denied ad revenue to conservative publishers
WPP, Dentsu and Publicis settled claims they colluded on policies to combat misinformation, denying ad revenue to publishers on the right.
Shoe company Allbirds, which sold last week for $39M after its valuation fell from $4B+ in 2021, says it aims to become an AI compute provider; BIRD jumps 800%+
Ah, zeitgeist: — Allbirds is a San Francisco maker of wool trainers that was once valued at more than $4bn.
Sources and analyst estimates: Uber is on track to spend $7.5B+ on thousands of robotaxis and $2.5B+ on equity stakes in their makers over the next few years
Ride-hailing app races to make up lost ground with equity investments and vehicle order commitments — Uber has committed more than $10bn …
Anthropic details using AI agents to accelerate alignment research on “weak-to-strong supervision”, where a weak model supervises the training of a stronger one
Large language models' ever-accelerating rate of improvement raises two particularly important questions for alignment research.
Uber CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga says the company's surging use of AI coding tools has maxed out its full-year AI budget just a few months into 2026
Uber's surging use of AI coding tools, particularly Anthropic's Claude Code, has maxed out its full year AI budget just a few months into 2026 …
Q&A with ElevenLabs co-founder Mati Staniszewski on how audio models work, the startup's business model, the conversational Turing Test, voice agents, and more
Mati Staniszewski is the co-founder of ElevenLabs, the research company making audio accessible across languages and voices.
Amazon agrees to acquire satellite operator Globalstar, set to close in 2027, to expand Leo; Amazon and Apple say Leo will power some iPhone and Watch services
Globalstar would be its second-biggest deal ever I think: Whole Foods — $13.7B Globalstar — ~$11.6B announced / pending MGM — $8.45B One Medical — ~$3.9B Zoox — ~$1.3B Zappos — ~$1.2B Ring — ~$1.0-1.2...
Sources: Microsoft ended production of its Surface Hub 3 collaborative touch displays and scrapped plans for a Hub 4; Hub 3 debuted in 2023 in 50" and 85" sizes
Microsoft has ended production on the Surface Hub 3, with no plans to make more in the future, putting an end to its collaborative displays line.
A profile of BusPatrol, whose AI-powered cameras on 35K+ school buses in 24 US states record vehicles passing illegally, claiming they help reduce violations
BusPatrol says its technology helps curb dangerous driving at no cost to cities. Public records from across the US often tell a different story.
Omdia: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok now capture over 90% of social media ad revenue, with Meta accounting for 70% of the total
Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok “capture over 90 percent of social media advertising revenues,” an Omdia analyst tells the StreamTV Europe gathering in Lisbon.
How some mathematicians are exploring ways to incorporate using LLMs as part of their research without losing direct experience with mathematical understanding
Those changes will be contested, in math as in other academic disciplines wrestling with AI's impact.
Global smartphone shipments fell 4.1% YoY in Q1, the first drop since mid 2023, amid memory constraints; only Samsung and Apple grew shipments, at 3.6% and 3.3%
Limited memory supply and record high memory prices increase pressure on smartphone OEMs to reduce shipments and increase prices that dampen demand.
The EU unveils an open-source age verification app, which requires showing ID, to shield kids from harmful content, setting the standard for verification tech
The European Union has unveiled an app to confirm users' age online, setting the standard for verification technology …
Google DeepMind introduces Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6, a model for robots that it says shows significant spatial and physical reasoning improvements over ER 1.5
For robots to be truly helpful in our daily lives and industries, they must do more than follow instructions, they must reason about the physical world.
Sources: at least two US federal agencies and three congressional committees have reached out to Anthropic to test Claude Mythos, quietly bypassing Trump's ban
The Commerce Department's Center for AI Standards and Innovation — tasked with evaluating U.S. and foreign AI models …
Sources: a Snap-Perplexity AI search deal calling for Perplexity to pay Snap $400M has fallen apart; Snap is set to announce significant layoffs on Wednesday
Mass layoffs land tomorrow, the Perplexity deal is dead, and Specs are launching soon. Also: OpenAI has a cyber model too …
ByteDance launches its Seedance 2.0 video model to enterprise clients in 100+ countries, excluding the US amid legal disputes, after a February launch in China
ByteDance's cloud computing unit has made the company's Seedance 2. AI video generation model available globally to enterprise customers …
Q&A with Jensen Huang on Nvidia's supply chain moat, competition from ASICs like Google's TPU, investing in AI labs and neoclouds, selling to China, and more
“If our next several years are a trillion dollars in scale, we have the supply chain to do it”
NY-based Auctor, which uses AI to curate resource plans and process flows to help companies adopt new software, raised $20M in a combined seed and Series A
Auctor, a startup helping companies adopt new software, raised $20 million in a combined seed and Series A, CEO William Sun tells Axios Pro first.
Google launches Skills, repeatable AI prompts that Chrome users can run with a keyboard shortcut; users can set up their own Skills or choose from 50+ presets
The premade Skills available through the Gemini sidebar in Chrome include ways to maximize protein in recipes or summarize YouTube videos.
Cal.com, which provides scheduling software, is moving its core open-source codebase to a closed repository, citing the dangers of AI hacking its open code
ZDNET's key takeaways — Cal is reluctantly moving away from open source for security. — This move isn't about Mythos, but risks from modern AI tools.
Maine's legislature passes a bill blocking new data centers that exceed 20 MW capacity until November 2027, making it the first state to enact such a measure
A malicious Ledger Live clone on Apple's App Store seems to have drained $9.5M+ from 50+ victims on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Tron, and XRP from April 7 to 13
Claude users accuse Anthropic of degrading Claude Opus 4.6's and Claude Code's performance; Anthropic staff publicly deny it degrades models to manage capacity
From Its Own FansMaria Garcia /Implicator.ai:Anthropic Ships Claude Code Routines, Cloud Automations That Run Without Your MacLeila Sheridan /Inc.com:Users Say Anthropic's Claude Is Getting Worse. A Q...
Tel Aviv-based eToro agrees to acquire crypto wallet provider Zengo, a source says for ~$70M, mostly in cash; Zengo lets traders swap between tokens and fiat
EToro Group Ltd. has agreed to acquire Zengo, a crypto wallet provider, as the trading and investment platform expands its reach into decentralized finance.
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel says the company plans to lay off ~1,000 full-time employees, or 16% of its global workforce, to cut costs and achieve profitability
Snap Inc. is laying off roughly 1,000 full-time employees, or 16% of its global workforce, part of an effort …
A US judge issues a $322.2M judgment against pirate library Anna's Archive for scraping Spotify, a largely symbolic victory as the site is anonymously operated
At least for now, the court judgment is largely a symbolic victory, as no one has identified the anonymous internet users behind Anna's Archive.
Sources: Apple plans to send a significant part of its Siri team, known as a laggard, to an AI coding bootcamp; the group is expected to be fewer than 200
Apple is sending a portion of its Siri programmers back to coding school just two months before the company is expected to unveil a major …
Trading firm Jane Street takes an additional $1B stake in CoreWeave and plans to spend ~$6B to access CoreWeave's Nvidia Vera Rubin chips to build and deploy AI
Jane Street Group, a trading firm, has taken an additional $1 billion stake in AI cloud services provider CoreWeave Inc. and plans …
Google rolls out Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS, a text-to-speech model with support for over 70 languages and audio tags that give developers granular speech control
The company says it's the most natural and expressive voice output it has shipped to date. The big new feature is audio tags …
Objection, which aims to use AI and experts to evaluate claims in news stories, debuts with funding from Peter Thiel, Balaji Srinivasan; evaluations cost $2,000
After helping lead the lawsuit that bankrupted media firm Gawker, Aron D'Souza says he saw something broken in the American media system …
PitchBook: US growth and late-stage venture funds raised $23.6B YTD, up from $7.4B in 2025 and above the totals for any of the past 12 years, amid the AI boom
U.S.-based growth and late-stage venture funds raised a record $23.6 billion this year so far, according to PitchBook
Survey: 35% of Virginia voters are comfortable with new data center construction, down from 69% in 2023, and 37% support data center tax breaks, down from 61%
Virginians previously embraced the facilities, but a Post-Schar School poll finds they are now almost as undesirable as nuclear power plants.
A survey of US teens: ~90% say entertainment is a reason they use TikTok, Instagram, or Snapchat, 57% message daily on Snapchat, 37% say TikTok impacts sleep
Teens largely turn to TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat for fun and connection. But experiences around messaging, screen time and cyberbullying vary.
ASML reports Q1 net sales of €8.8B, above €8.5B est., a €2.8B net profit, above €2.5B est., and raises its 2026 net sales forecast from €34B-€39B to €36B-€40B
Anthropic launches a repeatable routines feature for Claude Code as a research preview, allowing developers to schedule and automate software development tasks
Zac Hall /9to5Mac:
Filings: Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz donated $25M to pro-AI super PAC Leading the Future, bringing the group's total cash on hand to over $51M
Venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz poured $25 million into a pro-artificial intelligence super political action committee …
Microsoft agrees to rent 30K Nvidia Vera Rubin chips from Nscale at a Narvik, Norway site that was initially intended for OpenAI, which marketed it for Stargate
Asia's startup funding rose 93% YoY to $27.4B in Q1, the highest quarterly total in 3+ years, with Chinese startups raising $16.5B and Indian startups $3.8B
Spotify launches a feature to buy physical books in the US and UK, powered by Bookshop.org, and expands its Page Match scanning tool to support 30+ languages
In February, Spotify made an exciting (and a bit unusual) move when it entered the world of physical book sales.
Hilbert, whose AI software connects data across teams to help companies make decisions from a single system, raised a $28M Series A led by a16z
Hilbert, an AI startup rethinking how companies drive growth, raised a $28 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, the startup told Axios exclusively.
The US Energy Information Administration plans to implement a mandatory nationwide survey of data centers focused on their energy use
In a letter obtained by WIRED, the Energy Information Administration tells two senators that it plans to develop a mandatory assessment of data centers' energy use.
The European Commission issues a supplementary statement of objections threatening Meta with an interim ban on WhatsApp policies that allegedly block AI rivals
A look at publicly reported incidents of deepfake sexual abuse that have impacted more than 600 students at 90 schools around the world since 2023
An analysis by WIRED and Indicator found nearly 90 schools and 600 students around the world impacted by AI-generated deepfake nude images …
X users complain that the latest crackdown on bots purged secret accounts they had used for years to watch and curate their favorite porn
The platform's large-scale crackdown on automated accounts is also impacting people who've spent years curating niche porn on secret X accounts.
AWS launches Amazon Bio Discovery, an AI-powered application designed to speed up drug development, giving scientists access to biological foundation models
Sources: SoftBank invites more banks to join its $40B loan backing its OpenAI investment, requiring them to commit ~$5B each; SoftBank has already invested $30B
More banks are being invited to join SoftBank Group Corp.'s $40 billion loan backing its investment in US tech giant OpenAI …
London-based Gizmo, which uses AI to turn students' notes into gamified study materials, raised a $22M Series A led by Shine Capital and reports 13M users
Gizmo, an AI educational platform, raised a $22 million Series A, CEO Petros Christodoulou tells Axios exclusively.
Microsoft debuts MAI-Image-2-Efficient, a faster version of its flagship text-to-image model that it says offers production-ready quality at nearly 50% the cost
Nvidia releases Ising, which it says are the world's first family of open-source quantum AI models, aimed at quantum computing calibration and error correction
Source: US Treasury CIO Sam Corcos aims to gain access to Mythos as soon as this week, and directed the Treasury's cybersecurity team to prepare for AI threats
US-based Credo, which specializes in data center connectivity, agrees to acquire Israeli chip startup DustPhotonics in a cash-and-stock deal worth up to $1.3B
Nvidia's stock rose 18%+ over the past 10 days, its longest winning streak since 2023; Jensen Huang said in March that Nvidia has $1T of GPU orders through 2027
Artemis, which aims to replace rule-based cybersecurity systems with an AI-driven centralized “brain”, emerges from stealth with a $70M Series A led by Felicis
Artemis, a new cybersecurity startup trying to help defenders fight AI-powered attacks with AI, emerged from stealth today …
AI cloud infrastructure company Parasail raised a $32M Series A led by Touring Capital and Kindred Ventures, bringing its total funding to $42M
“Give me tokens. Just give me tokens. I want them fast. I want them cheap. I want them now." — That's the mantra for developers building software …
AMD, Arm, and Qualcomm invest $60M in London-based self-driving tech startup Wayve as part of an extension to its $1.2B Series D, announced in February
Source: Anthropic is preparing to release Claude Opus 4.7, along with a new AI-powered tool for designing websites and presentations, as soon as this week
Stephanie Palazzolo /The Information:
Sources: AI cloud infrastructure provider Fluidstack is in talks to raise ~$1B at an $18B valuation; source: it raised at a ~$7.5B valuation earlier in 2026
Sources: ahead of the US midterms, Democrats have been advised not to antagonize a $300M+ pro-AI lobby; internal polls show broad support for tougher AI rules
Bluefish, which helps brands manage visibility across AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Claude, raised a $43M Series B, bringing its total funding to $68M
Accel raised $5B, including a $4B Leaders fund, focused on writing large checks to late-stage startups globally, and a $650M sidecar fund, taking AUM to $36B
ASML says South Korea surpassed China as its largest market in Q1 2026, with shipments hitting 45% of net system sales, or €2.84B, up from 22% in Q4 2025
But Supply Constraints Linger