Week of May 17 – May 23, 2026partial
Sun 2026-05-17 → Tue 2026-05-19 (partial) · 26 stories
AI model & product releases
- Developers say Chinese AI labs lead US rivals in video generation, as ByteDance and Kuaishou train models on vast short-form video libraries from their own apps Eleanor Olcott / Financial Times · 2026-05-17
- Sources: Apple's revamped Siri may launch in beta, and will have an option to auto-delete chats; Apple plans to add Suggested Genmoji to iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 Mark Gurman / Bloomberg · 2026-05-17
- Amazon's Alexa+ now produces AI-generated “podcasts” on various topics in the US, featuring chats between two AI “co-hosts”, using content from media outlets Todd Spangler / Variety · 2026-05-18
Revenue & scale milestones
User behavior & adoption
- A college senior at Stanford describes how AI has changed classes: cheating using AI “has become omnipresent” with students “fudging just about everything” Theo Baker / New York Times · 2026-05-18
Platform & policy
- X quietly limits users who didn't pay for verification to “50 original posts and 200 replies per day”, down from 2,400 posts per day Jackson Chen / Engadget · 2026-05-18
Infrastructure & compute
- Sources: DayOne, the spinoff of China's largest data center operator GDS Holdings, plans dual IPO in Singapore and NY, seeking to raise $5B at a ~$20B valuation Owen Walker / Financial Times · 2026-05-17
- Sources: competition for Google's TPUs among its employees and researchers intensified as it prioritizes cloud customers and flagship AI products over research Julia Love / Bloomberg · 2026-05-18
- NextEra's $67B deal to buy Dominion, the largest utility merger in US history, signals a new era of utility consolidation to accommodate AI-driven power demand Emily Forgash / Bloomberg · 2026-05-18
- A deep dive into Meta's Hyperion data center campus in Louisiana, expected to reach 5 GW of compute capacity; source: Meta plans to spend $200B+ on the project Riley Griffin / Bloomberg · 2026-05-18
- Blackstone announces a JV with Google to create a US company that will offer customers access to Google's TPUs, and makes an initial equity commitment of $5B Wall Street Journal · 2026-05-18
Deals & funding
- Publicis agrees to acquire LiveRamp, which allows companies to share and build new data sets and models that can power agentic frameworks, for $2.2B in cash Alison Weissbrot / Adweek · 2026-05-17
- Decart, which offers real-time generative video and GPU optimization tech, raised $300M at a ~$4B valuation, up from $3.1B after raising $153M in August 2025 Robbie Whelan / Wall Street Journal · 2026-05-18
- Anthropic acquires NYC-based Stainless, which generates SDKs from APIs, and plans to wind down its hosted products, after reportedly discussing a $300M+ deal Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch · 2026-05-18
- Sources: AI chip designer Tenstorrent has drawn takeover interest from Intel and Qualcomm; Tenstorrent could be valued at more than $5B in a potential deal Bloomberg · 2026-05-18
Regulation & legal
- Sources: US authorities in recent months have issued multiple information requests to Kalshi and Polymarket, many tied to wagers on events in Iran and Venezuela Wall Street Journal · 2026-05-17
- Musk v. Altman: the jury unanimously rejects Elon Musk's claims against Sam Altman, finding that the claims were filed outside of the statute of limitations CNBC · 2026-05-18
- Procurement records: the FBI seeks a vendor that can provide access to automated license plate readers nationwide; Flock and Motorola are among the few options Joseph Cox / 404 Media · 2026-05-18
Geopolitics & trade
- Experts: Stuxnet-linked Fast16 malware, designed to subvert nuclear weapons testing simulations, was likely part of a campaign to slow Iran's nuclear ambitions Kim Zetter / ZERO DAY · 2026-05-17
- Chinese chipmaker CXMT reports Q1 revenue up 719% YoY to ~$7.5B, net profit up 1,688% to $3.6B, and says Omdia ranks it No. 4 in DRAM with a 7.67% global share Cheng Ting-Fang / Nikkei Asia · 2026-05-18
- Iranian media: Iran launches “Hormuz Safe”, a Bitcoin-backed insurance service for shipping companies transiting the Strait of Hormuz; ~1,500 ships are trapped Golnar Motevalli / Bloomberg · 2026-05-18
Hardware & devices
Research & ideas
Industry narratives
- The Vatican says Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah will join Pope Leo on May 25 to launch the pope's first encyclical, setting out his views on the AI age Flavia Rotondi / Bloomberg · 2026-05-18
- Internal memo: Meta is reassigning 7,000 workers to four new units focused on building AI tools, two days before it is set to lay off 10% of its workforce Eli Tan / New York Times · 2026-05-18
Beyond AI
- Analysis: mass adoption of smartphones and social media may be a primary driver of declining birthrates globally, in part by reducing in-person socializing John Burn-Murdoch / Financial Times · 2026-05-17