Evening Scan

Oil dominated today. Gas hit $4 a gallon nationally as the Iran situation deteriorated, and markets are pricing the downstream effects. China released two new AI models; one of them crashed Moonshot's servers.

$587M — cash, for an AI filmmaking startup co-founded by an actor. Hollywood's AI anxiety has a price tag now.

U.S. Average Gas Price Returns to $4 a Gallon as Iran Crisis Escalates (paywall)

The post-Hormuz-deal relief at the pump is fading. Widening conflict means no obvious floor in sight. (New York Times)

Moonshot AI Pauses New Subscriptions After Kimi K3 Demand Nearly Maxed Capacity

Kimi K3 launched two days ago as a 2.8-trillion-parameter model benchmarking near Anthropic's Opus 4. It broke Moonshot's infrastructure — either a scaling success or evidence of how tight the compute margin runs. (X / @kimi_moonshot)

CuspAI Raises $450M Series B for AI-Driven Materials Discovery (paywall)

Kleiner Perkins and NEA led the Cambridge round, with Bezos backing. The thesis: AI can compress the decades-long timeline for discovering new materials that chip and battery makers actually need. (Bloomberg)