Summary: Threads head Connor Hayes previewed a redesigned web interface that adds direct messages, a navigation sidebar with shortcuts to saved posts and insights, and a cleaner single-feed layout replacing the current multi-column design. DMs, which launched on mobile in June 2025, will roll out on web “over the coming weeks,” bringing one-on-one chats, group […]

In short: Meta will begin companywide layoffs on 20 May, cutting approximately 8,000 employees (10% of its 78,865-person workforce), with additional cuts planned for the second half of 2026. The restructuring, which follows earlier rounds that brought Zuckerberg’s total cuts since 2022 to roughly 25,000, is driven by a reallocation toward AI infrastructure costing $115-135 […]

The European Investment Fund is raising a €15 billion fund of funds called ETCI 2 that aims to unlock up to €80 billion in scaleup funding across Europe. Germany’s WIN initiative is targeting €12 billion by 2030. France’s Tibi programme has pledged €7 billion in private capital and labelled 92 VC and growth funds with […]

In short: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang warned on the Dwarkesh Podcast that DeepSeek optimising its AI models for Huawei’s Ascend chips instead of American hardware would be “a horrible outcome” for the United States, as the Chinese AI lab prepares to launch its V4 foundation model on Huawei’s Ascend 950PR processor. The migration from Nvidia’s […]

In short: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei met White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday in what the White House called “productive and constructive” talks over access to Mythos, the frontier AI model capable of finding thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities. The meeting signals a thaw in the standoff that […]

In short: The FAA is developing SMART (Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories), an AI system that would extend air traffic conflict prediction from 15 minutes to two hours, with Palantir, Thales, and Air Space Intelligence competing for the contract. The project follows the LaGuardia crash that exposed controller overwork and aging systems, and sits […]

In short: AI coding startup Cursor (Anysphere) is in talks to raise at least $2 billion at a $50 billion valuation, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital, and Nvidia, nearly doubling its November 2025 valuation of $29.3 billion. The company has grown from zero to $2 billion ARR in three years – the fastest B2B […]

Summary: Three senior OpenAI executives, former CPO Kevin Weil, Sora head Bill Peebles, and enterprise CTO Srinivas Narayanan – departed on the same day as the company shuts down “side quests” including Sora (discontinuing 26 April) and dismantles OpenAI for Science. The exits continue a two-year pattern that has seen only 2 of 11 co-founders […]

Christian Weedbrook, the founder and CEO of Toronto-based Xanadu Quantum Technologies, became a billionaire this week without NVIDIA investing a single dollar in his company. His 46.4 million multiple-voting shares were worth approximately $1.5 billion as of midday Friday, after Xanadu’s stock surged nearly fivefold in six trading sessions. The catalyst was not anything Xanadu […]

Summary: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is meeting White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles on Friday to negotiate access to Mythos, a frontier AI model that can identify and exploit thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities across every major operating system and browser. The meeting follows Anthropic’s blacklisting by the Pentagon after Amodei refused to remove safety […]