Samwise Tech/AI/Robotics Newsletter
Saturday, May 16, 2026
Cerebras IPO Raises $5.5B as Stock Doubles on Debut, Valuing AI Chip Maker at $66B
Cerebras Systems raised $5.5 billion in the first major tech IPO of 2026 on May 15, pricing shares at $185 before the stock opened at $385 — a 108% jump — as retail demand overwhelmed the offering. Shares ended the day at $311, giving the AI chip company a $66 billion market valuation. Cerebras reported $510 million in revenue for 2025, up 76% year over year, and swung to $237.8 million in net profit from a $477 million loss the year before. OpenAI and AWS are among its major customers. The Cerebras processor is designed around a single wafer-scale chip to eliminate memory bandwidth bottlenecks that constrain GPU performance.
Sources: TechCrunch
Recursive Superintelligence Emerges From Stealth With $650M to Build Self-Improving AI
Recursive Superintelligence, a San Francisco startup, emerged from stealth on May 14 with $650 million in funding and a mission to build AI that autonomously designs, implements, and validates its own research. Co-founders Josh Tobin, former head of OpenAI’s Codex and Deep Research teams, and Tim Rocktäschel, who led self-improvement research at Google DeepMind, aim to automate the entire loop of AI research. The team also includes Peter Norvig, former Google research chief. Investors see the approach as a credible path to superintelligence rather than incremental improvement. The company intends to ship products commercially, not just pursue research in isolation.
Sources: TechCrunch
OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Personal Finance Tools With Bank Account Integration
OpenAI launched personal finance tools for ChatGPT Pro users in the United States on May 15, allowing account connections via Plaid to more than 12,000 financial institutions, including Chase, Fidelity, Schwab, Robinhood, and Capital One. Users can access spending analysis, savings tracking, and forward financial planning by selecting Finances in the sidebar or prompting the model directly. OpenAI said GPT-5.5, which it notes has stronger contextual reasoning, powers the financial queries. The company reports more than 200 million ChatGPT users already ask financial questions each month. Plus subscribers will gain access after an initial Pro feedback period.
Sources: TechCrunch
Runway Bets Video-Trained World Models Will Outpace Language AI
Runway, the AI video generation company valued at $5.3 billion, told investors it added $40 million in annual recurring revenue in Q2 2026, with co-founder Anastasis Germanidis arguing that training models on raw observational data — not text — is the next frontier of AI. The company, which began as a tool for filmmakers, now believes video-trained world models will outpace language-trained systems for tasks in robotics, drug discovery, and climate modelling. Runway’s approach bets that companies which learn how the physical world actually behaves, rather than how humans describe it, will build more powerful AI. The firm is expanding toward interactive real-time video intelligence.
Sources: TechCrunch
Hackers Steal OpenAI Code-Signing Certificates in Supply Chain Attack
OpenAI confirmed May 14 that hackers stole limited credential material from code repositories after compromising several open-source projects used across dozens of technology companies, including OpenAI itself. The stolen data included digital certificates used to sign OpenAI’s software products; the company said it is rotating all affected certificates as a precaution and noted that macOS users will need to update the ChatGPT desktop application. OpenAI stated it found no evidence of compromise to existing software installations and said the incident remains under investigation. The breach is the second security incident disclosed by OpenAI in 2026, following April’s introduction of hardware security key support via a Yubico partnership.
Sources: TechCrunch
Musk vs. Altman Jury Begins Deliberating Over OpenAI’s Charitable Origins
Nine California jurors began deliberating May 14 in Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, with closing arguments centred on whether OpenAI violated a charitable agreement made at its founding. The jury will rule on breach of charitable trust, unjust enrichment, and whether Microsoft aided the alleged breach by knowingly investing in OpenAI’s for-profit arm. Musk donated to OpenAI on the understanding it would operate as a non-profit for the public benefit; he is seeking up to $134 billion in damages. The judge is separately preparing remedy hearings should the jury find in favour of the plaintiffs.
Sources: TechCrunch
SpaceXAI Loses 50+ Staff to Meta and Rivals Since February Merger
More than 50 researchers and engineers have left Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI since the SpaceX-xAI merger in February 2026, with departures concentrated across pre-training, Grok voice, and world models teams. At least 11 former employees have joined Meta and at least seven have moved to Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab. The departure of pre-training team lead Juntang Zhuang has particularly alarmed remaining staff, as pre-training is the foundational step in building new AI models. Sources cited Musk’s culture of extreme work hours and the appeal of cashing out vested SpaceX equity ahead of the company’s anticipated IPO as driving factors. SpaceXAI did not respond to requests for comment.
Sources: TechCrunch
Tech Pulse
Top Frontier Models (SWE-Bench Pro): Claude Mythos Preview (77.8%) | Claude Opus 4.7 (64.3%) | GPT-5.5 (58.6%)
Top Open Source Models (SWE-Bench Verified): DeepSeek V4 Pro (80.6%) | Mistral Medium 3.5 (77.6%) | Llama 4 Scout (~72%)
Top Small Models (15–50B): Mistral Small 3 24B (~65%) | Qwen 3.5 27B (~62%) | Phi-4 Reasoning Vision 15B (~58%)
Top Edge Models (0–15B): Qwen 3 7B (~52%) | Gemma 3 9B (~48%) | Phi-4 Mini 3.8B (~45%)
AI Leaders (Market Cap): NVIDIA $5.2T | Alphabet $4.8T | Microsoft $3.2T
Robotics Leaders: Intuitive Surgical ~$175B | Figure AI ~$39B (private est.) | Boston Dynamics ~$25B (private est.)
Curated by JD · samwise.agency