Tech Brew Ride Home

OpenAI is abandoning Sora to do the big refocus they’ve been signaling. Meta is starting to rack up the losses in court. Is China going to block the Manus acquisition by Meta from going through? They’re not even letting the founders leave the country. And interesting raises from vertical AI startups.


OpenAI Scraps Sora Video Platform Months After Launch (WSJ)


Meta must pay $375 million for violating New Mexico law in child exploitation case, jury rules (CNBC)


Supreme Court Sides With Internet Provider in Copyright Fight Over Pirated Music (NYTimes)


China reviews $2bn Manus sale to Meta as founders barred from leaving country (Financial Times)


AI Notetaker Granola Hits $1.5 Billion Value in $125 Million Funding (Bloomberg)

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Buying an internet router made outside the US is now verboten. Claude can now basically fully use your computer for you. More layoffs and surprising production cuts in the gaming industry. And the two big prediction markets try to close the barn door when it comes to insider trading.


US regulator bans imports of new foreign-made routers, citing security concerns (Reuters)


Anthropic's Claude Can Now Control Your Computer (CNET)


Epic Games Cuts About 1,000 Jobs Across Company Amid ‘Fortnite’ Slump (Bloomberg)


Nintendo Cuts Switch 2 Output by Over 30% on Weak US Sales (Bloomberg)


Kalshi says it will block politicians and athletes from trading in markets they’re tied to (The Verge)


Polymarket, Kalshi Take On Insider Trading as Scrutiny Grows (Bloomberg)

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Mark Zuckerberg has spun up his own AI bot to do his job for him. Or help him do his job quicker, I guess. OpenAI hires an ad guru from Meta. Elon loses a case. Maybe some managers actually want you to use as many tokens as possible. And how to get your LLM to recursively improve itself? Maybe?


Mark Zuckerberg Is Building an AI Agent to Help Him Be CEO (WSJ)


OpenAI Taps Former Meta Executive to Lead Ad Push (WSJ)


Samsung's Galaxy S26 Phones Will Work With Apple's AirDrop, Much Like the Pixel 10 (CNET)


Musk Misled Twitter Investors Before 2022 Buyout, Jury Says (Bloomberg)


More! More! More! Tech Workers Max Out Their A.I. Use. (NYTimes)


‘The Karpathy Loop’: Former OpenAI researcher’s autonomous agents ran 700 experiments in 2 days—and gave a glimpse of where AI is heading (Fortune)

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OpenAI is becoming a superapp. Does Amazon really want to try its hand at a smartphone again? Google is making further steps to obviate classic Google Search in that innovator’s dilemma way. And in the Longreads, why has AI gotten worse at writing.


OpenAI Plans Launch of Desktop ‘Superapp’ to Refocus, Simplify User Experience (WSJ)


White House releases AI policy blueprint for Congress (Politico)


Exclusive: Amazon plans smartphone comeback more than a decade after Fire Phone flop (Reuters)


Super Micro shares tank 25% after employees charged with smuggling Nvidia chips to China (CNBC)


Google Search is now using AI to replace headlines (The Verge)


Jeff Bezos in Talks to Raise $100 Billion for AI Manufacturing Fund (WSJ)

Weekend Longreads Suggestions:


ChatGPT did not cure a dog’s cancer (The Verge)


The Human Skill That Eludes AI (The Atlantic)

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In three parts I’ll make the case that in Q1 of this year, the AI race has become basically a land grab for design and development tasks. MLB fully embraces our new prediction market overlords. Even if they’re behind in AI Apple is still making big money from AI. And Uber is still placing bets in the self-driving race.


Google introduces 'vibe design' with Stitch (The Deep View)


OpenAI to Acquire Startup Astral, Expanding Push Into Coding (Bloomberg)


Crypto.com cuts around 12% of staff as CEO pushes enterprise-wide AI integration (The Block)


Major League Baseball Steps Into the Prediction Markets, Strikes Deal With Polymarket (WSJ)


Apple Is Way Behind in AI—and Still Making a Fortune From It (WSJ)


Uber to invest $1.25 billion in Rivian as part of new robotaxi deal (The Verge)

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