Morning Digest, May 24, 2026

May 24, 2026 · 5 newsletters · 3 overlapping stories

Top Stories

Anthropic Had a Very Big Week

(3 newsletters)

Andrej Karpathy, the AI researcher who co-founded OpenAI and previously led AI at Tesla, joined Anthropic this week to work on pre-training research. Separately, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark told an Oxford audience that AI will collaborate on a Nobel Prize-winning scientific discovery within 12 months. Taken together, Anthropic is pulling major talent and making major claims at the same moment, signaling it intends to go on offense in the foundation model race.

AI Policy in Flux: White House Delays, California Acts

(2 newsletters)

The Trump administration postponed its long-awaited AI executive order, which would have required a voluntary 90-day pre-launch review for frontier models, citing internal disagreements between innovation-first and security-first factions. No new signing date was announced. Hours later, California Governor Newsom signed what appears to be the first US state executive order directing agencies to prepare workers and small businesses for AI-driven economic disruption. The federal vacuum is creating a state-level policy race.

Travel Is K-Shaped This Memorial Day Weekend

(2 newsletters)

AAA projects a record 45 million Americans will travel this Memorial Day weekend, but the industry increasingly serves two very different customers. Delta’s premium ticket sales surpassed economy revenue for the first time ever last year, while Spirit Airlines shut down this month citing fuel costs. Luxury hotel revenue grew 2.9% year-over-year while economy hotels fell 4.1%. Budget travelers are turning to “destination dupes” and frequent flyer points to make trips work. Vegas, meanwhile, had its biggest non-pandemic visitor decline since the 1970s even as casinos posted record revenue of $8.8 billion.

Also Worth Knowing

Google I/O: 100 updates, 3 that matter. Gemini 3.5 is now Google’s default model across all products (monthly actives jumped from 400M to 900M in six months), Google declared “the era of ten blue links is over,” and Gemini Spark entered beta as a 24/7 cloud agent that works while your laptop is closed. Alphabet has committed up to $190 billion in AI capex this year.
Humanoid robots are having a serious week. Figure AI’s F.03 sorted 250,000 packages in 200 continuous hours with zero failures. SF startup Gatsby launched an Uber-like robot home cleaning service for $150 per clean. ETH Zurich unveiled HELIOS, a four-armed humanoid designed for space station maintenance, where human astronaut labor runs $140,000 per hour.
Meta laid off 8,000 employees to fund its AI push, about 10% of its workforce, while redirecting another 7,000 workers into newly created AI-focused roles. The restructuring signals that the AI buildout is now coming at the direct expense of existing headcount across big tech.
Elon Musk lost his OpenAI lawsuit. Nine California jurors ruled unanimously that Musk’s claims against Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, OpenAI, and Microsoft were filed too late. Musk had accused them of “stealing a charity” by converting the nonprofit into a for-profit entity.
Oura filed confidentially for IPO. The smart ring maker submitted its draft prospectus to the SEC with no timeline announced. The company says it is on track to surpass 5 million paid members this quarter, a fourfold increase in two years.
Waymo suspended service in four cities after robotaxis drove into floodwaters in Atlanta. The company had already issued a recall and software update last week, but the fix did not prevent the Atlanta incidents because flooding began before emergency alerts were sent. Service in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, and Houston is paused pending additional software changes.
Kevin Warsh sworn in as Fed Chair. With oil prices rising amid the Iran war, markets are speculating Warsh may be walking into a rate-hike environment rather than the cut cycle Trump lobbied for. His predecessor Jerome Powell leaves a central bank navigating both inflation risk and geopolitical energy shocks.

Quick Hits

SpaceX Starship had a mostly successful test flight, its first in seven months. One of the 33 booster engines failed but the mission reached space. The flight clears the runway ahead of Starship’s anticipated Nasdaq debut.
The Mandalorian and Grogu opened in theaters Friday and is projected to earn $80-100M domestically, potentially the lowest opening in Star Wars history, trailing even the money-losing Solo.
ChatGPT can now fill out forms via Images plus Voice Mode. Upload a PDF form, describe what to fill in, get back a completed version. 810K views in 24 hours suggests broad appeal.
China’s Unitree G1 humanoid now takes live voice commands, executing dance moves, push-ups, and emotional responses generated by AI on the spot, no scripted demo.
NVIDIA and Kawasaki are building a robotics center in San Jose. Hyundai plans to deploy 25,000 Atlas humanoid robots across its US factories.
A robotic beehive called BeeHome deployed in Florida claims a 70% reduction in colony collapse by detecting varroa mite infestations and treating them with targeted heat, no human intervention needed.
AI haircut kiosks are appearing in Chinese malls, using robotic arms to cut hair after scanning a customer’s head, part of China’s broader push to automate service industries.
Qatar and Pakistan have sent mediators to Iran in hopes of preventing the US and Israel from resuming hostilities, as the Iran war continues to pressure oil prices and global travel costs.