Techmeme River
Saturday, April 27, 2024
2:40 AM
A review of Dana Mattioli's The Everything War, which covers Lina Khan's antitrust battle against Amazon and makes a case that no company should be so powerful
Financial Times
2:35 AM
Investors cheer Microsoft and Alphabet's huge AI spending plans as shares of both firms rallied but not Meta's, which saw its worst trading day in 18 months
Wall Street Journal
12:40 AM
Google plans to invest $2B to set up a data center in Indiana and $1B to expand three Virginia sites, and announces a $75M fund to train Americans on AI skills
Reuters
12:05 AM
Google opens its second hardware office in New Taipei City, as VP of Engineering Elmer Peng says “Taiwan is Google's largest hardware R&D hub outside of the US”
Nikkei Asia
Friday, April 26, 2024
11:40 PM
A number of Apple users say they were logged out of their Apple ID across multiple devices on April 26 and forced to reset their password before logging back in
9to5Mac
9:25 PM
A US appeals court reverses a 2021 ruling that prevented New York from enforcing a law requiring ISPs to offer low-cost broadband plans to low-income consumers
Ars Technica
8:50 PM
Microsoft partners with IBM to release the MS-DOS 4.0 source code under the MIT license on GitHub
PC Gamer
7:45 PM
IBM plans to expand its semiconductor packaging and testing plant in Bromont, Quebec, with more than CA$1B in investments over the next five years
Bloomberg
7:05 PM
Filing: FTC says Jeff Bezos, Andy Jassy, and other Amazon execs used Signal's disappearing messages to conceal evidence in FTC's antitrust case against Amazon
Bloomberg
6:40 PM
Sources: Apple has renewed discussions with OpenAI about using its technology to power some features in iOS 18; talks with Google on using Gemini remain ongoing
Bloomberg
6:20 PM
Alphabet closes above a $2T market cap for the first time, reaching a valuation of $2.15T after rising 10% on April 26, its biggest one-day jump since July 2015
Bloomberg
5:00 PM
Google is testing “Speaking practice” in Search, which uses a conversational AI bot to let Search Labs users in some countries improve their English skills
TechCrunch
4:00 PM
Baltimore Police arrest a high school teacher for allegedly framing his principal by using AI to create an audio file of the principal making racist comments
The Baltimore Banner
3:25 PM
As Intel reports disappointing earnings and guidance, and becomes S&P 500's worst performing stock in 2024, a look at the long history of company's missteps
CNBC
2:10 PM
Congress considers legislation to block DJI drones from running on US communication networks, effectively killing the Chinese company's US commercial business
New York Times
1:30 PM
Discord bans Spy Pet-affiliated accounts, which were scraping 12K+ Discord servers to archive and sell user data, and says it is considering legal action
404 Media
12:55 PM
Apple's latest supplier list shows the challenges the company is facing in diversifying its supply chain, as its Chinese suppliers grew from 48 to 52 in 2023
Nikkei Asia
11:30 AM
Sources: China's muted response to TikTok bill reflects the view that TikTok is of less strategic value than Huawei; China prefers TikTok US closure to sale
Wall Street Journal
10:50 AM
The NHTSA finds that Tesla's driver-assist features insufficiently keep drivers engaged in the task of driving, and links them to 100+ crashes and 10+ deaths
The Verge
10:00 AM
Apple removes three AI image generation apps from the App Store after a 404 Media probe found the apps advertised being able to create nonconsensual nude images
404 Media
8:40 AM
A look at Abu Dhabi-based AI startup G42, as sources say US intelligence officials fixated on CEO Xiao Peng ahead of its China divestment and Microsoft deal
Bloomberg
7:50 AM
The NHTSA closes a 2021 investigation into Tesla's Autopilot and opens a new probe to evaluate whether a December 2023 Autopilot recall fix is effective enough
TechCrunch
7:35 AM
The EU Commission says Shein will have to comply with DSA rules for handling content on its platform from August 2024, as the retailer has 45M+ users in the EU
Politico
7:20 AM
Sam Altman, Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, Jensen Huang, and others join a board for advising the DHS on deploying AI safely within US critical infrastructure
Wall Street Journal
4:35 AM
Thoma Bravo agrees to acquire Darktrace for ~$7.75 per share, a 20% premium on its April 25 closing price, valuing the UK-based cyber security company at ~$5B
Financial Times
2:13 AM
ByteDance says it has no plans to sell TikTok, responding to a report suggesting that the Chinese company is considering selling a majority stake in TikTok US
Wall Street Journal
Thursday, April 25, 2024
11:20 PM
TechInsights teardown: Huawei's Pura 70 uses a 7nm chip, similar to the Mate 60, and a Kirin 9010 processor, a newer version of the Mate 60 Pro's Kirin 9000s
Bloomberg
9:55 PM
Sources: the US is urging Japan, South Korea, and the Netherlands to tighten export controls to China, including stopping engineers from servicing Chinese fabs
Financial Times
9:25 PM
New rules that allow UK law enforcement agencies to seize, destroy, or transfer crypto holdings used for crime before making an arrest take effect
CoinDesk
7:50 PM
Former Twilio CEO and co-founder Jeff Lawson buys The Onion from G/O Media, via his company Global Tetrahedron; Lawson had long wanted to buy the satirical site
New York Times
7:30 PM
Consensys sues the US SEC over what it calls the agency's “unlawful seizure of authority over ETH”, after getting a Wells notice for its MetaMask wallet product
CoinDesk
6:00 PM
The CHIPS Act has been surprisingly successful so far, giving the US greater scope to meet critical infrastructure needs in the event of a crisis in East Asia
Financial Times
5:00 PM
In a subpoena, Elon Musk asked Helen Toner to hand over documents about her departure from OpenAI's board and how OpenAI decides when a technology achieves AGI
Bloomberg
4:55 PM
Roku reports Q1 revenue up 19% YoY to $882M, vs. $848.62M est., a net loss of $50.9M, compared to $193.6M YoY, and 81.6M active accounts, up 1.6M from Q4 2023
Variety
4:50 PM
Atlassian's co-CEO Scott Farquhar plans to step down on August 31, 2024, after 23 years at the company; he will remain a board member and a special advisor
Work Life
4:38 PM
Snap reports Q1 revenue up 21% YoY to $1.19B, vs. $1.12B est., DAUs up 10% YoY to 422M, vs. 420M est., and net loss down 7% YoY to $305M; SNAP jumps 25%+
CNBC
4:35 PM
Alphabet announces its first-ever dividend, $0.20 per share on June 17, and authorizes the repurchase of up to an extra $70B of its Class A and Class C shares
Reuters
4:30 PM
YouTube's Q1 ad revenue climbs 21% YoY to $8.1B, vs. $7.72B estimated, its highest Q1 total to date
Variety
4:26 PM
Microsoft reports Q3 Intelligent Cloud revenue up 21% YoY to $26.71B, vs. $26.26B est., with Azure and other cloud services revenue up 31% YoY
CNBC
4:21 PM
Intel reports Q1 revenue up 9% YoY to $12.72B, vs. $12.78B est., Data Center and AI up 5% to $3B, and Q2 revenue guidance below est.; INTC drops 9%+
CNBC
4:20 PM
Microsoft Q3: Windows OEM revenue up 11% YoY, devices revenue down 17% YoY, overall gaming revenue up 51% YoY, and Xbox content and services revenue up 62% YoY
The Verge
4:06 PM
Alphabet Q1: revenue up 15% YoY to $80.5B, net income up 57% to $23.7B, Google Cloud revenue up 28% to $9.6B, and headcount down 5%; GOOG jumps 10%+
Alphabet
4:03 PM
Microsoft Q3: revenue up 17% YoY to $61.9B, net income up 20% to $21.9B, Office Commercial revenue up 13%, LinkedIn revenue up 10%
Microsoft
3:55 PM
As ASML shareholders approve Christophe Fouquet as CEO, he faces a tricky balancing act to guide ASML, Europe's largest tech firm, through the US-China chip war
Reuters
3:35 PM
Nagomi Security, which has developed a proactive security and threat exposure management platform, emerges from stealth with a $23M Series A and a $7M seed
CTech
2:45 PM
Stripe will let customers accept crypto payments, starting with USDC on Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon, the first time it has taken crypto payments since 2018
TechCrunch
1:50 PM
Threads expands Hidden Words to let users filter out words, phrases, and emoji; Threads is also testing a way to mute notifications and controls for quote posts
TechCrunch
1:30 PM
Sources: ByteDance prefers to shut down TikTok US over selling the app if legal options fail, deeming TikTok's algorithms core to ByteDance's overall operations
Reuters
1:10 PM
Cloud data management startup Rubrik closes up 16% at $37 per share in its NYSE debut, after raising $752M at a $5.6B valuation
CNBC
12:25 PM
The FCC votes 3-2 to reinstate the US' net neutrality rules, expanding government oversight of ISPs and aiming to protect consumer access to the internet
New York Times
12:00 PM
Sublime, which monitors emails of companies and political campaigns to spot AI-generated phishing attacks, raised a $20M Series A, taking total funding to $30M
Forbes
11:10 AM
Movement Labs, which is building Movement L2, a layer-2 Ethereum blockchain based on the Move programming language, raised a $38M Series A led by Polychain
Fortune
10:25 AM
Sources: a Huawei-led consortium, backed by Chinese government funding, aims to compete with Nvidia by making high-bandwidth memory chips, used in GPUs, by 2026
The Information
9:15 AM
Sources: Microsoft is prioritizing security over new features to win back consumer trust, as it scrambles to respond to new attacks from Russia-linked hackers
The Verge
8:30 AM
Sources: ByteDance is exploring scenarios for selling a majority stake in TikTok US, preferably to a non-tech company, and without the recommendation algorithm
The Information
8:15 AM
Google Meet rolls out an update to let users seamlessly transfer calls between devices without hanging up via its Android, iOS, and web apps
9to5Google
6:30 AM
Garry's Mod is removing “all Nintendo related stuff” from its Steam Workshop, covering “20 years of uploads”, after receiving a takedown request from Nintendo
PC Gamer
6:05 AM
Interviews with 24+ current and ex-ByteDance staff: the Beijing-based company has tightened its grip on TikTok over the past two years, causing a culture clash
Financial Times
5:40 AM
A look at AI video startup Synthesia, whose avatars are more human-like and expressive than predecessors, raising concerns over the consequences of realistic AI
MIT Technology Review
5:15 AM
Franco-Italian chip company STMicro reports Q1 revenue down 18% YoY to $3.47B, below $3.63B est., and expects Q2 sales down 26% YoY to $3.2B, below $3.79B est.
Bloomberg
5:05 AM
The US awards Micron up to $6.1B under the CHIPS Act, to back an up to $125B investment to build a megafab in New York and a fab in Idaho over the next 20 years
Wall Street Journal
4:10 AM
Lenovo survey of 750 CIOs: 96% expect increased AI investment in the next 12 months and 42% don't expect to show return on AI investments for the next two years
Bloomberg
2:35 AM
A look at Saudi Arabia's spending blitz to become an AI superpower, which has put the kingdom in the middle of an escalating global competition over AI
New York Times
2:30 AM
Filing: Swiggy, which has a ~45.8% share of the Indian food delivery market, secures shareholder approval for a potential $1.25B IPO, slated for later in 2024
TechCrunch
2:25 AM
Sources: ByteDance executives have previously considered TikTok's global operations to be worth ~50% of the Chinese company's overall value, or above $100B
Wall Street Journal
1:40 AM
K Krithivasan, the CEO of Indian IT giant TCS, says there will be “minimal” need for call centers in as soon as one year, due to AI chatbots taking on the work
Financial Times
1:15 AM
On Meta's Q1 earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg said that Threads now has more than 150M MAUs, up from more than 130M in February 2024
Engadget
12:20 AM
Snowflake launches Arctic, an LLM optimized for enterprise tasks such as SQL generation, coding, and instruction following, under an Apache 2.0 license
VentureBeat
12:00 AM
Mark Zuckerberg says “tens of millions of people” have “tried” Meta AI but making money from generative AI in Meta's apps is likely going to take several years
The Verge
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
11:10 PM
TSMC unveils A16, chip manufacturing tech featuring nanosheet transistors with “backside power rails” meant for producing its ultra-advanced 1.6nm chips by 2026
Nikkei Asia
10:25 PM
Reddit says its Dynamic Product Ads, which use “shopping signals” to automatically show relevant ads to users, are entering public beta globally
Ars Technica
8:55 PM
SK Hynix reports Q1 revenue of ~$9B, more than doubling YoY, and ~$2B in operating income, above estimates of ~$1.3B and the biggest quarterly profit since 2022
Bloomberg
8:40 PM
Memo: Thrasio CEO Greg Greeley plans to resign and five other senior executives will “step down when Thrasio emerges from Chapter 11 in the coming weeks”
CNBC
7:45 PM
Hands-on with the Rabbit R1: a fun and funky AI device that feels pretty nice and does a solid job with basic AI questions, but the Rabbithole app is unfinished
The Verge
6:55 PM
Nooks, whose AI tools can analyze sales calls and summarize customer interactions, raised a $22M Series A led by Lachy Groom, bringing its total funding to $27M
VentureBeat
6:10 PM
AI coding assistant startup Augment emerges from stealth with a $227M Series B at a $977M post-money valuation, following a $25M Series A led by Sutter Hill
TechCrunch
5:50 PM
Cloud data management startup Rubrik priced its NYSE IPO at $32 per share, above its expected $28 to $31 range, raising $752M and valuing the company at $5.6B
CNBC
5:15 PM
Meta's stock drops 10%+ on weak Q2 revenue guidance and increasing FY 2024 capital expenditures from $30B-$37B to $35B-$40B due to AI infrastructure investments
CNBC
4:40 PM
Meta's Reality Labs Q1: revenue up 30% YoY to $440M, vs. $512.5M est., a $3.85B operating loss, vs. $4.31B est.; Reality Labs has lost $45B+ since 2020's end
CNBC
4:35 PM
IBM agrees to acquire HashiCorp, which helps companies manage cloud infrastructure, in a deal valuing HashiCorp at $6.4B and set to close by the end of 2024
Wall Street Journal
4:25 PM
IBM reports Q1 revenue up 1% YoY to $14.46B, vs. $14.55B est., software revenue up 5.5% YoY to $5.9B, and net income up 73% YoY to $1.6B; IBM drops 8%+
CNBC
4:08 PM
Meta reports Q1 revenue up 27% YoY to $36.46B, net income up 117% YoY to $12.37B, and family daily active people up 7% YoY to 3.24B on average for March 2024
Meta Investor Relations
4:05 PM
Cisco details a hacking campaign that penetrated multiple governments' networks using two zero-day flaws in its VPN and firewall Adaptive Security Appliances
Wired
3:55 PM
TikTok suspends the rewards program in TikTok Lite while the company tries to resolve EU concerns over the potentially addictive nature of Lite for children
Reuters
3:45 PM
US prosecutors charge two founders of Samourai Wallet, saying the crypto mixing service facilitated more than $100M in “money laundering and sanctions evasion”
Bloomberg
3:15 PM
Stripe says some of its products will be available to companies that are using other payments providers, and unveils new embedded finance features and AI tools
TechCrunch
2:50 PM
Worldcoin subsidiary World Assets plans to sell WLD tokens to meet the demand for orb-verified World IDs and support Worldcoin network growth; WLD drops 7%+
The Block
2:15 PM
WhatsApp rolls out passkey support on iOS, removing the need for users to deal with SMS one-time passcodes, six months after introducing the feature on Android
TechCrunch
1:30 PM
Apple researchers share OpenELM, a family of LLMs with 270M to 3B parameters, designed to run on-device, and pre-trained and fine-tuned on public datasets
VentureBeat
12:50 PM
Source: Cognition, which offers an AI coding assistant, raised $175M led by Founders Fund at a $2B valuation, a month after a Series A at a $350M valuation
The Information
12:30 PM
President Biden signs the ByteDance-TikTok divest-or-ban bill into law, after the Senate passed it by 79-18; the House passed the legislation 360-58 on April 20
The Verge
11:40 AM
Biden's re-election campaign plans to continue using TikTok for at least the next year, with “enhanced security measures”, to help “meet voters where they are”
NBC News
11:15 AM
Whether TikTok is banned or not, this is the end as we know it for the money-losing app, which may lose focus due to advertiser, creator, and staff uncertainty
Spyglass
11:00 AM
Klarna partners with Uber to power Uber and Uber Eats payments, adding its Pay Now option in the US, Germany, and Sweden, but not installment-based payments
CNBC
10:35 AM
Meta, Google, Snap, and Amazon all benefit from the US' TikTok ban; Mark Zuckerberg criticized TikTok's Chinese roots in 2019, part of Meta's broader campaign
Washington Post
10:25 AM
Nvidia acquires AI infrastructure orchestration and management service Run:ai, a source says for ~$700M; Run:ai, founded in 2018, had raised $118M to date
CTech
10:20 AM
Sources: Qualcomm is cheating on Snapdragon X Plus and Elite benchmarks given to OEMs and the press; the numbers are not achievable with the claimed settings
SemiAccurate
10:05 AM
How a tiny group of US lawmakers and aides wrote the TikTok divestment bill, hiding their efforts to avoid TikTok's lobbying, alongside the DOJ and White House
New York Times
9:40 AM
US companies racing to build data centers to serve AI demand is causing a shortage of parts, property, and power; cooling system lead times are now 5x longer
Wall Street Journal
9:15 AM
Qualcomm details its Snapdragon X Plus and X Elite chips; benchmarks from a demo suggest the chips match Apple's M3, Intel's Core Ultra 9, and AMD's Ryzen 9
The Verge
8:25 AM
Dublin-based Tines, which offers no-code automation tools for security teams, raised a $50M Series B extension, sources say at a near $600M post-money valuation
TechCrunch
7:35 AM
Hands-on with the Meta AI chatbot: fails at basic search queries, stinks at counting, excels at editing existing paragraphs, quickly creates images, and more
New York Times
7:10 AM
Berlin-based Parloa, which uses conversational AI to automate call center operations, raised a $66M Series B led by Altimeter, after a $21M Series A in 2023
TechCrunch
6:55 AM
Microsoft begins rolling out Windows 11 Start menu ads that show app “recommendations” from “a small set of curated developers”; users can disable the ads
The Verge
6:40 AM
The US DOJ argues Binance founder Changpeng Zhao should spend three years in prison and pay $50M for helping Binance violate sanctions and money laundering laws
CoinDesk
6:25 AM
Filings: in 2024, ByteDance and TikTok spent $7M+ combined on lobbying against the US' TikTok bill; AdImpact: TikTok spent $4.5M+ on TV and digital ads in 2023
CNBC
6:05 AM
SK Hynix plans to spend ~$3.86B to build a new DRAM chip facility in South Korea, starting construction this month and aiming for completion by November 2025
Reuters
5:50 AM
Biden signing the TikTok divestment bill starts a 270-day countdown for a sale or a US prohibition; sources say ByteDance sees a divestiture as a last resort
Bloomberg
5:35 AM
An interview with Apple Arcade Senior Director Alex Rofman: the service hit record highs on all “critical metrics” in 2023 and will feature Vision Pro games
The Guardian
5:20 AM
The US OFAC sanctions four Iranian nationals over cyberattacks on the US government, defense contractors, and private companies, and the DOJ unseals indictments
BleepingComputer
5:05 AM
An interview with Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors on criticism over mass layoffs and studio closures, splitting the company into three, rising debt, and more
GamesIndustry.biz
4:50 AM
How Palantir, which doesn't have a traditional salesforce, is using software boot camps to attract customers, hosting an average of about five per day in 2024
Bloomberg
4:20 AM
A look at the restaurant reservation ecosystem in New York City, where new apps have sprung up to help diners book a table at buzzy restaurants for a price
New Yorker
4:00 AM
A deep dive into how Bluesky is built, including its growth from three engineers to 12 in just over two years and its infrastructure move from AWS to on-prem
The Pragmatic Engineer
2:35 AM
Microsoft must take security seriously again by being transparent about breaches and no longer charging subscribers for core security and compliance features
Directions on Microsoft
2:30 AM
Paris-based FlexAI, which is developing an on-demand cloud service for AI training, emerges from stealth with $30M in seed funding
TechCrunch
2:25 AM
Mobvoi, a Google-backed Chinese smartwatch and AI company, fell as much as 22% in its first day of trading, after raising $41M in its Hong Kong IPO
Bloomberg
2:10 AM
Emails released as part of US v. Google show how Google's finance and ad teams led by Prabhakar Raghavan made Search worse to make the company more money
Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
2:00 AM
China approves the US listing of self-driving startup Pony.ai, which plans to sell up to 98M shares and list on Nasdaq or NYSE, signaling an easing crackdown
Bloomberg
1:20 AM
Huawei unveils Qiankun, a new business unit focused on providing self-driving systems, marking the company's latest push to become a major EV industry player
Reuters
12:40 AM
SenseTime's stock rises 30%+ after the company unveiled the latest version of its SenseNova AI model; its stock is down 80%+ since its 2021 Hong Kong IPO
Bloomberg
12:30 AM
Samsung starts mass production of its 9th-generation 286-layer 3D NAND memory chips, which increases data I/O speeds by 33% compared to 8th-gen 236-layer chips
Nikkei Asia
12:15 AM
Paris-based Payflows, whose automated financial management SaaS could be deployed on top of existing ERP systems, raised a €25M Series A led by Balderton
Sifted
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
10:50 PM
NYC-based Campus, which is building an online alternative to traditional community colleges, raised a $23M Series A extension, following a $29M Series A in 2023
TechCrunch
10:25 PM
Legal scholars discuss how the TikTok divestment bill could survive a First Amendment challenge and why the US will likely rely on a national security argument
Platformer
9:51 PM
Senate passes TikTok ban bill, sending it to President Biden's desk
The Verge
9:20 PM
Xaira Therapeutics, which aims to use AI models to find new drugs to treat diseases, emerged from stealth with $1B in commitments from Sequoia and others
Bloomberg
9:05 PM
As software gets better at labeling photos, CAPTCHA designers are adopting more difficult logic-based prompts to thwart nefarious bots
Wall Street Journal
7:00 PM
Block says it has finished developing its own 3nm bitcoin mining chip and is working through the design with a “leading global semiconductor foundry”
CNBC
6:55 PM
Letter: the US Department of Commerce is reviewing the national security implications of China's work in open-source RISC-V chip technology
Reuters
6:10 PM
Tesla teases a ridehailing function in its app and says its robotaxi will be “purpose-built”, suggesting it will be built from the ground up to be self-driving
The Verge
5:45 PM
Larry Ellison says Oracle is moving its world headquarters from Austin to Nashville to be closer to a major healthcare epicenter
CNBC
5:35 PM
Google delays deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome for the third time, pushing back its Q4 2024 plans to early 2025, after the UK CMA expressed concerns
Digiday
5:10 PM
OpenAI announces new enterprise-grade features for API customers, including enhanced security, administrative controls, and new Assistants API capabilities
VentureBeat
5:00 PM
The European Parliament adopts right-to-repair rules clarifying manufacturers' obligations to provide repair services, consumer access to spare parts, and more
PC Gamer
4:25 PM
Taser company Axon launches an AI tool that turns body cam audio into police reports to save time; critics worry it will introduce errors into crucial evidence
Forbes
4:17 PM
The US FTC bans noncompete clauses that restrict job switching, the first time in 50+ years that the FTC has issued a regulation mandating an economywide change
Wall Street Journal
3:45 PM
The US Senate advances the bill forcing a sale or ban of TikTok, preparing for a final vote on the bill as soon as Tuesday evening
Forbes
3:36 PM
Sources: IBM is nearing an acquisition of HashiCorp, which helps companies manage cloud infrastructure, in the coming days; HashiCorp's stock jumps 22%+
Wall Street Journal
3:00 PM
Apptopia: Threads is now consistently surpassing X in US DAUs, up to ~28M in April, after it first began eclipsing X in Dec. 2023, but X still has more US MAUs
Business Insider
2:50 PM
Interviews with 20+ current and former TSMC staff at its Arizona plant finds struggles over bridging Taiwanese and US norms, rigid hierarchies, and other issues
Rest of World
2:28 PM
Not only has GM sold driving data to insurers without telling users, but a GM app “bug” meant users who were enrolled in Smart Driver were told they weren't
New York Times
2:00 PM
Microsoft took down its WizardLM 2 LLM after it reportedly missed “toxicity testing”, but people already downloaded and re-uploaded it to GitHub, Hugging Face
404 Media
1:35 PM
Taylor Swift's new album smashed streaming records; Spotify says it had 300M+ streams on launch day and became 2024's most-streamed album within just 12 hours
Fortune
1:15 PM
Sources: Apple cut 2024 Vision Pro shipments to 400K to 450K units, compared to a 700K+ market consensus, and US demand has “fallen sharply beyond expectations”
Ming-Chi Kuo
1:05 PM
Meta's Ray-Ban Smart Glasses get support for video calling via WhatsApp and Messenger, hands-free Apple Music controls, and a new frame style
The Verge
12:45 PM
Sources: AI search engine Perplexity is raising $250M+ at a $2.5B to $3B valuation; previous backers NEA and IVP are among those looking to invest
TechCrunch
12:00 PM
Repairable laptop maker Framework Computer raised a $17M Series A-1, after an $18M Series A in early 2022, to expand into new product categories
TechCrunch
11:45 AM
Meta rolls out multimodal AI in early access for the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, mainly to help identify objects, translate signs, and write Instagram captions
The Verge
10:25 AM
Apple schedules a “special Apple Event” for May 7 at 10am ET, where new iPads are expected; rumors suggest the iPad Pro will get an OLED display and an M3 chip
The Verge
9:40 AM
As Congress' TikTok bill moves ahead, US lawmakers must show on what grounds they are forcing a sale or ban of the popular and culturally significant platform
Bloomberg
9:25 AM
Meta, Google, OpenAI, and other AI companies and organizations sign on to an initiative committing to guard against the creation and spread of AI-generated CSAM
Wall Street Journal
9:15 AM
Sonos updates its Android and iOS apps, rebuilding them to become more reliable, and plans to discontinue its Windows and macOS apps in favor of web apps
The Verge
9:10 AM
Perplexity AI, which offers an AI chatbot that summarizes search results, raised ~$63M led by Daniel Gross at a $1B+ valuation, up from $520M in January 2024
Bloomberg
8:25 AM
Analysis of pinyin keyboard apps from Baidu, Honor, Huawei, iFlytek, OPPO, Samsung, Tencent, Vivo, and Xiaomi: flaws reveal keystrokes to network eavesdroppers
The Citizen Lab
7:20 AM
Google fires ~20 more staff the company says participated in protests denouncing an Israeli cloud contract; an activist workers' group says the total is now 50+
Washington Post
7:05 AM
Sources: two SEC lawyers resigned after a US federal judge sanctioned and sharply rebuked the SEC for “gross abuse” of power in crypto platform DEBT Box's case
Bloomberg
6:45 AM
iPhone sales in China fell 19.1% YoY to a 15.7% share in Q1 2024; Vivo fell 0.4% YoY to 17.4%, Honor rose 11.5% YoY to 16.1%, and Huawei rose 69.7% YoY to 15.5%
Counterpoint Research
6:25 AM
Spotify Q1: revenue up 20% YoY to €3.6B, MAUs up 19% to 615M, vs. 617.9M est., subscribers up 14% to 239M, and a €168M operating income; SPOT closes up 11.41%
Bloomberg
6:20 AM
Adobe adds AI tools powered by its new Firefly Image 3 model to Photoshop, including Reference Image to inspire the AI's output, available in beta on desktop
The Verge
5:55 AM
Kaiko: in the past year, Binance's bitcoin trading share outside the US fell from 81.3% to 55.3%, OKX's rose from 3% to 7.3%, and Bybit's rose from 2% to 9.3%
Bloomberg
5:40 AM
Analysis: 10 Chinese entities acquired advanced Nvidia chips embedded in Supermicro, Dell, and Gigabyte products from November 20, 2023, to February 28, 2024
Reuters
5:25 AM
Elon Musk criticizes Australia's order to remove a video of a religious leader's stabbing, after the eSafety commissioner took X to court and the PM weighed in
Wall Street Journal
5:11 AM
French electrical equipment maker Legrand agrees to acquire Dutch health software company Enovation from PE firm Main Capital Partners, sources say for €500M+
Bloomberg
4:45 AM
Microsoft debuts Phi-3 Mini, a small 3.8B-parameter model about as capable as GPT-3.5, and plans Phi-3 Small and Phi-3 Medium models with 7B and 14B parameters
The Verge
4:15 AM
A look at Jeff Yass' Susquehanna International Group, which has a ~15% ByteDance stake worth ~$40B and has invested $3.5B+ into 350+ China startups since 2005
Financial Times
2:25 AM
Q&A with BCG CEO Christoph Schweizer, who says the consulting firm expects 20% of its 2024 revenue and 40% of its 2026 revenue to come via helping integrate AI
Financial Times
12:30 AM
Revolut plans an ad sales push, expects to derive a “proper chunk” of its revenue from targeted ads, and hires an ex-TikTok executive to lead its media strategy
Financial Times
Monday, April 22, 2024
8:25 PM
Nominal, which offers tools for data analysis, testing, and more to startups building advanced hardware like drones, emerges from stealth with $27.5M in funding
Bloomberg
7:30 PM
TabaPay, which offers instant payment services, agrees to acquire assets of banking-as-a-service startup Synapse, after Synapse filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
TechCrunch
6:10 PM
Amazon ends drone deliveries in Lockeford, California, which began in 2022, and plans to expand them to Tolleson, Arizona, in 2024 and other US regions in 2025
CNBC
5:50 PM
HR software company Rippling raised a $200M Series F led by Coatue at a $13.5B valuation, up from $11.25B in March 2023, and a separate $590M tender offer
TechCrunch
4:35 PM
Newsletter service Ghost says it plans to add ActivityPub support in 2024; rival service Buttondown also plans ActivityPub support
The Verge
3:55 PM
Source: ALPHV breached UnitedHealth's Change Healthcare network on February 12, nine days before the ransomware attack; the company paid a ransom to the hackers
Wall Street Journal
2:30 PM
Pomelo, a “send now, pay later” startup that lets users in the US send money in the form of credit to people in the Philippines, raised a $35M Series A
TechCrunch
1:00 PM
Meta opens its VR OS, now called Horizon OS, to third parties, and says Asus and Lenovo plan Horizon OS-compatible headsets; Meta plans an Xbox branded Quest
CNET
12:30 PM
Cloud data management company Informatica says it is not currently in acquisition talks, after Salesforce's reported interest in a ~$10B deal; INFA falls 8%+
CNBC
12:00 PM
The EU opens another TikTok investigation to assess whether TikTok Lite's design, which financially rewards users for watching or liking videos, is “addictive”
TechCrunch
10:55 AM
Russia sentences Meta spokesperson Andy Stone in absentia to six years for “publicly defending terrorism”; Russia designates Meta as an extremist organization
Reuters
10:25 AM
Q&A with Discord CEO Jason Citron on creating a more private internet, developers, community, gaming origins, moderation, layoffs, Loom video meetings, and more
The Verge
9:30 AM
Stanford Internet Observatory: AI images could overwhelm federally authorized CSAM clearinghouse CyberTipline, which gets tens of millions of tips per year
Washington Post
8:00 AM
UK-based users sue Grindr in the UK for allegedly sharing personal data, such as their HIV status, with ad companies like Localytics from May 2018 to April 2020
Bloomberg
7:30 AM
A profile of Aleksanteri Kivimäki, a hacker wunderkind with a mean streak, who stood trial over a ransomware attack on Finnish psychotherapy provider Vastaamo
Bloomberg
6:35 AM
Researchers: files on a misconfigured North Korean server suggest local animators worked on upcoming Prime Video and Max TV shows, possibly via a Chinese front
Wired
6:10 AM
African tech VC TLcom Capital has raised $154M for a new fund, attracting US and European investments; Africa-focused VCs have raised $655M+ since November 2023
Financial Times
5:45 AM
Japan's FTC: Google blocked Yahoo Japan from tech needed to receive targeted ad revenue from mobile searches from 2015 to 2022; Alphabet changed its practices
Bloomberg
5:30 AM
A US judge sentences HeadSpin founder Manish Lachwani to 18 months and fines him $1M for inflating financials; HeadSpin raised $117M and hit a $1.1B valuation
New York Times
4:15 AM
Swedish game developer Embracer Group plans to split into three publicly traded companies, focused on tabletop, indie, and AAA games; EMBRAC-B closed up 8.61%
Bloomberg