Good morning. Elon Musk said Wednesday that his SpaceX reserves “the right to reclaim the compute” from Anthropic, given their new agreement, if its “AI engages in actions that harm humanity.”
In honor of Musk’s sassy social media presence, which I consider occasionally harmful to humanity, here are three things I’d like the universe to reclaim:
1.) Twitter’s shuttered Vine
2.) DOGE’s efficiency pantomime
3.) Maxine Waters’ time
Today’s tech news below. Have a wonderful weekend. —Andrew Nusca
Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Fortune Tech? Drop a line here.
Apple AirPods with cameras are coming
Get this: Apple’s lowly AirPods? A $100 billion lifetime business for the company sometime this year, according to estimates.
So it’s not hard to imagine why the folks in Cupertino might be keen to evolve a set of Bluetooth earbuds into a full-fledged, AI-equipped wearable device.
Apple has reportedly “reached the late stages of development for new AirPods with built-in cameras” that would put the iPhone-maker’s most popular accessory on equal footing with its more prominent products.
Why cameras, you ask? The image sensors help the earbuds “see” the space around the wearer to provide information. What kind, we don’t yet know. But a look at Meta's popular smart glasses suggests photo and video capture, visual analysis, and video calls. (Hello, FaceTime?)
Then again, maybe not. “The cameras essentially act as eyes for the Siri digital assistant and aren’t designed to take photos or video,” Bloomberg reports. “These components—located in both the right and left earbuds—allow the device to capture visual information in low resolution.”
The earbuds are expected to have longer “stems” to accommodate the cameras, but few changes otherwise. Testers inside Apple “are actively using prototypes,” according to the report.
And finally: When can you get your hands—er, ears—on them? This fall, if Apple’s Siri plans remain on track. If. —AN
Cloudflare cuts 1,100 jobs in ‘agentic AI-first’ shift
Things are getting real at the internet infrastructure company Cloudflare.
The San Francisco firm’s shares fell almost 20% in after-hours trading yesterday after the company announced that it would revamp its operating model to “agentic AI-first.” Coming along with the strategic shift are some 1,100 job cuts—about 20% of its total workforce.
“Employees across the company from engineering to HR to finance to marketing run thousands of AI agent sessions each day to get their work done,” wrote CEO Matthew Prince and President Michelle Zatlyn in a memo. “That means we have to be intentional in how we architect our company for the agentic AI era in order to supercharge the value we deliver to our customers and to honor our mission to help build a better internet for everyone, everywhere.”
The layoffs come as the company posted Q1 revenue of $640 million, up 34% from last year, with a net loss of $23 million, down from $39 million a year ago.
Cloudflare’s cuts are the latest in a great wave of tech layoffs that are—directly or indirectly—related to the rise in adoption of artificial intelligence. Amazon, Atlassian, Block, Coinbase, Meta, Salesforce, and others have laid off workers this year in a bid to tighten up operations and/or address investor concerns about AI investments.
U.S. technology companies announced more than 33,000 job cuts last month, bringing the total for the year to date to more than 85,000, a 33% increase from last year, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. —AN
Meet Google Fitbit Air, the company’s Whoop-killer
Familiar with Whoop? The Boston wearable tech firm, founded in 2012, has long been popular among the tech set for its pricey, quantified-self products and subscription.
Go back far enough, though, and there was another company popular for similar reasons: San Francisco’s Fitbit, which Google acquired for $2.1 billion in 2021.
After a period of smartwatch distraction, health trackers are back in vogue. So it stands to reason that Fitbit, a pioneer in the category, might want some of its groove back.
The company on Thursday announced its Google Fitbit Air, a $100, screenless, Whoop-like wearable that’s best described as a Fitbit without a band. (Though you can buy a band for it.)
It will, according to Engadget, “monitor your heart rate all day, and with that data it can use the company's long-established algorithms to log your sleep, deliver details on your time spent in specific sleep stages, and assign you a Sleep Score each night.”
It can also detect signs of atrial fibrillation, detect activities automatically, and silently wake you up by vibrating against your skin.
The device goes on sale on May 26, at which point the Fitbit app will evolve into the Google Health app. As those of us from the 1980s used to say: big whoop. —AN
More tech
—CoreWeave shares drop 10%. Q1 revenue of $2.08 billion beat estimates, but Q2 revenue forecast of $2.53 billion was lighter than Wall Street wanted.
—Kalshi raises $1 billion at a $22 billion valuation. It’s the third round of funding in seven months for the prediction markets darling.
—Airbnb notes “slightly elevated cancellations” in EMEA and Asia Pacific, “primarily driven by the conflict in the Middle East.”
—EU postpones high-risk AI restrictions to December 2027. Policymakers will also exempt industrial AI from the AI Act.
—Coinbase Q1 revenue sinks 31% year over year on crypto market weakness, turning an expected profitable quarter into a loss.
—Ramp is reportedly fundraising at a $40 billion valuation, up from $32 billion just six months ago.
—Lyft partnerships with Chase, DoorDash, and United Airlines help boost rides by 14% in Q1, even if they missed analysts’ estimates.
