Bryce Elder / Financial Times:
Shoe company Allbirds, which sold last week for $39M after its valuation fell from $4B+ in 2021, says it aims to become an AI compute provider; BIRD jumps 800%+  —  Ah, zeitgeist:  —  Allbirds is a San Francisco maker of wool trainers that was once valued at more than $4bn.

Samuel Stolton / Bloomberg:
The European Commission issues a supplementary statement of objections threatening Meta with an interim ban on WhatsApp policies that allegedly block AI rivals  —  Meta Platforms Inc. has been threatened with an interim European Union ban on policies that allegedly block rival AI firms …

Rebecca Torrence / Bloomberg:
Accel raised $5B, including a $4B Leaders fund, focused on writing large checks to late-stage startups globally, and a $650M sidecar fund, taking AUM to $36B  —  Accel, the venture capital firm that's backed artificial intelligence companies including Anthropic, Cursor and Perplexity …

Washington Post:
Survey: 35% of Virginia voters are comfortable with new data center construction, down from 69% in 2023, and 37% support data center tax breaks, down from 61%  —  Virginians previously embraced the facilities, but a Post-Schar School poll finds they are now almost as undesirable as nuclear power plants.

Sarah Jacob / Bloomberg:
ASML says South Korea surpassed China as its largest market in Q1 2026, with shipments hitting 45% of net system sales, or €2.84B, up from 22% in Q4 2025  —  South Korea emerged as ASML Holding NV's largest market in the first quarter as the country's memory chip makers increase purchases …