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Buckeye State found it had inadvertently joined the billion dollar losers’ club 

The US state of Ohio has suspended tax breaks for datacenters, amid claims that the policy cost the state more than $1.5 billion in revenue during in 2025 alone.

Ohio’s Republican Governor Mike DeWine declared a pause in the state’s server farm subsidy, directing its Tax Credit Authority to stop considering new datacenter sales tax exemption requests while officials review the industry’s costs and impacts.

According to the Associated Press, the amount of money involved in Ohio’s tax break has ballooned, hugely exceeding earlier estimates, while opposition to the building of giant bit barns has also grown, as in other areas of the US that have become datacenter hotspots.

Nonprofit research org Good Jobs First puts the cost of the sales tax exemption to the state at more than $1.5 billion in 2025, about 11 times the state’s $136 million forecast. It cites figures from news network Signal Ohio, which found the figure had inflated from $555 million in lost revenue the previous year, which was itself four times more than the state government had forecast.

However, the pause is only on the approval of new tax exemptions – those projects in operation that have already had their tax breaks rubber-stamped will continue to feel the benefit.

The sales tax exemption granted by Ohio is understood to be generous, covering not only building supplies for construction of the data halls, but also the server racks, cooling facilities, and other infrastructure to fill them.

According to Good Jobs First, the revelation means Ohio joins the small club of US states now losing more than $1 billion annually on tax breaks for cloud-hosting campuses. The other three are Virginia – the “datacenter capital of the world” – Texas, and Georgia, where subsidies are projected to cost $2.5 billion this year.

The organization has been agitating for greater transparency in the concessions afforded to datacenter operators for some time, claiming that in many cases, schemes which were supposed to attract investment and create jobs were resulting in taxpayers helping some of the richest corporations on the planet buy servers, equipment, and power infrastructure.

Last November, it published a list of 36 states that exempt building materials and IT equipment for datacenters from sales and use taxes, yet only 5 states disclose estimated or actual total costs of those exemptions.

In April, it upped the ante by claiming that many US states and local authorities are violating generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) by failing to disclose revenue lost to bit barn tax subsidy schemes.

One of those it pointed the finger at is Indiana, but the state has since come clean and confirmed the tax exemptions cost it $655 million annually. Most of that – $561 million – is going to Amazon

Back in Ohio, a campaign has started to get a constitutional ban on datacenters that consume more than 25 MW of power. The group behind it, Ohio Residents for Responsible Development, claims to have gathered 25,000 signatures in five weeks.

According to reports, communities in other parts of the US, including Nevada, California, and Maryland are planning to hold ballots on some form of datacenter ban in their areas as well. ®

Anthropic, the AI lab behind Claude, has filed confidentially for an initial public offering, the company said in a blog post Monday.

The company, which is valued at close to $1 trillion, submitted a draft registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering. Anthropic has yet to list the number of shares or set the price. Anthropic said the proposed initial public offering will depend on market conditions and other factors.

The filing comes less than a week after Anthropic raised $65 billion in a Series H funding round that pushed its valuation to $965 billion. The round, which was co-led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, Sequoia Capital, Capital Group, Coatue, and D1 Capital Partners, attracted a bevy of institutional and strategic investors in anticipation of an IPO.

Anthropic’s confidential filing landed in an already white-hot IPO season that includes SpaceX’s initial public offering that is targeting a $2 trillion valuation. SpaceX is seeking to raise more than $75 billion.

It also comes as its rival OpenAI continues to raise funding, notably a $122 billion round in March at an $852 billion post-money valuation, and prepares for its own IPO. OpenAI is expected to file for an initial public offering, setting the stage for an IPO season that will pit the two largest AI labs against each other and test the market’s resolve and interest in artificial intelligence.

Anthropic, now an AI powerhouse that has landed top-tier enterprise customers, was once considered an underdog in the emerging world of large language models. The startup was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees and was seen as a distant competitor to OpenAI and its AI chatbot, ChatGPT.

The company has gained investors and customers for the capabilities of Claude and powerful model Mythos, which has been released on a limited basis. That has translated to eye-popping revenue growth. The company said recently that its revenue run-rate had surpassed $47 billion, up from $9 billion at the end of 2025.

That revenue growth rate could accelerate as Anthropic makes its Mythos model more widely available. Anthropic unveiled Mythos in April — along with a warning to software developers that its model had discovered thousands of high-severity bugs that would need to be fixed before it could be made public.

The generative AI lab is poised to give the European Union’s cybersecurity agency access to Mythos, Bloomberg reported, citing anonymous sources.

Gigascale, the venture firm led by former Meta CTO Mike Schroepfer, announced on Monday that it had raised a $250 million fund to back founders who are “rebuilding the physical economy.”

The new fund will focus on energy, grid infrastructure, and critical minerals all through the lens of climate tech. By continuing with the overt climate focus, Gigascale is bucking conventional wisdom which has soured on the “climate tech” thesis.

Gigascale’s second fund is shaping up to be a continuation of the sort of bets that Schrep, as he’s known, has made in the three years since he started Gigascale. The firm has backed some high-profile startups in the climate tech space, including Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Heron Power, Mill, and Form Energy. 

Gigascale emerged from Schrep’s study of climate tech during COVID, and the new fund is the first with an early-stage focus that includes institutional investors.

Climate tech has always been a wide-ranging sector, and Gigascale’s portfolio reflects that. But in recent years, the sector has become increasingly focused on energy and infrastructure, a shift that has been largely driven by the demands of AI. 

It’s no surprise, then, that power is a significant focus of the new fund. With rising demand for electricity, there’s an opportunity to invest in new energy sources and new ways to deliver that to businesses and households.

Schroepfer pointed to solar as a recent example of a clean technology that’s faster and cheaper and winning the market. 

While solar and batteries have come to dominate conversations around clean power, Schroepfer clearly sees more opportunities. AI and broader trends in electrification have made it challenging for companies to connect to the grid. In response, many have been seeking to develop their own power sources, though there, too, competition is stiff. Natural gas turbines, for example, have a waitlist that stretches into the early 2030s.

The power crunch gives energy startups an opening. In energy intensive industries, bring-your-own power “is going to be a competitive advantage over time,” Schroepfer said on the Inevitable podcast last year. Startups that can supply power cheaper or more flexibly — or both — can win on those merits alone.

But Gigascale also expects its energy investments to extend beyond generation, citing grid infrastructure, critical minerals, and physical AI as other places where the company will look for opportunities. 

“The companies we back win because they’re cheaper, faster, and more reliable,” Schroepfer said in a statement. “That’s how adoption scales. Climate impact is the result of better-performing systems.”

FiiO has expanded its hi-fi line-up with three new products, headlined by the JT9 planar magnetic headphones.

The latest products from FiiO lean heavily into high-power desktop audio but keeps portability and modern connectivity in view.

We’re excited about WWDC 2026 , and after talking to some of you, you are too! Here’s new wallpapers, an Apple Music playlist, and tips for developers, all from Apple, to keep the hype going.

For WWDC 2025, Apple announced it with the line “On the horizon,” but changed it to “Sleek peek,” with one week to go. That change was revealed by Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, Greg Joswiak.

Now, again exactly a week ahead of WWDC, Joswiak has revealed a change alongside a new animation. WWDC 2026 has been given the headline “All systems glow.”

Apple has also been adding to its WWDC promotion across its developer site and services. There’s a WWDC 2026 playlist on Apple Music, for instance, with more to come.

It’s also now possible to download new WWDC wallpapers. They each feature a still, typically a close-up, of the glowing, liquid logo from the latest animation, in versions for the Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

Plus a new video guides developers on how to prepare for the conference. It includes details of the newly updated Apple Developer app, plus how to sign up for WWDC’s sessions.

WWDC 2026 is a week-long developer conference that runs from June 8 to June 12. The opening keynote will be where Apple makes its major announcements for macOS 27, iOS 27, and more.

As ever, AppleInsider will be at Apple Park for the event. It’s expected that Apple will once again showcase its Apple Intelligence AI features, this time most significantly with a dramatic update to Siri.

If Apple stays true to form, the majority of the event will concern iOS 27 for the iPhone. But there will certainly be updates for at least most of Apple’s platforms, including the Apple Watch‘s watchOS and Apple Vision Pro‘s visionOS.

Problematic hinge and motherboard claims aside, the rumor mill has decided that the iPhone Fold will be coming out in the fall of 2026. Only Apple really knows

The iPhone Fold has been a hot topic of rumors, and in later weeks, has been subject to claims that there are production problems. Despite the varying viewpoints, that hasn’t stopped more reports from surfacing about the flexible smartphone.

The newest claim is from serial Weibo leaker Fixed Focus Digital. Posting on Monday, the leaker says that, despite rumors of manufacturing issues, the release is still planned to occur in September.

Fixed Focus Digital assures their followers while acknowledging other claims that the manufacturing process is troubled ahead of the final assembly of the model. Early-stage products are experiencing “ramp-up difficulties,” they say in a machine-translated post.

On the bright side, the foldable model apparently has good heat dissipation and cooling performance. This is believed to be from Apple making a significant investment in thermally managing the product.

As with all Weibo leakers, we must warn that they tend to be less reliable than other rumor sources. This is in part due to needing to maintain their audience of followers by providing a steady flow of posts.

In the case of Fixed Focus Digital, they have a middling record for accuracy. It also doesn’t help that their comment is made with no additional evidence or reasoning to bolster its release schedule claim.

Questionable trouble

Fixed Focus Digital doesn’t specify what the apparent issues are, but there have been quite a few reports about what they could be referring to. Including their own posts.

On May 26, Fixed Focus Digital said Apple didn’t have manufacturing difficulties for the iPhone Fold. There was, however, an issue in getting the model into mass production due to an issue with a circuit board component manufacturing technique.

At the time, they said that the situation was “not optimistic.”

Earlier in the month, on May 18, Instant Digital said that there was a problem with the hinge caused through repeated opening and closing. They did not explain what the exact problem was, though a social media post that was circulating at the time alleged that there was a rattle in the hinge.

Previous rumors have also included disputes about the launch timing for the model and even the name.

While they can’t get the story straight about such a major launch, at least the rumor mill is excited about the iPhone Fold.

In the fall of 2006, I decided emo was out and IDM was in. Fueled by the hope of becoming the next Four Tet or Aphex Twin, I marched into my local Guitar Center and purchased an audio interface to convert my guitar and vocals into ones and zeroes, then mangle them in Ableton Live.

When I got home, I plugged a brand-new M-Audio Fast Track Pro into my Windows desktop and immediately hit a brick wall of audio driver configuration hell. I eventually got the thing to work after hours of troubleshooting, but latency—the gap between when you make a sound and when it hits your computer—rendered the box unusable.

I was tempted to throw the Fast Track out the window and sample the sound of it hitting the pavement with an analog tape recorder. Instead, I went back to Guitar Center, traded the interface for a Line 6 DL4 delay pedal, and set my sights on ripping off Explosions in the Sky in a proper band setting.

Had something quick and painless like the Universal Audio Volt 876 existed at the time, who knows where my life would be now. I probably wouldn’t be opening for Four Tet and Fred Again … at the O2 Academy, but my entrée into computer-based music would have gone much more smoothly than it did in 2006.

For the Masses

Audio interfaces have come a long way since then. Prices are down, quality is way up, and latency is negligible in most home studio environments. Interfaces that pair with proprietary software and drivers still exist, but the genius of class compliance—meaning you can plug a device into your computer without needing the aforementioned—makes it easy for audio gear manufacturers to build boxes that are effortlessly plug-and-play on most operating systems. Even iOS and Android, in many cases. Anyone can find a decent-sounding interface on Amazon for $200 or less and plug it into their iPhone, then plug in a cheap mic and mumble their way to TikTok superstardom.

Photograph: Pete Cottell