~techmeme | Bookmarks (1069)

Katarina Hoije / Bloomberg: Central African Republic, the first in Africa to adopt Bitcoin as tender, launches CAR MEME on Solana, which traded at $0.03 on Feb. 11, down ~90% since launch  —  - CAR Meme is second cryptocurrency launched by the country  — Nation first in Africa to adopt Bitcoin as tender in 2022

Arjun Neil Alim / Financial Times: The Hang Seng Tech Index, tracking top 30 Hong Kong-listed tech groups, is up 25% since January 13, entering a bull market after the DeepSeek breakthrough  —  Budget AI model triggers global reappraisal of Chinese technology companies  —  A benchmark for Chinese technology stocks has risen …

Stephen Nellis / Reuters: US chip startup Groq says it has secured a $1.5B commitment from Saudi Arabia to expand the delivery of its AI chips to the country over the course of this year  —  U.S. semiconductor startup Groq said on Monday it has secured a $1.5 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia to expand the delivery of its advanced AI chips to the...

Bloomberg: A White House document sent to Capitol Hill shows President Trump plans to nominate Brian Quintenz, a16z Crypto's head of policy, to lead the CFTC  —  - Trump to tap Jonathan Gould as Comptroller of the Currency  — Trump also set to nominate Jonathan McKernan as CFPB director

The Economic Times: Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal says Krutrim has deployed DeepSeek R1 671B on Nvidia's H100 and will be offered to Indian developers starting at ₹1/million tokens  —  Bhavish Aggarwal stated on X that while caution is needed with the DeepSeek app in India, the open-source version of the model …

Paul Sawers / TechCrunch: Miami-based Moderne, which helps companies analyze their software stack and remediate technical debt, raised a $30M Series B led by Acrew Capital  —  When companies take shortcuts to build their software stack, prioritizing speed and quick fixes over quality and long-term scalability …

Emma Roth / The Verge: Meta creates a free, “fully funded” curriculum to teach middle schoolers how to recognize forms of online exploitation, in partnership with nonprofit Childhelp  —  Schools, parents, and organizations can access the Meta-funded curriculum for free.

Emma Goldberg / New York Times: A look at ACTS 17, a nonprofit devoted to introducing Christianity to technologists by inviting Peter Thiel and other tech executives to talk about their faith  —  Everything clicked when Peter Thiel gave the speech about God.  —  The occasion was a 40th birthday party for Trae Stephens …

David DiMolfetta / Nextgov/FCW: Andesite, which combines human expertise and AI in its security operations center platform, raised an additional $23M seed, taking its total funding to $38.25M  —  Cybersecurity firm Andesite secured an added $23 million in seed funding, bringing its total funds to $38.5 million …

Juli Clover / MacRumors: Apple now lets users migrate apps, music, books, shows, and movies between Apple accounts, but the feature isn't available to users in the EU, the UK, or India  —  If you have two Apple Accounts with multiple digital purchases between them, Apple now has a way for you to consolidate the accounts …

Samantha Subin / CNBC: Super Micro forecasts FY 2026 revenue above est. and is “confident” it will file its delayed annual report by the Feb. 25 deadline; SMCI jumps 7%+ after hours  —  Super Micro Computer gave optimistic commentary for its fiscal 2026 and delayed annual report that overshadowed …

Anna Tong / Reuters: Reno, Nevada-based Positron, which sells AI chips intended for inference and manufactured in Arizona, raised a $23.5M seed from Flume, Valor Equity, and others  —  Positron, a startup chip maker that aims to compete with Nvidia (NVDA.O), said Tuesday it raised $23.5 million to scale production …

The Logic: Internal message: Shopify's general council said the company closed Ye's store since the swastika shirt listed for sale “brought with it the real risk of fraud”  —  TORONTO — Shopify's general counsel said the company took down musician Kanye West's online store because of the potential …

The Information: Source: Apple and Alibaba submitted their co-developed AI features for approval by China's cyberspace regulator; Apple considered but rejected DeepSeek's models  —  Apple has recently started working with Chinese internet and e-commerce giant Alibaba Group to roll out artificial intelligence features …

Bloomberg: Sources: Shein asked some top apparel suppliers in China to set up new production lines in Vietnam, with incentives like higher procurement prices of up to 30%  —  - It's offering higher procurement prices and guaranteed orders  — Fast fashion giant racing to mitigate impact of Trump tariffs

Wen-Yee Lee / Reuters: TrendForce: China's share of global mature node manufacturing capacity in 2024 was 34%, vs. Taiwan's 43%; China's share is forecasted to exceed Taiwan's by 2027  —  When Taiwan's Powerchip Technology entered a deal with the eastern Chinese city of Hefei in 2015 to set up a new chip foundry …

Kelcee Griffis / Bloomberg: T-Mobile's satellite texting feature, currently in beta and powered by SpaceX's Starlink, will cost customers $15/month starting in July for users on most plans  —  - Anticipated upgrade goes into a free beta period until July … The service is in beta mode now and users can sign up online to participate …

Alice Robb / Bloomberg: A look at the debate over how much authors should get paid for licensing books to train AI; Microsoft offered HarperCollins $5K/title, of which authors get 50%  —  Most experts agree that tech companies should pay creators whose work is used to train artificial intelligence.

Sam Altman: Observations on AI and how it may change society, the likely uneven impact of AGI, which could mess up the balance of power between capital and labor, and more  —  Our mission is to ensure that AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) benefits all of humanity.

Financial Times: Macron announces that companies have agreed to invest €109B in AI projects in France in the coming years, saying it's France's equivalent to Stargate for the US  —  French president speaks ahead of AI summit in Paris involving executives such as OpenAI's Sam Altman

New York Times: Chainalysis: just under 700K wallets recorded gains on $TRUMP, 810K+ have lost money, and $6.6B has been secured in cashed-out profits, mostly by early buyers  —  Some traders made tens of millions off a new cryptocurrency launched by President Trump and his sons.  Many others lost out.

Ashley Carman / Bloomberg: Edison: despite Spotify's video push, only two of the top 10 US podcasts post videos on Spotify; 37 of the top 50 US podcasts regularly post videos on YouTube  —  Popular programs like New Heights and Club Shay Shay have yet to put their videos on the streaming service  —  Hello, and welcome back to Soundbite.

Nitasha Tiku / Washington Post: How DeepSeek's R1 led to more chatbots' “chains of thought” being shown to users; an expert says seeing a chatbot's supposed inner monologue can trigger empathy  —  How Chinese start-up DeepSeek triggered a rush to launch chatbots that “reason.”

Benj Edwards / Ars Technica: A look at WikiTok, a site that lets users vertically swipe through an endless stream of random Wikipedia article stubs without an algorithm that tracks the user  —  On Wednesday, a New York-based app developer named Isaac Gemal debuted a new site called WikiTok, where users can vertically swipe through …