~techmeme | Bookmarks (1043)

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 …