Amazon-backed nuclear startup X-Energy raises $1.02 billion in IPO
Amazon-backed nuclear startup X-Energy raises $1.02 billion in IPO

X-Energy sold 44.3 million Class A shares at $23 each, above the $16–$19 marketed range, and began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker XE on 24 April. The company has $1.8 billion in prior private capital, a $500 million Amazon-led Series C-1, and a bin…

Cohere and Aleph Alpha announce merger in Berlin, creating a $20 billion transatlantic AI company
Cohere and Aleph Alpha announce merger in Berlin, creating a $20 billion transatlantic AI company

Cohere’s shareholders will receive approximately 90% of the combined entity; Aleph Alpha’s shareholders approximately 10%, making this effectively a Cohere acquisition in merger framing. The German government is set to become an anchor customer. Both d…

DeepSeek returns with V4-Pro and V4-Flash, a year after its ‘Sputnik moment’
DeepSeek returns with V4-Pro and V4-Flash, a year after its ‘Sputnik moment’

The Hangzhou startup released preview versions of both models on Hugging Face on Friday. V4-Pro claims top performance on coding and maths among open models, trails only Gemini 3.1-Pro for world knowledge, and falls “marginally short” of GPT-5.4 and Ge…

Verda raises $117 million to expand its GPU cloud platform from the Nordics into the US, UK, and Asia
Verda raises $117 million to expand its GPU cloud platform from the Nordics into the US, UK, and Asia

The Helsinki-based company, formerly DataCrunch, is backed by Lifeline Ventures, byFounders, Tesi, Varma, and a group of Nordic lenders. It is already cash-flow positive, holds Nvidia Preferred Partner status, and plans to hire more than 100 people thi…

Norway plans to ban social media for children under 16 and shift age verification liability to platforms
Norway plans to ban social media for children under 16 and shift age verification liability to platforms

The minority Labour government, led by PM Jonas Gahr Støre, announced the legislation on Friday. The age threshold has been raised from the 15-year limit proposed in the 2025 consultation, aligning Norway with Australia’s world-first ban that came into…

Meta is cutting 8,000 jobs to pay for AI. It is also asking the survivors to train their replacements.
Meta is cutting 8,000 jobs to pay for AI. It is also asking the survivors to train their replacements.

Summary: Meta is cutting approximately 8,000 employees (10% of its workforce) beginning 20 May, cancelling 6,000 open roles, and planning additional cuts for H2 2026. The layoffs, announced via an internal memo from HR head Janelle Gale, are structural…

High gas prices are not saving Tesla. They are just slowing the bleeding.
High gas prices are not saving Tesla. They are just slowing the bleeding.

Summary: US petrol prices passed $4/gallon for the first time in four years (+30% YoY), driven by the Iran conflict and Strait of Hormuz disruption. Tesla delivered 358,023 vehicles in Q1 2026, up 6% against a weak comparison quarter but missing estima…

White House accuses China of industrial-scale AI model distillation, commits to intelligence sharing with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google
White House accuses China of industrial-scale AI model distillation, commits to intelligence sharing with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google

Summary: The White House OSTP released a policy memo accusing China of “industrial-scale” distillation of US AI models, committing to share intelligence with US AI companies and explore accountability measures. OpenAI accused DeepSeek of distilling its…

Microsoft offers voluntary retirement to 7% of US workers in first-ever buyout programme amid $80B AI spending push
Microsoft offers voluntary retirement to 7% of US workers in first-ever buyout programme amid $80B AI spending push

Summary: Microsoft is offering voluntary retirement to approximately 7% of its US workforce (~8,750 of 125,000 employees) in the first such programme in its 51-year history, using a “Rule of 70” formula (age + years of service). The offer, disclosed by…

OpenAI launches GPT-5.5, its first fully retrained base model since GPT-4.5
OpenAI launches GPT-5.5, its first fully retrained base model since GPT-4.5

The model, codenamed “Spud,” is designed to complete complex multi-step tasks with minimal human direction. It sets new benchmarks in agentic coding, computer use, and knowledge work, while matching GPT-5.4’s per-token latency. API access is delayed pe…