~techmeme | Bookmarks (1028)

Ryan Lawler / Axios: Klarna reports 2024 revenue up 24% YoY to $2.81B, a net profit of $21M, compared with a net loss of $244M a year ago, and 93M active consumers  —  Klarna, the Swedish buy now, pay later giant, on Friday filed for a U.S. IPO.  —  Why it matters: It's the first big consumer fintech to test …

Bloomberg: Klarna files for a US IPO, with plans to list on the NYSE under KLAR, seeking to raise at least $1B and reportedly targeting a valuation of more than $15B  —  Klarna Group Plc filed publicly for a US initial public offering in what could be one of the year's biggest financial company listings.

Molly White / Citation Needed: The US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, to be funded via civil asset forfeitures, goes against bitcoiners' early skepticism of state overreach and market intervention  —  The formerly anti-establishment bitcoin movement abandons its principles in favor of number-go-up, applauds federal plan …

Sophie Spiegelberger / Financial Times: Ernst & Young: German startups raised ~€7B across 755 deals in 2024, up from ~€6B across 861 deals in 2023, but far below the peak of over €17B in 2021  —  Funding increased to €7bn last year but it is a far cry from the 2021 peak of more than €17bn

Martin Young / Cointelegraph: CoinGecko data shows that daily trading volume of crypto dropped from a peak of $440B in early February to $163B on March 12, a 63% decrease  —  Crypto trading volumes and dwindling digital asset prices are flashing signs of trader exhaustion and potentially weaker market momentum, according to analysts.

A. Anantha Lakshmi / Financial Times: GoTo, which operates Gojek and is a part owner of e-commerce company Tokopedia, reports adjusted EBITDA of $23.5M for 2024, its first annual profit  —  TikTok ecommerce partnership has had ‘huge’ impact on profitability, says CEO  —  The chief executive of Indonesian tech giant GoTo …

Reuters: A profile of Intel's new CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who invested in Annapurna Labs and Nuvia and revived the fortunes of chip design firm Cadence Design Systems as its CEO  —  Lip-Bu Tan may be one of the most powerful technology executives you've never heard of.  As he steps into one of the highest-profile jobs …

Saritha Rai / Bloomberg: Boston-based Insilico, which uses AI for drug discovery and has extensive operations in China, raised a $110M Series E led by Value Partners at a $1B+ valuation  —  US-based Insilico, which has extensive operations in China, secured $110 million in a financing round led by Value Partners Group.

John Gruber / Daring Fireball: By previewing smarter Siri vaporware at WWDC and the iPhone 16 launch, Apple burned a reputation earned over decades for only promising actual working products  —  In the two decades I've been in this racket, I've never been angrier at myself for missing a story than I am about Apple's announcement …

Bill Peters / MarketWatch: UiPath shares fell over 15% after the company projected FY 2026 sales of $1.525B to $1.53B, vs. $1.58B estimates; PATH is down 51.6% over the past 12 months  —  UiPath shares were dropping around 15% after hours Wednesday  —  Referenced Symbols  —  Shares of UiPath Inc. fell sharply …

Belle Lin / Wall Street Journal: D-Wave claims it has achieved “quantum supremacy” with its quantum annealing processors; some physicists say classical computers can achieve comparable results  —  The company said classical computers can't beat its quantum computer in magnetic materials simulation.  Some physicists disagree.

Jay Peters / The Verge: An arbitrator instructs a former Meta employee to stop promoting and publishing her book alleging company misconduct; publisher Flatiron Books earlier objected  —  An arbitrator has instructed the book's author and its publishers to stop publishing the book, though it's unclear how much authority the arbitrator has to do so.

Lauren Feiner / The Verge: Google calls the passage of Utah's app store age-verification bill “concerning” and part of an effort by Meta and others to “offload” kids' safety to app stores  —  Google has its own ideas about what kids online safety legislation should look like.

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch: In its final decision report, the UK CMA finds that Apple and Google's mobile browser duopoly is “holding back innovation”, but offers no enforcement action  —  A U.K. competition authority investigation of Apple and Google's mobile browsers has concluded that the mobile duopoly's policies are …

Bloomberg: Sources: Supabase, which bills itself as an open-source alternative to Google's Firebase, is raising $100M+ in a round led by Accel, valuing the company at ~$2B  —  Accel is leading the funding round of more than $100 million.  —  Supabase Inc., an open source developer platform …

TechCrunch: Indian police arrest Aleksej Besciokov, the co-founder of Garantex, a Russian crypto exchange sanctioned by the EU and the US, at the request of US authorities  —  Indian police have arrested the co-founder of Garantex, a Russian cryptocurrency exchange sanctioned by the European Union …

Benoit Berthelot / Bloomberg: French publishers and authors sue Meta for allegedly training AI models on their books without consent, say they have evidence of “massive” copyright breaches  —  SNE, the trade association representing major French publishers including Hachette and Editis, along …

Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times: Cerebras, Groq, and Big Tech target AI inference to challenge Nvidia; Barclays sees inference capex surpassing training in two years, reaching $208.2B in 2026  —  Rivals focus efforts on how AI is deployed, in their efforts to disrupt the world's most valuable semiconductor company

John Keilman / Wall Street Journal: Seagate and other HDD makers bet on tech like heat-assisted magnetic recording to stay competitive; IDC expects data center HDD spending to hit $22B by 2028  —  Hard disk drive makers, under pressure from faster rivals, hope a breakthrough will keep it the dominant data-storage medium

Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Infinite Uptime, which uses AI and proprietary sensors to offer predictive maintenance solutions for factories, raised a $35M Series C led by Avataar Ventures  —  Infinite Uptime, an Indian startup that offers predictive maintenance solutions for factories, has raised $35 million …

Liz Napolitano / Decrypt: Thailand's SEC approves Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC for exchange trading, with both available in Thailand on March 16, signaling growing stablecoin adoption  —  Thailand has added two dollar-backed stablecoins to its list of regulated cryptocurrencies as global stablecoin adoption gains steam.

Jaspreet Singh / Reuters: ServiceNow says it plans to acquire agentic AI company Moveworks for $2.85B in its largest-ever acquisition, a cash and stock deal set to close in H2 2025  —  ServiceNow (NOW.N) said on Monday it would buy AI firm Moveworks for $2.85 billion in cash and stock, marking the software maker's …

Columbia Journalism Review: A study of eight AI search engines found they provided incorrect citations of news articles in 60%+ of queries; Grok 3 answered 94% of the queries incorrectly  —  We Compared Eight AI Search Engines.  They're All Bad at Citing News.  —  AI search tools are rapidly gaining in popularity …

Tom Warren / The Verge: Leaked video: Sony is working on a prototype AI-powered version of a PlayStation game character that can interact with players through voice prompts  —  Sony's advanced technology group has created an AI-powered version of Aloy from PlayStation's Horizon games.