~techmeme | Bookmarks (1030)

Belle Lin / Wall Street Journal: Anthropic and Databricks ink a five-year deal, expected to jointly generate $100M in revenue, by selling AI tools to businesses developing their own AI agents  —  The AI startup and data company are working together to help businesses build their own artificial intelligence bots …

Dylan Butts / CNBC: Alibaba releases open-source multimodal AI model Qwen2.5-Omni-7B on Hugging Face and GitHub, saying the model can be deployed on edge devices like smartphones  —  Alibaba Cloud launched Thursday its latest AI model in its “Qwen series,” as large language model competition in China continues to heat up following the “DeepSeek moment.”

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Sam Altman says OpenAI will support Anthropic's Model Context Protocol, an open-source standard that connects AI models to data for more relevant answers  —  OpenAI is embracing rival Anthropic's standard for connecting AI assistants to the systems where data resides.

Jordan Novet / CNBC: Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger joins VC firm Playground Global as a GP and the board of portfolio company xLight, which develops lasers for chip manufacturing  —  After a tumultuous four years running Intel, Pat Gelsinger is going into venture capital.  —  Gelsinger, who was ousted …

Ryan Whitwam / Ars Technica: Nvidia releases G-Assist, an experimental, gaming-centric AI chatbot that runs locally and provides real-time system information for a given game  —  Most people use their Nvidia GPUs for games, but why not both?  Nvidia has a new AI you can run at the same time, having just released its experimental G-Assist AI.

Paige Smith / Bloomberg: Robinhood plans to roll out checking and savings accounts in 2025 for its paying Gold subscribers, aiming to provide more of a private banking-like experience  —  Now it's taking it a step further: It also wants to be your bank.  —  Robinhood will roll out checking and savings accounts later …

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources: Apple is promoting Vanessa Trigub to VP of stores and retail operations globally, as it streamlines management of its retail arm under Deirdre O'Brien  —  Apple Inc. is naming a global head of stores, a move meant to streamline management of its retail arm under senior executive Deirdre O'Brien …

Polly Thompson / Business Insider: Filing: Dell says it had about 108K employees as of January 31, 2025, down from 120K employees in February 2024, marking a 10% annual reduction in its workforce  —  - An SEC filing shows Dell's head count has fallen by 12,000 in the last year and 25,000 in the past two.

Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer: Oracle customers confirm the authenticity of data samples shared by a threat actor who allegedly breached Oracle Cloud servers, after Oracle denied the breach  —  Despite Oracle denying a breach of its Oracle Cloud federated SSO login servers and the theft of account data for 6 million people …

Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority: Google says it plans to develop Android fully in private to streamline the development process but will continue to publish the source code for new releases  —  Android OS development will now fully happen behind closed doors, but Google says it's committed to releasing source code

Andrew Hutchinson / Social Media Today: xAI's Grok AI chatbot is now integrated with Telegram for Telegram Premium users, marking Grok's first big expansion beyond X  —  X is looking to expand the reach of its Grok chatbot, by partnering with messaging app Telegram on a new integration.  —  So now, if you're subscribed …

Kif Leswing / CNBC: Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signs a bill requiring Apple's and Google's mobile app stores to verify user ages and require parental consent for minors to use some apps  —  Utah Gov. Spencer Cox on Wednesday signed a bill that requires Apple and Google's mobile app stores to verify user ages …

Bobby Allyn / NPR: A US federal judge rejects OpenAI's request to dismiss the NYT's lawsuit, allowing the main copyright infringement claims to go forward while narrowing the suit  —  A federal judge on Wednesday rejected OpenAI's request to toss out a copyright lawsuit from The New York Times that alleges …

Michael Kozlowski / Good e-Reader: A software update for some Amazon Kindle models lets users double-tap the sides or back of the device to turn pages in books or scroll down in Home and Library  —  The Kindle now has new features: Recaps for Books in Series and Double Tap to Page Turn.  — AMAZON KINDLE,

Kelcee Griffis / Bloomberg: State and former US officials say satellite internet like Starlink's may cut upfront costs for the $42B rural broadband program but could cost more long term  —  The Trump administration is making changes to a $42 billion broadband subsidy program that will benefit satellite internet providers …

Financial Times: As the EU considers funding a Starlink rival, experts say no single European network can match Starlink's range, likely requiring a patchwork of satellites  —  Brussels wants to create a homegrown alternative to Starlink with satellite groups such as Eutelsat

Bloomberg: BMW partners with Alibaba to use Qwen-powered AI cockpit tech from Alibaba-backed Banma in its upcoming car models for the Chinese market, rolling out next year  —  BMW will adopt AI cockpit technology from Alibaba-backed Banma for its upcoming models tailored for the Chinese market, the companies said Wednesday in a joint statement.

Financial Times: Docs: China's new energy rules could block the use of Nvidia's H20 chips in new data centers if implemented strictly, risking Nvidia's $17B/year China business  —  US chipmaker could suffer $17bn-a-year hit to business if energy efficiency rules are enforced more strictly

Annie Palmer / CNBC: Amazon unveils Interests, an AI search tool for finding products by passion or hobby, rolling out to all US users, and is testing a chatbot called Health AI  —  Amazon, in an effort to infuse generative artificial intelligence across a wider swath of its e-commerce universe …

Reuters: The US adds six subsidiaries of Inspur Group, China's top cloud provider, and dozens of other Chinese entities to its export blacklist; Inspur was added in 2023  —  The U.S. added six subsidiaries of Inspur Group, China's leading cloud computing and big data service provider …

Blake Brittain / Reuters: Anthropic convinced a California federal judge to reject a preliminary bid to block it from using lyrics owned by UMG and other music publishers to train Claude  —  Artificial intelligence company Anthropic convinced a California federal judge on Tuesday to reject a preliminary bid to block …

Adi Robertson / The Verge: Character.AI adds a Parental Insights feature that lets teens send reports of their chatbot usage to their parents, including which bots they are talking to  —  They won't see the contents of the chats. … Chatbot service Character.AI is adding a new ‘Parental Insights’ feature …

TechCrunch: Leaked email: Block lays off 931 employees, ~8% of staff, and moves 193 managers to individual contributor roles, in a second reorganization in just over a year  —  Fintech Block laid off 931 people, roughly 8% of the company's staff, on Tuesday, according to a leaked message from the company seen by TechCrunch.

Erin Brodwin / Axios: NY-based Silna, which provides healthcare revenue cycle management software, emerges from stealth with a $22M Series A co-led by Accel and Bain and a $5M seed  —  Revenue automation company Silna Health raised $27 million in seed and Series A funding, CEO Jeffrey Morelli tells Axios exclusively.