Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, speaks at the 2026 Google I/O technology developer conference on May 19, 2026 (Karl Mondon/Getty Images)

Google announces new models, glasses, agents, but investors are not impressed

At Google’s I/O developer conference, the company announced a bevy of new products, but none of it helped the stock one bit.

Jon Keegan

Each year at Google’s I/O conference, developers get a look at the new products and features that will define the company for the next year. This year’s three-hour-long keynote featured a dizzying array of new products and features, but investors were not feeling it. The stock started the day down, and stayed down, dropping over 2% during Tuesday’s session.

Probably the most significant new thing Google announced was Gemini Spark, Google’s answer to the persistent AI agent OpenClaw. Spark can run long-running tasks for you even when you turn off your phone or shut your laptop.

The next version of Google’s Gemini AI model was announced — Gemini 3.5. But only the smaller, faster version of the model, Gemini Flash 3.5, was ready for release. Gemini 3.5 Pro won’t be available until next month, according to the company. Google showed benchmark scores putting Gemini Flash 3.5 slightly ahead of Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.7 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 in agentic tests, as well as multimodal tests (processing prompts that use both images and text).

Google also previewed a brand-new multimodal model called Google Omni and released the first version, Gemini Omni Flash:

“Omni is our new model that can create anything from any input — starting with video. With Omni, you can combine images, audio, video, and text as input and generate high-quality videos grounded in Gemini’s real-world knowledge. You can also easily edit your videos through conversation.”

An update to Google’s AI-powered coding tool was released — Antigravity 2.0 — which competes against Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex.

And what tech keynote would be complete without some kind of AI face computer. Google announced a pair of chunky “audio glasses” in a partnership with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker that lets you ask Gemini what you are looking at.

Google glasses — Google’s new “audio glasses” by Gentle Monster and Warby Parker (Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images)

Investors may have been looking at this list of announcements — as well as other new abilities, like conversation AI features across many products and creative tools like Google Flow — and wondering if this justifies the $180 billion to $190 billion in capex that the company says it will spend this year.

In reality, most of that capex money is being spent on its increasingly important TPU 8 AI chips, which are seeing some real traction in the market.

Rani Molla7h

Report: Tesla to build solar factory near Houston

Tesla is planning to build its solar panel manufacturing plant — an endeavor that could add up to $50 billion in value to its energy business — near Houston, Texas, Electrek reports. The plant would be located on the same site as its Megafactory, which builds Megapack battery systems.

The solar plant is part of Tesla and SpaceX’s goal of eventually putting solar-powered data centers in space.

On the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, CEO Elon Musk said Tesla was “going to work towards getting 100 gigawatts a year of solar cell production, integrating across the entire supply chain from raw materials all the way to finished solar panels.”

At the time, the news had sent shares of First Solar down, but subsequent reports suggest Tesla is unlikely to compete directly with the country’s leading photovoltaic panel maker, instead using much of that production internally.

Exclusive: Tesla (TSLA) is building its giant solar panel factory in Houston

Rani Molla7h

Anthropic hires former OpenAI member and Tesla AI director Andrej Karpathy

Andrej Karpathy — a founding member of OpenAI, Tesla’s director of AI from 2017 to 2022, and the man responsible for the term “vibe coding” — is doing what many in tech are doing right now: heading to greener pastures at Anthropic.

Anthropic, which is slated to go public this year, recently raised money at a $950 billion valuation, making it more valuable than OpenAI and nearly as valuable as Tesla.

Personal update: I've joined Anthropic. I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative. I am very excited to join the team here and get back to R&D. I remain deeply passionate about education and plan to resume my work on it in time.
— Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) May 19, 2026

TURN SIGNAL

Confessions of a (former) robotaxi hater

Rani Molla

“governments around the world will not allow Apple junk fees to stand”

Rani Molla10h

Epic Games has returned “Fortnite” to the Apple App Store globally, after the video game maker signaled confidence in its ongoing lawsuit with the iPhone maker. In a press release Tuesday, the company wrote:

“Fortnite is returning to the App Store now because we are confident that once Apple is forced to show its costs, governments around the world will not allow Apple junk fees to stand.

We will continue to challenge Apple’s anticompetitive App Store practices of banning alternative app stores and competition in payments.”

Late last year, an appeals court partly reversed sanctions against Apple but upheld the contempt finding and an injunction forcing Apple to permit outside payment options. “Fortnite” returned to the US App Store a year ago.

The suit began in 2020 over Apple’s mandatory 30% commission on in-app purchases and its refusal to allow third-party payment processors or alternative app stores on its mobile devices.

Rani Molla5/18/26

Meta to lay off 8,000 employees, move 7,000 to new initiatives related to AI

On Wednesday, Reuters reported Meta plans to lay off about 8,000 employees in three batches and move another 7,000 employees to “new initiatives related to AI workflows.” The company also plans to “eliminate managerial roles,” though Reuters did not specify how many.

Reuters had previously reported the number and date of the layoffs, but details of the restructuring come from a new internal document from the company’s head of human resources. The cuts come as Meta tries to balance its enormous capex budget of $125 billion to $145 billion this year, as it builds out its AI infrastructure.

As of the company’s last earnings report, its headcount was 77,986.

Exclusive: Meta lays out plans for May 20 layoffs, restructuring, internal document says