Europe’s child safety laws require collecting the data its privacy laws forbid
Europe’s child safety laws require collecting the data its privacy laws forbid

Summary: Europe’s effort to protect children online has collided with its own privacy architecture. The ePrivacy derogation allowing voluntary CSAM scanning expired on April 3 after Parliament voted 311-228 to reject its extension, the EU’s new age ver…

X-Energy’s failed $1 billion SPAC became a $1 billion IPO. The reactor did not change. The market did.
X-Energy’s failed $1 billion SPAC became a $1 billion IPO. The reactor did not change. The market did.

In short: X-Energy raised $1.02 billion in the largest nuclear IPO on record, pricing at $23 (21% above range) on the Nasdaq, with shares surging 31% on opening to imply a $12 billion market cap. The offering was 15x oversubscribed. The same company fa…

US government’s Intel stake jumps 300% to $36B after CHIPS Act grants were converted to equity under Trump
US government’s Intel stake jumps 300% to $36B after CHIPS Act grants were converted to equity under Trump

In short: The US government’s 9.9% stake in Intel, acquired for $8.9 billion last August by converting CHIPS Act grants and Secure Enclave funds into equity at $20.47/share, is now worth approximately $36 billion after Intel’s stock surged 20%+ on a ma…

Google is investing up to $40 billion in a company that is beating Gemini. That is the point.
Google is investing up to $40 billion in a company that is beating Gemini. That is the point.

Summary: Google is investing up to $40 billion in Anthropic ($10B cash now at $350B valuation, $30B conditional on performance targets) plus five gigawatts of compute over five years, bringing its total commitment to ~$43B. The deal arrives as Anthropi…

Turkey’s parliament passes social media ban for under-15s, one week after a school shooting
Turkey’s parliament passes social media ban for under-15s, one week after a school shooting

Erdŏgan has 15 days to sign the bill into law. The legislation enters into force six months after publication in the Official Gazette. The main opposition CHP criticised it as a political censorship tool rather than child protection. Turkey has previou…

Intel beats expectations for the sixth straight quarter as AI demand for CPUs surges
Intel beats expectations for the sixth straight quarter as AI demand for CPUs surges

Q1 revenue of $13.6 billion beat the $12.4 billion consensus by 9.4%. Data Centre and AI revenue rose 22% to $5.1 billion. Non-GAAP EPS of $0.29 beat the 1-cent consensus by a factor of 29. The stock is up more than 80% this year. Intel is working with…

China plans to block US investment in its top AI firms without government approval
China plans to block US investment in its top AI firms without government approval

Two parallel moves in 24 hours mark a significant escalation of the US-China AI war from chips and exports into capital and models.  China plans to restrict its leading technology companies, including top AI startups, from accepting US capital without …

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…