Is It Ironic If Amazon Is Shredding Books?

Is It Ironic If Amazon Is Shredding Books?

Author: Morning Brew August 17, 2026 Duration: 20:31
Stripe locked in a $7B+ deal for OpenRouter, and OpenAI leased a 10GW Ohio campus with Nvidia backstopping it. The Journal found $3T in off-balance-sheet AI commitments, an AirTag caught Amazon shredding rare books, and Anthropic detailed Claude's invisible watermarks. Links Sources: Stripe has finalized a deal to acquire AI model marketplace OpenRouter for more than $7B; founded in 2023, OpenRouter had a $1.3B valuation in May (Bloomberg) OpenAI signs a 20-year, 10GW data center deal in Ohio with SoftBank's SB Energy; Nvidia agrees to backstop a portion of the value of the completed data center (The Wall Street Journal) Analysis: nine top tech companies including Alphabet and Meta had ~$3T of AI-related off-balance-sheet commitments, far exceeding their $600B in reported capex (The Wall Street Journal) Anthropic explains how Claude's invisible text watermarks will work (The Verge) Investigation: Amazon is buying huge quantities of rare books, scanning them for AI, and destroying them; a tracked Biblio order went to its Las Vegas facility (The Decoder) Used bookstores are seeing a sales resurgence driven not by readers but by AI companies placing bulk orders in the thousands, with the books destructively scanned, then pulped (Fast Company) AI film startups are setting up studios in Hollywood, using US and Chinese AI models while touting lower production costs and a way around traditional financing (The Guardian) Subscribe to the ad-free feed.

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Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

Tech Brew Ride Home
Podcast Episodes
OpenAI Has Receipts [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 19:06
OpenAI took Apple's trade-secrets lawsuit to the court of public opinion, receipts and all. Bending Spoons bought Airtable, Anthropic inked a $10B Norway compute deal, the US eyed polysilicon tariffs, and Microsoft told…
DO You Understand Sandboxing Or No? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:07
OpenAI found more instances of AI agents escaping containment, and nobody's sure who's liable. Astra solved ten open math problems, Google pulled a Google Earth image tool over deepfake fears, and AI chip counts were set…
I Don’t Think You Understand What “Sandboxed” Means [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 19:03
Anthropic revealed Claude broke into three real organizations during cybersecurity tests it thought were simulations. Apple slid 10% as component shortages hit its outlook, Amazon jumped on accelerating AWS growth and a…
The AI Trade [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 19:30
Microsoft surged 15% on its fastest cloud growth since 2022, while Meta slid 10% defending its AI spending. Aschenbrenner's hedge fund unwound positions after the AI rout, the EU targeted ChatGPT under the DSA, and airli…
Is Everybody Racing RSI? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:05
Over 1,100 AI staffers signed a letter asking Washington to help pace frontier development. Wall Street got nervous as AI capex ballooned, Silicon Valley's backlash against Anthropic built over open weights, and the argu…
Anthropic Doesn't Hate Open Weights, Says Anthropic. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 19:52
Dario Amodei said Anthropic never backed an open-weights ban, pitching mandatory safety tests instead as OpenAI and Google signed on. Altman headed to Washington, Korea's KOSPI cratered 11% on AI jitters, Apple launched…
Nvidia On The March [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:04
Nvidia committed $5B to Ilya Sutskever's SSI and weighed a $250B backstop for OpenAI's Ohio megaproject. CXMT soared 466% in its debut, Amazon filed for 5,105 satellites, Apple delayed AI glasses, and Peacock landed on Y…
Stripe Wants To Buy Everything [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:05
Stripe was in talks to buy OpenRouter for as much as $10B while still chasing PayPal. Midjourney bought astrology app Co-Star, Meta launched Facebook Verified and a standalone Seller app, and Nvidia and Microsoft defende…
Even OpenAI Folks Are Freaked Out [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 21:27
OpenAI staff were reportedly freaked out after its models breached Hugging Face, as aggressive training raced Anthropic. Google posted its first-ever negative free cash flow on AI spending, added selfie-video account rec…
The AI Has Escaped Containment [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 21:07
OpenAI said its models breached Hugging Face's infrastructure during a cyber-capability test. The White House accused Moonshot AI of distilling Anthropic's Fable to build Kimi K3, and Samsung unveiled its Z Fold 8 Ultra,…