The Treehouse
A late-2025 amendment redefined founder-controlled stock as taxable wealth — converting California's billionaire tax from a liquidity nuisance into an existential threat to Silicon Valley's founder model. Four months later, Larry Page had moved his assets out of state, Peter Thiel had donated $3M to anti-tax groups, and Sergey Brin — the most apolitical billionaire of the founding tech generation — had spent $58 million-plus mobilizing a network of fellow tech leaders to choose California's next governor. The tax was designed to extract from billionaires. It produced the most coordinated billionaire political coalition in California history.
Jury selection begins in Musk v. Altman trial at a federal courthouse in California, with Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in attendance
Jury selection is beginning in the high-stakes legal battle between longtime friends turned rivals Elon Musk and Sam Altman at a federal courthouse in Oakland, California.
Palantir's Slack logs and staff interviews reveal internal debates over the company's ICE and DOD contracts during Trump's second term, its manifestos, and more
It took just a few months of President Donald Trump's second term for Palantir employees to question their company's commitments to civil liberties.
Microsoft and OpenAI amend their deal to let OpenAI serve all its products across any cloud provider; Microsoft will no longer pay a revenue share to OpenAI
Amended agreement provides long-term clarity. — The rapid pace of innovation requires us to continue to evolve our partnership to benefit our customers and both companies.
OpenAI publishes a five-principle framework for AGI development, pledging to resist concentrating AI power and to collaborate with companies and governments
OpenAI published a five-principle framework on Sunday for the development of artificial general intelligence.
GitHub says all Copilot plans will move to usage-based billing on June 1, replacing premium requests with monthly GitHub AI Credits
Starting June 1, your Copilot usage will consume GitHub AI Credits. — TL;DR: Today, we are announcing that all GitHub Copilot plans will transition to usage-based billing on June 1, 2026.
Renders based on photos of Samsung's upcoming smart glasses, expected to launch later this year, show a design nearly identical to Ray-Ban Meta glasses
Add Android Headlines as a preferred source on Google — Samsung's next Android XR product is reportedly a pair of smart glasses codenamed …
How Sergey Brin's $58M+ political push against a proposed wealth tax in California has helped mobilize a network of fellow tech leaders to sway state issues
In a treehouse nestled in redwoods north of San Francisco, California Governor Gavin Newsom stood cold and hungry as Sergey Brin …
Spotify partners with Peloton to offer Premium subscribers access to curated playlists and 1,400+ ad-free fitness classes, its first foray into fitness content
Spotify Technology SA is now offering workout classes from Peloton Interactive Inc. to premium subscribers …
An amateur solved a 60-year-old Erdős problem using a single GPT-5.4 Pro prompt; Terence Tao says it's a “nice achievement” with unclear long-term significance
A ChatGPT AI has proved a conjecture with a method no human had thought of. Experts believe it may have further uses
Apple will let developers offer monthly subscriptions with a 12-month commitment starting in May, except in the US and Singapore
Apple today announced the launch of a new subscription option for App Store developers: monthly subscriptions with a 12-month commitment.
Sources detail Microsoft's “Windows K2”, an ongoing initiative to address Windows 11 UX complaints regarding AI features, OS bloat, performance issues, and more
Microsoft has restructured its Windows team to better position Windows 11 as a strong platform that people should want to use.
China blocks Meta's $2B Manus acquisition, after reviewing whether it violated investment rules, and tells both to cancel it; Manus moved to Singapore in 2025
Regulators had reviewed whether deal violated Beijing's investment rules — China has blocked Meta's $2bn acquisition …
A deep dive into how ASML became a chokepoint for making cutting-edge chips by betting on EUV, closely collaborating with TSMC and the US government, and more
By betting on extreme ultraviolet lithography long before it worked, ASML became the chokepoint for cutting-edge chips.
The founder of car rental platform PocketOS says a Cursor agent using Claude Opus 4.6 accidentally deleted a production database while in a staging environment
An AI Agent Just Destroyed Our Production Data. It Confessed in Writing.
Sources: Jay Chen, who led Tokyo Electron's China operations, left the chip toolmaker after it discovered his family had invested in competing Chinese startups
Veteran executive Jay Chen, who helped build Japanese group's China business, left after links to start-ups surfaced
Kuo: OpenAI is working with MediaTek and Qualcomm to develop smartphone chips, with Luxshare handling the system co-design; mass production is expected in 2028
• Latest industry checks: OpenAI is working with MediaTek and Qualcomm to develop smartphone processors …
Meta says it signed a deal for up to 1GW of space solar energy from Overview Energy, which seeks to beam solar energy to earth and is planning a 2028 demo
Meta Platforms Inc. is looking to power artificial intelligence data centers with solar energy collected in space …
A profile of Dwarkesh Patel, whose podcast has become mandatory listening in the AI community, with guests like Jensen Huang, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg
Dwarkesh Patel was a bored college sophomore looking for intellectual stimulation. Now he commands interviews with Jensen Huang …
A look at Elon Musk's efforts to launch the banking and payments service X Money, delayed by US regulatory concerns, as some industry watchers remain skeptical
More than three years after acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk says he's nearing his long-stated goal of turning it into an …
Xiaomi open sources MiMo-V2.5 and MiMo-V2.5-Pro under the MIT License, saying both models are among the most efficient available for agentic “claw” tasks
Xiaomi, the Chinese firm best known for its smartphones and electric vehicles, has lately been shipping some incredibly affordable …
Study: only ~3% of Polymarket accounts drove most price discovery in 2023-2025, suggesting market accuracy comes from an informed minority, not crowd wisdom
Researchers show market accuracy comes from a tiny group of informed traders, not broad participation. … What to know:
Amazon reaches a multiyear licensing deal with Oprah Winfrey to produce twice-a-week video podcasts starting in July, repurpose The Oprah Winfrey Show, and more
The multiyear deal with Ms. Winfrey signifies the tech giant's growing ambitions in video podcasts.
Have I Been Pwned: ShinyHunters' breach of ADT exposed the personal data of 5.5M people; ADT previously disclosed data breaches in August 2024 and October 2024
The ShinyHunters extortion group stole the personal information of 5.5 million individuals after breaching the systems …
Chinese state media: China formalizes its gig worker rules for online platforms, calling for standardized contracts, fair pay, and stronger labor protections
China formalized its first comprehensive policy framework for “new employment groups,” including delivery riders and livestreamers …
An interview with Bill Nguyen, a tech entrepreneur who is completely outsourcing parts of his life to an AI assistant in his bid to create a virtual body double
On a recent morning at his Atlanta office, Bill Nguyen tore open a large package and lifted out a high-end desktop computer.
Canva says it “moved quickly to investigate and fix” an issue with its Magic Layers feature that replaced the word “Palestine” in designs, after a viral X post
The Magic Layers feature is off to a good start. … One of Canva's new AI features …
Inside Andon Market, billed as the first retail boutique run by an AI agent; the Andon Labs experiment uses a Claude Sonnet 4.6-based agent to run the boutique
A look at what's next for Netflix and Comcast's Peacock after WBD's Paramount acquisition; Nielsen: Netflix had six of the top 10 original streaming shows in Q1
The company's streaming service has lost more than $11 billion and can't keep customers form canceling
Ineffable Intelligence, founded by ex-Google DeepMind Principal Scientist David Silver, raised a $1.1B seed at a $5.1B valuation to build AI “superlearners”
David Silver has a new billion-dollar company that aims to build AI “superlearners.” — David Silver gave the world its very first glimpse of superintelligence.
More than 600 Google employees, including many from DeepMind, sign a letter to Sundar Pichai demanding he bar the DOD from using Google's AI for classified work
“We want to see AI benefit humanity; not to see it being used in inhumane or extremely harmful ways,” Google employees wrote. — Summary
Vilnius-based Vinted says it closed an ~€880M secondary share sale led by EQT, Teachers' Venture Growth, and Schroders at an €8B valuation, up from €5B in 2024
Second-hand marketplace sells €880mn of existing shares to investors including Teachers' Venture Growth and Schroders Capital
The EU unveils new proposals under the DMA aimed at opening up Android to rivals' AI services; Google says the measures are “unwarranted intervention”
Google was targeted by European Union watchdogs who unveiled a slate of proposals aimed at prising open its Android ecosystem to rivals' AI services.
A profile of Anthony Fujiwara, who industrialized “clipping” for social media video marketing and has contributed to the rise of crypto casinos like Stake
Anthony Fujiwara is the co-founder of Clipping Exe, also known as the creator of clipping, the video marketing phenomenon …
San Francisco public records: in 2024, Salesforce and Airbnb were among the top tech spenders in the city's 10B program, which lets them hire police officers
A recent attack on Sam Altman's home and OpenAI offices has put corporate security under renewed scrutiny.
Sources and executives: the war in the Middle East disrupted crucial PCB raw material supplies; Goldman Sachs says PCB prices surged as much as 40% MoM in April
Truecaller faces mounting pressure as growth slows in India, its largest market, while telcos, Apple, and Google roll out caller ID and spam-blocking features
Truecaller is one of the world's most widely used caller identification platforms, with more than 500 million users.
An interview with Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and EVP Matt Booty on the “Return of Xbox” memo, making Xbox Series X and S the “first-class experience again”, and more
OpenView: by 2025's end, 79 of 500 tracked software companies, like HubSpot, Adobe, and Salesforce, adopted usage-based AI fees, more than double that of 2024
Dozens of enterprise software firms have shifted away from charging customers flat, per-user subscription fees as AI threatens their seat-based pricing model.
Sources: some UK officials fear Keir Starmer's plan for closer EU ties risks the US-UK alliance; a source says the main issue is the UK adopting EU AI rules
Officials are concerned about the damage to the country's technology sector as well as its alliance with the US
Quantum Art, a quantum computing startup focused on enhancing computational throughput using its unique “multicore” architecture, extends its Series A to $140M
An analysis of 100+ actively traded software company loans since January 20 finds varied price declines as investors seek defensive moats against AI disruption
Maybe, as a trend piece. But feels pretty boring, and based on fairly limited data. Analysis of 100 publicly traded loans for various categories of software companies.
Collov Labs, whose visual interface lets users feed images and camera input into a model that AI agents can reason over and act on, raised a $23M Series A
Cyera agrees to acquire Tel Aviv-based Ryft, which makes automated data access and governance tools for enterprise AI deployment, sources say for $100M to $130M
Stuttgart-based Sereact, which develops software for industrial robots to handle tasks they haven't been trained on, raised a $110M Series B led by Headline
Kashable, which lets companies offer “socially responsible” credit and financial wellness programs for employees as a voluntary benefit, raised a $60M Series C
Kashable, a fintech that provides access to “socially responsible” credit and financial wellness programs for employees …
Filing: Beijing-based GPU maker Moore Threads reports Q1 revenue up 155% YoY to ~$107.89M, and a ~$4.3M net profit, up from a ~$16.46M net loss in Q1 2025
Elon Musk boosts an X post by Ronan Farrow promoting his New Yorker article on Sam Altman's alleged deceptions, as Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI heads to trial
Sources: Tokyo-based humanoid robotics startup Genki Robotics, co-founded by Andy Rubin, raised a Series A at a ~$1B valuation; it raised a ~$50M seed in 2025
Taiwan's Intellectual Property and Commercial Court sentences ex-Tokyo Electron engineer Chen Li-ming to 10 years in prison for stealing TSMC's proprietary data
Debby Wu /Bloomberg:
Epoch AI: Google controls ~25% of global AI compute, with ~3.8M TPUs and 1.3M GPUs; Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian says demand and revenue justify the spend
Microsoft and OpenAI remove a clause that would have given Microsoft IP rights until OpenAI achieved “AGI”; Microsoft retains use of OpenAI's models until 2032
Microsoft and OpenAI amended the terms of their arrangement, allowing OpenAI to sell its models on competing cloud providers, the companies said on Monday.
ASML says it plans to make at least 60 of its standard EUV machines in 2026, 36% more than it sold in 2025, as it races to meet demand for making AI chips
Kim Mackrael /Wall Street Journal: