The Reform
In June 2025, the Trump administration dissolved the US AI Safety Institute into the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, scrubbed "safety" from the mission, and oriented the body toward "US dominance." Eleven months later, every frontier US lab is granting CAISI pre-release evaluation access and the White House is drafting an executive order requiring it.
Sources: the Trump administration is discussing an EO to form an AI working group that would examine AI oversight procedures, like vetting models before release
The Trump administration, which took a noninterventionist approach to artificial intelligence, is now discussing imposing oversight …
Musk v. Altman: Greg Brockman testifies that his OpenAI stake is now worth almost $30B; a Musk attorney asks why he didn't donate $29B to OpenAI's nonprofit arm
OpenAI co-founder and President Greg Brockman testified that his stake in the startup is now worth almost $30 billion …
New Mexico child safety trial: New Mexico asks a judge to declare Meta a public nuisance and to order it to pay $3.7B and overhaul its apps to protect children
The U.S. state of New Mexico on Monday asked a judge to declare Meta Platforms (META.O) a public nuisance …
Elon Musk agrees to pay $1.5M to settle US SEC allegations that he cheated Twitter shareholders in 2022 by not disclosing the 5%+ stake he had in the company
Elon Musk agreed to settle Securities and Exchange Commission allegations that he cheated Twitter shareholders out of millions …
Crypto stocks jump after lawmakers struck a compromise on the CLARITY Act, preserving stablecoin rewards under certain conditions; Circle's stock closed up ~20%
Shares of Circle surged after lawmakers over the weekend struck a compromise on the market structure bill known as the CLARITY Act …
Sources: Apple held exploratory talks with Intel and Apple executives visited a Samsung plant in Texas to explore producing core chips for its devices in the US
Apple Considers Using Intel, Samsung to Build Device Processors — Video Player is loading. — Unmute
Musk v. Altman: Greg Brockman testified about tense negotiations with Musk in 2017, saying “he knows rockets, he knows electric cars” but “does not know AI”
OpenAI President Greg Brockman testified that Elon Musk called a ChatGPT predecessor “stupid,” …
Ex-iRobot CEO Colin Angle launches Familiar Machines & Magic and unveils Familiar, a dog-like “emotionally intelligent” robot that reacts to an owner's feelings
The inventor behind the world-famous robot vacuum is now designing robots that form an emotional bond with their owners
OpenAI says GPT-5.5 Instant produces 52.5% fewer hallucinated claims “on high-stakes prompts covering areas like medicine, law, and finance”
- GPT-5.5 Instant is rolling out to all ChatGPT users and to the API. — Enhanced personalization is initially for Plus and Pro on the web.
Palantir reports Q1 revenue up 85% YoY to $1.63B, US government revenue up 84% YoY to $687M, and US commercial revenue up 133% YoY to $595M; PLTR drops 5%+
Palantir Technologies (PLTR.O) beat Wall Street estimates for first-quarter revenue on Monday, driven by rising demand …
Meta is using AI on Facebook and Instagram to detect under-13 users by analyzing bone structure, height, and visual cues, but says it's “not facial recognition”
‘We want to be clear: this is not facial recognition,’ Facebook says. … Facebook and Instagram have a new way to detect …
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announces the company is cutting ~700 jobs, or ~14% of its global workforce, to reduce costs, saying “AI is changing how we work”
Coinbase (COIN.O) said on Tuesday it will cut about 700 jobs, or about 14% of its global workforce …
Kaspersky says Daemon Tools, a widely used app for mounting disk images, has been backdoored in a monthlong compromise that has pushed malicious updates
Daemon Tools, a widely used app for mounting disk images, has been backdoored in a monthlong compromise that has pushed malicious updates …
Vodafone plans to take full ownership of its VodafoneThree joint venture with Hong Kong conglomerate CK Hutchison, which agrees to sell its 49% stake for £4.3B
The deal is expected to be completed in the second half of 2026 — Vodafone Group will take full ownership of its joint venture …
As Colorado engineers and VCs say that burdensome regulations are driving startups away, lawmakers introduce a slimmer version of an AI anti-discrimination bill
Proposed AI bill has many wondering whether state's regulations killing its entrepreneurial spirit
Source: YC owns ~0.6% of OpenAI, which was seeded by a YC offshoot called YC Research in 2016; at OpenAI's current $852B valuation, the stake is worth $5B+
Speaking of companies with valuable minority stakes in AI companies, there's one thing that stuck in my craw about the blockbuster …
Microsoft's 2026 Work Trend Index: a survey of 20K AI users finds 65% fear falling behind, but only 13% report being rewarded for experimenting with AI at work
[Editor's Note: Agents of Transformation is an independent GeekWire series, underwritten by Accenture, exploring the adoption and impact of AI and agents.
Katie Haun raised $1B for two funds split between early and later-stage investments, looking at startups blending financial services, AI, and alternative assets
Katie Haun, a former Andreessen Horowitz general partner and federal prosecutor who made her name investigating digital assets …
Anthropic co-founder explains why there's a 60%+ chance of AI systems autonomously building their successors by 2029 and the consequences of automated AI R&D
The first step towards recursive self improvement — Welcome to Import AI, a newsletter about AI research.
Q&A with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi on his plan to make Uber an everything app, Uber's AI integrations, Uber's large investments in autonomous cars, and more
Uber's CEO on his plan to make Uber an everything app and take over travel. … Today, I'm talking with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.
Kuo: OpenAI appears to be fast-tracking its AI agent phone with two NPUs and a custom MediaTek Dimensity 9600 SoC, targeting mass production as early as H1 2027
【Industry Check Update】OpenAI appears to be fast-tracking its first AI agent phone, with mass production targeted as early as 1H27. Potential drivers include supporting a year-end IPO narrative and in...
Letter: UK-based Google DeepMind workers voted to unionize with the Communication Workers Union and Unite in April, representing 1K+ staff, amid the US DOD deal
Exclusive: Worker pointed to Iran war and Pentagon's Anthropic feud as indications the department is ‘not a responsible partner’
Crypto exchange Bullish agrees to acquire UK-based financial services outsourcing business Equiniti from Siris Capital for $4.2B, set to close in January 2027
Bullish agreed to buy Equiniti from Siris Capital in a $4.2 billion deal, as the crypto exchange seeks to expand in blockchain-based capital markets infrastructure.
Oregon-based Lattice Semiconductor agrees to acquire Georgia-based AMI for $1.65B in cash and stock; AMI makes firmware to speed data center and AI deployments
Hillsboro-based Lattice Semiconductor said Monday it is buying a Georgia tech company called AMI for $1.65 billion in cash and stock …
Sources: Apple plans to let users choose from multiple third-party AI models to perform tasks like generating and editing text and images in iOS 27
Apple Inc. will let users choose from a range of outside artificial intelligence services to power features across its software …
Shopify reports Q1 revenue up 34% YoY to $3.17B, above $3.12B est., GMV up 35% YoY to $100.74B, and forecasts slower Q2 revenue growth; SHOP closes down 15.63%
Shopify Inc. shares slumped as its revenue outlook suggests growth pace may be slowing down. — The stock dropped as much as 11% …
Pinterest reports Q1 revenue up 18% YoY to $1B, vs. $966M est., MAUs up 11% YoY to 631M, in line with est., and forecasts Q2 revenue above est.; PINS jumps 15%+
Pinterest reported first-quarter earnings on Monday that beat on the top and bottom lines. Shares soared 15% after the report.
Anthropic unveils 10 new AI agents for the financial sector, including for drafting pitch decks, reviewing financial statements, and escalating compliance cases
Anthropic PBC unveiled a set of new artificial intelligence agents designed to handle a broader mix of financial services tasks …
How Europe is falling behind in the global crypto race, as years of delays to the ECB's digital euro leave the bloc exposed to the USD's stablecoin dominance
In the contest over the future of money, the US dollar has a huge head start — When Christine Lagarde addressed a central bank conference late last year, her frustration was clear.
a16z crypto raised $2.2B for its fifth fund, down from its record $4.5B Fund 4 in May 2022, taking its total capital raised across five funds to ~$9.8B
Quick Take — a16z crypto has raised $2.2 billion for its fifth fund as the venture capital firm points to growing use of stablecoins …
Sources: Apple prepares a “Create a Pass” feature for iOS 27, which lets users take a QR code and generate a custom pass around it for concerts and other events
In Q1, the iPhone 17 was the world's best-selling smartphone, with 6% of global sales; the iPhone 17 Pro Max and 17 Pro were 2nd and 3rd, and Galaxy A07 was 4th
Harshit Rastogi is Senior Analyst based out of Gurgaon, India. He closely tracks global handset market ecosystem and wearables.
PayPal reports Q1 revenue up 7% YoY to $8.4B and plans $1.5B+ in savings over the next 2-3 years, a source says including a ~20% workforce cut; PYPL drops 10%+
PayPal Holdings Inc. plans to cut costs and jobs as new Chief Executive Officer Enrique Lores seeks to turn around …
The FTC will ban data broker Kochava and its subsidiary CDS from selling Americans' location data as part of a settlement over charges brought in 2022
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will ban data broker Kochava and its subsidiary Collective Data Solutions (CDS) from selling location …
Nscale agrees to spend €695M on infrastructure in Portugal in an expansion of its Microsoft partnership, supplying 66K+ Nvidia Rubin GPUs from late 2027
Nscale Global Holdings has agreed to spend €695 million ($812 million) on infrastructure in Portugal in an expansion of its partnership with Microsoft Corp.
The US Commerce Department's CAISI says Google, Microsoft, and xAI join OpenAI and Anthropic in granting early access to evaluate models prior to public release
Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Microsoft Corp. and xAI have agreed to give the US government early access to their artificial intelligence models …
ElevenLabs raised $550M+ in its Series D, up from a previously announced $500M, adding BlackRock, Nvidia, and others as investors; its ARR passed $500M in Q1
ElevenLabs also said it had completed it second employee share sale in less than a year. — One of the UK's most hyped AI startups today …
Inference cloud startup DeepInfra raised a $107M Series B co-led by 500 Global and Georges Harik, and currently supports 190+ open models, including Nemotron
Dedicated inference cloud startup Deepinfra Inc. is looking to expand its global capacity after raising $107 million in a Series B round …
Memo: Xbox CEO Asha Sharma overhauls the group's leadership, including bringing over executives from Microsoft's CoreAI engineering unit where she worked before
Microsoft Xbox CEO Asha Sharma told employees in a Tuesday memo that she's appointing new leaders, as the software company looks to return its video game unit to growth.
Grab reports Q1 revenue up 24% YoY to $955M, above est., and adjusted EBITDA up 46% YoY to $154M, vs. $146.3M est., helped by ride hailing and delivery demand
Dutch quantum processor company QuantWare raised a $178M Series B from Intel Capital, In-Q-Tel, and others to build KiloFab, a quantum manufacturing facility
QuantWare will use new funding to scale its quantum processor technology, expand manufacturing capacity, and accelerate …
Former Trump and Biden AI advisers Dean Ball and Ben Buchanan urge bipartisan action on AI security risks, including tighter export controls and safety audits
Pennsylvania sues Character.AI, alleging that one of its characters posed as a psychiatrist, as the state seeks to prevent chatbots from impersonating doctors
Pennsylvania has sued the artificial intelligence company behind Character.AI to stop its chatbot from posing as doctors.
Cisco agrees to acquire Astrix Security, which helps companies monitor and control the permissions granted to AI agents, a source says for approximately $400M
The Israeli startup, backed by Menlo Ventures and Anthropic, targets growing risks from non-human identities and autonomous AI agents.
A US court sentences a Latvian national to 8.5 years for acting as a negotiator for Russia's Karakurt ransomware group
A Latvian national extradited to the United States was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison for his “cold case” negotiator role in the Russian Karakurt ransomware group.
Global chip sales hit $298.5B in Q1 2026, up 25% from Q4 2025, and March sales were up 79.2% YoY to $99.5B, driven by strong sales in Asia and the Americas
Worldwide chip sales in March increase 79.2% year-to-year, 11.5% month-to-month — The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) …
Filing: Elon Musk texted Greg Brockman about settling days before trial; after being denied, he said Brockman and Altman “will be the most hated men in America”
and got threatening.
Aylo says it will restore Pornhub access in the UK, but only for users who have verified their age via iOS 26.4's device-level age verification system
Pornhub's parent company Aylo says it will be making the site available again for some UK users. — The company behind …
Intel taps Alex Katouzian, an ex-Qualcomm EVP, to lead Client Computing & Physical AI group, and names Pushkar Ranade as CTO, after serving on an interim basis
OpenAI rolls out a beta version of its new Ads Manager tool to advertisers in the US, making it easier for SMBs to buy ChatGPT ads on a cost-per-click basis
OpenAI has launched a self-serve advertising platform, executives said, marking a significant step in its goal of generating $2.5 billion …
Subquadratic launches with a $29M seed and debuts SubQ, an LLM that uses a subquadratic sparse attention architecture to achieve a 12M-token context window
Subquadratic, a company developing a novel generative artificial intelligence model, launched today with $29 million in seed funding.
Sources: China targets 70%+ of silicon wafers that its chipmakers use to be made domestically by 2026's end, and has an unspoken mandate to use local 12" wafers
TAIPEI — China is aiming for more than 70% of silicon wafers used by its chipmakers to be made domestically by this year …
Investigation: an inheritance dispute over an ex-LG chair's estate prompts a criminal complaint over how the dynastic South Korean chaebol family divides assets
On a Thursday afternoon in June 2020, two executives from the LG finance department arrived at the hilltop home of Kim Young-shik …
Zyg, an AI startup by ironSource's founders to automate business functions, raised $60M led by Accel at a $500M valuation, two months after exiting stealth
Zyg, an artificial intelligence platform created by the founders of IronSource, raised funding at a $500 million valuation just two months after coming out of stealth.
Nearly 20 US state-run health insurance exchanges include ad trackers that send user data like race and citizenship info to Meta, TikTok, Google, and others
Duolingo reports Q1 revenue up 27% YoY to $292M, above $288.5M est., bookings up 14% YoY to $308.5M, and expects slower bookings growth in Q2; DUOL drops 5%+
Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier, and Cengage, alongside novelist Scott Turow, file a class-action copyright lawsuit against Meta and Mark Zuckerberg
The class-action lawsuit accuses the tech giant and its founder and chief executive of infringing on authors' copyrights.
Blitzy, which says its platform autonomously completes months of software development, raised $200M led by Northzone at a $1.4B valuation
Blitzy, an autonomous software development startup, said it has raised $200 million in a funding round that values it at $1.4 billion …
Super Micro reports Q3 revenue up 123% YoY to $10.24B, vs. $12.33B est., forecasts Q4 revenue and adjusted profit above estimates; SMCI jumps 17%+ after hours
Super Micro Computer (SMCI.O) on Tuesday forecast fourth-quarter revenue above Wall Street estimates, banking on robust demand …
Trump's World Liberty Financial countersues Tron founder Justin Sun, alleging defamation, contract violations, and more
AMD reports Q1 revenue up 38% YoY to $10.25B, vs. $9.89B est., Data Center revenue up 57% to $5.8B, forecasts Q2 revenue above est.; AMD jumps 7%+ after hours
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O) forecast second-quarter revenue above Wall Street expectations on Tuesday, betting on resilient demand …
Seattle-based CopilotKit, whose popular AG-UI protocol lets developers deploy app-native AI agents, raised a $27M Series A led by Glilot, NFX, and SignalFire
Many companies today provide AI simply as a chatbot inside their apps: you type in (or dictate) what you want it to do, and the AI bot goes and tries to do it.
RadixArk, led by former xAI employee Ying Sheng, raised a $100M seed at a $400M valuation to make AI inference more efficient via its open-source SGLang engine
RadixArk has raised $100 million at a $400 million valuation for a software engine and framework that make inference and training more efficient to run
Source: OpenAI has raised $4B+ at a $10B pre-money valuation for The Deployment Company, a new joint venture that will aim to help businesses adopt OpenAI tools
Sources: Sam Altman discussed spinning out OpenAI's robotics and consumer hardware divisions in late 2025 to give them more room to grow; the plan was rejected
Company is considering an Alphabet-like structure for its portfolio of products, though no discussions are currently active
GlobalFoundries reports Q1 revenue up 3% YoY to $1.63B, in line with est., and forecasts Q2 revenue and adjusted earnings above estimates; GFS closes up 9.28%
Contract chipmaker GlobalFoundries (GFS) on Tuesday beat earnings estimates on in-line sales for the first quarter.
Source: Anthropic plans to spend about $200B on Google's cloud and chips over five years, representing 40%+ of the “revenue backlog” Google disclosed last week
When Google last month said it would supply Anthropic with an astonishing five gigawatts of server capacity …
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma says Xbox “will begin winding down Copilot on mobile and will stop development of Copilot on console” as part of a strategic shift
Jay Peters /The Verge:
How AI is transforming the pharma industry, with most gains so far from back-office streamlining and faster manufacturing rather than breakthrough drug research
Drug companies like Eli Lilly and Roche are racing to build supercomputers to help fix the 90% failure rate in drug development
Panthalassa, which aims to power floating data centers using energy generated by ocean waves, raised $140M led by Peter Thiel, source says at a $1B valuation
Sources: more than two dozen prediction-market ETFs have been pushed back as the SEC seeks more information; they were originally expected to launch this week
Match Group reports Q1 revenue up 4% YoY to $864M, vs. $855M est., as Tinder's new user registrations grew for the first time since 2024, up 1%
Match Group Inc. reported first-quarter revenue that beat analysts' estimates as a decline in Tinder users moderated, suggesting its turnaround strategy is resonating with younger daters.
Sources: Meta is building agentic tools, including an OpenClaw-like assistant powered by its new Muse Spark AI model to help users create AI bots
Social media platform invests in equivalent to OpenClaw that aims to seamlessly carry out everyday tasks for users
Bret Taylor's Sierra, which sells AI customer service agents, raised a $950M Series E led by Tiger and GV at a $15.8B post-money valuation, up from $10B in 2025
Investment and tech firm Long Lake says it will buy corporate travel operator Amex GBT for $6.3B, citing AI's ability to modernize the business travel sector
EA reports Q4 net bookings up 3.6% YoY to $1.86B, vs. $2B est., weighed down by a post-launch drop-off in engagement for Battlefield 6
Videogame publisher Electronic Arts (EA.O) missed quarterly bookings estimates on Tuesday, weighed down by a post-launch drop-off in engagement for its …
Intel's stock jumps 12%+ and hits a new all-time high on a report that Apple has had early-stage talks with Intel to produce chips for Apple's devices in the US
From commanding the strategic heights of compute infrastructure from data centers to the desktop, to being grateful for some fab work. [embedded post]
OpenAI launches GPT-5.5 Instant, which it says is smarter, with more accurate and personalized responses, replacing GPT-5.3 Instant as ChatGPT's default model
Apple reaches a $250M settlement in a CA federal court to resolve a false advertising class action lawsuit over the launch of a “personalized” Siri in 2024
iPhone buyers sued the tech giant for touting features in 2024 that have yet to launch
Filing: Blackstone's data center acquisition vehicle seeks to raise as much as $1.75B in its IPO, and will target newly built data centers valued at $250M-$1.5B
SAP to acquire Dremio, an open data lakehouse provider, and Prior Labs, which it pledges to invest €1B in over four years, hoping to create a frontier AI lab
Micron closes up 11% after announcing its highest-capacity SSD has started to ship, lifting its market cap past $700B for the first time; Sandisk closes up 12%
São Paulo-based Enter, which uses AI to handle litigation for companies like Airbnb, raised $100M led by Founders Fund at a $1.2B valuation
Enter, a Brazilian AI legal startup, has tripled its valuation to $1.2 billion in a new round of funding, vaulting it into the upper ranks of artificial intelligence companies in Latin America.
How “emotion AI”, the use of facial and sentiment analysis tools to track workers' moods, is seeping into white-collar jobs amid concerns over privacy and bias
Musk v. Altman: Stuart Russell, Elon Musk's only AI expert witness, warned of AI risks, but the judge limited his testimony about AI's existential threats
Tim Fernholz /TechCrunch:
Inside Palantir Foundation's Atlantic and Pacific Forum at Yale for invited students: State Dept. and Palantir staff share a vision of mixing AI and state power
Sources: Alphabet sold its biggest-ever euro-denominated bonds, raising €9B, and its first Canadian dollar notes, raising CA$8.5B, months after raising $20B
Meta says it will expand Instagram teen account safeguards to 27 EU countries, and plans to roll them out on Facebook in the US ahead of the UK and EU in June
Meta Platforms (META.O) will expand technology safeguards for teen accounts to 27 European Union countries and to Facebook in the United States …
Musk v. Altman: on his second day of testimony, Greg Brockman said that OpenAI expects to spend $50B on computing in 2026, up from $30M in 2017
and got threatening.