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Jessica Toonkel / Wall Street Journal: Streamers court YouTubers for new shows or spinoffs; sources: Amazon made $100M+ in profit on Beast Games and Netflix held talks with Dude Perfect for a series — As ‘Beast Games’ boasts profit and gears up for more seasons, streamers search for similar success — YouTube creators are beginning to get their Hollywood moment.
Scharon Harding / Ars Technica: Email: Amazon says Echo users won't be able to set their devices to process Alexa requests locally, as new generative AI features need processing in the cloud — In an email sent to customers today, Amazon said that Echo users will no longer be able to set their devices to process Alexa requests locally …
Bloomberg: Sources: Ubisoft explores selling a stake in a new entity holding IP like Assassin's Creed to investors including Tencent, at a higher valuation than Ubisoft — - Tencent among firms invited to bid for stake in new entity — Unit to hold some core Ubisoft IP, including Assassin's Creed
Ryan Christoffel / 9to5Mac: Delaying a revamped Siri may be embarrassing for Apple, but rushing an update with half-baked features could have created a real crisis for the company — Apple's recent Siri delays have stirred up a mess of bad press, and reportedly led to an all-hands meeting where an exec called the affair “ugly and embarrassing.”
Ryan Lawler / Axios: Klarna reports 2024 revenue up 24% YoY to $2.81B, a net profit of $21M, compared with a net loss of $244M a year ago, and 93M active consumers — Klarna, the Swedish buy now, pay later giant, on Friday filed for a U.S. IPO. — Why it matters: It's the first big consumer fintech to test …
Bloomberg: Klarna files for a US IPO, with plans to list on the NYSE under KLAR, seeking to raise at least $1B and reportedly targeting a valuation of more than $15B — Klarna Group Plc filed publicly for a US initial public offering in what could be one of the year's biggest financial company listings.
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC: Block says it is expanding consumer lending through Cash App Borrow after obtaining FDIC approval to issue loans out of its subsidiary Square Financial Services — With its stock down more than 30% this year and revenue growth slowing, Jack Dorsey's Block is going bigger in lending.
Dan Milmo / The Guardian: The UK held a hearing for Apple's legal battle with the government over providing a backdoor in its Advanced Data Protection service, without the media present — Media organisations including the Guardian and the BBC fail to gain entry to proceedings — A hearing in Apple's legal battle …
Tina Nguyen / The Verge: Rep. Jim Jordan subpoenas 16 companies, including Apple, Meta, and OpenAI, over alleged Biden administration pressure to use AI to “censor lawful speech” — The ‘free speech’ investigation goes hunting at Apple, OpenAI, and 14 other companies.
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC: White House memo: David Sacks sold $200M+ worth of digital asset-related investments personally and through Craft Ventures before starting his government job — David Sacks, the Trump administration's AI and crypto czar, sold over $200 million worth of digital asset-related investments personally …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources: an exec overseeing Siri told staff the delays were ugly, made worse by Apple publicly promoting the new features, and it's unclear when they will ship — Apple Inc.'s top executive overseeing its Siri virtual assistant told staff that delays to key features have been ugly and embarrassing …
Abner Li / 9to5Google: Google says Gemini will replace Google Assistant on Android phones this year, except on phones that run Android 9 or earlier and don't have at least 2 GB of RAM — Just over a year after its launch and various feature parity updates, Gemini is set to replace Google Assistant on Android phones later in 2025.
Yohan Yun / Cointelegraph: Hong Kong-based RedotPay, which aims to enable cryptocurrency use in everyday transactions, raised a $40M Series A led by Lightspeed — Direct crypto payments are gaining traction across Asia, with stablecoins emerging as natural payment rails for major economies. — Total views
Scharon Harding / Ars Technica: Reddit will allow users to hide ads from their feeds from an advertiser account for “at least a year”; some users report seeing a daily limit for hiding ads — Reddit has shown a growing commitment to promoting ads on its platform, especially since going public a year ago.
Joseph Menn / Washington Post: Morgan Marquis-Boire, the once-celebrated hacker accused of sexual assaults in 2017, is the undisclosed co-founder of crypto intelligence firm Unciphered — Employees said they weren't told that the co-founder of Unciphered was a once-celebrated spyware foe who dropped out of the public eye after being accused of sexual assault.
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch: The DOJ says Rostislav Panev, who is accused of being a key developer for the LockBit ransomware gang, has been extradited from Israel to the US — Rostislav Panev, a 51-year-old dual Russian-Israeli national, who is accused of being a key developer for the notorious LockBit ransomware gang …
Laya Neelakandan / CNBC: DocuSign stock jumps 14%+ after reporting Q4 revenue up 9% YoY to $776M, subscription revenue up 9% YoY, and a $83.5M net income, up from $27.2M a year ago — WATCH NOW — Docusign rose more than 14% after reporting stronger-than-expected earnings after the bell Thursday.
Debby Wu / Bloomberg: China announces new rules requiring companies to label AI-generated material, either explicitly or via metadata, starting September 1 — China joined the EU and US in rolling out new regulation to control disinformation by requiring labeling of synthetic content online.
The Information: Sources: DeepSeek and its hedge fund parent, High-Flyer Capital, forbid some R&D staff from traveling abroad freely, asking them to hand in their passports — DeepSeek's sudden rise to global stardom has earned the startup a status akin to national treasure in China.
Reuters: Sources: Russia is using bitcoin, ether, and stablecoins such as Tether in its oil trade with China and India to skirt Western sanctions — Russia is using cryptocurrencies in its oil trade with China and India to skirt Western sanctions, according to four sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
Politico: European authorities raided 21 addresses, arrested several people, and sealed two offices in the EU Parliament, as part of a spiraling bribery probe into Huawei — Chinese tech giant's offices raided and Parliament offices sealed in case that echoes the 2022 Qatargate investigation.
Kathrin Hille / Financial Times: Foxconn CEO Young Liu says “the attitude and the approach” of the US government toward tariffs has become a “big headache” for companies like Apple and Amazon — World's biggest contract electronics manufacturer highlights disruption caused by trade policy to groups including Apple and Amazon
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: The GSMA announces that the latest RCS standard now includes E2EE, which will enable encrypted RCS messaging between platforms like Android and iOS — 'We will add support for end-to-end encrypted RCS messages to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS in future software updates.'
Danny Park / The Block: A US bankruptcy court lets 3AC raise its claim against FTX from $120M to $1.53B, despite FTX's objection that it was too late; 3AC originally filed in June 2023 — - A U.S. bankruptcy court allowed 3AC to expand its claims against FTX from $120 million to $1.53 billion.
Kate Park / TechCrunch: SoftBank plans to buy a former Sharp LCD panel plant in Osaka for ~$676M, sources say to turn it into a data center for jointly developing AI agents with OpenAI — SoftBank is marching ahead on its ambitions to build out a major AI operation in its home market of Japan …
Reuters: Foxconn reports Q4 profit down 13% YoY to ~$1.41B, missing the ~$1.65B estimate, its first quarterly drop since Q2 2023, but forecasts strong Q1 2025 growth — Taiwan's Foxconn (2317.TW),the world's largest contract electronics maker, said on Friday that solid demand from its tech clients …
Financial Times: Two activist groups launch a legal challenge against the UK's bid to force Apple to create a data “backdoor”, arguing it would breach consumers' privacy rights — Privacy International and Liberty's complaint adds pressure on government as iPhone maker fights demand in court
Reuters: DeepSeek sparked an AI arms race among Chinese asset managers, shaking up China's $10T fund management industry as firms expand AI research and adopt DeepSeek — Chinese hedge fund High-Flyer's use of artificial intelligence in trading markets has spurred an AI arms race among mainland asset managers …
Nikkei Asia: Sources: SoftBank plans to buy a former Sharp LCD panel plant in Osaka for ~$676M and convert it into a data center for jointly developing AI agents with OpenAI — Investment in Japan facility, one of country's largest, could near $7bn — TOKYO/OSAKA — SoftBank Corp. plans to use …
Zijing Wu / Financial Times: Sources: DeepSeek has shown little intention to further commercialize its tech in the near term, instead focusing on model development and building AGI — Chinese start-up to concentrate resources on building machines with humanlike cognitive capabilities — Chinese artificial intelligence start …
Financial Times: Terabase, which is developing robots and automated systems using AI to rapidly build solar farms, raised a $130M Series C led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 — Also in today's newsletter, the pipeline of US data centre capacity exceeded 92GW by the end of 2024 — Welcome to Energy Source, coming to you from New York.
Julie Bort / TechCrunch: Flock Safety, maker of computer vision-enabled video surveillance tech for police and businesses, raised $275M at a $7.5B valuation, up from $4.8B a year ago — Flock Safety and one of its long-time VCs, Bedrock Capital, announced Thursday that the startup raised a fresh $275 million at a $7.5 billion valuation.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: OpenAI calls DeepSeek “state-controlled” and recommends that the US consider banning “PRC-produced” models that “violate user privacy and create security risks” — In a new policy proposal, OpenAI describes Chinese AI lab DeepSeek as “state-subsidized” …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources: Apple is planning a new AirPods feature as part of iOS 19 that will enable live-translation of in-person conversations — Apple Inc. is planning a new AirPods feature that allows the earbuds to live-translate an in-person conversation into another language, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Google releases its proposals for White House's AI Action Plan, arguing that “fair use and text-and-data mining exceptions” are “critical” to AI development — Google, following on the heels of OpenAI, published a policy proposal in response to the Trump Administration's call for a national “AI Action Plan.”
The Block: Crypto payments company MoonPay acquires Iron, an API-focused stablecoin infrastructure company, a source says in a “nine-figure” deal — - The acquisition is comparable to Stripe's acquisition of the stablecoin platform Bridge, and MoonPay's financial services will now include enterprise-grade stablecoin offerings.
Kif Leswing / CNBC: Nvidia is expected to announce new GPUs, named after Vera Rubin, the female scientist who discovered dark matter, on March 18 at its annual GTC conference — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is expected to reveal details about Rubin, the chipmaker's next AI graphics processor, on Tuesday at the company's annual GTC conference.
Wall Street Journal: Sources: Elon Musk visited the NSA and discussed staff reductions and operations with its leadership, a week after saying the agency needs an overhaul — Meeting between Musk and the National Security Agency's leadership was ‘positive’ but comes after he called for its overhaul
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: UiPath acquires Peak, which makes AI tools to optimize product inventory and pricing; Peak raised a total of $121M and reported revenue of just ~£9M in 2023 — A rush of agentic AI solutions is hitting the enterprise market, and now one of the bigger players in automation has scooped …
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat: Cohere debuts Command A, its latest generative AI model for agentic enterprise tasks, with a context length of 256K tokens and requiring just two A100s or H100s — Canadian AI startup Cohere — co-founded by one of the authors of the original Transformer paper that kickstarted the large language model …
Pranob Mehrotra / Android Authority: Google makes Gems, its personalized Gemini chatbots, free for all users and offers several premade Gems including Career guide and Coding partner — - You no longer need a Gemini Advanced subscription to create Gemini Gems. — The feature lets you set up custom versions of the chatbot …
CNBC: Adobe's stock falls 12%+ after reporting a disappointing Q2 outlook and investor concerns that it is falling behind some rivals and losing its AI advantage — Adobe shares dropped 13% following the company's quarterly earnings report, as investors fretted over lingering growth concerns …
Emma Roth / The Verge: Google says Gemini can now personalize answers based on users' search history, available as an experimental feature to Gemini and Gemini Advanced subscribers — If you enable personalization, Gemini will reference your search history to ‘enhance’ some of its responses.
Igor Bonifacic / Engadget: Google says Gemini users can now try Deep Research for free in 45+ languages and the tool is now powered by Gemini 2.0 Flash — The tool is now powered by Gemini 2.0 Flash. — After being one of the first companies to roll out a Deep Research feature at the end of last year …
Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority: Google adds new developer tools and programs to simplify PC game porting to Android and improves Vulkan support on Android, ahead of the GDC — Google is improving Vulkan support on Android and introducing new tools and programs to simplify PC game porting
Hayden Field / CNBC: In its proposal for White House's AI Action Plan, OpenAI calls for a strategy that preserves “American AI models' ability to learn from copyrighted material” — After President Trump, in one of his initial actions upon returning to the White House, revoked the country's …
Bloomberg: Sources: President Trump's World Liberty Financial has discussed doing business with Binance, including the possibility of developing a stablecoin with Binance — Discussions between the family's World Liberty Financial and the world's largest digital-asset exchange are said to include possible work on new stablecoin.
Tom Warren / The Verge: Microsoft announces Copilot for Gaming, available through the Xbox mobile app initially for Xbox Insiders and designed to work as a companion or gaming coach — Microsoft is launching a Copilot in gaming with Xbox testers next month. … Microsoft is preparing to launch an AI-powered Copilot …
Dan Primack / Axios: GSR, one of several VC firms rebuked in 2024 over China investments, splits its China business from its US business, which is renamed as Informed Ventures — GSR Ventures tells Axios that it has formally separated its U.S. business from its China business, and renamed the U.S. effort as Informed Ventures.
Heather Somerville / Wall Street Journal: A profile of new Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, an early investor in SMIC who has extensive ties to China and gained fame by helping turn around Cadence Design Systems — The semiconductor veteran is set to take the helm of the once-venerated U.S. chip maker — Lip-Bu Tan, who is set …
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