Sequoia Capital co-steward Alfred Lin personally purchased 200 Mac Minis, had each one custom-engraved with a design mixing old cartography and machine learning contour plots, and distributed them to attendees at Sequoia’s “AI at the Frontier” event. Each machine contained two easter eggs: Sequoia’s ethos statement about creative spirits and underdogs, and a quote generated […]
Jury selection begins Monday in Oakland federal court for the trial that will determine whether OpenAI’s conversion from a nonprofit to one of the most valuable companies in the world was a breach of charitable trust. Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and donated at least $38 million to it, is suing Sam Altman, […]
Sam Altman published an open letter to the community of Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, on Thursday, apologising for OpenAI’s failure to alert law enforcement after its own systems flagged a user who went on to carry out the deadliest school shooting in Canada in nearly four decades. “I am deeply sorry that we did not […]
In short: X-Energy raised $1.02 billion in the largest nuclear IPO on record, pricing at $23 (21% above range) on the Nasdaq, with shares surging 31% on opening to imply a $12 billion market cap. The offering was 15x oversubscribed. The same company failed to close a $1 billion SPAC in 2023. The difference is […]
In short: The US government’s 9.9% stake in Intel, acquired for $8.9 billion last August by converting CHIPS Act grants and Secure Enclave funds into equity at $20.47/share, is now worth approximately $36 billion after Intel’s stock surged 20%+ on a massive Q1 earnings beat. The $26.5 billion unrealised gain is one of the most […]
Summary: SoftBank Corp. plans to convert part of the former Sharp LCD factory in Sakai, Osaka into one of Japan’s largest battery production lines for AI data centres, with production expected within five years (~2031). The move completes a vertical integration stack spanning chips (Arm, Graphcore, Ampere), modular data centre manufacturing (Lordstown), energy generation (SB […]
Summary: Meta is cutting approximately 8,000 employees (10% of its workforce) beginning 20 May, cancelling 6,000 open roles, and planning additional cuts for H2 2026. The layoffs, announced via an internal memo from HR head Janelle Gale, are structural rather than performance-based, reorganising teams into AI-focused “pods” while Meta spends $115-135 billion on AI infrastructure […]
Summary: The White House OSTP released a policy memo accusing China of “industrial-scale” distillation of US AI models, committing to share intelligence with US AI companies and explore accountability measures. OpenAI accused DeepSeek of distilling its models in February; Anthropic named DeepSeek, MiniMax, and Moonshot AI as having created 24,000 fraudulent accounts generating 16+ million […]
Summary: SpaceX’s confidential S-1 pre-IPO filing warns that its orbital AI data centre plans “involve significant technical complexity and unproven technologies, and may not achieve commercial viability,” contradicting Elon Musk’s January claim at Davos that space-based AI was a “no-brainer” achievable within two to three years. The filing comes as SpaceX targets a $1.75 trillion […]
Summary: Sundar Pichai opened Cloud Next 2026 with Google Cloud at $70 billion in annual revenue, 48% growth, a $240 billion backlog that doubled in a year, and $175-185 billion in planned capital expenditure. The Gemini app has 750 million monthly users, AI Overviews reach two billion, and the Gemini API processed 85 billion requests […]
