• Cursor Nears $2B Raise at $50B Valuation
  • a16z and Thrive Capital co-lead; Nvidia and Battery Ventures joining
  • xAI to provide GPUs for Cursor's Composer 2.5 model training
  • TechCrunch, The Information, Techmeme
• Anthropic Launches Claude Design; White House Thaws
  • Figma drops 6.84% on Claude Design launch; product powered by Opus 4.7
  • Bessent joined Amodei-Wiles meeting; White House calls it 'productive and constructive'
  • Anthropic, Axios, TechCrunch
• DeepSeek Seeks Outside Capital for First Time
  • Targeting at least $300M at $10B+ pre-money valuation
  • First-ever external raise for China's most prominent open AI lab
  • The Information, Techmeme
• Meta Plans 10% Layoffs; China Probes Manus Deal
  • Company-wide cuts rolling out starting in May
  • Multiple Chinese agencies mobilized to scrutinize $2B Manus acquisition
  • The Information, Techmeme
• Cerebras IPO Filed: $510M Revenue, Turned Profitable
  • Revenue up 76% YoY; $87.9M net income vs. a -$485M loss in 2024
  • Targeting Nasdaq listing at $35B+ valuation
  • Wall Street Journal, CNBC/Techmeme, The Information
• OpenAI Succession Floated; Two Top Execs Exit
  • Shareholders float Bret Taylor as IPO-era replacement for Altman
  • Sora head Bill Peebles and science VP Kevin Weil both announce departures
  • Wall Street Journal/Techmeme, The Verge, TechCrunch

• Recursive Superintelligence Raises $500M+ at 4 Months Old
  • Founded by former Google DeepMind engineers; building self-teaching AI
  • Among the fastest-funded AI startups on record
  • Techmeme/Financial Times
• 40% of 2026 US Data Centers Face Delays of 3+ Months
  • Satellite imagery confirms major AI infrastructure slippage
  • Power gridlock, construction backlogs, and local resistance all cited
  • Ars Technica, Techmeme/Financial Times
• Alibaba Grows Selective on Open-Source AI Models
  • New model release signals a more controlled open-source strategy
  • The Information

• Sequoia Raises $7B, First Fund Under New Leadership
  • Alfred Lin and Pat Grady now co-steer the 54-year-old firm
  • More than doubles its last $3.4B expansion fund from 2022
  • TechCrunch, Techmeme/Bloomberg
• Police Tech Startup Flock Safety Hits $8.4B Valuation
  • Valuation set despite mounting civic protests over surveillance tools
  • The Information
• Kraken Acquires Bitnomial Derivatives Platform for $550M
  • Cash-and-stock deal for US crypto derivatives exchange
  • Parent Payward implied at $20B total valuation post-deal
  • The Information, Techmeme/CoinDesk

• Windows Zero-Days Actively Exploited in Real Attacks
  • BlueHammer, UnDefend, RedSun used to breach at least one organization
  • Flaws published by a disgruntled researcher over the past two weeks
  • TechCrunch
• Bluesky Battles Near Day-Long DDoS Attack
  • Intermittent outages to feeds, notifications, threads, and search
  • No evidence of unauthorized access to private user data
  • The Verge/Hacker News
• NIST Quietly Abandons Enriching Most CVE Records
  • National Vulnerability Database updates deprioritized
  • Security teams lose their authoritative vulnerability metadata source
  • Risky.biz/Hacker News

• World Iris Verification Expands to Tinder, Zoom, and More
  • Also integrating with DocuSign, Shopify, Okta, and Vana
  • 'Proof of humanity' badge fights AI impersonation at scale
  • TechCrunch, Axios, BBC
• Netflix Launches Vertical Feed, Bets Big on AI Recs
  • TikTok-style content discovery rolling out this month
  • AI to power both recommendations and content creation going forward
  • TechCrunch
• Amazon Fire TV Ditches Android for Vega OS Entirely
  • All future Fire TV Sticks to run Vega; second Vega device ships now
  • Android fully replaced; Vega debuted last year on Fire TV Stick Select
  • 9to5Google

• Big Tech Lobbied EU to Hide Data Center Emissions Data
  • Industry demands written almost verbatim into EU confidentiality rules
  • Legal experts warn the clauses may violate EU transparency law
  • Investigate Europe/Hacker News, The Guardian/Techmeme
• EU Age Verification App Has Glaring Security Flaws
  • Cyber experts cite serious privacy and security vulnerabilities
  • Officials walk back 'ready' claim; now calling it 'still a demo'
  • Politico/Techmeme

• Stratechery: Servers, Satellites, and Stars
  • AI cost economics, the satellite internet deal, and Nico Rosberg
  • Thompson's weekly synthesis of the biggest platform power shifts
  • Stratechery
• 'Tokenmaxxing' Is Making Developers Less Productive
  • Token budgets become status symbols; more code doesn't mean better output
  • Managers struggle to measure real productivity from AI coding agents
  • TechCrunch
• Discourse Will Not Go Closed Source
  • Rejects argument that AI makes open-source transparency too dangerous
  • Argues openness still worth the risk in the AI security era
  • Discourse Blog/Hacker News