Dienstag, 2. September 2025

22:40
Source: Sierra, which builds AI customer service agents, nears a $350M raise at a $10B valuation, up from $4.5B in October 2024, and is set to top $100M in ARR
Axios
21:35
The judge in US v. Google says allowing Google's payments is “more palatable now”, since GenAI companies “already are in a better position” to compete
The Verge
20:25
Google says it is reviewing the court's ruling on search and has “concerns” about how the requirements “will impact our users and their privacy”
Google
20:10
Content creators and rideshare drivers are among the professions covered under the “no tax on tips” policy passed as part of the US spending bill signed in July
Forbes
19:55
As part of the US v. Google remedies ruling, a technical committee will be established to help enforce the final judgment, which will last six years
New York Times
18:10
A six-year US effort to counter Chinese telecom dominance took a hit after the One Big Beautiful Bill cut ~$1B from a program aimed at developing Open RAN tech
Politico
17:15
A judge bars Google from paying to be the exclusive search engine on devices and browsers but allows payments for product distribution, including to Apple
Wall Street Journal
16:30
US v. Google: a federal judge rules that Google will not be required to divest Chrome or Android but must share search data; GOOG jumps 6%+ after hours
CNBC
16:20
Cloudflare says attackers gained access to a Salesforce instance it uses for internal customer case management, as part of the Salesloft Drift breach
BleepingComputer
16:05
OpenAI CPO Kevin Weil will become VP of a new group called OpenAI for Science to build an “AI-powered platform that accelerates scientific discovery”
TechCrunch
15:20
Apple's lead AI researcher for robotics, Jian Zhang, has left for Meta's Robotics Studio; sources: three more researchers left Apple's Foundation Models team
Bloomberg
15:05
Plaud says it has sold 1M+ of its $159 NotePin AI recording devices since 2023, is profitable, and is on track to bring in $250M in annualized revenue this year
Forbes
14:16
OpenAI acquires product analytics company Statsig for $1.1B and shuffles executive roles, with Statsig CEO Vijaye Raji becoming OpenAI's CTO of Applications
The Verge
13:55
Disney pays $10M to settle an FTC complaint that alleges Disney collected children's data by failing to designate certain YouTube videos as being made for kids
Axios
12:50
WordPress showed off Telex, its experimental AI development tool, at WordCamp US; CEO Matt Mullenweg called it “V0 or Lovable, but specifically for WordPress”
TechCrunch
12:20
OpenAI subpoenaed AI governance nonprofits Encode and CANI, alleging they are part of a conspiracy involving billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg
The San Francisco Standard
12:06
Anthropic raised a $13B Series F led by Iconiq, Fidelity, and Lightspeed at a $183B valuation, up from $61.5B in March, and reports a run rate of $5B+
Anthropic
11:30
Amazon says it will end the ability for Prime members to share their free shipping benefits with individuals outside their household, starting on October 1
The Verge
11:10
US procurement records show the Trump administration jettisoned a Biden-era order and reactivated an ICE contract for phone spyware from Tel Aviv-based Paragon
Bloomberg
10:50
Blockchain-based lender Figure plans to sell 26.3M shares priced between $18 and $20 to raise up to $526.3M in its US IPO, targeting a valuation of up to $4.13B
Reuters
10:30
Source: Mexico City-based Kapital, which offers financial visibility tools to SMBs, raised an $86M Series C led by Tribe Capital at a ~$1.3B valuation
Bloomberg
10:25
Winklevoss twins' Gemini plans to sell 16.67M shares at $17 to $19 each in its US IPO, seeking to raise $317M, which would value the crypto exchange at $2.22B
CoinDesk
10:20
Sources: the EU delayed a planned September 1 fine against Google over its ad tech practices due to fears it could provoke Trump to unravel EU-US trade progress
Bloomberg
09:55
How Ukraine has been using AI to allow groups of drones, known as swarms, to coordinate with each other to attack Russian positions for much of the past year
Wall Street Journal
09:40
Underdog and Crypto.com debut a sports prediction market to let US users in 16 states bet on the NFL, the NBA, MLB, college football, and more in Underdog's app
CNBC
09:20
Varonis Systems agrees to acquire email security company SlashNext for up to $150M, including retention awards, after acquiring database company Cyral for ~$25M
Bloomberg
09:03
TSMC says the US revoked its authorization to ship gear to its main Chinese chipmaking base in Nanjing, after the US revoked Samsung's and SK Hynix's waivers
Bloomberg
08:50
Dolby launches Dolby Vision 2, with AI tools that optimize TVs based on content and a feature for “authentically cinematic” smoothing, first on Hisense TVs
The Verge
08:10
Microsoft says it is giving the US GSA $6B+ in potential savings on Office, Azure, Dynamics 365, and more over three years, including $3.1B in the first year
CNBC
08:00
Internal data: Amazon registered 5.4M US Prime sign-ups over the 21-day run-up to its four-day Prime Day event, ~116K less than in 2024 and 106K below its goal
Reuters
07:50
A look at a16z's Speedrun, a YC-like accelerator targeting a more creative demographic and which has invested $180M into 150 companies over the past 18 months
Bloomberg
07:36
OpenAI details its plan to add guardrails for teens and people in emotional distress by the end of 2025, including parental controls within the next month
Axios
07:15
Filing: Klarna and some shareholders are selling 34.3M shares for $35-$37 each in its IPO, aiming to raise up to $1.27B and giving it an up to ~$14B market cap
Bloomberg
06:35
An analysis of Grok's responses to 41 political questions in May and July shows it shifted to the right on 50%+ of them, often reflecting Elon Musk's priorities
New York Times
06:20
IFR: Chinese factories install ~280K industrial robots every year, or 50% of the global total, helping China grow its global export share; ~50% are made locally
Financial Times
05:55
Google plans to update Play Games on Android to show stats, achievements, and social features in most regions on September 23 and the EU and the UK on October 1
The Verge
05:40
A profile of Jumia, hailed as “the Amazon of Africa”, as CEO Francis Dufay tries to achieve profitability by 2027, after closing its food delivery business
Financial Times
04:20
UK fintechs like Revolut and Starling step up plans to buy US banks to get US licenses for lending in all 50 states, as regulators ease M&A rules under Trump
Financial Times
03:50
A look at AI adoption across US schools and colleges, as tech companies invest in AI education initiatives, including partnerships with major teachers' unions
Bloomberg
02:00
Marc Benioff says Salesforce has cut its customer support staff from 9,000 to ~5,000 in 2025 after deploying AI agents to handle a growing share of its work
San Francisco Chronicle
01:05
UK-based Phasecraft, which develops algorithms for quantum computers, raised a $34M Series B co-led by Plural, Playground Global, and Novo Holdings
Sifted

Montag, 1. September 2025

22:55
An interview with Lovable CEO Anton Osika on competition, staying in Europe, and more; the startup now has 2.3M+ active users, including 180K paying subscribers
TechCrunch
20:15
TrendForce: Q2 global chip foundry revenue surged 14.6% QoQ to $41.7B, with TSMC securing a 70% market share, followed by Samsung with 7.2% and SMIC with 5.1%
Tom's Hardware
19:30
Tokyo-based LayerX, which uses AI to help enterprises scale back-office automation, raised a $100M Series B led by TCV, taking its total funding to $192.2M
TechCrunch
18:20
WLFI, run by the Trump family's World Liberty Financial, falls 25% to ~$0.21 on its first trading day, giving it a ~$6B market cap; Trump's WLFI is worth ~$3.6B
Financial Times
17:00
Alibaba's stock jumped 19%+ in Hong Kong on September 1, after its August 29 report of cloud computing driving strong Q1 results and reports of its new AI chip
CNBC
15:55
Tencent open sources translation models Hunyuan-MT-7B and Hunyuan-MT-Chimera-7B, which support 33 languages, claiming they beat established models in benchmarks
The Decoder
12:40
China's new AI content labeling law goes into effect, as part of a broad effort to address AI-related risks such as misinformation and copyright infringement
South China Morning Post
12:05
Internal memo: Revolut begins a secondary share sale for employees at $1,381.06 per share, valuing Revolut at $75B, up from $45B in a 2024 secondary share sale
Bloomberg
11:45
Trump family's World Liberty Financial token starts trading on exchanges with $30 billion-plus valuation
The Block
09:30
Source: G42 is talking to AWS, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and xAI to become tenants at its UAE-US AI Campus, and aims to diversify chip suppliers beyond Nvidia
Semafor
07:05
Sources: OpenAI is scouting local partners to set up a 1GW+ data center in India, although the exact timeline is unclear; Sam Altman is set to visit this month
Bloomberg
06:40
Analysis: porn sites ignoring the UK's age verification law have seen a burst of traffic from UK users, while sites complying saw declines from UK IP addresses
Washington Post
06:15
AI shopping agents have prompted sellers and brands to rethink selling online, as advertisers employ new techniques to appear more prominently in AI results
Financial Times
05:00
Q&A with Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince on why he thinks AI chatbots are killing the web and journalism, how his pay-per-crawl initiative can fix it, and more
Crazy Stupid Tech
03:50
A survey of 1,047 US college students on GenAI: 55% use the tech for brainstorming ideas, 18% now question the value of college more than they used to, and more
Inside Higher Ed
01:10
A profile of Chinese AI chip designer Cambricon, whose share price has doubled since the start of August, supported by Beijing's push for tech self-sufficiency
Financial Times

Sonntag, 31. August 2025

21:40
Q&A with Lyft CEO David Risher on Lyft's three profitable quarters in a row, its co-founders leaving the board, acquiring Freenow, robotaxi economics, and more
Sherwood News
18:10
A policy doc authored in July by seven Chinese government departments outlines plans to create a globally competitive brain-computer interface industry by 2030
Wired
16:00
An interview with CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz on the company's M&A strategy as it acquires Madrid-based data observability startup Onum for about $290M
Fortune
14:00
Source: Indian fantasy sports startup Mobile Premier League plans to lay off ~60% of its local workforce, after the Indian government banned online paid games
Reuters
12:10
Pharma commercialization company Eversana acquires Waltz Health, which provides drug price-comparison software to insurers, creating an entity valued at $6B
Bloomberg
11:55
OpenLight, which designs custom silicon photonic chips for the data center interconnect market, raised a $34M Series A led by Xora Innovation and Capricorn
DatacenterDynamics
09:40
Crypto and tech entrepreneurs are attending Network School, founded by Balaji Srinivasan in Forest City, Malaysia, as a testbed for his techno-utopian ideas
Bloomberg
06:10
A critique of two contrasting research papers on AI's impact on US employment trends, along with caveats from a Stanford study on jobs in AI-exposed fields
Noahpinion
02:05
A look at a potential future of personalized, AI-generated entertainment where AI culture could submerge human originality and enable new forms of creative work
New Yorker
02:00
Cambridge, UK-based Paragraf, which makes graphene-based electronics using standard semiconductor processes, raised a $55M Series C to scale its manufacturing
Tech.eu
01:30
AI startup Aurasell, which aims to automate sales and streamline tools built on CRM software, emerges from stealth with a $30M seed from June 2024 led by Next47
Business Insider
00:55
Xi Jinping is pushing the country's tech industry to be oriented toward applications for AI, charting a pragmatic alternative to Silicon Valley's pursuit of AGI
Wall Street Journal
00:45
PUBG developer Krafton is eyeing major expansion in India, seeking acquisitions as growth slows in China and the US, and plans to invest at least $50M annually
Financial Times

Samstag, 30. August 2025

22:30
An interview with Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd on building an AI-powered app with “the world's smartest and most emotionally intelligent matchmaker” and more
Wall Street Journal
20:25
El Salvador splits its 6,274 bitcoin across 14 new wallets, describing the move as a precaution against quantum attacks, a merely theoretical threat for now
Cointelegraph
19:40
An inside look at how Netflix's use of data led to generic “algorithm films” intended for broad appeal, with AI set to further entrench the production style
The Guardian
17:40
How Turkmenistan turned censorship into a lucrative extortion scheme by intentionally restricting internet access in order to sell its own VPNs to citizens
Tor Blog
15:40
AI models' price per token has fallen since 2023, but costs for developers are rising as newer reasoning models require more tokens to complete tasks
Wall Street Journal
14:20
Purgatory, tied to online community The Com, claims responsibility for swatting attacks on US universities, airports, and more, charging $20 to $95 per incident
Wired
12:30
TikTok suspends its live feature for the “next few days” in Indonesia, citing “increasing violence in protests” over lawmakers' pay
Reuters
11:10
Filing: StubHub, which is planning a September IPO, says revenue grew 3% to $828M in H1, missing its earlier projection of $885M, with adjusted EBITDA down 7%
The Information
09:40
A study focused on OpenAI's GPT-4o mini found that LLMs can be persuaded to comply with objectionable requests using the same tactics that persuade humans
Bloomberg
06:45
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem fires 24 FEMA IT staffers, including the CIO and CISO; DHS says they failed security protocols and let hackers access FEMA networks
Nextgov/FCW
02:40
Q&A with Stanford researchers on their recent study finding that, since 2022, US employment in the most AI-exposed fields has fallen 13% for entry-level workers
Derek Thompson
02:00
China says it will prevent excess competition in the AI sector, echoing Xi Jinping's caution against excessive local government investment in AI last month
Bloomberg
01:20
NPCI, which runs India's digital payments network UPI, has started making its infrastructure available to banks to deliver short-term loans to small businesses
Financial Times
00:50
SEC filing: Super Micro cautions that its financial control weaknesses, if not fixed, could hurt its ability to report results “in a timely and accurate manner”
Bloomberg
00:25
Filing: Nvidia reveals its top two customers accounted for 39% of its Q2 revenue, up from 25% in Q2, 2024
CNBC

Freitag, 29. August 2025

20:55
ChatGPT integration in Apple's Xcode 26 beta 7 defaults to GPT-5; developers can now also use Claude Sonnet 4 by signing into their paid Claude account
9to5Mac
20:00
Sources: Meta Superintelligence Labs' leaders have discussed using Google's or OpenAI's models to power Meta AI and other AI features in Meta social media apps
The Information
19:15
Filing: Intel says its funding deal with the US loosens its requirements under the CHIPS Act, including removing the need to meet certain project milestones
Wall Street Journal
18:15
Top 100 AI consumer apps: Gemini ranks #2 behind ChatGPT on mobile with ~50% of its MAUs, with Grok at #4; on the web, Gemini has ~12% of ChatGPT's visits
Andreessen Horowitz
17:00
The Ethereum Foundation pauses its grants program, which awarded $3M+ to 100+ projects since 2018, to rethink its spending strategy and reduce its burn rate
The Block
16:15
Meta created and let users create flirty chatbots and intimate images using the names and likenesses of Taylor Swift and other celebs without their permission
Reuters
15:55
The FCC rejects a proposal by broadcasters and others to impose cable-style regulatory fees on streaming services, tech companies, and pure broadband providers
TheDesk.net
15:20
WhatsApp fixed a zero-click bug in its iOS and Mac apps that was being used, alongside a now-fixed Apple flaw, to hack into devices of “specific targeted users”
TechCrunch
14:50
Taco Bell, which deployed voice AI-powered ordering at 500+ drive-through locations, is now reconsidering the tech after viral videos of glitches and pranks
Wall Street Journal
14:30
Sources: Google is set to face a modest EU antitrust fine over adtech practices, in an investigation triggered by a complaint by the European Publishers Council
Reuters
14:10
Flip, a TikTok rival that let shoppers post video reviews and earn cash based on engagement, has shut down; it had raised $300M and was valued at $1B+ in 2024
The Information
14:05
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers strike a deal with Uber and Lyft allowing drivers to unionize while remaining classified as independent contractors
Los Angeles Times
13:55
xAI sues a former employee in federal court in California for allegedly stealing Grok trade secrets and taking them to OpenAI, where he recently accepted a job
Reuters
13:30
Meta is updating how it trains AI chatbots to prioritize teen safety and will limit teen access to certain characters, as it works on long-term safety updates
TechCrunch
13:15
Mastodon says it does not “have the means to apply age verification” to its services and it's up to server admins to observe local laws in places they operate
TechCrunch
12:40
French President Emmanuel Macron vows a strong response if any country takes measures that undermine Europe's digital sovereignty
Bloomberg
12:25
Perplexity's head of advertising and shopping Taz Patel has left after nine months; its ad business reportedly generated only about $20,000 in Q4 2024
Adweek
12:05
Valve adds credit card-based age checks for UK users to access “mature content” games on Steam; Discord and others are using selfies for verification
The Verge
11:10
FriendliAI, which invented “continuous batching” to optimize dynamic and uneven LLM inference traffic, raised a $20M extension to its $6M seed from 2021
Crunchbase News
10:15
The US makes it harder for Samsung, SK Hynix, and Intel to produce chips in China by revoking waivers for the use of US equipment in their Chinese operations
Reuters
10:10
Sources: the US government restored xAI to its vendors list after removing it for Grok's antisemitic content; email: the White House asked GSA to add xAI “ASAP”
Wired
10:00
EU competition commissioner Teresa Ribera says the EU must be ready to walk away from the US trade deal if the US demands a watered-down DSA and DMA
Financial Times
09:40
Reliance launches a subsidiary called Reliance Intelligence, aiming to create national-scale AI infrastructure in India, in partnership with Google and Meta
TechCrunch
09:25
Sources: DeepSeek plans to use Huawei's Ascend AI chips to train smaller versions of its upcoming R2 models but will still use Nvidia chips for largest models
The Information
09:05
A judge rules Nvidia must face trial over allegations that it benefitted from autonomous driving data stolen by an engineer who defected from Valeo in 2021
Bloomberg
08:35
In a trial over a fatal Autopilot crash, Tesla denied having crash-snapshot data, until a hacker hired by the plaintiffs recovered the data from the vehicle
Washington Post
08:05
Sources: Alibaba developed a new AI inference chip to compete with H20; it is manufactured by a Chinese company unlike an earlier AI chip made by TSMC
Wall Street Journal
07:15
Alibaba reports Q1 revenue up 2% YoY to ~$34.6B, below ~$35.4B est., and net income up 76% to ~$5.9B, above ~$4B est., as AI demand drives cloud sales up 26%
CNBC
07:10
Sources: ChatGPT co-creator Shengjia Zhao threatened to quit Meta within days of joining and return to OpenAI; later, he was given the chief AI scientist title
Financial Times
06:40
Huawei reports H1 2025 revenue up 3.9% YoY to ~$58.5B, driven by soaring AI compute demand and a rebound in phone sales, and net profit down 32% YoY to ~$5.2B
Bloomberg
06:05
India's largest telco Reliance Jio, owned by Asia's richest man Mukesh Ambani, says it aims to list its shares through an IPO in India by the first half of 2026
Reuters
04:45
An investigation finds spammers are deploying Holocaust-themed AI slop images across Facebook, in an attempt to game Meta's content monetization program
BBC
02:00
Police are investigating a murder-suicide in what appears to be the first documented murder involving someone who engaged extensively with an AI chatbot
Wall Street Journal
01:00
Elon Musk files a motion to dismiss a US SEC suit over his 2022 Twitter stake disclosure, calling allegations that he cheated investors a government overreach
Bloomberg
00:45
Court filing: the UK sought broad access to Apple user data, including bulk iCloud interception beyond ADP, and hasn't dropped the mandate as the US claimed
Financial Times