~techmeme | Bookmarks (1045)

Malathi Nayak / Bloomberg: Former Google engineer Linwei Ding faces new charges of economic espionage by the US DOJ for allegedly stealing trade secrets to boost China's AI industry  —  - US claims Linwei Ding stole technology for home-grown chip  — Former engineer pled not guilty to original charges in March

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Bengaluru-based payments startup Cashfree raised a $53M Series C led by Krafton, bringing its total funding to nearly $100M, a source says at a $700M valuation  —  Cashfree, an Indian payments startup that facilitates and processes more than $80 billion for its customers each year …

Melissa Heikkilä / Financial Times: Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman poaches three Google DeepMind former colleagues, including two who built NotebookLM's Audio Overviews and worked on Astra  —  Rival companies in fierce battle for talent in race to build powerful artificial intelligence ‘agents’

Chris Welch / The Verge: Sources: Sonos will release an Android-based streaming box in the coming months, priced between $200 and $400, that combines content from Netflix, Max, and more  —  After the most tumultuous nine months in Sonos' history, the brand is trying to find its footing again.

Max Goldbart / Deadline: Ampere predicts streamers will outspend commercial broadcasters on content for the first time in 2025, and overall content spend will rise 0.4% YoY to $248B  —  For the first time this year the streamers will spend more on content than commercial broadcasters.

Reuters: Alphabet expects 2025 capex of ~$75B, vs. ~$58B est., and reports Google Cloud Q4 revenue up 30% YoY to $11.96B, vs. $12.16B est.; GOOG drops 7%+ after hours  —  Alphabet (GOOGL.O) said on Tuesday it will spend $75 billion on its AI buildout this year, 29% more than Wall Street expected …

Daniel Kuhn / The Block: Bitcoin Ordinals project Taproot Wizards raised $30M to expand work on OP_CAT, a scripting capability for Bitcoin to enable automated, customizable transactions  —  - Bitcoin Ordinals project Taproot Wizards is raising $30 million in a round led by Standard Crypto.

Jonathan Bell / Wallpaper*: OpenAI unveils a visual rebrand, featuring a new bespoke typeface called OpenAI Sans, a refined logo, and a new color palette  —  A new typeface, word mark, symbol and palette underpin all the ways in which OpenAI's technology interacts with the real world  — Sign up to our newsletter -

Hayden Field / CNBC: SoftBank commits $3B annually for itself and subsidiaries to use OpenAI's tech, and launches SB OpenAI Japan to market OpenAI's enterprise tech in Japan  —  SoftBank has committed to spending $3 billion per year for itself and its subsidiaries to use OpenAI's tech, according to a joint announcement on Monday.

Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: India expands Aadhaar, now linked to the biometrics of over 1.4B people, to let businesses across several sectors use it to authenticate customers  —  India has eased restrictions on its Aadhaar authentication service, a digital identity verification framework linked to the biometrics …

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch: OpenAI unveils Deep Research, an AI agent for creating in-depth reports, available to subscribers of the $200 ChatGPT Pro tier and limited to 100 queries/month  —  OpenAI is announcing a new AI “agent” designed to help people conduct in-depth, complex research using ChatGPT, the company's AI-powered chatbot platform.

Brian Heater / TechCrunch: Google's X spins out Heritable Agriculture, which aims to use AI to improve crop yield, as the incubator aggressively spins off companies under CEO Astro Teller  —  Google's X “moonshot factory” this week announced its latest graduate.  Heritable Agriculture is a data- and machine learning …

Vittoria Elliott / Wired: A look at six engineers with Elon Musk and Peter Thiel ties, between 19 and 24 years old, playing key DOGE roles, as Musk seizes control of US infrastructure  —  Engineers between 19 and 24, most linked to Musk's companies, are playing a key role as he seizes control of federal infrastructure.

Bloomberg: Some parents say they are eschewing 529 college savings plans and other traditional investments to invest in cryptocurrency to build wealth for their children  —  Despite the risks and volatility, some families are investing in cryptocurrency to build wealth for their children.

Foo Yun Chee / Reuters: Intel received €515.55M in default interest from the EU after being reimbursed a €1.06B fine levied in 2009; the EU's top court sided with Intel in October 2024  —  U.S. chipmaker Intel (INTC.O) has received 515.55 million euros ($536 million) in default interest …

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Reliance Retail relaunches the Shein app in India, with control over operations and data while Shein acts as the technology partner, years after the app's ban  —  Chinese fast-fashion platform Shein has relaunched in India through a partnership with local conglomerate Reliance's retail chain …

Heidi Mitchell / Wall Street Journal: A look at Future You, an AI-based research tool that lets users interact with a virtual older self and is currently being used by 60K people from 190 countries  —  A new artificial-intelligence tool allowed me to talk to my 80-year-old self.  It's going to be quite a life.  —  It turns out I'm going to write a...

Katie McQue / The Guardian: A US man pleads guilty to a cyberstalking campaign against a professor, including by creating chatbots on CrushOn.ai and JanitorAI using her personal info  —  James Florence, 36, agreed to plead guilty after using victim's information to guide chatbots in impersonation

Kevin Roose / New York Times: OpenAI's Operator is currently more an intriguing demo than a product most people need to spend $200/month on, but it points to a future of powerful AI agents  —  In the past week, OpenAI's Operator has done the following things for me:  — Ordered me a new ice cream scoop on Amazon.

Bloomberg: Donald Trump's EO for levies on China says the “de minimis” exemption for items under $800 no longer applies, affecting Alibaba, JD.com, Shein, Temu, and others  —  - President could block tariff exemption for packages under $800  — Change could affect online retailers such as Shein and Temu

Sima Kotecha / BBC: The UK announces four new laws that make it illegal to possess, create, or distribute AI tools designed to produce CSAM, becoming the first country to do so  —  Four new laws will tackle the threat of child sexual abuse images generated by artificial intelligence (AI), the government has announced.

Emily Rose / Reuters: How Israeli startups like Xtend are helping the country's Hamas war effort, with ~50% of anti-drone tech used since the October 7 attacks coming from startups  —  The drone that tracked Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and filmed him as he lay dying in footage beamed around the world last October …

Ryan Browne / CNBC: Hugging Face's Thomas Wolf and other experts say startups like DeepSeek and the rise of AI agents may erode the value of LLMs from OpenAI and Big Tech companies  —  Large language models like those developed by Microsoft-backed firm OpenAI are set to become commoditized this year amid rapid …

Thomas Seal / Bloomberg: Instagram and Facebook, which blocked news links in Canada, are hosting hundreds of scam ads pretending to be from news outlets ahead of Canadian elections  —  - Images of public figures and billionaire used in fake ads  — Bogus ads fuel foreign interference fear before election