Reading List

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

Memo: Amazon SVP Dave Treadwell says junior and mid-level engineers now require more senior engineers to sign off any AI-assisted code changes, after outages (Rafe Rosner-Uddin/Financial Times)

Techmeme

AI networking equipment startup Eridu emerges from stealth and raised a $200M Series A led by Socratic, John Doerr, and more, taking its total funding to $230M (Julie Bort/TechCrunch)

Techmeme

Meta emails advertisers about "location fees" in select European countries to cover digital services taxes, starting July 1; Google and Amazon have similar fees (Gian Volpicelli/Bloomberg)

Techmeme

Kazuo Ishiguro, Philippa Gregory, Richard Osman, and ~10,000 writers publish Don't Steal This Book, an "empty" book to protest AI companies using their work (Dan Milmo/The Guardian)

Techmeme

Nexthop AI, which offers specialized switches to reduce power consumption and latency for hyperscalers, raised $500M led by Lightspeed at a $4.2B valuation (Rebecca Torrence/Bloomberg)

Techmeme

How AI training company Mercor, valued at $10B in 2025, uses AI interviewer Melvin and invasive monitoring software Insightful to manage its 30K+ workforce (Josh Dzieza/The Verge)

Techmeme

AT&T says it plans to spend $250B+ over the next five years to build out its US infrastructure, including high-speed fiber; AT&T spent $21B on capex in 2025 (Bloomberg)

Techmeme

AI cybersecurity startup Armadin, started by Mandiant founder Kevin Mandia to build AI agents, raised ~$190M led by Accel; Google bought Mandiant for $5.4B (Samantha Subin/CNBC)

Techmeme

An interview with Hinge CEO Jackie Jantos, promoted from CMO in December 2025, as the dating app hits 1.8M+ paying users, gaining ground while others struggle (Kieran Smith/Financial Times)

Techmeme

US commercial satellite provider Planet Labs delays Middle East imagery to two weeks from four days over concerns it could be used to target NATO members (Aaron Clark/Bloomberg)

Techmeme

A look at the top 100 GenAI consumer apps: ChatGPT leads but the race for the "default AI" is on, global usage is splintering by product, and AI agents arrive (Olivia Moore/Andreessen Horowitz)

Techmeme

Pentagon official Emil Michael says Anthropic's lawsuit is an "expected reaction" and "I don't think there's a scenario where this gets resolved in that way" (Katrina Manson/Bloomberg)

Techmeme

Uzbek fintech and e-commerce company Uzum raised $131.5M led by Oman's sovereign funds, with $81.5M equity, at a $2.3B valuation, up from $1.5B in August 2025 (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)

Techmeme

How "dark factories", powered by AI and robotics and requiring essentially no workers, are set to upend China's labor market, already stressed by tariffs (Bloomberg)

Techmeme

How AI may disrupt venture capital, from making it easier and cheaper to start software companies, to agentic investors analyzing startup pitch decks and teams (Arielle Pardes/Wired)

Techmeme

Yann LeCun's Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs raised a $1.03B seed at a $3.5B pre-money valuation to work on world models, in Europe's largest-ever seed round (Madhumita Murgia/Financial Times)

Techmeme

Sources: Apple made ~55M iPhones in India in 2025, up 53% YoY from 36M in 2024, or ~25% of total iPhone production, as it shifts away from China amid tariffs (Sankalp Phartiyal/Bloomberg)

Techmeme

Flipkart moves its headquarters back to India, more than a decade after it moved to Singapore, as it prepares for a potential IPO in India in the coming months (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)

Techmeme

Source: Spark Capital, the first VC firm to back Anthropic in 2023, is raising about $3B in new funds, 50% more than the size of funds it raised two years ago (The Information)

Techmeme

Dify, which offers an open-source platform to build and run AI applications and agentic workflows, raised a $30M pre-Series A led by HSG at a $180M valuation (FinSMEs)

Techmeme