~techmeme | Bookmarks (985)

Mackenzie Hawkins / Bloomberg: Sources: Microchip Technology is pausing its application for $162M in CHIPS Act grants, as it plans to close a factory in Arizona, affecting ~500 employees  —  - It had been in line to get $162 million in grants from program  — Company announced on Monday it will shut down Arizona plant

Julie Bort / TechCrunch: Trade business software provider ServiceTitan offers an IPO range of $52 to $57 per share and plans to buy back the shares of its nonconvertible preferred stock  —  On Tuesday, cloud business software provider ServiceTitan offered a price range for its initial public stock of $52 to $57 a share …

Hayden Field / CNBC: OpenAI hires its first CMO, Kate Rouch, who joined Coinbase in August 2021 to lead global marketing and PR and previously spent 11+ years at Meta as a VP  —  OpenAI has hired its first chief marketing officer, nabbing Kate Rouch from crypto company Coinbase.

Timothy Gardner / Reuters: Meta is seeking proposals from nuclear power developers, as it plans to add 1 to 4 gigawatts of new US nuclear generation capacity starting in the early 2030s  —  Meta (META.O) said on Tuesday it is seeking proposals from nuclear power developers to help meet its artificial intelligence …

Jonathan Vanian / CNBC: Salesforce reports Q3 revenue up 8% YoY to $9.44B, vs. $9.34B est., net income up 25% YoY to $1.5B, and gives Q4 guidance above est.; CRM jumps 10%+ after hours  —  Salesforce shares were up 5% on Tuesday after the company reported its fiscal third-quarter earnings, reporting revenue …

Todd Spangler / Variety: Walmart closes its $2.3B cash acquisition of TV maker Vizio, saying the deal will let it offer new ways for advertisers to reach customers via Walmart Connect  —  Walmart announced the completion of its $2.3 billion all-cash acquisition of TV maker Vizio, a move by the retailing giant to expand its advertising business.

Sam Sabin / Axios: The FBI and CISA give US telcos best practices to harden their systems against attacks, as senior US officials say Salt Typhoon hackers remain on their networks  —  - Officials added that they don't yet know the full scope of the intrusions, despite starting the investigation in late spring.

Financial Times: London-based 9fin, a data provider for debt markets, raised a $50M Series B led by Highland Europe, sources say at a ~$500M valuation on current ARR of ~$25M  —  Founder of London-based 9fin predicts winning research company could generate $1bn a year in revenue

Wall Street Journal: Sources say a number of tech executives, including Sam Altman, worry that Elon Musk's new proximity to Trump could supersize rivalries in ways that favor Musk  —  OpenAI's Sam Altman ranks high on the billionaire's list of enemies; car companies and tech giants scramble for allies in the incoming Trump administration

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: AWS announces AWS Security Incident Response to help customers prepare for, respond to, and recover from various cyber incidents, including ransomware attacks  —  Companies often struggle with how to respond to cybersecurity incidents.  According to one recent poll, only three …

Maria Deutscher / SiliconANGLE: AWS adds new generative AI features to Amazon Connect, which helps companies run their contact centers, including letting Lex-powered assistants use Amazon Q  —  Amazon Web Services Inc. is adding more artificial intelligence features to its Amazon Connect service, which helps companies run their contact centers more efficiently.

Yang Jie / Wall Street Journal: Sources: BYD's contract-manufacturing arm, which has 10K+ engineers and ~100K employees dedicated to the Apple's supply chain, now assembles 30%+ of all iPads  —  BYD has grown into a top iPad assembler and has put around 100,000 people to work for Tim Cook's company

Ian Hogarth / Financial Times: VC firm Plural's cofounder says Europe, which is yet to create a $1T company, must start supporting experienced founders and start providing “audacious capital”  —  In 2024, artificial intelligence is consistently front-page news.  From Nvidia hitting a trillion-dollar market cap …

Josh Taylor / The Guardian: Meta says it will require advertisers globally to get verified before running financial service ads targeting Australian users, starting in early February 2025  —  Exclusive: Businesses to require financial services license number to post Facebook ads, while individuals will need government-issued ID

Bloomberg: Q&A with Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark on Nokia's mobile phone failure, moving from mobile and fixed networks into data centers and defense, fine-tuning 5G, and more  —  Pekka Lundmark sees opportunities for the Finnish communications company to grow in defense and data centers.

Iris Kim / NBC News: How Indigenous engineers are using AI to preserve Native American languages, building speech recognition models for 200+ endangered languages in North America  —  Indigenous languages are rapidly disappearing, and AI could help preserve them, according to Indigenous technologists.

Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg: A profile of SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, who made a highly risky bet to acquire debt-ridden Hynix in 2012 to form SK Hynix, which is now valued at ~$80B  —  The race to win the AI chip market is akin to Squid Game, quipped an industry insider during a lunch meeting recently.  It's intense.

Financial Times: How the UK, Australia, the US, South Korea, and the EU deal with explicit AI deepfakes; legislation around the world is scattered and remains largely untested  —  Omny Miranda Martone was not surprised when computer-generated images and videos purporting to show their naked body started to appear on social media in January.

Alexandre Tanzi / Bloomberg: A look at Death Clock, an app that claims to predict the user's likely date of death by using an AI model trained on a dataset of 1,200+ life expectancy studies  —  - Model trained on longevity studies is popular on fitness app  — Technology may have wider applications in economics, finance

Jack Coleman / TheGamer: Star Citizen, a video game in development since 2012, has now raised $750M+ in crowdfunding, and its single-player spin-off Squadron 42 won't be out until 2026  —  - Star Citizen has eclipsed $750 million in crowdfunding.  — There is no release date in sight for Star Citizen.

Financial Times: Some UK policymakers worry whether Elon Musk will complicate UK-US ties, as his diatribes against the Labour government extend well beyond tech and free speech  —  A London-based VC has connected Boris Johnson and the Tesla chief, who Tony Blair has praised as ‘an extraordinary innovator’

Pratik Bhakta / The Economic Times: RBI data shows India's UPI recorded 10B+ merchant transactions in October 2024, up 53% YoY, while credit cards saw a 35% YoY increase in transactions to 433M  —  While UPI grew the fastest among all merchant payments modes, credit cards saw a 35% increase in transactions in October …

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Salesforce says global online Thanksgiving day sales hit $33.6B, up 6% YoY, and $8.1B in the US, up 8% YoY; Adobe says US online sales hit $6.1B, up ~9% YoY  —  Thanksgiving weekend has long been seen as the traditional start of the most important sales period for retailers, and so far …

Lauren Feiner / The Verge: A look at the DOJ's proposed remedies in the Google Search antitrust case, and why forcing a sale of Chrome might not be biggest threat to Google's power  —  Selling Chrome might not be the most painful part of the DOJ's antitrust demands for Google.