Tech Brew Ride Home

China blocked Meta's $2B Manus acquisition and ordered both sides to unwind the deal, closing the "Singapore washing" loophole for Chinese AI startups. OpenAI is developing smartphone chips with Qualcomm and MediaTek, Google controls ~25% of global AI compute, and SaaS pricing shifts to usage-based.


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 (FT)


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 (Ming-Chi Kuo)


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 (FT)


Analysis: as of late 2025, 79 of 500 tracked software companies including HubSpot, Adobe, and Salesforce adopted usage-based AI fees, more than doubling on 2024 (The Information)


Anthropic details Project Deal, a marketplace experiment where Claude models bought, sold, and negotiated personal belongings on behalf of Anthropic employees (Anthropic)

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DeepSeek dropped V4 Pro and V4 Flash, undercutting US labs on price by roughly 5x. OpenAI fired back with GPT-5.5, reclaiming benchmark crowns from Claude. Meta confirms 8,000 layoffs on May 20, and Google plans to invest up to $40B in Anthropic.


DeepSeek releases its new flagship models V4 Pro and V4 Flash in preview, saying V4 Pro trails the performance of state-of-the-art models by about 3 to 6 months (Bloomberg)


Simon Willison's comparison chart of DeepSeek V4 pricing vs. US frontier models (Simon Willison)


OpenAI says "GPT-5.5 matches GPT-5.4 per-token latency in real-world serving", performs "at a much higher level of intelligence", and is more capable for Codex (OpenAI)


Meta plans to cut 10% of its employees, or ~8,000 jobs, on May 20 and won't fill 6,000 open roles, trying to boost efficiency and offset its heavy AI spending (Bloomberg)


Google plans to invest up to $40B in Anthropic: $10B now at a $350B valuation, with another $30B if Anthropic hits performance targets (Bloomberg)

Weekend Longreads Suggestions


A look at the AI nonprofit METR, maker of maybe the most important AI benchmark, whose time-horizon metrics are used by researchers and Wall Street to track AI development (NYT)


The Infinite Machine Olto e-bike review: a more elegant solution for trips too long to walk but too short to drive (The Verge)

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Microsoft considered buying Cursor but didn't pull the trigger before SpaceX's deal. Microsoft launches its first-ever voluntary retirement program, Anthropic's secondary market valuation hits $1T on Forge Global, and SpaceX's S-1 reveals plans to manufacture its own GPUs.


Sources: Microsoft considered buying Cursor in recent weeks but didn't make an offer; Microsoft has been working to boost GitHub Copilot's popularity (CNBC)


Microsoft announces the first voluntary retirement program in its 50-year history, for US staffers whose combined years of service added to their age totals 70+ (The Verge)


Kalshi suspends and fines congressional candidates Mark Moran of Virginia, Matt Klein of Minnesota, and Ezekiel Enriquez of Texas for political insider trading (CNBC)


Anthropic's valuation has hit $1T on Forge Global, a leading private marketplace exchange, surpassing OpenAI's valuation on the platform of $880B (Business Insider)


A poll of 4,000 workers in the US and the UK finds that the highest-earning and most experienced workers are adopting AI in their jobs far faster than others (FT)


SpaceX's S-1 excerpts list "manufacturing our own GPUs" among the "substantial capital expenditures" it is undertaking, with the size of the expenditure TBD (Reuters)


Spotify celebrates its 20th anniversary with a first-ever list of its 20 most streamed artists, albums, songs, podcasts, and audiobooks (Billboard)

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SpaceX struck a deal giving it the option to acquire Cursor for $60B or pay $10B, as xAI scrambles to catch up in AI coding. Google unveiled new TPUs and an agent platform, OpenAI shipped ChatGPT Images 2.0, and Mythos got accessed by unauthorized users.


SpaceX says it's working with Cursor to build "the world's most useful models" and it has the right to acquire Cursor for $60B or pay $10B for the partnership (NYT)


Google unveils a new TPU lineup consisting of the TPU 8t for AI training and the TPU 8i for inference, with general availability scheduled for later in 2026 (Bloomberg)


OpenAI releases ChatGPT Images 2.0 with new "thinking capabilities", allowing it to search the web to help it create multiple images from a single prompt (The Verge)


Source: a handful of unauthorized users in a private Discord channel have been accessing Anthropic's Mythos model since the day the company announced it (Bloomberg)


Meta is installing tracking software on US staffers' computers to capture mouse movements, clicks, and keystrokes in work-related apps for use in AI training (Reuters)

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Apple named John Ternus as its next CEO, with Tim Cook stepping up to executive chairman on September 1. Amazon agrees to invest up to $25B more in Anthropic, Bezos' Project Prometheus nears a $10B raise, and SpaceX's IPO prospectus reveals Musk's power moves.


John Ternus, senior VP of Hardware Engineering, will become Apple's next CEO on September 1; Tim Cook will become executive chairman of Apple's board (CNBC)


Amazon agrees to invest up to $25B in Anthropic, on top of the $8B that it has already invested; Anthropic commits to spend $100B+ on AWS over the next 10 years (CNBC)


Sources: Jeff Bezos' Project Prometheus is close to a $10B fundraising deal, which includes an initial $6.2B raise in November, at a $38B post-money valuation (FT)


Draft of SpaceX's confidential IPO prospectus: Elon Musk increased his stake in SpaceX last year by purchasing $1.4B of stock from current and former employees (The Information)

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