Microsoft invests $1.5B in Abu Dhabi-based AI startup G42 for a minority stake, after G42 severed ties with Chinese suppliers; Brad Smith will join G42's board
Agreement is latest move by US tech group to extend its reach into fast-growing sector — Microsoft has agreed to invest $1.5bn …
Sources: in 2023, Abu Dhabi's G42 and the US Commerce Department held talks that led to G42 agreeing to pare back its China presence to avoid punitive measures
Bloomberg :
YouTube strengthens its “enforcement on third-party apps” violating its ToS, “specifically ad-blocking apps”, leading to error messages and “buffering issues”
Following the ad blocker crackdown, YouTube is explicitly going after third-party …
A look at the failure of Humane's Ai Pin, which took six years to ship after raising $230M, including building the device “the Apple way” and raising too much
Why You Can't Build Apple with Venture Capital — An ex-Apple designer who went on to startup success once told me …
The Open Source Security Foundation and the OpenJS Foundation say the attempt to insert a secret backdoor into XZ Utils “may not be an isolated incident”
The recent attempt by an unknown actor to sabotage a widely used software program may have been one of several attempts …
Meta's Oversight Board plans to investigate two deepfake porn cases involving unnamed US celebrities who had their images altered to create explicit content
Social platforms have struggled to quickly remove deepfake porn depicting celebrities. — As AI tools become increasingly sophisticated …
UnitedHealth says the February ransomware attack on Change Healthcare cost the company $872M in Q1; another ransomware group appears to be extorting the company
First glimpse at attack financials reveals huge pain — UnitedHealth, parent company of ransomware-besieged Change Healthcare …
Meta plans to launch a new education product for Quest that will let teachers access education apps for students ages 13+ and manage multiple headsets at once
- In time for the fall semester, it'll make available a suite of visually engrossing education apps that teachers can use with students ages 13+.
AMD unveils Ryzen Pro 8040 series for commercial laptops and mobile workstations and Ryzen Pro 8000 series for desktops, adding a neural processing unit for AI
AMD is the first with a Pro desktop PC chip with an NPU for AI workloads. — AMD announced its Ryzen Pro portfolio today …
Limitless unveils the $99 Limitless Pendant, a wearable AI gadget that transcribes meetings and provides real-time notes and summaries, shipping in August 2024
The Limitless Pendant doesn't exactly scream “AI.” As Dan Siroker, the CEO of the company behind the new device …
Intel's Gaudi 3 white paper details the made-for-China processors HL-328 and HL-388, likely designed to comply with US export controls by reducing performance
Intel is set to launch two China-exclusive models of its Gaudi 3 AI accelerator, and they'll be substantially crippled to fit in with US sanctions.
EU antitrust regulators are questioning Broadcom about changes to VMware's licensing conditions, following complaints from EU business users and a trade group
U.S. chipmaker Broadcom (AVGO.O) is being asked by EU antitrust regulators about changes to newly acquired cloud computing company …
Mozilla and CheckFirst: Apple, Google, Meta, and others' ad transparency efforts are a work in progress, months after the EU's DSA mandated a searchable library
Efforts by tech giants to be more transparent about the ads they run are — at very best — still a work in progress …
The UK announces legislation to outlaw making sexually explicit deepfake photos without consent, regardless of whether the creator intended to share the image
Offenders could face jail if image is widely shared under proposed amendment to criminal justice bill
Ghost kitchens and virtual restaurant brands, which boomed during the pandemic after raising billions, are disappearing due to overtaxed kitchens and complaints
Ghost kitchens and virtual brands became a way for idle restaurant kitchens to generate revenue. Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to . X: @rakeshlobster Mastodon: Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life@mas.to : Gho...
Filing: MGM sues the FTC to stop an investigation into a 2023 cyberattack and asks for Chair Lina Khan's recusal; Khan stayed at the MGM Grand in September 2023
- Agency chair Lina Khan was visiting resort during cyber attack — Lawsuit alleges FTC asked company for ‘100 categories’ of data
TikTok signs a deal with ticketing provider AXS to let users buy tickets to live events in the US, UK, and more; TikTok has had a Ticketmaster deal since 2022
TikTok inked a partnership with ticketing provider AXS to let users of the popular video app discover and buy tickets to live events.
Adobe says it is in the early stages of developing a way to let Premiere Pro users tap AI models from OpenAI, Runway, and Pika Labs to generate video
and hopefully OpenAI's Sora Fionna Agomuoh / Digital Trends : AI is about to change video production forever Austin Blake / iPhone in Canada Blog : Adobe Video Editing with Generative AI Coming Soon B...
Mark Zuckerberg wins his bid to avoid personal liability in about two dozen lawsuits accusing Meta and other companies of addicting children to their products
US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who is overseeing the cases, sided with the Meta chief executive officer in a ruling issued Monday.
A look at Neopets, a website launched in 1999 to let users care for virtual pets, including how the site survived multiple acquisitions and Flash's phasing out
An icon of millennials' childhoods languished for nearly two decades. Now it's attempting a comeback - banking on the fact that it hasn't changed at all X: @blakersdozen X: Blake Montgomery / @blaker...
AI chip developer Rivos, which recently settled with Apple over trade secret theft, raised $250M+ led by Matrix to compete with Nvidia using its RISC-V chips
- US upstart targets data analytics and generative AI markets — Matrix Capital leads round, with Intel, MediaTek participating
Andreessen Horowitz raised $7.2B, with $600M for American Dynamism, $3.75B for late-stage startups, and $600M for gaming, exceeding its target by ~4%
Andreessen Horowitz, one of Silicon Valley's biggest venture capital firms, has raised $7.2 billion in new funding — a sizable haul after a rocky period for the startup world.
India-based B2B e-commerce marketplace ProcMart raised a $30M Series B led by Fundamentum and Edelweiss Discovery Fund, following a $10M Series A in 2022
Times of India :
Stanford's AI Index report: training top AI models is way more expensive, AI still trails humans on complex tasks, people are more nervous about AI, and more
customer support, customer acquisition, and personalization all between 22-26%. [image] @stanfordhai : The #AIIndex2024 tracks the rise of multimodal models, major cash investments into generative AI,...
ISD: fake footage of Iran's attack on Israel went viral on X, including AI-made videos and photos, with many posts from verified accounts and “OSINT experts”
Bain Capital agrees to sell UK payroll software company Zellis, acquired in 2017, to Apax Partners; sources say the deal values Zellis at ~£1.25B
- Apax said to fund deal with £450 million private credit loan — Zellis counts Harrods and carmaker Jaguar among its customers
Sources: Tesla is focused on building a giant Texas data center for its robotaxi project, now a top priority, after postponing work on a cheaper vehicle
Fred Lambert / Electrek :
Kode Labs, which develops tools that integrate data from building management systems and IoT devices, raised a $30M Series B led by Maverix Private Equity
Proud to announce our $30 Million Series B round led by Maverix Private Equity … Nick Viscuso : A huge day for KODE Labs. An even bigger day for the smart building industry! This next round of fundi...
Berlin-based finmid, which makes embedded fintech tools for SMBs, raised a €23M Series A at a €100M post-money valuation, bringing its total raised to €35M
Anna Heim / TechCrunch :
Letter: X's lawyers tell Brazil's Supreme Court that the social media platform will comply with every ruling issued by the court or Brazil's top electoral court
Ricardo Brito / Reuters :
Sources: Instagram is in the early stages of testing “Creator AI” chatbots for top influencers, which would automate DM responses to fans in a creator's “voice”
Baidu says that eight months after launch its AI chatbot Ernie Bot now has 200M+ users and 85K enterprise clients, after reaching 100M+ users in December 2023
Josh Ye / Reuters :
South Korea-based AI startup Upstage raised a $72M Series B from SK Networks, SBVA, formerly known as SoftBank Ventures Asia, and other investors
Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg :
How scammers, often from Nigeria, are using sextortion to target teenage boys on social media in the US, leading to at least 20 suicides over an 18-month period
Olivia Carville / Bloomberg :
Tel Aviv-based Bridgewise, which uses AI to provide investment analysis to brokerages, wealth advisors, and exchanges, raised a $21M Series A led by SIX Group
Saritha Rai / Bloomberg :
Google's Jigsaw expands Perspective API, a set of ML tools that help moderators and researchers identify toxicity, with seven attributes, including nuance
Billy Perrigo / TIME : X: @mer__edith , @prestonjbyrne , @jigsaw , @billyperrigo , @jigsaw , and @jigsaw . LinkedIn: Reza Ghazinouri See also Mediagazer X: Meredith Whittaker / @mer__edith : TLDR: to...
CISA warns that locks from RealPage's Chirp Systems, reportedly on ~50K US dwellings, can be unlocked via a hack; Chirp was told in 2021 but has remained quiet
No idea if any of those older systems have been changed, but back then the default duress code was 2-5-8-0, straight down the middle of the keypad. … @kurtseifried@infosec.exchange : @briankrebs so Te...
Impressions of Waymo's robotaxis after several rides: amazing tech that quickly feels “normal”, but the car failed to understand a traffic cop's hand signals
I took my first Cruise more than a year ago! https://www.businessinsider.com/ ... Pranay Prateek / @pranay01 : My first time riding a driverless car and I must say this is definitely the future. The r...
Sources: the UK plans talks this month with Apple, Meta, and others to push a voluntary charter granting parents more control of social media use by young teens
Ellen Milligan / Bloomberg : X: @arollingsloane , @jamesrbuk , @alecmuffett , and @webdevlaw X: @arollingsloane : they shouldn't agree too it bcos the ‘disturbing content’ is literally just gonna be ...
Source: a16z closed $7.2B for its newest set of funds, with allocations for AI infrastructure, AI apps, its “American Dynamism” strategy, and more
As nine US states advance online child safety bills, a look at tech giants' lobbying efforts against the legislation, led by industry group NetChoice
Katie McQue / The Guardian : X: @zamaan_qureshi , @jason_kint , @ttp_updates , and @blakersdozen X: Zamaan Qureshi / @zamaan_qureshi : .@jason_kint hitting the nail on the f%*$ing head with this: “Ne...
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