Techmeme River
Samstag, 29. März 2025
02:40
India's e-commerce market grew 10%-12% YoY to ~$60B in GMV in 2024, versus historical rates of over 20%, with 270M+ people shopping online, second only to China
Bain
02:30
Bain and Flipkart report: quick commerce made up over two-thirds of India's e-grocery orders in 2024, with GMV rising nearly five times to $6B-$7B from 2022
Reuters
01:50
NYC-based Rain, which issues credit cards that let customers settle payments in stablecoins, raised $24.5M led by Norwest, taking its total funding to $30.5M
Fortune
00:40
Brooklyn-based Underdog, a fantasy sports and sports betting app, raised $70M in a first Series C tranche at a $1.23B valuation from Spark Capital
Axios
00:25
Gensol's financial woes have cast doubt on the future of BluSmart, an Indian EV ride-hailing startup founded by Gensol's promoters, Anmol Jaggi and Puneet Jaggi
Inc42 Media
Freitag, 28. März 2025
23:55
FTX tells a US bankruptcy judge it will make the first payment to its main creditors on May 30 using the $11.4B cash hoard it has collected since shutting down
Bloomberg
22:10
Adalytics: DoubleVerify, IAS, and Human Security, paid by advertisers to detect bots, regularly miss such traffic; DoubleVerify missed 21% of bot visits
Wall Street Journal
21:15
In the latest Windows 11 preview build, Microsoft removed the “bypassnro” command, which let users skip signing into a Microsoft Account when installing Windows
Windows Central
21:01
A US judge rejects Musk's bid to dismiss a lawsuit claiming he defrauded ex-Twitter shareholders by delaying the disclosure of his initial Twitter investment
Reuters
20:25
Source: the new combined entity housing xAI and X is called XAI Holdings and is valued at more than $100B, not including debt
Bloomberg
19:40
Filing: Intel says three board members will not stand for reelection at its 2025 annual meeting, shrinking the size of the board to 11 members
Reuters
19:20
Source: hackers broke into Oracle's Cerner servers sometime after January 22 and stole patient data to extort US medical providers; the FBI is investigating
Bloomberg
18:50
Sources: Blackstone is evaluating a small minority investment in TikTok's US operations, joining the front-running bid by ByteDance's non-Chinese shareholders
Reuters
18:00
Elon Musk says xAI acquired X in an all-stock deal valuing xAI at $80B and X at $33B; xAI was reportedly in talks to raise funds in February at a $75B valuation
CNBC
17:25
@xAI has acquired @X in an all-stock transaction. The combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45B less $12B debt). Since its founding two years ago, xAI has rapidly become one of the leading AI labs in the world, building models and data centers at unprecedented speed and scale... xAI and X's futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent.
@elonmusk
17:15
Sources: ScaleAI is seeking a valuation as high as $25B in a potential tender offer; it was last valued at $13.8B in a $1B Series F round led by Accel in 2024
Business Insider
17:10
Sources: OpenAI is finalizing a $40B round led by SoftBank, receiving $10B initially and another $30B by 2025's end if it restructures into a for-profit company
Wall Street Journal
16:25
Reddit shares are down 50% from a February high, after its Q4 earnings report showed its traffic took a hit from a change in Google's search algorithm
Bloomberg
15:50
Former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear, who was OpenAI's interim CEO in 2023 when Sam Altman was fired, launches Softmax, a startup focused on AI alignment
Core Memory
15:45
A jury finds Frank founder Charlie Javice guilty of defrauding JPMorgan Chase by falsifying Frank user numbers; the charges carry a maximum sentence of 30 years
Fortune
15:05
Trump pardons BitMEX founders Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed, who previously pled guilty to federal criminal charges related to money laundering
CNBC
14:40
Google will pay $100M in cash to settle a 2011 lawsuit accusing the company of charging for clicks on ads outside the geographic areas the advertisers targeted
Reuters
14:05
The US FDIC says banks can engage in cryptocurrency and other legally permitted activities without prior regulatory approval if they manage risks appropriately
Reuters
14:00
CoreWeave closes flat at $40 in its Nasdaq debut; CoreWeave's offering is the largest US IPO since UiPath's NYSE debut in 2021
CNBC
13:45
US chipmaker Wolfspeed's shares fell ~50% on Friday, hitting their lowest since 1998, a day after it appointed a new CEO, amid worries about CHIPS Act funding
Reuters
13:15
Michael Novogratz's Galaxy Digital will pay $200M as part of a settlement with the New York AG over the firm's role in promoting the failed Luna cryptocurrency
Bloomberg
12:25
Anthropic researchers share the surprises they observed while watching Claude think: planning ahead, confusion between safety and helpfulness goals, lying, more
Wired
11:50
Sources: DOGE aims to migrate all Social Security Administration's computer systems off COBOL in a matter of months, risking the integrity of SSA infrastructure
Wired
10:55
Google says Pixel 9a will launch in the US, Canada, and UK on April 10; the company delayed the phone's launch to April to check “on a component quality issue”
9to5Google
10:50
A US judge dismisses Samsung's Oura lawsuit, saying Samsung acted prematurely in seeking a judgment that Galaxy Ring doesn't infringe on Oura's patents
The Verge
09:55
AppLovin hires a law firm to investigate short sellers' allegations that the mobile ad company's ad performance numbers are fraudulent
Bloomberg
09:40
Interviews with Dario Amodei, Daniela Amodei, and other executives about Anthropic's origin, Claude, why DeepSeek isn't a threat, reaching AGI safely, and more
Wired
09:25
Google starts offering user choice billing in the UK, initially to non-game developers, says 90%+ of developers are satisfied with Google Play's native billing
TechCrunch
08:35
An appeals court agrees with India's antitrust regulator that Google's app store billing policy was unfair and restrictive but cuts the fine from $110M to $25M
Bloomberg
07:25
The UK's Financial Conduct Authority says it intends to begin authorizing new crypto firms in 2026 after it designs a more stringent regulatory regime
CoinDesk
06:50
Crypto.com says the US SEC won't pursue enforcement action; Crypto.com sued the SEC in October after receiving a Wells notice signaling potential charges
The Block
06:01
Court documents: India criticizes Elon Musk's X for wrongly labeling an official website, used to notify tech firms of harmful content, as a “censorship portal”
Reuters
04:15
CoreWeave raised $1.5B in its IPO, selling ~37.5M shares at $40 each, down from a planned 49M shares at $47-$55; source: Nvidia anchored with a ~$250M order
CNBC
04:00
How Paul Ginsparg, a Cornell University physics professor, created the digital repository arXiv nearly 35 years ago to help researchers share their preprints
Wired
01:25
Sources: the EU will impose minimal fines on Apple and Meta next week, far below the DMA's 10% of global turnover cap, to avoid tensions with President Trump
Financial Times
00:45
Taiwan is investigating 11 Chinese tech firms, including SMIC, which is being probed for allegedly poaching engineers to access the island's advanced chip tech
Bloomberg
Donnerstag, 27. März 2025
23:20
PUBG developer Krafton acquires a “north of 75% stake” in Pune-based gaming studio Nautilus Mobile for $14M in an all-cash deal, its first acquisition in India
TechCrunch
22:40
Q&A with Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy on working at Bell Labs and Google, building Neeva, Snowflake's business model and its approach to AI, and more
Stratechery
21:45
A look at Archetype, whose AI model Newton is trained to analyze output from sensors monitoring the physical world, including cities and factories
Fast Company
20:45
EY: Indians collectively spent 1.1T hours on their smartphones in 2024, averaging five hours daily, with ~70% of the time on social media, gaming, and videos
Bloomberg
18:15
A US federal judge orders agencies whose leaders participated in the Signal chat on the Houthi attacks to preserve all messages sent from March 11 to March 15
Reuters
17:20
OpenAI's model behavior lead says OpenAI is “shifting from blanket refusals in sensitive areas to a more precise approach focused on preventing real-world harm”
Reservoir Samples
16:40
Sources: the Chinese startup behind Manus is in talks with US VC firms and others to raise funding at a $500M+ valuation, up ~5x from its previous valuation
The Information
16:20
AppLovin's stock closes down over 20% after short seller Muddy Waters released a report, the third such short report against the company in about a month
Bloomberg
15:40
Immunefi: crypto industry lost a record $1.64B in Q1 2025 across 40 incidents, including $1.46B from the Bybit hack, vs. $348.3M across 63 incidents in Q1 2024
The Block
14:55
Source: the White House sent a “records retention policy” to DOGE staffers on Monday, reminding them to preserve their Signal messages and disable auto-delete
Politico
14:45
Amazon partners with Electronic Arts to bring EA games like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor to cloud gaming service Amazon Luna, which is now available in 14 countries
VentureBeat
14:10
Anthropic says it created a new tool for deciphering how LLMs “think” and used it to resolve some key questions about how Claude and probably other LLMs work
Fortune
13:55
Sam Altman says “our GPUs are melting” due to ChatGPT's viral image generation and OpenAI plans to temporarily introduce some rate limits
The Verge
13:40
Ubisoft plans to spin off a unit, which includes Assassin's Creed, into a ~€4B subsidiary with Tencent investing €1.16B for a 25% stake; UBI jumps 10%
Bloomberg
13:20
Perplexity says it is working with Seattle-based startup Firmly.ai to make it easier for brands to sell goods directly through Perplexity's shopping results
Fortune
12:47
Meta adds a Friends tab on Facebook that will show content just from users' friends, with no recommended posts, as it brings back “OG” Facebook experiences
New York Times
12:25
Appfigures: Signal downloads were up 45% from the daily average on March 24 in the US and up 42% in Yemen, after The Atlantic's story; global downloads grew 28%
TechCrunch
12:10
Mendel, which offers corporate spend management tools for companies in Latin America, raises a $35M Series B led by Base10, bringing its total funding to $60M
TechCrunch
11:40
Sources: Reddit banned r/WhitePeopleTwitter for 72 hours in February 2025 after Elon Musk messaged CEO Steve Huffman about users threatening DOGE staffers
The Verge
11:25
TikTok plans to launch TikTok Shop in France, Germany, and Italy on March 31, expanding its reach in Europe as TikTok's future in the US remains uncertain
Reuters
11:05
Nintendo unveils Virtual Game Cards, letting users transfer existing digital Switch games to other consoles and lend them out more easily, available in April
TechCrunch
10:35
Cleo AI agrees to pay $17M to settle US FTC charges that the cash advance startup deceived customers about how much money they could obtain and how quickly
Reuters
10:15
Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen says the startup generated revenue of $2.1B in 2024, up from $1.6B in 2023, but missed its target to be profitable by the end of 2024
Wall Street Journal
09:50
CoreWeave Raises $1.5 Billion in Downsized IPO Below Price Target
Bloomberg
09:25
Instacart rolls out Store View, paying shoppers to film store shelves “one aisle at a time” to assess inventory, starting with select US and Canadian retailers
The Verge
09:10
Google rolls out new Search, Maps, and Gemini features to help plan vacations, including hotel price drop alerts and turning screenshots into holiday plans
TechCrunch
08:05
Client notice: Chinese server maker H3C warns of potential shortages of Nvidia's H20 chips, the most advanced AI chips available in China under US export rules
Reuters
07:45
Xiaomi's Poco unveils the £649+ F7 Ultra, with a 6.67" display, Snapdragon 8 Elite, a triple rear camera, 120W wired charging, and IP68, and the £499+ F7 Pro
The Verge
07:30
Meta VP of Asia Pacific Dan Neary is leaving for personal reasons; the Singapore-based executive joined in 2013, and Meta now has ~1.1B users in the region
Bloomberg
07:10
Pat Gelsinger says TSMC's pledge to invest $100B+ in US chip manufacturing will do little to restore the US' chipmaking leadership, as R&D will remain in Taiwan
Financial Times
06:55
Source: Nvidia is in advanced talks to acquire Lepton AI, which rents Nvidia GPU-based servers, for several hundred million dollars; Lepton raised $11M in 2023
The Information
06:40
After OpenAI released ChatGPT's new image generator, social media has been flooded with AI memes in the style of Studio Ghibli, highlighting copyright concerns
TechCrunch
06:30
An EU confidential decision, now public, shows the EU pressed Meta to create a separate version of Facebook Marketplace or let users access rival services
Bloomberg
06:15
Sources: after nearly five years of building a US plant, TSMC expects new factories to take two years; TSMC plans a 3nm US plant by 2028 and a 2nm one by 2030
Nikkei Asia
05:55
Q&A with Mike Clark, the chief architect of AMD's Zen microarchitecture, on x86, ARM, CPUs vs GPUs, Zen 4 to Zen 5, software developers, and more
Computer, Enhance!
05:40
A leaked Chinese dataset on “public opinion work” reveals 133,000 entries fed into an LLM designed to automatically flag content deemed sensitive by China
TechCrunch
05:25
A look at OpenWorm, a 13-year-old project that has so far failed to simulate C. elegans, one of the simplest and most extensively studied organisms in the world
Wired
05:00
Takeaways after using AI search exclusively for one month: AI search is more of a UX revamp than a replacement for Google's blue links-based web search paradigm
Wall Street Journal
04:47
A survey of US adults: 34% support a TikTok ban, down from 50% in March 2023, and 49% say TikTok is a national security threat, down from 59% in May 2023
Pew Research Center
02:55
JPMorgan researchers say they have generated and certified truly random numbers using a quantum computer, a world-first with potential security and trading uses
Bloomberg
02:40
Sources: many new Chinese AI data centers sit unused due to weak demand and DeepSeek-driven shifts; local reports: up to 80% of new computing resources are idle
MIT Technology Review
01:50
The Trump administration cut $20M for the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, which oversees chip export controls, or ~10% of BIS' budget
Bloomberg
01:35
Anthropic and Databricks ink a five-year deal, expected to jointly generate $100M in revenue, by selling AI tools to businesses developing their own AI agents
Wall Street Journal
01:20
Alibaba releases open-source multimodal AI model Qwen2.5-Omni-7B on Hugging Face and GitHub, saying the model can be deployed on edge devices like smartphones
CNBC
00:35
Sam Altman says OpenAI will support Anthropic's Model Context Protocol, an open-source standard that connects AI models to data for more relevant answers
TechCrunch
00:30
Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger joins VC firm Playground Global as a GP and the board of portfolio startup xLight, which develops lasers for chip manufacturing
CNBC
Mittwoch, 26. März 2025
23:45
Nvidia debuts G-Assist, an experimental, gaming-centric AI chatbot that runs locally and offers system diagnostics, setting recommendations for games, and more
Ars Technica
22:55
Robinhood plans to roll out checking and savings accounts in 2025 for its paying Gold subscribers, aiming to provide more of a private banking-like experience
Bloomberg
22:30
Sources: Apple is promoting Vanessa Trigub to VP of stores and retail operations globally, as it streamlines management of its retail arm under Deirdre O'Brien
Bloomberg
21:55
Filing: Dell says it had about 108K employees as of January 31, 2025, down from 120K employees in February 2024, marking a 10% annual reduction in its workforce
Business Insider
20:05
Oracle customers confirm the authenticity of data samples shared by a threat actor who allegedly breached Oracle Cloud servers, after Oracle denied the breach
BleepingComputer
19:00
Google says it plans to develop Android fully in private to streamline its development process but will continue to publish the source code for new releases
Android Authority
18:25
xAI's Grok AI chatbot is now integrated with Telegram for Telegram Premium users, marking Grok's first big expansion beyond X
Social Media Today
18:10
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signs a bill requiring Apple's and Google's mobile app stores to verify user ages and require parental consent for minors to use some apps
CNBC
17:25
A US federal judge rejects OpenAI's request to dismiss the NYT's lawsuit, allowing the main copyright infringement claims to go forward while narrowing the suit
NPR
17:20
A software update for some Amazon Kindle models lets users double-tap the sides or back of the device to turn pages in books or scroll down in Home and Library
Good e-Reader
16:45
DNI Tulsi Gabbard told a Congressional hearing that Signal comes “pre-installed” on government devices, hinting at a major shift following the Salt Typhoon hack
Politico
15:40
YouTube says Shorts views will now be counted each time a video starts to play or replay, rather than only after being watched for a certain number of seconds
TechCrunch
14:55
Starboard Value nominates three directors including its CEO, Jeff Smith, to Autodesk's board, rekindling its proxy battle with Autodesk over margin concerns
Reuters
13:50
Leaked financial figures: Stripe doubled its free cash flow in 2024 to about $2.2B and grew revenues by about 28% to $5.1B; Chime grew revenues by 31% to $1.7B
The Information
13:00
Island, which offers a Chromium-based secure enterprise browser, raised a $250M Series E led by Coatue at a $4.8B valuation, taking its total funding to ~$730M
SiliconANGLE
12:40
Sources: Italy hands tax demands to Meta, X, and LinkedIn in the last step in its VAT case, seeking €887.6M from Meta, €12.5M from X, and ~€140M from LinkedIn
Reuters
11:55
Waze says it is removing Google Assistant for iPhone users, citing “ongoing difficulties” with the integration, after recently testing a Gemini-based assistant
The Verge
11:25
TD Cowen: Microsoft canceled new data center projects in the US and Europe that would've amounted to ~2 gigawatts of capacity, a sign of AI computing oversupply
Bloomberg
11:15
iPad (A16) review: fast chip, double the storage, 2GB more RAM, good build quality and battery, and loads of apps, but an aging display and no M chips or AI
Engadget
10:30
eMarketer expects X to generate $1.31B in US ad sales in 2025, up 17.5%, and $2.26B in global ad sales, up 16.5%, its first year of ad revenue growth since 2022
Bloomberg
10:20
IPO filings: CoreWeave, set to launch a $32B IPO on March 28, violated key terms of a $7.6B Blackstone loan in 2024, triggering a series of technical defaults
Financial Times
09:30
Mercury, a neobank serving early-stage startups, raised $300M led by Sequoia at a $3.5B valuation; the fintech company saw $2B in deposits after SVB's collapse
Wall Street Journal
09:15
Chinese AI startup SenseTime reports FY 2024 revenue up 11% YoY to ~$524M, below ~$620M est., and a ~$592M net loss, above ~$551M est., as the AI race heats up
Bloomberg
07:55
Apple says the iPhone 16 series will be available in Indonesia from April 11, after Jakarta lifted a sales ban following Apple's $300M+ investment plan
Reuters
07:35
Gemini 2.5 Pro hands-on: a very strong model with 1M input tokens, 64K output tokens, a January 2025 knowledge cut-off, and very, very impressive coding skills
Simon Willison's Weblog
07:20
Sources: Fidelity Investments is in the advanced stages of testing its own stablecoin, managed by its digital assets arm; Trump pledged to back USD stablecoins
Financial Times
06:10
Microsoft unveils AI “deep reasoning” agents for 365 Copilot: Researcher, based on OpenAI's deep research model, and Analyst, based on o3-mini, coming in April
The Verge
05:55
Sources: the EU's Huawei corruption probe is looking at alleged exchanges of soccer tickets and phones for political favors; one detainee is a Huawei lobbyist
Financial Times
05:40
Databricks details Test-time Adaptive Optimization, or TAO, a new approach that lets its customers boost LLM performance without the need for clean labeled data
Wired
05:20
The US adds export restrictions to 80 organizations, primarily targeting Chinese companies, including server maker Nettrix and clients of Nvidia, Intel, and AMD
New York Times
05:00
Bain Capital agrees to acquire a majority stake in Italian IT company Namirial from private equity firm Ambienta, a deal sources say values Namirial at €1.1B
Bloomberg
04:45
A cross-party committee of UK MPs casts doubt on the UK's plan to boost the public sector with AI, citing outdated tech, poor data, and a lack of digital skills
Financial Times
04:25
Q&A with Careem CEO Mudassir Sheikha on the MENA ride-hailing giant becoming a super app, the spinout of its non-ride-hailing services from Uber, AI, and more
Rest of World
04:10
Power chip companies Renesas, Infineon, and others are cutting jobs and spending, as disappointing EV market growth leaves them saddled with excess capacity
Nikkei Asia
03:55
A look at RISC architecture's origins, the Arm vs. RISC-V war, and how RISCites beat the CISCites, as RISC's increasing adoption risks US companies' dominance
Wired
03:20
USCIS data shows Amazon got the most H-1B visas each year from 2020 to 2024; Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Apple ranked in the top 10 in 2024
Rest of World
02:50
Developers say aggressive AI crawlers are overwhelming open-source infrastructure; LibreNews: up to 97% of some projects' traffic comes from AI companies' bots
Ars Technica
02:45
TRAI Chairman Anil Kumar Lahoti says India, with only 1% of global subsea cable landing stations, must expand its subsea cable infrastructure 10x to meet demand
The Indian Express
02:35
US state and former US officials say satellite internet like Starlink's may cut upfront costs for the $42B rural broadband program but could cost more long term
Bloomberg
02:10
As the EU considers funding a Starlink rival, experts say no single European network can match Starlink's range, likely requiring a patchwork of satellites
Financial Times
02:00
BMW partners with Alibaba to use Qwen-powered AI cockpit tech from Alibaba-backed Banma in its upcoming car models for the Chinese market, rolling out in 2026
Bloomberg
01:30
Docs: China's new energy efficiency rules could ban Nvidia's H20 chips from data centers if implemented strictly, risking Nvidia's $17B-per-year China business
Financial Times
01:25
Amazon rolls out AI tool Interests, which checks for new inventory by interests, price limits, and preferences, to US users, and is testing chatbot Health AI
CNBC
00:55
US adds dozens of Chinese entities to export blacklist, including Inspur units
Reuters
Dienstag, 25. März 2025
23:00
Anthropic convinced a California federal judge to reject a preliminary bid to block it from using lyrics owned by UMG and other music publishers to train Claude
Reuters
22:20
Character.AI adds a Parental Insights feature that lets teens send reports of their chatbot usage to their parents, including which bots they are talking to
The Verge
21:25
Leaked email: Block lays off 931 employees, or ~8% of staff, and moves 193 managers to individual contributor roles, after cutting ~1,000 roles in January 2024
TechCrunch
18:55
NY-based Silna, which provides healthcare revenue cycle management software, emerges from stealth with a $22M Series A co-led by Accel and Bain and a $5M seed
Axios
17:50
In an addendum to the GPT-4o System Card, OpenAI says it is “not blocking the capability to generate adult public figures” and that public figures can opt out
Simon Willison's Weblog
17:15
Sources: Qualcomm has complained to antitrust regulators in the EU, the US, and South Korea that Arm is hurting competition by restricting access to its tech
Bloomberg
17:10
GameStop says its board has unanimously approved a plan to buy bitcoin with its corporate cash, and it has not set a ceiling on how much bitcoin it may purchase
CNBC
16:45
Ripple says it agreed to settle a US SEC civil lawsuit over the alleged sale of unregistered securities and pay just $50M of a previously imposed $125M fine
Reuters
16:35
Nielsen: YouTube was the top TV distributor in February 2025, making up 11.6% of all US TV; over-50s viewers accounted for 36% of time spent watching it on TVs
The Hollywood Reporter
16:30
An internal NSA memo in February 2025 warned staff of a “Signal Vulnerability”; Signal says it was a phishing warning and “had nothing to do with” its core tech
CBS News
15:20
Nexthop AI launches with $110M in seed and Series A funding led by Lightspeed Ventures, offering hardware and software for cloud AI infrastructure
SiliconANGLE
14:19
OpenAI rolls out GPT-4o image generation natively in ChatGPT across all subscription tiers and says the omnimodal model is “a step change above previous models”
The Verge
14:15
The Arc Prize Foundation says its new ARC-AGI-2 test stumps most AI models; humans get 60% of the questions right but GPT-4.5 and Claude 3.7 Sonnet score ~1%
TechCrunch
13:55
Meta rolls out a pilot program on Instagram designed to let US schools flag any potentially rule-violating post or account for prioritized review
The Verge
13:14
Apple announces WWDC 2025 for June 9-13, which will be an “entirely online” event free for developers, with an in-person special event at Apple Park on June 9
9to5Mac
13:10
Google debuts Gemini 2.5 “thinking” models for developers and Gemini Advanced subscribers, starting with Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental, which tops some benchmarks
9to5Google
13:05
Google releases TxGemma, a collection of open models built on Gemma that are designed to improve the efficiency of therapeutic drug development
Google Developers Blog
13:01
Quora's Poe launches a cheaper $5/month premium tier, alongside a new $250/month plan that it says is better for more “expensive” models like GPT-4.5 and o1-pro
TechCrunch
12:40
As TikTok faces a US ban on April 5, the ByteDance-owned app has a new ad campaign framing TikTok as a savior of Americans and a champion of small businesses
New York Times
12:01
Trump's World Liberty Financial unveils USD1, a 1:1 USD-pegged stablecoin minted on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain, custodied by BitGo; its launch date is TBA
Bloomberg
11:45
India's finance minister says the country will scrap a 6% tax on digital advertisements, easing costs for US tech giants, as a way of soothing US trade concerns
Reuters
11:40
Since DeepSeek-R1's debut, Chinese companies like Baidu, DeepSeek, Tencent, Ant, and Alibaba have been flooding the market with low cost AI services and models
Bloomberg
10:50
Apple Music is opening its catalog to DJs by integrating with popular DJ software and hardware platforms including Algoriddim's djay Pro and AlphaTheta
9to5Mac
10:35
AI startup Synthesia says it's creating a $1M stock pool to pay actors with equity for the use of their likeness, a first for the AI industry
Financial Times
08:20
3D tech company Infinite Reality acquires Napster for $207M; Infinite's CEO says that the file-sharing phenomenon will be used for marketing in the metaverse
CNBC
08:05
Sources: AI chipmaker Cerebras' IPO, in limbo for months, has been delayed while Trump fills key roles and CFIUS reviews Abu Dhabi-based G42's $335M investment
Reuters
07:50
TechInsights: producing 300mm wafers at TSMC's Fab 21 near Phoenix, Arizona, is only about 10% more expensive than in Taiwan
Tom's Hardware
07:35
Sources: the EU is set to close its probe into browser options on iOS without a fine next week, but will fine Apple over App Store anti-steering violations
Reuters
07:25
Waymo plans to launch its Waymo One ride-hailing service in Washington, DC in 2026; the city currently prohibits autonomous vehicles without safety drivers
The Verge
07:10
Sources: companies like Nvidia and many governments are trying to persuade Trump to loosen AI chip export curbs set for May, known as the “AI diffusion rule”
Bloomberg
07:00
Document: India orders Samsung and its executives in the country to pay $601M in back taxes and penalties for dodging tariffs on key telecoms equipment imports
Reuters
06:50
Interviews with 24+ US government workers show many embraced Signal after Trump's return to office as a tactic to shield communications, impacting transparency
Washington Post
06:30
TikTok memo: Blake Chandlee, who oversaw TikTok's ad sales and marketing globally, is moving to an advisory role; TikTok faces an April 5 deadline for a US sale
Bloomberg
06:15
Binance suspends an employee for allegedly using insider information to sell tokens for significant profits; X users suggest the project was the memecoin UUU
The Block
05:50
A profile of veteran Googler Liz Reid, who became Head of Search in March 2024 and rolled out major changes, like AI Overviews, as Google competes with ChatGPT
Bloomberg
04:05
Investors see opportunities in Malaysian tech stocks amid a shift to cheaper AI models like DeepSeek, as the country's chip sector faces US export rules
Nikkei Asia
02:25
A look at the 25-year-old CVE program, which assigns unique IDs to security flaws; 413 orgs report CVEs, with 40K+ reported in 2024, pushing the total to 270K+
CyberScoop
01:45
A look at Apple's bad Apple TV+ strategy, including dismissing Netflix's growth, building a platform without a back-catalog, and using TV+ to boost device sales
Spyglass
01:05
Alibaba releases Qwen2.5-VL-32B, a 32B open model under Apache 2.0, claiming better math reasoning and alignment with human preferences than earlier 2.5 models
Simon Willison's Weblog
00:35
Some EU organizations weigh moving from AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure over US privacy fears under Trump; two European cloud providers say it is driving interest
Wired
Montag, 24. März 2025
23:35
Alibaba Chairman Joe Tsai warns of a bubble in data center construction, saying the buildout may outpace early AI demand and is starting to look indiscriminate
Bloomberg
23:00
Sources: the European Commission is set to find that Meta violated the DMA, hitting it with a cease and desist and a hundreds-of-millions fine, possibly $1B+
New York Post
22:20
Chinese AI startups revamp their business models after DeepSeek's rise; sources: Zhipu eyes an IPO, 01.ai drops pretraining to sell apps with DeepSeek, and more
Financial Times
21:55
OpenAI updates Advanced Voice Mode to make ChatGPT “more direct, engaging, concise, specific, and creative” for paying users, and interrupt all users less often
TechCrunch
20:50
Samsung says co-CEO Han Jong-hee has died at age 63 from cardiac arrest and that Jun Young-hyun, appointed as co-CEO just last week, would now be the sole CEO
Reuters
20:00
Trump officials accidentally added The Atlantic's EIC to a Signal group chat about the US' Houthi war plans; Signal is not approved for sharing classified info
The Atlantic
19:35
Sources: 11x, an AI-powered sales automation startup backed by a16z and Benchmark, has been using fake customer endorsements and massaging its financial numbers
TechCrunch
19:05
Sources: quantum computing startup PsiQuantum is raising at least $750M led by BlackRock at a $6B pre-money valuation
Reuters
19:00
Sources: Onavo co-founder Roi Tiger is closing a $55M Series A led by Greenoaks for his stealth cybersecurity startup at a valuation in the hundreds of millions
Business Insider
18:35
Researchers say a Next.js flaw that existed for several years could have let hackers bypass middleware-based authentication; Vercel patched the flaw on March 18
CyberScoop
18:20
Trump Media signs a non-binding agreement with Crypto.com to launch ETFs under its Truth.Fi brand later this year, comprising digital assets and securities
Wall Street Journal
18:10
eToro files for an IPO, seeking to list as ETOR on the Nasdaq, and reports $12.6B in 2024 revenue, ~96% of which was from cryptoassets, and a $192M net income
Bloomberg
17:05
China published new rules on March 21 that banned the use of facial recognition without consent in private spaces like hotel rooms
The Register
16:15
A look at lobbying efforts by AI companies since Trump's return; hundreds submitted comments after a second AI-related EO, which called for pro-growth AI policy
New York Times
16:00
Arcade, a gen-AI marketplace for designing jewelry, raised a $25M Series A led by Canaan Partners, bringing total funding to $42M, and expands to home goods
TechCrunch
15:43
Sources: Haofei Wang, X's director of engineering, has suddenly left the company; Wang joined X in July 2023
The Verge
15:25
Berlin-based workflow automation startup n8n raised a €55M Series B, sources say at a valuation of ~€250M, and says it has 3K+ enterprise customers
TechCrunch
14:50
Massachusetts' top securities regulator probes Robinhood's decision to launch a prediction markets hub, after sending the company a subpoena last week
Reuters
13:27
OpenAI expands COO Brad Lightcap's role to oversee day-to-day operations, including global expansion and partnerships; Altman will focus on research and product
Bloomberg
13:25
Leadership updates — OpenAI has grown a lot. We remain focused on the same core …
OpenAI
12:50
Microsoft unveils 11 Security Copilot AI agents, five created by partners, that do things like triage phishing and data loss alerts, coming to preview in April
The Verge
11:40
DeepSeek releases MIT-licensed DeepSeek-V3-0324, the latest version of its enormous DeepSeek v3 model; the previous DeepSeek v3 had a custom license
Simon Willison's Weblog
10:50
Q&A with Splice CEO Kakul Srivastava on the music creation platform, the economics of creator platforms, why creatives “deserve better” than AI tools, and more
The Verge
10:00
A profile of Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm, set to go on trial on July 14 for conspiracy to commit money laundering; Storm says most users were legitimate
Wall Street Journal
09:25
Apple says the AirPods Max will get 24-bit, 48 kHz lossless audio, including Personalized Spatial Audio, and ultra‑low latency in April via a software update
The Verge
07:35
CB Insights: Q1 2025 has had 11 startup sales worth $1B+ so far, totaling a record $54.5B, up from two acquisitions worth $1B+ in Q1 2024, totaling $3.2B
Bloomberg
07:15
A survey of 730 developers: 75% have tried AI, 35.6% are AI optimists, 38.4% are AI pessimists, freelancers use AI more, 50%+ of employers pay for AI, and more
Wired
05:35
SAP's stock rose ~1% for a ~€313B market cap, passing Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk as Europe's most valuable public company; SAP is up 40% in the past year
Bloomberg
04:30
Q&A with Reid Hoffman on making people AI-curious through his new book, Superagency, writing with AI, why AI “gloomers” are wrong, tech's DEI rollback, and more
The Guardian