An AI disproves a math conjecture, Google ships 100 things, and graduates boo the hype
Tue, May 26, 2026 · 11 stories
Last week's Google I/O brought AI into every nook and cranny of their products. Traditional search is dead, with the new AI Mode now running on Gemini 3.5 Flash. And Gemini Omni can create anything FROM anything. Starting that home decor YouTube channel has never been so easy.
Math with a plus one this week. One of OpenAI's models disproved a longstanding geometry conjecture. Not a benchmark score. An actual open problem, disproved.
It's graduation season and commencement speeches are underway. Booing is not the sound you want to hear during your big moment, and neither, it turns out, is the word 'AI.' University of Arizona students heckled Eric Schmidt (former Google CEO) over his upbeat AI remarks, drowning him out until he conceded their fears were 'rational.' Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple) got the opposite welcome, cheered for telling students they already have 'Actual Intelligence.'
Top Stories
Google AI Blog
Google used I/O 2026 to ship more than 100 product announcements, led by Gemini Omni, a new flagship foundation model, alongside Google Antigravity and Universal Cart. The company also confirmed that ads are coming to AI Mode search results.
Why this matters:
The volume is the message. Google is using its distribution to flood every surface at once, from a frontier model down to checkout and search ads. For founders, the takeaway is that any single-feature wrapper announced this week now competes with a default that ships to billions. The ads-in-AI-Mode confirmation is the quieter tell: Google has decided how it monetizes AI search, and it looks exactly like the old search business.
OpenAI
OpenAI published a result in which one of its models disproved a long-standing central conjecture in discrete geometry, a contribution to pure mathematics research rather than an engineering benchmark.
Why this matters:
Benchmarks measure how well a model recalls and recombines what is known. Disproving an open conjecture is producing something that was not known. If models can now generate genuine mathematical results, the frontier shifts from "AI assists researchers" toward "AI is a researcher," with implications for every field that runs on discovery and proof. This is the most consequential capability story of the week, and it arrived with none of the fanfare of the funding headlines.
Tom's Hardware / Business Insider
At multiple 2026 commencement ceremonies, graduating students booed and heckled speakers who praised AI, with one speaker firing back "deal with it." Days later, Steve Wozniak drew cheers for telling graduates that they, not the machines, possess "actual intelligence."
Why this matters:
Capital is flooding into AI, but the next generation of talent is jeering from the cheap seats. Public sentiment is the line item that never shows up on a cap table, yet it shapes hiring, regulation, and which products get adopted versus resented. When the room cheers a "you are the real intelligence" line, that is a leading indicator worth more than another valuation rumor. The industry is winning the balance sheet and losing the auditorium.
Quick Hits
Financial Times
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are underwriting; SoftBank shares jumped nearly 20% on the news.
The Verge
The S-1 shows a $4.28B loss, and reveals that rival Anthropic pays SpaceX roughly $15B a year for Colossus compute through 2029 while xAI burned $6.4B in 2025.
Bloomberg Technology
The raise briefly makes it the world's most valuable AI startup, edging past OpenAI.
TechCrunch
The company split its reporting into Data Center and Edge segments and quietly became one of AI's largest venture investors.
The Verge
A sign its Anthropic integration is cooling as the model-partner landscape reshuffles.
Qwen
A new agent-focused frontier model billed as a push toward autonomous task execution.
TechCrunch
A clean reminder that benchmark performance and a flooded street are very different tests.
BleepingComputer
A supply-chain attack aimed squarely at developer tooling.
