~techmeme | Bookmarks (1054)

Arjun Kharpal / CNBC: Counterpoint has revised its 2025 global smartphone shipment growth forecast to 1.9% YoY, down from 4.2%, citing “renewed uncertainties surrounding US tariffs”  —  Forecasts for Apple and Samsung shipment growth this year were sharply slashed by Counterpoint Research on Wednesday amid uncertainty over U.S. tariff policy.

Ryan Lawler / Axios: OatFi, whose APIs handle underwriting, origination, and capital deployment for B2B payment providers, raised a $24M Series A led by White Star Capital  —  OatFi, a startup providing an embedded working capital financing infrastructure, has raised $24 million in Series A funding, CEO Michael Barbosa tells Axios exclusively.

Swathi Moorthy / The Economic Times: A former employee says fewer than 10,000 people use Ola Krutrim's LLM chatbot, which supports 10 Indian languages, and that over 60% of them are random testers  —  Ola founder Aggarwal first announced Krutrim in December 2023, launching an LLM that could support 10 Indian languages …

Helen Reid / Reuters: Pan-European consumer group BEUC files a complaint with the EC against Shein over its alleged use of “dark patterns”, after targeting Temu in 2024  —  Pan-European consumers organisation BEUC filed a complaint with the European Commission on Thursday against online fast-fashion retailer Shein …

Kyt Dotson / SiliconANGLE: Edinburgh-based Wordsmith, whose AI tools help legal teams automate contract and policy reviews, raised a $25M Series A led by Index Ventures  —  Wordsmith AI Ltd., an Edinburgh, Scotland-based artificial intelligence platform for in-house teams announced Tuesday it has raised $25 million …

Steven Church / Bloomberg: 23andMe plans to hold a new auction for its DNA data, opening with a $305M bid led by Anne Wojcicki, after the ex-CEO challenged Regeneron's winning bid in May  —  Bankrupt genetic analysis company 23andMe will hold a second auction for its cache of DNA data with an opening bid of $305 million …

Financial Times: Singapore's Temasek cuts back on startup investments after the fund wrote down hundreds of millions of dollars on a spate of collapsed startups, including FTX  —  State-owned $300bn fund says it is adopting a ‘more cautious approach’ on early-stage companies

Malathi Nayak / Bloomberg: DoorDash, Uber, and Grubhub agree to settle a 2021 lawsuit against New York City over its pandemic-era 15% cap to commissions and fees charged to restaurants  —  The meal-delivery services agreed to drop their challenge to the cap once the city makes adjustments to the law and final terms …

Matthew Gault / Wired: How AI-assisted “vibe hacking”, which often relies on jailbroken versions of mainstream AI models, is leading to a cybersecurity “arms race”  —  In the very near future, victory will belong to the savvy blackhat hacker who uses AI to generate code at scale.

Riley Griffin / Bloomberg: Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth says the “tides have turned” in Silicon Valley, making it more acceptable for the tech industry to support the US military's efforts  —  There's long existed a “silent majority” who wanted to pursue defense projects, Bosworth said during an interview …

Rocket Drew / The Information: Source: Amazon is developing software for humanoid robots to deliver packages and is near completion of an indoor “humanoid park” in San Francisco to test them  —  Amazon is developing software for humanoid robots that could eventually take the jobs of delivery workers …

Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE: MongoDB reports Q1 revenue up 22% YoY to $549M, vs. $527.5M est., net loss down 54% to $37.6M, and increases its full-year guidance; MDB up 14%+ after hours  —  Shares of the database company MongoDB Inc. were flying high in extended trading today after it posted better-than-expected financial results …

Echo Wong / Bloomberg: Document: Xiaohongshu, a TikTok alternative known in the US as Rednote, has surged to a $26B valuation based on recent market transactions via a GSR fund  —  The startup's price tag emerged through a document from GSR Ventures Management Co. vehicle that showed shares of the fund changing hands.

Ashley Belanger / Ars Technica: Filing: OpenAI seeks to block a May 13 court order requiring it to preserve all ChatGPT logs, including deleted chats, arguing it poses a risk to users' privacy  —  OpenAI is now fighting a court order to preserve all ChatGPT user logs—including deleted chats and sensitive chats logged through …

Ionut Ilascu / BleepingComputer: The US DOJ seized ~145 domains and crypto linked to BidenCash, a dark web market that made $17M+ in revenue since 2022 by selling stolen credit cards and more  —  Earlier today, law enforcement seized multiple domains of BidenCash, the infamous dark web market for stolen credit cards, personal information, and SSH access.

Lulu Yilun Chen / Bloomberg: Sources: Thrive and Capital Group visited China to study its AI scene, joining a wave of US investors rekindling interest in China after DeepSeek's advances  —  Joshua Kushner's Thrive Capital and investment firm Capital Group have in recent months visited China to learn about its AI industry …

Shannon Cuthrell / IEEE Spectrum: A look at Australian startup Cortical Labs' CL1, billed as the first code-deployable biological computer, with 115 units shipping this summer at $35K each  —  World-first biocomputing platform hits the market  —  Shannon Cuthrell is a freelance journalist covering business and technology.

Saritha Rai / Bloomberg: Chinese startup Butterfly Effect's Manus launches text-to-video generation tool in early access for paid users, with plans to roll it out for free to all users  —  Manus unveiled a text-to-video generation feature, entering a competitive segment populated by rivals from OpenAI …

Reuters: AI coding startups are at risk of being disrupted by Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI; source: Microsoft's GitHub Copilot grew to over $500M in revenue last year  —  Two years after the launch of ChatGPT, return on investment in generative AI has been elusive, but one area stands out: software development.

Financial Times: Sources: Toronto-based AI startup Cohere is seeking to raise $500M+ at a valuation of over $5.5B; it raised a $500M Series D at a $5.5B valuation in July 2024  —  Canadian group seeks valuation of up to $6.5bn but rivals have soared far higher in comparison

Jaspreet Singh / Reuters: CEO Alex Bouaziz says Deel crossed $1B annual revenue run rate in Q1 2025 and has allocated an M&A budget of between $200M and $500M in 2025  —  Payroll startup Deel said on Tuesday it crossed $1 billion annual revenue run rate in the first quarter and has earmarked up to $500 million for acquisitions this year to bolster growth.

Sophia Fox-Sowell / StateScoop: A bipartisan group of over 260 US state legislators sign a letter opposing a federal budget bill provision that bans states from enforcing AI laws for 10 years  —  More than 260 state legislators from all 50 states have signed a letter opposing a provision in the federal budget reconciliation bill …

George Hammond / Financial Times: Court filing: Deel alleges Rippling's “competitive intelligence manager” Brett Alexander Johnson posed as a customer to access Deel's product and business info  —  HR start-ups Rippling and Deel trade allegations their leaders directed efforts to steal company secrets from one another

Vildana Hajric / Bloomberg: NYSE Arca files with the SEC to list a Bitcoin ETF linked to Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social and Truth.fi  —  NYSE Group Inc. filed regulatory paperwork on Tuesday to list the Truth Social Bitcoin ETF, using the name of President Donald Trump's social network.