Earnings Overload

Apple beat Q2 estimates and forecast strong Q3 growth as the MacBook Neo and Mac Mini sell out. The Senate unanimously banned prediction market trading for senators, Intel closed its best month ever at +114%, and Musk admitted xAI "partly" distilled OpenAI models. Apple forecasts Q3 revenue above estimates, with sales expected to rise between 14% and 17%, and says memory expenses will climb "significantly higher" in Q3 (Bloomberg) Amazon debuts "Join the chat", an AI-powered feature that lets users ask questions about products and get conversational audio responses generated in real time (TechCrunch) The US Senate unanimously passed a rule barring senators from trading on prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, amid rising concern over insider trading (CNBC) Musk v. Altman: when asked whether xAI has distilled OpenAI models, Elon Musk says the claim is "partly" true (Wired) Intel's stock jumped 114% in April, hitting a record on April 24 and lifting its market cap past $470B, closing out the chipmaker's best month on record (CNBC) Longreads Talkie-LM: what happens when you train a language model exclusively on text from before 1930? Can it predict the future or independently rediscover General Relativity? (Talkie-LM) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Big Tech earnings landed — Alphabet soared on cloud growth while Meta dropped 10% after hiking capex to $145B. SoftBank plans an AI/robotics IPO called Roze, Anthropic weighs a $900B+ round, and Musk called himself a "fool" for backing OpenAI. Microsoft says Q3 Intelligent Cloud revenue was $34.68B, vs. $34.27B est., with Azure and other cloud services up 40% YoY; Microsoft 365 Copilot has 20M+ seats (CNBC) Meta raises full-year capex outlook to $125B–$145B, up from $115B–$135B; shares drop ~10%, biggest intraday decline since October (Bloomberg) Alphabet stands out on Big Tech earnings day as Google Cloud revenue jumps 63% and backlog nearly doubles to $462B; capex guidance raised to $180B–$190B (MarketWatch) Big Four combined Q1 capex hit a record $130B, on pace for $725B in 2026, up 77% from $410B last year (FT) Sources: SoftBank plans to create an AI and robotics company called Roze in the US to build data centers and list it as early as 2026, seeking a $100B valuation (FT) Sources: Anthropic has begun weighing a new funding round at a $900B+ valuation, after previously resisting investor proposals at an $800B+ valuation (Bloomberg) Sony confirms that some digital PS4 and PS5 games require a one-time online license check "to confirm the game's license" (GameSpot) OpenAI explains Codex's "goblin problem": reinforcement training rewarded quirky creature metaphors via a discontinued "Nerdy" personality, and the behavior spread (The Verge) Musk v. Altman: Elon Musk says he was a "fool" for backing OpenAI, accusing Altman and Brockman of manipulating him into donating tens of millions of dollars (WSJ) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The EU escalated its DSA probe against Meta over child safety failures on Instagram and Facebook. OpenAI has effectively abandoned its Stargate JV, China suspended new robotaxi licenses after a Baidu outage, and the Musk v. Altman trial kicked off with opening arguments. The European Commission issues preliminary DSA findings against Meta, saying Instagram and Facebook fail to prevent under-13 users from accessing the services (Bloomberg) YouTube rolls out Full Multiview Customization to YouTube TV, letting users pin up to four live streams in a window, after debuting a limited version in 2023 (The Verge) Sources: OpenAI has, in practice, abandoned its Stargate JV in favor of large bilateral deals; execs say its guiding principle remains to "build more compute" (FT) Sources: China suspends issuing Level 4 autonomous vehicle licenses, after 100+ of Baidu's Apollo Go robotaxis stalled and disrupted traffic in Wuhan in March (Bloomberg) OpenAI's Codex instruction set contains a line, repeated several times, that forbids Codex from randomly mentioning goblins, gremlins, and other creatures (Wired) Musk v. Altman: Musk testifies he's suing OpenAI because "it is not okay to steal a charity" and its pivot sets a concerning precedent for philanthropic efforts (Bloomberg) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Musk v. Altman trial seated a jury in California, with opening arguments set for today. Microsoft and OpenAI amended their partnership, removing the AGI clause. OpenAI missed internal user and revenue targets, Google launches Ask YouTube, and March saw 45,800 tech layoffs. A US judge seated a nine-person jury in the Musk v. Altman trial at a federal courthouse in California; Sam Altman and Greg Brockman were in attendance (CNBC) Microsoft and OpenAI amend their deal to let OpenAI serve all its products across any cloud provider; Microsoft will no longer pay a revenue share to OpenAI (OpenAI) Sources: OpenAI missed an internal goal of reaching 1B weekly active ChatGPT users by 2025's end, and missed multiple monthly revenue targets earlier in 2026 (WSJ) Google launches Ask YouTube, a conversational AI search "experiment" that generates pages with videos and text summaries, for Premium users in the US aged 18+ (The Verge) Bloomberg CTO Shawn Edwards says the company is overhauling Terminal with a new chatbot-style interface called ASKB, currently open to ~125K users in beta (Wired) Layoffs.fyi: companies announced layoffs affecting 45,800 tech employees in March, making it the worst month for reported tech job cuts in at least two years (WSJ) An analysis of Internet Archive data: by mid-2025, ~35% of new websites published since ChatGPT's launch in November 2022 were AI-generated or AI-assisted (404 Media) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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) Disclaimer: ● Initial 3 week subscription and 4 weeks of medication from $79 plus tax and $179 per month plus tax for 12 week subscription thereafter. Final pricing depends on program selection. ● Noom GLP-1Rx Program involves healthy diet, exercise and support. Individual results vary. Meds & personalization based on clinical need. Not reviewed by FDA for safety, efficacy, or quality. No affiliation with Novo Nordisk Inc., the only US source of FDA-approved semaglutide. Not available in all 50 US states ● Based on an analysis of self reported data from 1,254 engaged Noom users. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vercel confirmed a breach traced to an AI platform's compromised OAuth app. The NSA is using Anthropic's Mythos despite the Pentagon blacklist. Mac Minis face 12-week wait times from AI agent demand, and humanoid robots crushed the Beijing half-marathon. Vercel says its internal systems were accessed after a Vercel employee's Google Workspace account was compromised via a breach at the AI platform Context.ai (BleepingComputer) Sources: the US NSA is using Mythos Preview; one source says Mythos is also being widely used within the DoD, despite Anthropic's supply chain risk designation (Axios) Adobe introduces CX Enterprise, an AI agent-based platform that aims to help corporate customers automate digital marketing and other functions (WSJ) Some Mac Mini and Mac Studio models are unavailable or facing up to 12-week wait times in the US, with analysts citing strong demand from AI agent power users (WSJ) Deezer says AI-generated tracks now account for 44% of daily uploads, totaling ~75K tracks per day and 2M+ per month, but account for just 1-3% of consumption (TechCrunch) Sources: Recursive Superintelligence, a four-month-old start-up developing self-teaching AI and founded by ex-DeepMind and OpenAI engineers, has raised $500M+ (FT) At the Beijing half-marathon, several humanoid robots beat human winners by 10+ minutes; a robot made by Honor beat the human world record held by Jacob Kiplimo (Reuters) Disclaimer: ● Initial 3 week subscription and 4 weeks of medication from $79 plus tax and $179 per month plus tax for 12 week subscription thereafter. Final pricing depends on program selection. ● Noom GLP-1Rx Program involves healthy diet, exercise and support. Individual results vary. Meds & personalization based on clinical need. Not reviewed by FDA for safety, efficacy, or quality. No affiliation with Novo Nordisk Inc., the only US source of FDA-approved semaglutide. Not available in all 50 US states ● Based on an analysis of self reported data from 1,254 engaged Noom users. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices