Tech Brew Ride Home

Nintendo raised the Switch 2 price to $500 amid a global memory shortage. ShinyHunters forced Canvas offline during finals season. Researchers found 5,000+ insecure vibe-coded apps, Mozilla credits Mythos for 423 Firefox bug fixes in April, and France escalates its Musk probe.


Nintendo says it will increase the price of the Switch 2 globally on September 1, from $450 to $500 in the US, and the price of the original Switch in Japan (Bloomberg)


Instructure disables its Canvas edtech platform, used by thousands of schools, universities, and companies, amid a data extortion attack claimed by ShinyHunters (Krebs on Security)


Researchers: 5,000+ web apps built using AI coding tools like Lovable, Base44, and Replit have little to no authentication, and ~40% exposed sensitive data (Wired)


Mozilla says Anthropic's Mythos Preview and other AI models helped it identify and ship 423 Firefox security bug fixes in April, compared to 31 a year earlier (TechCrunch)


French prosecutors escalate an investigation into Elon Musk and X, focused on alleged algorithmic manipulation and sexual deepfakes, to a criminal probe (CNBC)

Longreads


Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark explains why there's a 60%+ chance of AI systems autonomously building their successors by 2029 and the consequences of automated AI R&D (Import AI)


How Delta SkyMiles and airline loyalty programs turned carriers into fintech companies with wings, and why most airlines couldn't survive without them (NY Mag)

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Dario Amodei revealed Anthropic could grow 80x in 2026, and the company signed a deal with SpaceX for 300MW of compute from Colossus 1. Musk dissolved xAI into SpaceX. Google launches the $100 Fitbit Air, and HubSpot's founder coins "strategic illegibility."


At Code with Claude, Dario Amodei said Anthropic had planned to grow ~10x in 2026 but could grow 80x, calling its growth rate "crazy" and "too hard to handle" (NYT)


Anthropic signs a deal with SpaceX for 300MW+ of compute from Colossus 1 in Memphis, accessing 220,000+ Nvidia GPUs within the month (Bloomberg)


Musk says xAI will be "dissolved as a separate company" and will become "SpaceXAI, the AI products from SpaceX" (Spyglass)


Google launches the $100 Fitbit Air, a Whoop-like screenless wearable, with Gemini-powered features like Google Health Coach, available May 26 (Engadget)


As founders race to make their companies "legible" to AI, they must keep the things that make them hard to copy "illegible", or risk commoditizing their moat (Brian Halligan)

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Corning and Nvidia partnered to open three optical manufacturing plants in the US, with Nvidia investing up to $2.7B. Morgan Stanley launched crypto trading on ETrade, Google tests a personal agent called Remy, and Meta builds an OpenClaw-inspired agent called Hatch.*


Corning and Nvidia partner to open three advanced manufacturing plants in North Carolina and Texas dedicated to optical tech for Nvidia, creating 3,000+ jobs (CNBC)


Morgan Stanley rolls out a crypto trading pilot on E*Trade, charging less than Coinbase, Robinhood, and Charles Schwab, ahead of a wider launch later in 2026 (Bloomberg)


Sources and a document: Google is testing a "personal agent" codenamed Remy in the Gemini app that integrates with Google services to take actions for users (Business Insider)


Sources: Meta is building an OpenClaw-inspired agent, internally called Hatch and powered by its Muse Spark model, and an agentic shopping tool in Instagram (The Information)


OpenAI partners with Microsoft, AMD, Broadcom, Nvidia, and Intel researchers to detail the Multipath Reliable Connection (MRC) protocol to help scale compute (The Deep View)

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The Trump administration discussed an EO to form an AI oversight working group, a stark reversal from its hands-off approach. Apple explored using Intel and Samsung to make chips in the US, Coinbase cut 14% of its workforce, and OpenAI fast-tracks an AI phone for 2027.


Sources: the Trump administration is discussing an EO to form an AI working group that would examine AI oversight procedures, like vetting models before release (NYT)


Sources: Apple held exploratory talks with Intel and Apple executives visited a Samsung plant in Texas to explore producing core chips for its devices in the US (Bloomberg)


Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announces the company is cutting ~700 jobs, or ~14% of its global workforce, to reduce costs, saying "AI is changing how we work" (Reuters)


Meta is using AI on Facebook and Instagram to detect under-13 users by analyzing bone structure, height, and visual cues, but says it's "not facial recognition" (The Verge)


Kuo: OpenAI appears to be fast-tracking its AI agent phone with two NPUs and a custom MediaTek Dimensity 9600 SoC, targeting mass production as early as H1 2027 (Ming-Chi Kuo)


ElevenLabs raised $550M+ in its Series D, up from a previously announced $500M, adding BlackRock, Nvidia, and others as investors; its ARR passed $500M in Q1 (Tech.eu)


Source: YC owns ~0.6% of OpenAI, which was seeded by a YC offshoot called YC Research in 2016; at OpenAI's current $852B valuation, the stake is worth $5B+ (Daring Fireball)

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GameStop made an unsolicited ~$56B bid for eBay as Ryan Cohen eyes a commerce empire. Anthropic finalizes a $1.5B JV with Blackstone and Goldman Sachs, Amazon opens its logistics network to outside companies, and a Harvard study finds AI outperforms ER doctors at triage.


GameStop makes an unsolicited ~$56B offer to buy eBay after building a ~5% stake, offering $125/share in cash and stock, a ~20% premium on May 1's closing price (WSJ)


Sources: Anthropic is finalizing a deal for a $1.5B JV with Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Hellman & Friedman, and others to sell AI tools to PE-backed companies (WSJ)


Amazon debuts Supply Chain Services, which lets companies use its logistics network to move, store, and deliver everything from raw materials to final products (Reuters)


An analysis of 1.6M Polymarket accounts since November 2022: 0.1% of users get 67% of the profits, with the highest-frequency traders seeing the most success (WSJ)


Study: OpenAI's o1 correctly diagnosed 67% of emergency room patients using electronic records and a few sentences from nurses, vs. 50-55% for triage doctors (The Guardian)

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