Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 07/07 – What Did I Miss?

Episode Date: July 7, 2025

Catching you up on the great Zuckerberg AI recruitment drive. Clueing you in to the great datacenter buildout goldrush that is, again, all about AI. TikTok is about to force everybody to use a new version of their app. And are the unicorns coming back? Links: Meta’s new hires offer a peek into superintelligence plans (Semafor) Zuck's Eleven (Spyglass) CoreWeave to Buy Core Scientific in $9 Billion Stock Deal (Bloomberg) US industrial groups pivot to data centres amid AI boom (FT) TikTok Building New Version of App Ahead of Expected U.S. Sale (The Information) As Trump pushes Apple to make iPhones in the U.S., Google’s brief effort building smartphones in Texas 12 years ago offers critical lessons (Fortune) At least 36 new tech unicorns were minted in 2025 so far (TechCrunch) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech meme right home from Monday, July 7th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough today. Catching you up on the great Zuckerberg AI recruitment drive, cluing you in on the great data center build-out gold rush that is, again, all about AI. TikTok is about to force everybody to use a new version of their app. And are the unicorns coming back? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. So obviously I have some things to catch you up on. First up, Daniel Gross, official. left Safe Superintelligence, the AI startup he co-founded with Ilius Saskerva to join Meta's new superintelligence lab and work on AI products. In fact, I was very wrong about something last

week. It turns out quite a few people have taken up Mark Zuckerberg's offers of the money canon to work on AI at Meta. First link in the show notes is to a semaphore story that has a list of all of the people that we know of that have signed up so far. I'm not going to just read you a list of names, but like the creators of 03 and 03 Mini and the recent image generation models at OpenAI, they're on there, the pre-training tech lead for Gemini is in there. And quote, meta's new hires offer a glimpse into its nascent superintelligence unit aimed at making the social media company's AI capabilities more competitive with industry leaders. The new team holds a wide gamut of skill sets with some specific expertise in image generation,

perception, synthetic data, and reasoning. The resumes suggests meta is working on the kind of voice and image-supported multimodal models with reasoning capabilities to more directly take on OpenAI suite of products. The hiring of Pi Sun, who developed two generations of Waymo's perception models, is particularly interesting. Given meta's investments in augmented reality headsets and glasses, it points to a continued integration of AI into devices in which meta could carve out a niche as OpenAI begins its partnership with Johnny Ive and Apple Investigates, integrated. an outside AI model into Siri. OpenAI supplied the largest share of talent, followed by Google

and its deep-mind unit, end quote. So if last week my question was, is meta looking desperate or is AI looking scared, I guess I'm back to the Open AI being scared side of the equation. And quoting M.G. Siegler on Spyglass, who is mentioning a Zuckerberg memo announcing the hires, quote, by my count, that's seven people from Open AI, two from Google, one from Anthropic and one from Sesame. That's a lot from OpenAI. Now, you see why they were sending around internal notes that sound quite shaken and stirred. Someone has broken into our home, end quote. I can't speak directly to the quality of this team. That's above my pay grade clearly, but it certainly seems more impactful than the downplaying of the poaching a couple of weeks back

by Sam Altman. It may or may not be their best people, but it's a lot, no question, money wins, and all that. Meta's previous model work with Lama does get one paragraph, seven paragraphs into the memo, quote. I'm excited about the progress we have planned for Lama 4.1 and 4.2. These models power meta AI, which is used by more than one billion monthly actives across our apps and an increasing number of agents across meta that help improve our products and technology. We're committed to continuing to build out these models, end quote. Leading with I'm excited probably says all you need to know there, but just in case the billions now being spent to play catch-up after the billions spent on Lama drills home the point. Lama, at least as we previously knew it, is yesterday's AI news within

meta. Quoting from the memo again, in parallel, we're going to start research on our next generation of models to get to the frontier in the next year or so. I've spent the past few months meeting top folks across meta, other AI labs, and promising startups to put together the founding group for this small, talent-dense effort. We're still forming this group and we'll ask several people across the AI org to join this lab as well, end quote. One phrase never mentioned once in the entire memo, open source. Interesting. Also not mentioned in the memo, Jan Lacoon, never one to be quiet about the current state of AI. He's been awfully restrained in the past couple of weeks, as all of this has swirled around. On the other hand, while he's been against all the talk about achieving AGI

through LLMs, he's apparently on board with ASI. Still, it seems weird not to even mention your chief AI scientists when you just hired a chief AI officer, end quote. CoreWeave says it is agreed to acquire Bitcoin miner Core Scientific in a $9 billion all-stock deal set to close in Q4 2025 to expand its AI data center capacity, quoting Bloomberg. Core Scientific has been one of the top Bitcoin mining companies that build large-scale data centers and use energy-intensive computers to mint the original cryptocurrency. The miner went bankrupt amid a plunge in digital assets, but emerged out of it in January of last year after Bitcoin saw a sharp rebound and started the pivot to AI. The company became one of the main

data center infrastructure providers for CoreWeave leveraging some of its existing data center capacities and access to large amounts of power. Corweave made a prior advance last year when it offered to buy Core Scientific for about $1 billion. At the time, the company has also announced a series of 12-year contracts, under which Core Scientific will deliver about 200 megawatts of infrastructure to host Corweaves operations. Shares of Core Scientific have soared on its contracts with the AI firm, as well as Corweaves' attempt to acquire the miner. The stock is up 110% since Bloomberg reported in June 2024 that Corweave made the earlier billion dollar offer. The deal will give Corweave access to about 1.3 gigawatts of power from Core Scientific's data center fleet. A gigawatt

is akin to the capacity from one nuclear reactor and can provide electricity to roughly 750,000 houses. Last week, Bloomberg reported that Oracle and Open AI struck an agreement for 4.5 gigawatts worth of data center capacity, end quote. Now, I'll say again that it seems to me the people with money seem to feel that we are nowhere near the end of demand for AI capacity. Now, I know the definition of a bubble popping is that everybody thinks the horizon is endless and everything is going to the moon until the very moment that everyone doesn't all at the same time. that could still happen. But I mean, as of right now, it's not just tech. This is rising a lot of boats. Grock this from the FT, quote, U.S. industrial companies are pivoting into the data center market to boost growth seeking a share of the hundreds of billions of dollars flooding into the sector as part of the artificial intelligence boom. Gates Industrial and Generic are part of a coterie of publicly listed

companies that are increasing efforts to build and sell specialist equipment, which includes backup power generators and cooling pumps designed for so-called hyperscalers such as Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft. Honeywell, a $153 billion North Carolina-based industrial giant that produces products from airplane engines to warehouse robots is also trying to tap the fast-growing data center market with its cooling solutions. We're seeing supersonic growth on the back of AI, and in general over the past three years, the price that you can get from the data center customer has been stronger than the price elsewhere, said Chris Snyder and analyst at Morgan Stanley. It comes after other U.S. listed groups such as Caterpillar, Cummins, and Johnson

controls have capitalized on the data center boom at a time when economic uncertainty and trade barriers erected under U.S. President Donald Trump have weighed on spending by customers in manufacturing and the commercial real estate market. Spending on data centers has proven resilient with analysts anticipating that more than $400 billion will be spent on the buildout of the infrastructure in the current fiscal year, according to Gartner. Hyper-scalers make up more than three-quarters of this expenditure with spending predicted to grow next year. Vimal Kapoor, Honeywell's chief executive told investors during a recent earnings call, the company was, quote, focused on pivoting into higher growth verticals such as data

centers. Those segments are growing regardless of the current conditions, he said. Honeywell has in the past 18 months started to focus on providing controls for hybrid cooling systems to data centers and has experienced double-digit growth in sales of their new hybrid controller for data centers and similar applications. Colorado-based Gates Industrial, a manufacturer of equipment for the heavy-duty trucking industry, has in the past year started to push into the market designing pipes and pumps used to circulate coolant around server racks a key component at a time when NVIDIA's most advanced

blackwell chips for AI model training and applications mandate liquid cooling, end quote. The information says that TikTok plans to launch a new app version on September 5th ahead of the U.S.'s September 17th, divest or ban enforcement deadline. Apparently, all U.S. users will be required to switch to this new app. Quote, the company has developed a plan to launch the new TikTok app known internally as M2 to U.S. app stores on September 5th, according to two people familiar with the knowledge of the matter. The existing TikTok app is known internally as M. Under the plan, TikTok users will eventually have to download the new app to be able to continue

using the service, although the existing app will work until March of next year. The effort to migrate the app's 170 million U.S. users to a new app comes as the Trump administration says it is getting close to an agreement for the sale of TikTok's U.S. operations, allowing the app to continue operating in the U.S. under that deal, a consortium of non-Chinese investors, including Oracle, is expected to buy TikTok's U.S. business, while the app's Chinese parent company Bite is expected to retain a minority stake. The Chinese government has to approve any deal. however, which remains the biggest hurdle. It's highly unusual for an app with a large filing to ask users to download a separate new app and the move would risk losing users. But a new TikTok app could

potentially help address some of the data security concerns about the app. One of the people with knowledge of the situation said it couldn't be learned whether building a new version of TikTok for U.S. users was something the Trump administration or the investors involved in the deal had explicitly required. The next deadline for the U.S. to enforce the ban law is September 17th. Less than two weeks after the new TikTok app is set to launch. On the day of the anticipated launch, the existing TikTok app will be removed from the app stores and users will be directed to the new version,

though it's unclear how that nudge will be communicated. The existing app is slated to be shut down in the U.S. in March 26, though timelines could change one of the people with knowledge of the situation said. The project to build a new version of TikTok is a massive engineering undertaking, and getting all of TikTok's users in the U.S. to move over to a new app, bringing their profiles with them, could pose technical issues in practice, the person said. While no deal to sell TikTok has been made official yet, Trump has suggested that an announcement

is imminent. Late Friday, he told reporters on Air Force One that the U.S. was close to a deal for a group to buy TikTok's U.S. operations and that the administration would start talking to Chinese authorities in the next week. A person familiar with the matter said the group of investors involved in the deal has been finalizing the legal and financial details with bite dance in recent months and the group expects it will be announced when the Chinese government approves the sale, though it's not clear when that will happen. An earlier plan to announce the deal in April was thrown off after Trump imposed steep tariffs on China, end quote. Found a bit of a long read over the weekend that I wanted to share with you. I don't know if you

remember this, but in 2013, Google had an effort to build Motorola smartphones in the U.S. Fortune spoke with former Google staff and others to detail why that effort failed as President Trump pushes Apple to make iPhones in the U.S. Again, it is a long read, but the gist is this. Through its acquisition of Motorola Mobility in 2013, Google launched the MotoX, a customizable Android phone assembled in a Fort Worth, Texas plant. Executives frame the project as a patriotic moonshot, promising faster delivery, local jobs, and a symbolic challenge to Apple's China-centric supply chain.

chain. The MotoX stood out with features like voice control and bespoke finishes, including wood backings and personalized engravings. Google hoped customization combined with U.S. production would create a competitive edge. No. The strategy quickly hit economic and logistical roadblocks. Labor costs were higher and production challenges required importing skilled engineers from around the world. But basically, despite early excitement and a visit from Texas Governor Rick Perry, the phone's sales lagged far behind expectations. Only 900,000 units sold in Q1 of 2014 compared to Apple's 26 million iPhones. Basically, made in the U.S. was not something that got people to buy. Google slash the MotoX's price, trim staff at the plan, and by early

2014, sold Motorola to Lenovo for $2.9 billion. The Fort Worth factory closed months later. former insiders now point to low sales and flawed assumptions, not U.S. assembly, as the real culprits for the failure of the effort, but let me quote this last bit. Adding thousands of workers on short notice to speed up production of a device getting more sales than anticipated would be next to impossible to do in the U.S. In China, it's routine. If there was a ramp that went super well, the ability to flex that workforce is insane, Randall said, about China. the ability to scale down that workforce is also insane. Also, there are relatively few U.S.-based suppliers that could produce enough electronic components for millions of phones, and expanding the pool would likely take years, end quote. Finally, today from the checking in on the health of the Silicon Valley ecosystem file, it seems like unicorns might be cautiously back. An analysis of crunch base and

pitchbook data reveals that in 2025 so far, more than 36 tech startups hit great than a $1 billion valuation, thereby becoming unicorns, including 7 in June, 6 in May, and 4 in April. Quoting TechCrunch, while most are AI-related, a surprising number are focused in other industries like satellite space companies like Loft Orbital and blockchain-based trading site Kalshi. And actually, I'm going to quote from a few of the non-obvious ones, like, I'm not going to mention Mira Muradis thinking machines, which was like the largest seed deal in history, if you'll recall. So not focusing on some of the AI ones because look at this. SAS is coming back.

Even consumer plays are coming back. Quote, Teamworks. This sports software company last raised a $247 million Series F valuing the company at $1.25 billion, according to pitchbook. The company founded in 2006 has raised more than $400 million in funding to date from investors, including Seaport Capital and General Catalyst. GECO, $1.62 billion. This company makes data gathering robotics that crawl, climb,

Swim and Fly. Founded in 2013, the company last raised a $121 million Series D, valuing the company at $1.6 billion, according to Pitchbook. Cal She, $2 billion, the popular prediction markets company founded in 2018, last raised in $185 million Series C, valuing the company at $2 billion, according to pitchbook. The company has raised more than $290 million in funding to date. Alipop, $2 billion. This popular probiotic soda company last raised a $137.3.7.5.5.5.5. $1.9 million Series C at a $1.96 billion valuation. It was founded in 2018 and has raised $243 million to date. Owner, $1 billion. This restaurant marketing software company founded in 2018 last raised a $120 million series C, valuing the company at $1 billion per Pitchbook.

The bot company, $2 billion. This robotics platform last raised a $150 million early stage round, valuing it at $2 billion, according to Pitchbook. The company, which was founded in 2024, has raised $300 million to date in funding, end quote. Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.