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subtl daily briefing

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Good morning, founders and builders. The AI industry just got a reality check as every frontier model failed a new benchmark designed to test genuine intelligence, while Meta and YouTube lost landmark social media addiction trials that could reshape Big Tech liability. Meanwhile, geopolitical tensions continue disrupting global markets as the Iran conflict pushes oil prices toward stagflation levels.

In today's briefing

  • 1.AI Models Fail Intelligence Test
  • 2.Big Tech Loses Addiction Trials
  • 3.Iran War Disrupts Global Markets
  • 4.AI Agent Security Challenges
  • Quick hits on other news
Latest Developments

Everything else in the news today

Apple has full access to Google's Gemini model in its own data centers and can distill it into smaller on-device AI models
Reflection AI is raising $2.5B at a $25B valuation with JPMorgan eyeing participation after generating $8B in revenue
Harvey raised $200M at an $11B valuation with ARR nearly doubling from $100M to $190M in five months
Granola raised $125M at a $1.5B valuation for AI-powered meeting assistance
Mastercard agreed to acquire stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK for up to $1.8B
Circle stock dropped 16% after draft Clarity Act would ban stablecoin yield on USDC balances
Bhutan has sold down its Bitcoin holdings from 13,000 BTC to 4,453 BTC, with outflows exceeding $150M
Apple Maps is introducing ads in the US and Canada this summer as paid search listings
Figma launched beta AI canvas agents that can create and modify design assets using existing design system components
Google's TurboQuant algorithm reduces LLM memory usage by 6x while delivering 8x performance gains
Cisco launched Duo Agentic Identity to monitor autonomous AI agent activity across enterprise workloads
Study shows over 80% of top-ranking pages use AI assistance for content creation
MLB exclusively aired Opening Night on Netflix as part of strategic shift toward new media platforms
SaaStr deployed 30+ AI agents and found only 1 of 5 vendors succeeded by offering Forward Deployed Engineer support before contract signing
Sanders and AOC proposed banning all new data center construction until AI regulation passes