~techmeme | 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.