Tech Brew Ride Home

SpaceX is officially kicking off the year of the biggest IPOs ever. More job cuts and more signs AI is the cause, in one way or another. Microsoft makes its first public moves to divorce itself from OpenAI when it comes to AI models. And a billion-dollar company with only two employees? You guessed it: AI is why.


SpaceX Has Filed Confidentially for IPO Ahead of AI Rivals (Bloomberg)


Larry Ellison’s Oracle cuts thousands of jobs after AI push (The Times of London)


US Job-Cut Announcements in Tech Keep Rising With AI Adoption (Bloomberg)


Cloudflare launches EmDash — the 'spiritual successor' that wants to take on WordPress (Tech Radar)


Alibaba Unveils Third Closed-Source AI Model in Focus on Profit (Bloomberg)


Microsoft launches 3 new AI models in direct shot at OpenAI and Google (VentureBeat)

Weekend Longreads Suggestions:


How A.I. Helped One Man (and His Brother) Build a $1.8 Billion Company (NYTimes)


AI Perfected Chess. Humans Made It Unpredictable Again (Bloomberg)

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OpenAI closes a monster round, but does Anthropic continue to steal their thunder? Is that Anthropic code leak from yesterday a bigger deal for them than I thought it was? What can happen when all the self-driving cars shut down at once. And you are finally able to change that embarrassing Gmail account you’ve been living with.


OpenAI closes record-breaking $122 billion funding round as anticipation builds for IPO (CNBC)


OpenAI raises $3bn from retail investors as part of record funding haul (FT)


OpenAI Is Falling Out of Favor With Secondary Buyers (Bloomberg)


Anthropic Races to Contain Leak of Code Behind Claude AI Agent (WSJ)


Claude Code Leak Reveals Always-On ‘Kairos’ Agent (The Information)


Robotaxi Outage in China Leaves Passengers Stranded on Highways (Wired)


You can finally replace your embarrassing Gmail username (The Verge)

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Is the Iran war coming for US tech companies specifically? Meta unveils new smartglasses. A leak gives us a look at how Claude Code works. SpaceX is losing contact with satellites for reasons we don’t know yet. And Whoop is the big wearable player I guess we don’t talk about enough.


Iran says it will target US tech companies in Middle East (The Hill)


Iran’s hackers go to war (FT)


The latest Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are more customizable and expensive (Engadget)


Claude Code's source code appears to have leaked: here's what we know (VentureBeat)


Google commits to video generation, announces Veo 3.1 Lite (9to5Google)


Another Starlink satellite has inexplicably exploded (The Verge)


Whoop, a Wearable Health Device Maker, Raises $575 Million (NYTimes)

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With everyone suddenly chasing Anthropic, are we getting strong signals AI is about to get more expensive? The dream of pairing AI models against each other and asking them to fight. We really are getting datacenters in space startups, aren’t we? And Project Hail Mary is Amazon’s biggest movie win ever.


The Sudden Fall of OpenAI’s Most Hyped Product Since ChatGPT (WSJ)

Andrew Curran X Post


Claude is limiting usage more aggressively during peak hours — here’s what changed (TechRadar)


Microsoft’s Researcher AI Agent Can Now Make GPT and Claude Models Work Together (Thurrott)


Starcloud raises $170 million Series A to build data centers in space (TechCrunch)


‘Project Hail Mary’ becomes Amazon MGM’s biggest box office hit (TechCrunch)

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Is Anthropic about to release an AI model that will be a true step change? Is Apple about to open Siri up to everyone, not just ChatGPT? Is OpenAI already making serious bank from Ads? Is Elon trying to open the SpaceX IPO to normies? And of course, the Weekend Longreads Suggestions.


Anthropic wins preliminary injunction in DOD fight as judge cites ‘First Amendment retaliation’ (CNBC)


Exclusive: Anthropic acknowledges testing new AI model representing ‘step change’ in capabilities, after accidental data leak reveals its existence (Fortune)


Apple Plans to Open Up Siri to Rival AI Assistants in iOS 27 Update (Bloomberg)


Sony is raising PS5 prices by $100 in April (The Verge)


OpenAI Surpasses $100 Million Annualized Revenue From Ads Pilot (The Information)


Exclusive: Musk rewrites IPO playbook with large slice of SpaceX stock for retail investors, source says (Reuters)

Weekend Longreads Suggestions:


Gemini task automation is slow, clunky, and super impressive (The Verge)


How Apple Became Apple: The Definitive Oral History Of The Company's Earliest Days (Fast Company)

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