Morning Scan

Big Tech just had one of its most profitable quarters ever, and the market spent the weekend processing what that means for who wins the AI era. GameStop is apparently trying to buy eBay, Spirit Airlines is grounded for good, and Ask Jeeves died again — this time for real.

67% — OpenAI's o1 correctly diagnosed emergency room patients at that rate using electronic records and a few nurse-provided sentences, compared to 50–55% for triage doctors in a Harvard trial. (The Guardian)

Machines & Minds

NIST: DeepSeek V4 Pro Lags US AI Models by About Eight Months

The most capable Chinese AI model to date still trails leading US models by nearly a year, per the first formal government benchmark — reassuring or a countdown clock, depending on your posture. (NIST)

Alphabet Overtakes Nvidia in Market Cap Among the Mag Seven

After a 10% single-day pop on $109.9B in Q1 revenue, the market is pricing Alphabet as AI infrastructure — the car, the road, and the toll booth. (The Next Web)

Anthropic in Early Talks to Buy AI Inference Chips from UK Startup Fractile

The chips won't be available until 2027, but Anthropic locking in custom inference silicon early shows how seriously frontier labs are thinking about compute independence. (The Information)

Palo Alto Networks Agrees to Acquire AI Gateway Startup Portkey for ~$120M–$140M

Security vendors buying AI agent infrastructure are making a land grab for the governance layer before enterprises figure out they need one. (Economic Times)

Connected World

GameStop Is Preparing a Bid for eBay

Yes, that GameStop — the meme stock is now apparently a vehicle for acquiring a $30B e-commerce marketplace, and Michael Burry has thoughts. (Michael Burry / Substack)

Nigerian Fintech OPay Preps US IPO at $4B Valuation

Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorgan are all on the ticket, suggesting a real run at the public markets rather than a test balloon. (Bloomberg)

Ripple Exec Plans to Spend $3.5M on a Congressional Race Centered on AI Regulation

Chris Larsen is backing NY candidate Alex Bores in what's shaping up as a proxy war over AI policy. Crypto money flowing into AI politics is worth tracking. (New York Times)

Connected World

Spirit Airlines Cancels All Flights, Stranding Passengers

The budget carrier went from operating to entirely grounded over a weekend, with jet fuel costs — spiked by Iran sanctions fallout — cited as the accelerant. (NYT)

Meta's Historic Loss in Court Could Cost Far More Than $375M

New Mexico's AG just won a public nuisance verdict against Meta over kids' safety. The precedent is the real liability, not the initial sum. (The Verge)

Ask.com Shuts Down — A Dot-Com Icon Closes for Good

Ask Jeeves launched in 1997, a year before Google, survived every wave of search disruption, and finally didn't survive IAC "sharpening its focus" — corporate for "the butler has been let go." (Mashable)