Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

The next humanoid robot might not look human at all

The Verge - All Posts

World models startup Odyssey raised $310M from Amazon and others at a $1.45B valuation and will use AWS as its preferred cloud partner, deploying Trainium chips (Financial Times)

Techmeme

Legend of Vox Machina season 4 just introduced a Critical Role Campaign 3 character

Polygon - All

New Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3 info reveals game mechanics

Polygon - All

A profile of Anthropic researcher Nicholas Carlini, who warned about Mythos in March and is now part of an Anthropic team briefing the White House on safeguards (Wall Street Journal)

Techmeme

Sources: Samsung is seeing a rise in advanced chip production requests from BYD, Google, AMD, and others as TSMC's capacity remains constrained by AI demand (Nikkei Asia)

Techmeme

India's Telegram ban until June 22 over exam paper leak concerns is a terrible look for the country, sets a precedent, and could happen again if unchallenged (Nikhil Pahwa/@nixxin)

Techmeme

Sources: a new AI lab founded by Junyang Lin, former lead of Alibaba's Qwen models, has raised several hundred million dollars at a ~$2B post-money valuation (The Information)

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Dealogic: investors have poured $58B across 42 data center deals YTD; Oxford Economics says ~850 data centers worth some $7T are under construction globally (Financial Times)

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Sources: Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu targets a Hong Kong IPO as early as year-end at a $70B+ valuation, up from $50B in recent private secondary trades (Wall Street Journal)

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Kazakhstan signs accords with Firebird on Nvidia-related computing projects that could bring up to $10B in investment, as it seeks to build a Data Center Valley (Bloomberg)

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Sources: Jeff Bezos is investing in Cambridge, UK-based CuspAI, which applies generative AI to material sciences, as part of a $400M round at a $2.6B valuation (Tim Bradshaw/Financial Times)

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WordPress survey: 60% of US consumers say "AI" in a brand's messaging is a turnoff, 86% always or sometimes check the original source after seeing an AI summary (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

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A look at Wyoming's Frontier Stable Token, which launched in January and currently has a market value of ~$1M, as other states explore "white labeling" the tech (David Voreacos/Bloomberg)

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Databricks says annualized revenue rose 80%+ YoY to $6.9B, up from $5.4B in Q4; CEO Ali Ghodsi says higher AI agent usage is increasing costs, lowering margins (Jordan Novet/CNBC)

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Sources: Meta decided to support KOSA after it was packaged with language preempting state AI laws and a bill requiring app stores to verify users' ages (Politico)

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Kapwing: in tests, ~60% of the first 500 TikTok For You videos shown to a new account were AI slop, ~3x the slop shown to a new YouTube user via YouTube Shorts (Matt G. Southern/Search Engine Journal)

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Widow's Bay season 1 ending explained by director, plus a season 2 teaser

Polygon - All

Sources: the US has held off adding DeepSeek, CXMT, and 100+ other flagged companies to its Entity List, last updated in October, the longest gap in 10+ years (Karen Freifeld/Reuters)

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Sources: Amazon faces a possible FTC lawsuit alleging it misled advertisers; multiple state AGs are involved and the case could seek billions in civil penalties (Bloomberg)

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