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Morning Brew
#3 in Technology this weekSilicon Valley's water cooler podcast. A tech news summary every day... 15 minutes and you're up to date. From Tech Brew, Morning Brew's tech hub.
- 2,461 episodes
- daily
- Avg 22 min
- English
- Saturday · 27 min
- TB
Friday · 22 minIs Anthropic’s $1.5T IPO Cracking?
Investors grew skeptical Anthropic’s IPO could land a $1.5T valuation after a brutal chip selloff. Thinking Machines unveiled Inkling 2 Small, Tesla announced it would wind down the Cybertruck, and Anthropic launched Personal Finance in Claude. Plus, Microsoft’s buyouts. Sources: major investors are increasingly skeptical Anthropic’s IPO can proceed at a $1.5T valuation after a market selloff; one says it could be closer to $1T (WSJ) The Nasdaq 100 fell 6% on Thursday, losing a record $2.3T in value, as the Philadelphia chip index fell 12% and vol control funds were expected to sell about $135B of US equity futures (Bloomberg) Thinking Machines Lab debuts Inkling 2 Small, a MoE model with 594B total and 17B active parameters, and plans to release weights next week after safety testing (Thinking Machines) Inkling 2 Small scored 31 on Artificial Analysis’ Intelligence Index, an 18-point jump, but used roughly four times as many output tokens per task; Thinking Machines is reportedly nearing a $5B round led by Accel (TechStrong.ai) Elon Musk says Tesla plans to wind down production of the Cybertruck at its Texas Gigafactory around mid-2027 “to make room for increased Cybercab production” (Financial Times) Anthropic launches Personal Finance in Claude, letting users connect bank and credit card accounts via Plaid with read-only access to analyze spending trends (ZDNet) Longreads How employees at Microsoft, long known for its stability in the tech industry, are grappling with its decision to offer buyouts to 60,000 people as AI spending grows (The New York Times) AvidXchange is a licensed money transmitter for B2B payments in the United States, licensed as a Money Transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services, as well as all other states that require AvidXchange to have a license.
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Thursday · 21 minOpenAI's Most Dangerous Model Yet?
OpenAI pledged to rethink data center deals, dropping NDAs, after the blue wave rattled AI. Motorola launched a $1,599 flagship, OpenAI released GPT-6 Cyber, and Apple’s touchscreen MacBook Pro reviews said the screen’s gorgeous, but you don’t have to touch it.
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Wednesday · 21 minDid the Election Just Stall the AI Build-Out?
Democrats swept Texas, Georgia and Ohio governorships on data center moratorium pledges, putting AI buildout billions at risk. Apple opened Siri AI to every developer, Google said it would turn K-12 AI off by default, and Revolut cut coding costs 90%.
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Tuesday · 20 minDid Apple's New CEO Fumble His Debut?
Apple beat estimates in John Ternus’s first earnings call, but memory costs loomed. Investors told Anthropic to price its IPO near $1.5T. Google banned a TV box maker for preloading malware. Binance detailed its $6.3B hack. Anthropic said RSI might be imminent.
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November 2 · 21 minOpenAI Can't Hit Its Target
OpenAI cut its funding round to about $20B at a $1.25T valuation as the AI selloff spooked investors. Anthropic’s S-1 showed nearly $17B in quarterly revenue, Marvell agreed to buy Lumentum for $115B, and Claude Code got game-cloning limits. Sources: OpenAI now seeks ~$20B at a $1.25T valuation for its latest round, from $30B at a $1.4T valuation, as some investors cut commitments amid an AI selloff (Financial Times) Anthropic’s updated S-1 shows Q3 revenue of nearly $17B, up from $1.4B a year ago, and a $23.3B net loss, as it plans to spend more than $895B in the years ahead (Bloomberg) Sources: neoclouds CoreWeave, Nebius, and Nscale have effectively been shut out of the bond market in recent weeks as lenders and investors demand tougher terms (WSJ) The cost of insuring against debt defaults at hyperscalers Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and Oracle has hit its highest level since 2021, as investors and tech executives turn to options and credit-default swaps for protection (WSJ) Marvell agrees to acquire optical components maker Lumentum in a $115B all-stock deal, as it aims to rival Broadcom; Nvidia invested $2B in each company in 2026 (Reuters) Marvell shareholders get 67% of the combined company in the all-stock deal, which isn’t expected to close until the first half of 2028, and shares of both companies slid on the news (Bloomberg) Anthropic confirms new Claude Code limits “to steer it away from recreating someone else’s specific game”, saying IP infringement violates its usage policy (Tom’s Hardware) Subscribe to the ad-free feed. AvidXchange is a licensed money transmitter for B2B payments in the United States, licensed as a Money Transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services, as well as all other states that require AvidXchange to have a license.
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October 30 · 22 minHow Hackers Drained $6.3B From Binance
Overnight brought the biggest heist in crypto history, as hackers drained $6.3 billion from Binance. Amazon’s AI spending soared while retail growth stalled, Spotify eyed a $5-a-month AI remix tool, and longreads covered El Niño forecasting and old-time fiddlers.
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October 29 · 22 minA Chinese Spy Inside Nvidia?
I covered the NYT report that US officials think Megaspeed’s Alice Huang is a Chinese asset who cozied up to Jensen Huang, the leak of 41,000 DHS workers’ data, DoorDash’s $17B Instacart grab, and Alphabet’s ugly free cash flow.
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October 28 · 21 minApple Caves: A Touchscreen Mac
Apple unveiled a touchscreen MacBook Pro, finally ditching Jobs’s stance. Then Amazon unloaded gadgets: a $500 Echo Show 16, the Echo Time alarm clock, an Alexa Photo Frame, and an Echo Studio with a camera. Not one AI story all day. Apple unveils a touchscreen MacBook Pro with a 14" or 16" PROLED XDR display, a light-up Apple logo, Dynamic Island, M5 Pro and M5 Max, for $2,899+ and $3,399+ (Apple) The new touchscreen MacBook Pro has a tandem OLED “PROLED XDR” display with up to 2,000 nits and 120Hz, a Dynamic Island, a glowing Apple logo on the lid, M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, and up to 24 hours of battery (The Verge) New CEO John Ternus introduced the touchscreen MacBook Pro on stage, reversing Steve Jobs’ long-held opposition to touch Macs, which Tim Cook once compared to merging a fridge and a toaster (Bloomberg) Amazon unveils the $500 Echo Show 16, the $200 Echo Time alarm, and the $200+ Alexa Photo Frame, raises smart speaker prices, and previews Alexa Home Map (Bloomberg) Panos Panay spent about 45 minutes introducing five new Echo speakers and displays, plus a “new brain” for Alexa Plus that can do “deeper research” and a Card interface that collects each chat (The Verge) Hands-on with the Echo Show 16: customizable Screen Styles could make it the versatile family hub Alexa users have wanted, but at double the price of the Echo Show 11 it may be too expensive (The Verge) Amazon debuts the Alexa Photo Frame and Echo Time smart clock, plus other upgraded devices (TechCrunch) The $199.99 Echo Time smart alarm has a 3.2-inch round touchscreen, a screen that dims below 0.3 nits, and opt-in sleep sensing that wakes you up to an hour early at the optimal point in your sleep cycle (The Verge) Amazon’s new Echo Studio speaker has a camera (The Verge) The $249.99 Echo Studio with Home Camera lets you ask Alexa about objects in the room, doubles as a home video feed, and handles video calls, though visual information is processed in the cloud (Gizmodo) Subscribe to the ad-free feed.
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October 27 · 21 minWho Inherits Anthropic?
OpenAI claimed three fresh breakthroughs in math, physics, and computer science — including that the Exponential Time Hypothesis is false. Apple unveiled the M6 MacBook Pro. Microsoft offered buyouts to ~60K workers, a quarter of headcount. Plus, Anthropic S-1 nuggets.
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October 26 · 25 minAnthropic's S-1 Just Dropped!
Anthropic’s S-1 finally dropped: ticker ANT, $16.3B in first-half revenue, and a gargantuan compute bill. Apple unveiled an OLED iPad mini, Meta moved to raise $95B for AI, Elvis’s rightsholders sued Anthropic, and Block’s Dessa speech model wowed me.
- TBOctober 23 · 23 min
OpenAI Takes a $150B Haircut
OpenAI neared a $30B bridge round at a $1.25T valuation, down from the $1.4T it pitched, ahead of an IPO. Treasury proposed curbs on US tech investment in China, banks blocked rogue AI agents, and OpenAI launched its Decisions API.
- TBOctober 22 · 22 min
The iPhone Duo Reviews Are In
PHP-aggedon kept rolling, with patches covering only PHP 8.2 and newer. Anthropic unveiled Claude Duet, a proactive background agent. Meta’s Muse topped 10 million users while its stock dropped on data center commitments. iPhone Duo reviews landed, Gruber scathing.
- TBOctober 21 · 22 min
Is Musk Merging Tesla and SpaceX?
Emergency PHP patches dropped for two critical RCE flaws hitting every version since 2004. Also: Anthropic’s IPO prospectus showed $16.3B H1 revenue and an $80.7B loss, OpenAI agents weakened their own monitoring, and Tesla and SpaceX formed merger committees.
- TBOctober 20 · 22 min
Eric Schmidt's $80 Billion Anthropic Bet
DeepSeek open-sourced DeepInfer, its internal inference stack. Inception’s diffusion LLM Mercury 3 claimed 4x to 8x speed over Haiku 5.5. Spotify launched paid podcast memberships, and Eric Schmidt’s 1% Anthropic stake looked set for a massive IPO windfall.
- TBOctober 19 · 21 min
Everyone Wants To Give Back
Elon Musk promised every American kid a SpaceX share, about $10.5B worth, as Anthropic committed 5% of its shares to a public benefit fund. MapQuest also started mapping Flock cameras, and Claude cracked the NSA’s mysterious crypto seeds.
- TBOctober 16 · 21 min
What Is Meta's Muse Spark Open?
Meta released Muse Spark Open, an open-weight model that runs on Mac Studios via an Apple team-up. An OpenAI model used a wallet it didn’t own, Accenture capped Claude spending at $29 a month, and BofA hired 1,000 patching contractors.
- TBOctober 15 · 21 min
Anthropic's Growth Is Slowing
Anthropic told investors Q3 revenue hit $16.8 billion, with adjusted profitability, but growth slowed ahead of the IPO. An arrested OpenAI engineer had booked one-way tickets to Saudi Arabia. Amazon launched two Bee wearables, and Nvidia’s RTX Spark impressed. Sources: Anthropic told investors that its Q3 revenue hit $16.8B, up from $11.5B in Q2, and that it was profitable on an adjusted basis in Q3, ahead of its IPO (Financial Times) Sources: Anthropic told investors that 5% to 7% of its revenue comes from distillation, and that distillation revenue will decline and keep weighing on its numbers this period (The Information) Filing: Abdulrahman Alfozan, his wife, and a family member booked one-way tickets from the US to Saudi Arabia for October 12; the FBI arrested him on October 9 (Bloomberg) OpenAI has trained employees to resist spies, including a stranger at a San Francisco playground who quizzed an employee about their work, before federal authorities arrested an employee for planting a listening device (WSJ) Amazon launches two AI wearables, the $75 Bee Frontier wristband and $100 Bee Eclipse magnetic phone-attachment recorder, with a $12/month Bee Pro subscription (Bloomberg) Amazon’s Bee debuts its first new devices since the acquisition, the $74.99 Frontier and $99.99 Eclipse, undercutting the $159 Plaud Note and $129 Pocket, with $11.99/month Bee Pro adding Amazon.com and Alexa+ integrations (TechCrunch) Nvidia’s RTX Spark Superchip in the Surface Laptop Ultra outperforms Apple’s M5 Max MacBook Pro by ~25% in agentic AI completion benchmarks using Qwen models (Tom’s Hardware) Download Cash App Today: https://cash.app/ #CashAppPartner. Terms apply. Bitcoin services by Block, Inc. See the Bitcoin disclosures at cash.app/legal/podcast
- TBOctober 14 · 20 min
OpenAI's Office Was Bugged
OpenAI said the FBI arrested a staffer after it found a hidden recording device in its offices. Netflix cut about 1,000 jobs, Microsoft patched a record 1,416 vulnerabilities, and the FBI shut down North Korean laptop farms in Texas.
- TBOctober 13 · 22 min
HomeView
Apple’s Welcome Home event brought the $299 HomeView smart display, LG and Schneider smart home gear, and a HomePod mini 2. Meta’s Muse Wonder caught up to the frontier, and Epic delayed a game over “no more hand-written code.”