Wednesday, December 4, 2024

12:45 AM
Salesforce says online Cyber Monday sales grew 3% YoY to $49.7B globally and just 2% YoY to $12.8B in the US; Adobe says US online sales grew 7.3% YoY to $13.3B
TechCrunch
12:25 AM
A look at ex-CEO Pat Gelsinger's history at Intel, the setbacks he faced in trying to turn the company around, and why investors may have lost confidence in him
The Verge

Tuesday, December 3, 2024

10:20 PM
Ubisoft will shut down its free-to-play shooter XDefiant, with servers remaining on until June 3, 2025, and plans to cut ~277 people from the production team
Polygon
9:15 PM
AWS introduces Amazon Aurora DSQL, a new serverless, distributed SQL database that promises high availability, strong consistency, and PostgreSQL compatibility
TechCrunch
7:40 PM
Bluesky COO Rose Wang says the social network is not “a US-centric, left-leaning app” and that Bluesky plans to launch a subscription service by the end of 2024
Bloomberg
7:10 PM
Sources: Meta's internal coding tool, Metamate, incorporates OpenAI's GPT-4 alongside Llama to make the tool more useful for developers and other Meta staff
Fortune
6:55 PM
Vodka maker Stoli says an August 2024 ransomware attack contributed to the bankruptcy filing of its US arm, amid its ongoing issues with the Russian government
The Record
6:15 PM
Sources: Microchip Technology is pausing its application for $162M in CHIPS Act grants, as it plans to close a factory in Arizona, affecting ~500 employees
Bloomberg
5:40 PM
Trade business software provider ServiceTitan offers an IPO range of $52 to $57 per share and plans to buy back the shares of its nonconvertible preferred stock
TechCrunch
5:20 PM
OpenAI hires its first CMO, Kate Rouch, who joined Coinbase in August 2021 to lead global marketing and PR and previously spent 11+ years at Meta as a VP
CNBC
5:10 PM
Meta is seeking proposals from nuclear power developers, as it plans to add 1 to 4 gigawatts of new US nuclear generation capacity starting in the early 2030s
Reuters
4:45 PM
Salesforce reports Q3 revenue up 8% YoY to $9.44B, vs. $9.34B est., net income up 25% YoY to $1.5B, and gives Q4 guidance above est.; CRM jumps 10%+ after hours
CNBC
4:40 PM
Walmart closes its $2.3B cash acquisition of TV maker Vizio, saying the deal will let it offer new ways for advertisers to reach customers via Walmart Connect
Variety
4:10 PM
The FBI and CISA give US telcos best practices to harden their systems against attacks, as senior US officials say Salt Typhoon hackers remain on their networks
Axios
3:50 PM
AWS unveils Nova models for Bedrock, including Micro, Lite, Pro, and Premier for text generation, and Canvas for image generation and Reel for video generation
TechCrunch
3:45 PM
Celsius Network founder and former CEO Alex Mashinsky pleaded guilty in a US court to commodities fraud and a fraudulent scheme to manipulate the price of CEL
Reuters
3:10 PM
Amazon says third-party services like Zoom, Asana, and others will soon be able to integrate Amazon Q Business, and gives Q Developer a wide range of updates
TechCrunch
1:55 PM
Apple says it's using Amazon's Trainium and Graviton chips to serve search services and is evaluating if Trainium2 chips can be used to pretrain its AI models
CNBC
1:30 PM
AWS launches Automated Reasoning checks to combat AI hallucinations, and Model Distillation, a tool to transfer the capabilities of a large model to a small one
TechCrunch
1:10 PM
Cameo launches CameoX, allowing creators to self-enroll and expanding beyond A-list celebrities, after piloting the app since May 2023 and adding 31K creators
TechCrunch
1:05 PM
AWS announces Project Rainier, a cluster with “hundreds of thousands” of Trainium2 chips, slated for 2025, that Anthropic aims to use to train and run AI models
Wall Street Journal
12:35 PM
AWS announces the general availability of its Trainium2 chips, and EC2 Trn2 UltraServers, which feature 64 Trainium2 chips, and slates Trainium3 for late 2025
TechCrunch
11:10 AM
FTC bans location data providers Gravy Analytics and subsidiary Venntel as well as Mobilewalla from using or selling data tied to sensitive locations and more
404 Media
9:36 AM
Sources: Intel has started evaluating outsiders to be CEO, including former board member Lip-Bu Tan, who left in August 2024 after clashing with Pat Gelsinger
Reuters
9:15 AM
Generative AI startup Yurts, which has contracts with the US Army, Air Force, and others, raised a $40M Series B led by XYZ, taking its total raised to $58.35M
TechCrunch
8:56 AM
TikTok says it removed a network covertly campaigning for Calin Georgescu, whose shock victory in Romania's November 24 election threw the country into crisis
Bloomberg
8:11 AM
Nick Clegg says Mark Zuckerberg is keen to play “an active role” in Trump admin tech policy debates and Meta “overdid it a bit” when moderating pandemic content
Financial Times
6:55 AM
The CFPB proposes limiting data brokers' ability to sell Americans' personal and financial info, after the National Public Data breach discovered in April 2024
The Verge
6:40 AM
A US law firm files an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft with the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal over how it charges users who buy services that rival Azure
Wall Street Journal
6:15 AM
China bans shipments to the US of several “dual-use” minerals and metals used in chipmaking and military applications, in a retaliation to new US chips curbs
Financial Times
5:40 AM
Internal docs: in early 2021, Google's lawyers, policy team, and more worried that its $1.2B Project Nimbus deal with Israel may enable human rights violations
New York Times
5:20 AM
German defense tech startup Helsing unveils its first AI attack drone, which can fly up to 100km and re-identify and engage targets without a data connection
Financial Times
4:20 AM
Indonesia's OJK: ~137M citizens owed 66T rupiah (~$4.1B) in outstanding digital lending debt in September 2024, up from 18.6M users owing 13.16T rupiah in 2019
Nikkei Asia
3:55 AM
Early tests show Perplexity's AI shopping agent, which lets users make purchases in its app, sometimes takes hours to process purchases or fails to buy items
TechCrunch
2:30 AM
Preqin data shows the US accounted for 83% of VC funding in G7 economies over the past decade; OECD data shows AI VC funding in China is second only to the US
Financial Times
1:50 AM
Sources and docs: troubled IT firm Atos is largely responsible for issues delaying the rollout of the EU's automated biometric Entry/Exit border system to 2025
Bloomberg
1:25 AM
An email and documents reveal Google's Project Nimbus deal with Israel isn't subject to Google's general ToS, but an “adjusted” ToS drafted by Google and Israel
The Intercept
1:00 AM
Chinese government data: China had 230M generative AI users at June 2024's end; Ernie Bot led with an 11.5% share, followed by ChatGPT at 7% and Gemini at 3.8%
South China Morning Post
12:50 AM
The NCSC says the UK faces a “widening gap” in its ability to fight cyber threats, and “severe” incidents handled by the agency tripled to 12 in the past year
Financial Times

Monday, December 2, 2024

11:25 PM
Real estate broker and reality TV personality Ryan Serhant raised $45M for his app S.MPLE, which lets real estate brokers automate parts of their sales process
Fortune
11:10 PM
Pat Gelsinger's retirement opens the door for Intel to consider fresh deal options, including splitting factory and product-design divisions and selling Altera
Bloomberg
11:00 PM
Hong Kong- and Singapore-based KPay, which offers financial management tools to merchants and SMBs, raised a $55M Series A led by Apis Partners
TechCrunch
8:40 PM
Delivery Hero's food delivery app Glovo says it will move to an employment-based model for its drivers in Spain, and anticipates a €100M earnings hit in 2025
Associated Press
7:10 PM
Microchip Technology plans to close a plant in Tempe, Arizona, in the September 2025 quarter, affecting about 500 employees, and lowers its Q3 revenue forecast
Reuters
6:55 PM
Threads is rolling out a search update globally over the next few weeks that will let users filter searches by “After date,” “Before date,” and “From profile”
The Verge
6:40 PM
Japanese crypto exchange DMM Bitcoin shuts down and plans to move accounts and assets to crypto firm SBI VC Trade by March 2025, after a $300M+ hack in May 2024
The Record
5:25 PM
ChatGPT refuses to state some names, possibly due to digital privacy requests or a post-prompt handling bug; OpenAI may have fixed the viral “David Mayer” issue
TechCrunch
4:15 PM
AWS details updates to its data centers, including liquid cooling for AI servers, more simplified electrical and mechanical designs for server racks, and more
TechCrunch
3:40 PM
RTFKT, the digital wearables NFT startup Nike acquired in 2021, is shutting down by the end of January 2025; DefiLlama: RTFKT brought in nearly $50M in earnings
The Block
3:15 PM
Twitch creator Kai Cenat completed a “subathon”, streaming 24 hours per day for 30 days, breaking Twitch's record with ~727,700 subscribers in November 2024
CNBC
2:05 PM
How generative AI may bridge current computing paradigms to future innovations, especially in wearables, which will benefit from context-aware user interfaces
Stratechery
12:50 PM
World Labs, founded by AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, gives an “early preview” of its first project, an AI system that can generate game-like, 3D scenes from an image
TechCrunch
11:20 AM
Sources: Intel's board gave CEO Pat Gelsinger the option to retire or be removed after the board lost confidence in his plans to turn the company around
Bloomberg
9:25 AM
Super Micro says an external review found no evidence of wrongdoing, and plans to hire a new CFO, chief compliance officer, and general counsel; SMCI jumps 28%+
Bloomberg
9:15 AM
Toronto-based AI chip designer Tenstorrent raised a $700M Series D from Jeff Bezos, Samsung, and more at a ~$2.6B valuation and claims nearly $150M in contracts
Bloomberg
8:40 AM
Intel says CEO Pat Gelsinger retired and left its board on December 1, and names CFO David Zinsner and Client Computing Group GM Michelle Holthaus as co-CEOs
TechCrunch
8:20 AM
New York-based Upwind, which sells tools to secure cloud infrastructure, raised a $100M Series A led by Craft Ventures at a $900M post-money valuation
TechCrunch
7:50 AM
AWS CEO Matt Garman kicks off his first re:Invent event by discussing upcoming “real, needle-moving” announcements, no end for the AI race, Anthropic, and more
Wall Street Journal
7:25 AM
Amsterdam-based Nebius, which rebranded itself from Russian internet giant Yandex and offers cloud services for AI, raised $700M from Nvidia, Accel, and others
Bloomberg
6:55 AM
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar says OpenAI is weighing an ads model, but plans to be “thoughtful”; sources and LinkedIn analysis: OpenAI hired Meta and Google ad talent
Financial Times
6:40 AM
Social media videos showing layoffs are now commonplace, especially by younger workers, forcing companies to face the spotlight; TikTok's #layoff has 32K+ posts
Financial Times
6:15 AM
CoinGecko: Ripple-linked XRP's market cap passes $137B to become the third-largest cryptocurrency, up from less than $30B on November 5 when Donald Trump won
Bloomberg
5:45 AM
OpenWrt releases the $89+ OpenWrt One router, a “hacker-friendly device” with open-source firmware, two Ethernet ports, three USB ports, and dual-band Wi-Fi 6
Tom's Hardware
5:16 AM
The US adds new HBM chip transfer restrictions for China, the fourth attempt in three years to curb China, and adds 140 Chinese companies to its trade blacklist
Wall Street Journal
4:40 AM
Bengaluru-based Swiggy expands 10-minute food delivery service Bolt to 400+ Indian cities and towns, and says it has partnered with 40K+ restaurants, like KFC
TechCrunch
4:25 AM
AWS launches Data Transfer Terminal to let customers upload their data to AWS Cloud by plugging in their storage devices at a set of physical locations
TechCrunch
4:10 AM
An interview with Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton on the company's London listing, establishing a sales department, single-board device assembly in Wales, and more
Financial Times
2:35 AM
Inside Helsinki's Slush 2024, a startup event described as a mix of TED Talks, Eurovision, and Shark Tank, attended by ~13K people, with LPs up 46% YoY to 350+
Bloomberg
2:30 AM
The UN's ITU and the International Cable Protection Committee announce a 40-member global advisory body to support the resilience of submarine telecom cables
The Register
2:25 AM
Analysis: US spot bitcoin ETFs now hold 1M+ bitcoin, or ~5% of the current total and about as many bitcoin that have been frozen in Satoshi Nakamoto's wallet
Bloomberg
2:20 AM
South Korean AI chip maker Rebellions completes its merger with Sapeon Korea, SK Telecom's AI chip subsidiary; Rebellions values the merged entity at ~$929M
The Korea Herald
2:05 AM
Analysis: US spot bitcoin and ether ETFs logged record monthly net inflows in November, $6.5B and $1.1B, respectively, buoyed by Trump's vow for low regulation
Bloomberg
1:20 AM
London-based 9fin, a data provider for debt markets, raised a $50M Series B led by Highland Europe, sources say at a ~$500M valuation on current ARR of ~$25M
Financial Times
1:10 AM
Sources: some tech executives, including Sam Altman, worry that Elon Musk's new proximity to Donald Trump could supersize rivalries in ways that favor Musk
Wall Street Journal
1:00 AM
AWS announces Security Incident Response, a service to help clients prepare for, respond to, and recover from cybersecurity events, including ransomware attacks
TechCrunch
12:40 AM
AWS adds new generative AI features to Amazon Connect, which helps companies run their contact centers, including letting Lex-powered assistants use Amazon Q
SiliconANGLE

Sunday, December 1, 2024

11:55 PM
Sources: BYD's contract-manufacturing business, which has 10K+ engineers and ~100K employees dedicated to Apple's supply chain, now assembles 30%+ of all iPads
Wall Street Journal
10:25 PM
VC firm Plural's co-founder says Europe, which has yet to create a $1T company, must start supporting experienced founders and start giving “audacious capital”
Financial Times
2:55 PM
Meta says it will require advertisers globally to get verified before running financial service ads targeting Australian users, starting in early February 2025
The Guardian
1:40 PM
Q&A with Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark on Nokia's mobile phone failure, moving from mobile and fixed networks into data centers and defense, fine-tuning 5G, and more
Bloomberg
9:55 AM
How Indigenous engineers are using AI to preserve Native American languages, building speech recognition models for 200+ endangered languages in North America
NBC News
7:05 AM
A profile of SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, who made a highly risky bet to acquire debt-ridden Hynix in 2012 to form SK Hynix, which is now valued at ~$80B
Bloomberg
2:00 AM
How the UK, Australia, the US, South Korea, and the EU deal with explicit AI deepfakes; legislation around the world is scattered and remains largely untested
Financial Times
1:45 AM
A look at Death Clock, an app that claims to predict the user's likely date of death by using an AI model trained on a dataset of 1,200+ life expectancy studies
Bloomberg
1:25 AM
Star Citizen, a video game in development since 2012, has now raised $750M+ in crowdfunding, and its single-player spin-off Squadron 42 won't be out until 2026
TheGamer
1:05 AM
Some UK policymakers worry whether Elon Musk will complicate UK-US ties, as his diatribes against the Labour government extend well beyond tech and free speech
Financial Times
12:15 AM
NPCI and RBI data: India's UPI recorded 10B+ merchant transactions in October 2024, up 53% YoY, while credit cards saw a 35% YoY growth in transactions to 433M
The Economic Times

Saturday, November 30, 2024

9:05 PM
A look at AI-enabled dashcam tech being developed by Samsara, Motive, Nauto, and others to detect fatigue and deliver real-time audio alerts to drowsy drivers
IEEE Spectrum
7:10 PM
Ethereum faces questions over its direction as its reliance on Layer-2 blockchains grows, leading to lower fee collection, while rivals like Solana gain ground
Bloomberg
3:52 PM
Elon Musk files for an injunction to halt OpenAI's for-profit transition, alleging that OpenAI is discouraging investors from backing rivals like xAI, and more
TechCrunch
3:30 PM
Baidu receives a license to test its Apollo Go robotaxi service in Hong Kong, Baidu's first known permit for autonomous vehicle testing outside mainland China
Reuters
2:15 PM
Bluesky requires parody, satire, and fan accounts to label themselves as such, after a researcher found 44 of its 100 most-followed accounts have a doppelganger
Engadget
1:10 PM
OpenAI says it plans to build data centers in parts of the US Midwest and Southwest; sources: OpenAI is spending $5B+ a year and is “not close to breaking even”
Financial Times
12:15 PM
Salesforce says online Black Friday sales grew 5% YoY to $74.4B globally, including $17.5B in the US, up 7% YoY; Adobe: US online sales grew 10.2% YoY to $10.8B
TechCrunch
11:10 AM
Ex-Meta crypto chief David Marcus says there was no legal or regulatory angle for the government or regulators to stop Libra and “it was 100% a political kill”
@davidmarcus
9:50 AM
Google, which joined the Open Cloud Coalition, denies its offer of €100M+ in Cloud credits to CISPE is linked to CISPE's antitrust complaint against Microsoft
The Register
7:35 AM
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia says generative AI tools helped it lower fraud by 30% and its AI messaging app cut call center wait times by 40% in 2024
Bloomberg
2:30 AM
How Tony Sayegh, head of public affairs at a major TikTok investor and an official in the first Trump admin, led the effort to win Trump's support for TikTok
Wall Street Journal

Friday, November 29, 2024

11:35 PM
Salesforce says online Thanksgiving day sales grew 6% YoY to $33.6B globally and 8% YoY to $8.1B in the US; Adobe says US online sales grew 9% YoY to $6.1B
TechCrunch
10:20 PM
A look at the DOJ's proposed remedies in the Google Search antitrust case, and why experts say forcing a Chrome sale may not be biggest threat to Google's power
The Verge
8:20 PM
Q&A with cognitive scientist Gary Marcus on technical limitations and moral inadequacies of LLMs, constructing a regulatory framework for AI, and more
Wall Street Journal
6:30 PM
How Amazon Haul, a storefront for fashion, home, and other items at “ultralow prices”, reflects the “haul” shopping phenomenon popularized by YouTube and TikTok
New York Times
4:25 PM
MicroStrategy is now the largest corporate holder of bitcoins, owning nearly 2% of them, and its stock is up 450%+ in 2024, as it continues its risky BTC scheme
Financial Times
3:15 PM
Major Canadian news organizations, including Torstar, Postmedia, and CBC, sue OpenAI, alleging breach of copyright and terms of use
Toronto.com
2:10 PM
Report: Russia arrested notorious cybercriminal Mikhail Matveev for developing malware and running hacking groups; US DOJ filed charges against him in 2023
BleepingComputer
12:40 PM
Samsung Galaxy S24 FE review: reasonable price, telephoto camera, and a big screen, but the screen isn't that sharp and other ~$500 phones offer more value
The Verge
11:15 AM
Bluesky replies now default to appear by “hotness”, which weights liked replies that are more recent more heavily; some say this rewards clout farming like X
Mashable
10:36 AM
Sources: ByteDance execs fear that launching its own AI models, or apps powered by the models, in the US could give lawmakers another excuse to attack TikTok
The Information
9:30 AM
Sources: European regulators rebuked Wise in 2022 after finding it lacked proof of address for hundreds of thousands of customers, forcing it into remediation
Financial Times
7:40 AM
Sources: Meta plans to build a fiber-optic subsea cable that is 40,000+ kilometers long and extends around the world, a project that could cost more than $10B
TechCrunch
7:15 AM
Japan allocates another $9.9B to boost its chip, quantum computing, and AI endeavors, with an undisclosed amount going to chip startup Rapidus
Bloomberg
5:40 AM
Didi reports Q3 revenue up 5% YoY to $7.44B and a net income of $128M, its second straight quarterly profit, as the company prepares for a Hong Kong IPO
Bloomberg
4:55 AM
Chinese food delivery giant Meituan reports Q3 revenue up 22.4% YoY to $12.9B, net profit up 3x YoY to $1.78B, and core delivery business up 20.2% YoY to $9.57B
Reuters
4:05 AM
Sequoia's former China unit HongShan is pushing for deals in Europe and North Asia, as it struggles to deploy $9B due to a weak domestic market and US controls
Financial Times
1:05 AM
Delivery Hero's Talabat, one of the largest food delivery services in the UAE, sets its Dubai IPO price at the top end of its range and plans to raise ~$2B
Reuters