~techmeme | Bookmarks (1076)

Jonathan Vanian / CNBC: Pinterest reports Q1 revenue up 16% YoY to $855M, vs. $847M est., MAUs up 10% to 570M, and forecasts Q2 revenue above estimates; PINS jumps 15%+ after hours  —  Pinterest shares rose 15% in extended trading Thursday after the company reported first-quarter earnings and provided better-than-expected guidance.

Chris Dolmetsch / Bloomberg: Celsius Network founder and former CEO Alex Mashinsky is sentenced to 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to commodities fraud and misleading investors  —  Whoop Launches Slimmer Fitness Bands With Blood Pressure, ECG Features  —  Review: The Whoop 5.0 and MG — short for medical grade …

Paige Smith / Bloomberg: Memo: the US CFPB discontinues its order designating the supervision of Google Payment, saying the Biden-era decision is an “unwarranted use” of CFPB's powers  —  The supervision of Google Payment would be “an unwarranted use of the Bureau's powers and resources,” …

Hannah Ritchie / Sustainability: A look at the impact of ChatGPT use on energy consumption, as analysis suggests AI usage is still a rounding error on a person's total electricity footprint  —  Very small compared to most of the other stuff you do.  —  A couple of months ago I wrote an article looking at the energy use of artificial intelligence.

Financial Times: DoorDash's planned takeover of Deliveroo has renewed questions about the UK's ability to attract and retain large tech listings in the face of NY's dominance  —  £2.9bn takeover brings end to app's UK listing after ‘worst ever’ initial public offering

Angel Au-Yeung / Wall Street Journal: Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell's family offices have committed $1B in total to Coatue's new investment fund targeting high-growth public and private tech companies  —  Coatue's fund is being anchored by $1 billion from family offices of Amazon founder and Michael Dell

MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC: The CFPB says it will stop enforcing a Biden-era rule treating BNPL firms like credit card lenders; Affirm and other BNPL firms had opposed the rule  —  For the third time under President Donald Trump, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has pulled back from enforcing a key rule, this time targeting buy now, pay later services.

Daniel Kuhn / The Block: New Hampshire becomes the first US state to pass a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” bill, permitting public fund investment in BTC, either directly or through an ETF  —  - New Hampshire has become the first state to pass a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” bill, according to Satoshi Action Fund founder Dennis Porter.

Kate Park / TechCrunch: Melbourne-based Blinq, which lets users create custom digital business cards and sync contacts with CRM systems, raised a $25M Series A led by Touring Capital  —  It's 2025, but business cards are still in vogue — just visit any conference or industry expo and you'll end up with a pile that's likely …

Natasha Mascarenhas / The Information: Sources: Periodic Labs, which is building a “ChatGPT for material science”, is seeking to raise hundreds of millions of dollars at a valuation of at least $1B  —  Periodic Labs, a startup founded by Liam Fedus, a former vice president of post-training research at OpenAI …

Margaux MacColl / The San Francisco Standard: A profile of Christian Garrett, co-founder of the Hill and Valley Forum and partner at 137 Ventures, who has become Silicon Valley's diplomat to Washington, DC  —  The young investor is the rare power broker who gives away no partisan preferences.  That's why everyone is listening to him.

Axios: Sources: Senate Democrats are in talks with Republicans about an eleventh-hour effort to try to save the bipartisan GENIUS Act on stablecoin regulation  —  Senate Democrats are in discussions with relevant Republicans about an eleventh-hour meeting to try to save the bipartisan GENIUS Act, according to people familiar with the matter.

Todd Bishop / GeekWire: An AWS survey of 3,739 senior IT decision-makers across nine countries finds 45% plan to prioritize spending on generative AI in 2025, and 30% on cybersecurity  —  Generative AI will surpass cybersecurity in many corporate tech budgets this year — with 45% of global IT leaders naming …

Rashi Shrivastava / Forbes: Sources: Legora, whose AI software helps lawyers draft contracts, review and analyze documents, and more, is in talks to raise $85M at a $675M valuation  —  The startup hopes to take on AI rivals Harvey and incumbents Thomson Reuters as it gains traction among law firms.  —  SaveComment

MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC: Chainalysis: ~2M wallets have bought the $TRUMP memecoin, of which ~764,000 wallets have lost money and 58 have made over $10M each, totaling ~$1.1B in profits  —  WATCH NOW  —  About 764,000 wallets that purchased President Donald Trump's $TRUMP meme coin have lost money on the investment …

Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch: Uber and Chinese company Pony.ai partner to deploy Pony.ai's robotaxis on Uber's platform, starting with a launch in “a key market in the Middle East” in 2025  —  Uber announced its third partnership with a Chinese autonomous vehicle company this week, revealing the ride-hail …

Micah Lee / micahflee: Analysis: TM SGNL, TeleMessage's modified version of Signal used by senior Trump officials, could send plaintext chat logs to TeleMessage's archive server  —  Despite their misleading marketing, TeleMessage, the company that makes a modified version of Signal used by senior Trump officials …

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Patreon rolls out an updated version of its iOS app that lets users make purchases via the web in addition to using in-app purchases  —  Creator platform Patreon has rolled out an updated version of its app that now allows users to make purchases via the web, in the wake of the Apple-Epic court ruling …

Pedro Nakamura / Rest of World: A look at “kidfluencers” in Brazil who promote online get-rich-quick schemes to other children on TikTok, Kwai, and Instagram, amid growing government scrutiny  —  Young Brazilians chase social media fame, selling “get-rich” schemes, while legal battles question platform responsibility and the cost to childhood.

Financial Times: Sources: Anysphere, maker of AI coding tool Cursor, raised $900M at a $9B valuation, up from $2.5B in January, led by Thrive, with a16z and Accel participating  —  Anysphere closes $900mn funding round from investors including Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz

Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media: The biggest deepfake porn site on the internet, Mr. Deepfakes, says it is shutting down permanently because a “critical service provider” stopped serving it  —  Mr. Deepfakes, the go-to site for nonconsensual deepfake porn, says it's shutting down and not coming back because it lost a service provider and data.

Micah Lee / micahflee: TeleMessage, a maker of modified versions of apps like Signal used by US officials including JD Vance, is hacked, leaking some user messages, contact info, more  —  TeleMessage, a company that makes a modified version of Signal that archives messages for government agencies, was hacked.  —  💡

Zack Abrams / The Block: Several Senate Democrats, key to the passage of a landmark stablecoin bill, withdraw support for the bill “as it currently stands”  —  - The future of the U.S. Senate's stablecoin bill has been thrown into jeopardy after nine pro-crypto Democrats, including four who supported the bill …

Joseph Cox / 404 Media: The Signal Clone the Trump Admin Uses Was Hacked  —  A hacker has breached and stolen customer data from TeleMessage, an obscure Israeli company that sells modified versions of Signal and other messaging apps to the U.S. government to archive messages, 404 Media has learned.