Trump pitches OpenAI equity, Krishnan exits White House, Apple licenses Gemini

Sources

The Trump administration might take an equity stake in OpenAI techcrunch.com

President Donald Trump said he’s discussing deals “where the American people can benefit from the success of AI.”

Sriram Krishnan is leaving his role as White House AI advisor techcrunch.com

Krishnan is reportedly starting a new institution to continue shaping Trump’s AI policy.

Here comes new Siri again theverge.com

Apple has been on its back foot, AI-wise, for the past few years. But in a strange way, playing from behind might not be such a bad move. At WWDC on Monday, Apple appears to be getting ready to reintroduce us to the new Siri. Again. As a reminder, we met the new Siri in […]

What to expect from WWDC 2026: Siri’s highly anticipated revamp and Apple Intelligence updates techcrunch.com

Apple’s WWDC nears: Here’s what you can look forward to.

Meta made its own AI-generated clickbait news feed theverge.com

Meta’s standalone AI app now serves a ‘For You’ stream where topics, images, and text are all machine-generated. The move turns Facebook’s long-running clickbait problem into a first-party product, with article quality already drawing scrutiny from early users.

The mayor of Shelbyville, Indiana, says only people who live in ‘shitty houses’ oppose data center theverge.com

Mayor Scott Furgeson was caught on camera saying ‘No Data Center’ signs only appear at ‘shitty houses,’ inflaming a fight over a proposed $2 billion build in the small Indiana city. The remark has turned a zoning dispute into a national political flashpoint.

The latest AI news we announced in May 2026 blog.google

Google’s monthly roundup compiles May updates spanning Gemini apps and models, Search, Android, Cloud, DeepMind research, Quantum, Health, Fitbit, and Shopping. The post serves as a single index for developers tracking what shipped across the company’s AI surface area last month.

The Meta hack shows there’s more to AI security than Mythos technologyreview.com

Attackers asked Meta’s customer support agent to relink Instagram accounts to attacker-controlled email addresses, and it complied. One hijacked the dormant Obama White House account to post pro-Iran content, exposing how agentic permissions, not model jailbreaks, drive real-world AI security failures.

Build tools, to build more bensbites.com

The newsletter spotlights OpenAI’s Codex Sites, which lets developers generate full web apps from prompts, alongside a wave of fresh open-weight model releases. The throughline: builders shipping tools that make it cheaper and faster to ship more tools.

OpenAI unveils Lockdown Mode to protect sensitive data from prompt injection attacks techcrunch.com

Lockdown Mode restricts what ChatGPT can do with sensitive data when processing untrusted content, lowering the odds that a prompt injection exfiltrates secrets. OpenAI concedes the feature does not eliminate the attack class but aims to shrink its blast radius.

References

Reason / Volokh Conspiracy (Ilya Somin) reason.com

Bernie Sanders’ Dangerous and Unconstitutional Plan to Expropriate AI Firms — a mandatory expropriation of stock would constitute a Fifth Amendment taking without just compensation.

Gizmodo — ‘The Leopard Is Eating David Sacks’s Face’ gizmodo.com

Sacks warned a state-controlled AI apparatus would possess ‘totalistic power’ over information and compared the proposals to building a ‘CCP-style social credit system’ in the U.S.

Cato Institute — ‘Trump Opened the Door to Sanders’s Sovereign Wealth Fund’ cato.org

The Intel precedent — converting roughly $8.9 billion in CHIPS Act funding into 433.3 million non-voting shares — gave Sanders the political opening to demand a 50% equity transfer.

Tech Policy Press — ‘The Doublespeak in OpenAI’s Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age’ techpolicy.press

There is a ‘deep chasm’ between OpenAI’s public rhetoric and its private lobbying record; the Public Wealth Fund pitch never commits OpenAI’s own equity, revenue, or assets.

The Next Web — ‘Nobody knows how that would work’ thenextweb.com

Legal experts remain unclear on the specific mechanisms for distributing shares to individuals versus the government holding them in trust, and on whether current federal law even permits the Treasury to manage such assets.

R&D World — ‘Trump’s AI push turns government into reviewer, warfighter, supplier and possible shareholder’ rdworldonline.com

Anthropic officials clarified they are not currently participating in the White House’s specific equity talks, even as Sanders’ bill names them alongside OpenAI and xAI for a 50% levy.

Carpe Datum Law — Colorado AI Reset carpedatumlaw.com

Colorado replaced its risk-based regime with a much narrower disclosure framework specifically to avoid federal litigation and the loss of broadband funding.

JSI Telecom — BEAD/AI EO analysis jsitel.com

States with ‘onerous’ AI laws — those imposing high-risk testing or anti-bias mandates — could be disqualified from receiving their share of approximately $21 billion in remaining non-deployment funds.

Communications Today — a16z influence communicationstoday.co.in

Co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz contributed millions to pro-Trump super PACs, including a $100 million ‘Leading the Future’ fund designed to support industry-friendly candidates and silence critics.

Binance Square post citing Encode AI’s Sunny Gandhi binance.com

Sunny Gandhi, Vice President of Political Affairs at Encode AI, has previously characterized the influence of Krishnan’s professional network as a ‘$100 million dragon’ capable of exerting immense pressure on policy.

IAPP — A view from DC on the Great American AI Act iapp.org

This bipartisan bill, led by Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-CA) and Lori Trahan (D-MA), proposes a three-year federal moratorium on state laws related to AI development.

Business Today — Krishnan exit and Sacks quote businesstoday.in

David Sacks… praised Krishnan as a ‘critical asset’ with a unique blend of technical fluency and diplomatic skill, noting that his exit represents a significant loss for the White House.

TechRepublic techrepublic.com

Apple is paying Google approximately $1 billion annually to license a custom 1.2-trillion-parameter Gemini model, roughly eight times the size of Apple’s largest in-house cloud models, with the weights running inside Private Cloud Compute on Nvidia Blackwell B200 confidential-compute hardware.

MacRumors macrumors.com

Apple agreed to a $250 million preliminary settlement covering iPhone 16 and iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max buyers between June 10, 2024 and March 29, 2025, with claimants receiving a presumptive $25 per device (scaling to $95) for the undelivered ‘more personalized Siri’ features.

TechTimes techtimes.com

Siri 2.0 reportedly requires an A17 Pro chip and at least 8GB of RAM, cutting off the base iPhone 15 and older devices from the new AI era.

Morningstar / MarketWatch morningstar.com

Wedbush’s Dan Ives holds a $400 price target arguing AI-Siri monetization could add $75–$100 per share, while Morgan Stanley’s bull case reaches $440 contingent on a working ‘Agentic AI’ demo at WWDC.

European Commission (DMA factsheet) digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu

By late 2026 Apple must provide non-discriminatory access to system-wide AI access points, including allowing third-party assistants to use custom voice wake words and receive on-screen context — a mandate Apple has publicly opposed alongside Google.

Medium (Creative Compiler) commentary medium.com

Paying Google roughly $1 billion annually for model access creates a ‘mutual dependency’ that erodes Apple’s long-term software independence — a ‘band-aid’ that ends Apple’s pursuit of AI sovereignty.