Bookmarks (1028)

Camomile Shumba / CoinDesk: At the request of South Korean regulator, Apple blocked 14 and Google blocked 17 crypto apps, including exchanges KuCoin and MEXC, from their app stores  —  South Korean regulators will continue to block unreported virtual asset operators from accessing domestic sites, a statement said.  —  What to know:

Bloomberg: India plans to add 200M-300M UPI users, including via delegated accounts for kids, and pitch UPI abroad; PwC: India makes up ~46% of global digital transactions  —  - India accounts for 46% of world's digital transactions  — Its government is pitching UPI to diaspora-heavy countries

Cheng Ting-Fang / Nikkei Asia: Sources: TSMC is close to finalizing specs for a new chip packaging method, known in the industry as “panel-level”, to meet rising demand for powerful AI chips  —  TAIPEI — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is close to finalizing the specifications for a radically new approach …

Ike Swetlitz / Bloomberg: Science Corp., which was started by Neuralink co-founder Max Hodak to develop a retina and brain implant system, raised over $100M led by Khosla Ventures  —  “We have a philosophy of investing in companies that are early and make bold bets and can be impactful for the future,” said Shernaz Daver …

Anton Shilov / Tom's Hardware: AMD announces its first 2nm silicon fabricated on TSMC's N2 process, set to debut on its 6th-gen EPYC “Venice” chip, which is expected to launch in 2026  —  First 2nm HPC design.  —  In a rather unexpected turn of events, AMD announced late on Monday that it had obtained …

Reuters: South Korea increases assistance to semiconductor industry by ~25% to $23.25B amid US tariffs, competition with China; the sector represents 21% of its exports  —  South Korea announced on Tuesday an increase in its support package for the country's vital semiconductor industry to 33 trillion won …

Priyanka.G / Reuters: Data center operator Applied Digital reports Q3 revenue up 22% YoY to $53M, vs. $63M est., as clients delay renewing their leases; APLD drops 13%+ after hours  —  Applied Digital (APLD.O) reported third-quarter revenue below Wall Street estimates on Monday, as clients delayed renewing …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: OpenAI plans to wind down the availability of GPT-4.5 via its API on July 14, 2025, after launching the model as a research preview on February 27, 2025  —  OpenAI said on Monday that it would soon wind down the availability of GPT-4.5, its largest-ever AI model, via its API.

Bloomberg: Sources: banks are providing Silver Lake $2B in debt for its 51% acquisition of Altera; Intel will receive ~$3.4B in cash from Silver Lake as part of the deal  —  Representatives for Silver Lake, Barclays, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and KKR declined to comment.

Ismail Shakil / Reuters: The Trump administration begins a probe into imports of semiconductors on national security grounds, as part of a bid to impose tariffs on the sector  —  The U.S. Commerce Secretary has initiated Section 232 national security investigations into imports of pharmaceuticals and semiconductors …

Wall Street Journal: Source: by 2030, Netflix aims to reach a $1T valuation, earn ~$9B in global ad sales, double its $39B 2024 revenue, and triple its $10B 2024 operating income  —  Streaming service shares financial performance targets with staff that underscore its dominance

Brendan Bordelon / Politico: FTC v. Meta: the US argued Meta has a monopoly in the “personal social networking” market, which it claims includes only Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and MeWe  —  The government wants to show the Meta CEO bought Instagram and WhatsApp to snuff out social media competition.

Jordan Novet / CNBC: Online trading platform Webull closed up 374.72% on its second day of trading following its SPAC merger, giving it a market cap of almost $30B  —  Shares of Webull soared nearly 375% on Monday, the second day on the market for the stock-trading app, which completed its merger last week …

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Apple plans to begin on-device, privacy-centric analysis of user data, comparing it to synthetic data, to improve AI, in beta versions of iOS 18.5, macOS 15.5  —  Apple Inc. will begin analyzing data on customers' devices in a bid to improve its artificial intelligence platform …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: OpenAI releases GPT‑4.1, GPT‑4.1 mini, and GPT‑4.1 nano, which excel at coding, instruction following, and long context understanding, available via its API  —  OpenAI on Monday launched a new family of models called GPT-4.1.  Yes, “4.1” — as if the company's nomenclature wasn't confusing enough already.

Bloomberg: Analysis: paper gains from the Trump family's investments in various crypto projects, including NFTs, DeFi, Bitcoin mining, and memecoins, are approaching $1B  —  President Donald Trump and his family have taken a interest in just about every corner of the crypto industry.

Vishal Singh / Silicon Canals: Copenhagen-based Sparrow Quantum, which is developing photonic quantum chips based on research conducted at the Niels Bohr Institute, raised a €21.5M Series A  —  Last update:  —  LinkedInFacebookWhatsAppXTelegramShare  —  Copenhagen-based Sparrow Quantum, a supplier of photonic quantum chips …

Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE: Tel Aviv-based Groundcover, an eBPF observability service for monitoring the performance of apps, systems, and their infrastructure, raised a $35M Series B  —  Application observability startup Groundcover Ltd. wants to muscle in on an industry dominated by the likes of Datadog Inc …

Ben Jiang / South China Morning Post: Alibaba's AI assistant Quark surpassed ByteDance's Doubao to become China's most popular AI app in March, with ~150M and ~100M MAUs globally, respectively  —  Quark's rapid ascent comes as Alibaba has transformed the app from a cloud storage and search service into an ‘AI super assistant’

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: LiveKit, which offers open-source tools for building apps to transmit real-time audio and video, raised a $45M Series B; LiveKit also powers ChatGPT Voice Mode  —  A challenge for many tech companies is delivering high-bandwidth, multimodal data — for example, simultaneous audio and video …

Martine Paris / Forbes: Sam Altman says ChatGPT users had doubled in the past few weeks and that “10% of the world uses our systems”, which would peg the number closer to 800M users  —  Martine Paris is a San Francisco-based reporter covering trends in AI  —  OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman might …

Sankalp Phartiyal / Bloomberg: Sources: Apple produced $22B worth of iPhones in India in the 12 months ended March 2025, up nearly 60% YoY, and now makes 20% of its iPhones in the country  —  The Cupertino, California-headquartered company now makes 20%, or one in five, of its prized iPhones in the South Asian country …

Kate Pickert / Bloomberg: AI could transform medicine by helping doctors and medical students improve their empathy and bedside manner before they interact with real patients  —  The hope is that artificial intelligence will eventually do much of the work that makes it difficult for doctors to spend enough time with patients.

Belle Lin / Wall Street Journal: A look at the US Energy Department's Argonne National Lab, whose AI-based PRO-AID tool assists in nuclear reactor design and helps operators run nuclear plants  —  Argonne National Lab has an AI-based tool that can help design and operate nuclear reactors—at a time when AI itself is feeding a power frenzy.

James O'Donnell / MIT Technology Review: How the Pentagon uses AI tools from Vannevar Labs, which got a DOD deal worth up to $99M, to scan open-source intelligence, write intelligence reports, and more  —  For much of last year, about 2,500 US service members from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit sailed aboard three ships throughout the Pacific …

Connor Jones / The Register: UK government report: 43% of businesses faced a cyber breach or attack in the past year; phishing was the most common type, affecting 85% of those attacked  —  The UK government's latest annual data breach survey shows the number of ransomware attacks on the isles is on the increase …

Washington Post: Arguments start Monday in the FTC's antitrust suit targeting Meta's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, amid reports Zuckerberg asked Trump to intervene  —  Arguments start Monday in the FTC's blockbuster antitrust suit targeting Facebook's purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp, as Zuckerberg pleads for the White House to intervene.

Bloomberg: India's JioHotstar now has 200M+ paid subscribers, driven by multi-language IPL cricket streams, ranking third-largest globally after Netflix and Prime Video  —  JioHotstar, India's largest streaming platform, has increased its paying subscriber base to over 200 million …

Bloomberg: The Trump administration exempts smartphones, laptops, hard drives, processors, memory chips, and machines used to make semiconductors from reciprocal tariffs  —  President Donald Trump's administration exempted smartphones, computers and other electronics from its so-called reciprocal tariffs …

Financial Times: Trump exempts smartphones from ‘reciprocal’ tariffs after market rout  —  Dispensation is first sign of softening of levies against China and provides a big boost for Apple  —  The Trump administration has excluded smartphones and other consumer electronics from its steep “reciprocal” …

Financial Times: EC president von der Leyen: the EU may tax Big Tech ad revenue, targeting Meta and Google, if Trump trade talks fail and won't revisit its “untouchable” rules  —  European Commission president tells FT she wants ‘balanced’ deal but could hit US services in retaliation

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Despite Trump admin pressure, Apple is unlikely to move iPhone production to the US soon due to facility, labor, and supply chain gaps only Asia can fill now  —  For US President Donald Trump, there would be few bigger victories than having a domestically produced version of the iPhone, one of the most popular tech products in history.

Erin Woo / The Information: Source: Google laid off hundreds of employees in its platforms and devices unit, which works on Android, Pixel, and Chrome, after offering buyouts in January  —  Google on Thursday laid off hundreds of employees in its platforms and devices unit, which works on Android software …

Cristina Criddle / Financial Times: Sources: OpenAI recently gave staff and third-party groups just days, vs. several months previously, to evaluate risks and performance of its latest models  —  Testers have raised concerns that its technology is being rushed out without sufficient safeguards

Ann Cao / South China Morning Post: China discloses details about its ~$8.2B AI Industry Investment Fund, aimed at early-stage investments in AI projects, established with money from the Big Fund  —  The AI Industry Investment Fund was established by the industry and finance ministries with money from the Big Fund

Charles Rollet / TechCrunch: The DOJ charges AI shopping app Nate's ex-CEO, Albert Saniger, with fraud, alleging the app relies heavily on workers in the Philippines; Nate had raised $50M+  —  Albert Saniger, the founder and former CEO of Nate, an AI shopping app that promised a “universal” checkout experience …

Hadlee Simons / Android Authority: Oppo launches the Find X8 Ultra in China, with a 6.82" OLED, a Snapdragon 8 Elite, a 6,100mAh battery, four rear cameras, and 100W charging, starting at ~$890  —  Unfortunately, the Find X8 Ultra isn't coming to global markets.  —  •  —  •  —  • … What if the Pro wasn't enough for you, though?

Jesse Hamilton / CoinDesk: Trump signs a bill repealing IRS rules that treat DeFi platforms as brokers and require them to report user data, the first pro-crypto effort to clear Congress  —  The successful reversal of the Internal Revenue Service rule marks the first time the industry got a significant pro-crypto effort through Congress.

Andrew Liszewski / The Verge: Razer launches Razer PC Remote Play, which streams PC games to mobile devices running Windows 11, iOS 18, iPadOS 18, or Android 14+ at their native resolutions  —  Razer PC Remote Play streams games to mobile devices at their native resolutions and aspect ratios.

Reuters: The cybersecurity industry is quiet after Trump canceled SentinelOne's security clearances on April 9 for hiring Chris Krebs; SentinelOne says it will cooperate  —  The cybersecurity industry has gone mostly quiet after President Donald Trump took action against one of its prominent members.

Sharon Goldman / Fortune: Some Meta insiders fear FAIR is “dying a slow death” as Joelle Pineau exits in May; Yann LeCun says it's “a new beginning” for “Advanced Machine Intelligence”  —  Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist at Meta Platforms Inc. Photographer: Nathan Laine/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Samantha Subin / CNBC: The Nasdaq closes down 4%, with Meta down 7%, Nvidia down 6%, Amazon down 5%, and Apple down 4%, as the White House says Trump's tariffs on China now total 145%  —  Technology stocks plummeted Thursday and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 4% on the heels of its record-setting session.

Vikki Blake / GamesIndustry.biz: The UK's home secretary criticizes Steam for hosting No Mercy, a game with sexual violence, rape, and incest; Steam removed it in the UK, Australia, and Canada  —  UPDATE: The game has been removed from Steam in the UK, Australia, and Canada  —  CW: This story contains references …

Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch: BeReal rolls out in-feed ads in the US, after Voodoo acquired it for €500M; BeReal says it has ~40M MAUs, including 5M in the US, and 85% of its users are Gen Z  —  It's time for BeReal to get real — it's difficult to turn a profit on a social photo-sharing app without selling ads or memberships.

Stephen Nellis / Reuters: nEye Systems, which is developing data center chips that use light to send data, raised a $58M Series B led by CapitalG, bringing its total funding to $72.5M  —  NEye Systems, a startup developing a new kind of networking chip for artificial intelligence data centers, on Thursday raised $58 million …

Wall Street Journal: X's merger with xAI caps its yearslong turnaround push; sources say X's revenue fell to $2.6B in 2024, down from $3B in 2023 and about $4.6B in 2022  —  xAI merger capped social-media company's yearslong turnaround push  —  A crowd of investors gathered at Morgan Stanley's New York office …

Ilya Gridneff / Financial Times: Docs: Canadian telecom Bell is lobbying to block Starlink subsidies, as Canada-US tensions and Musk's Trump ties put his satellite business under more scrutiny  —  Rival telecoms group Bell is lobbying for the Musk-owned group to be excluded for financial support for Far North region

Georgia Butler / DatacenterDynamics: Microsoft is backing away from its October 2024 plan to invest $1B in three Ohio data centers, the latest in a string of its data center project cancellations  —  Another data center project bites the dust  —  Microsoft has backed out of plans to build data centers in Licking County, Ohio.

Nikkei Asia: Sources: to offset tariffs, Apple, Dell, and others pressed suppliers to fly as many premium devices as possible to the US, especially those priced above $3,000  —  TAIPEI/PALO ALTO, California — Ever since Donald Trump was elected president back in November, the world's biggest electronics brands …

Moneycontrol: Pune, India-based online payments firm Easebuzz raised a $30M Series A led by Bessemer, says revenue grew 2x+ YoY to ~$78M in FY 2025 while staying profitable  —  The company's revenue doubled to Rs 650 crore in FY25, up from Rs 294 crore in the previous fiscal, while maintaining profitability