~techmeme | Bookmarks (1025)

Bloomberg: ON Semiconductor reveals a $6.9B bid to acquire chipmaker Allegro Microsystems, which had a ~$4.9B market cap as of March 5, while Onsemi's stood at $19.6B  —  The chip company, which does business as Onsemi, is offering $35.10 per share for Allegro, up from a September proposal of $34.50, it said in a statement.

Financial Times: Sources: Microsoft canceled some CoreWeave agreements over delivery issues and missed deadlines before its IPO; Microsoft made up 62% of CoreWeave's 2024 sales  —  AI data centre provider hit by blow from biggest customer ahead of the biggest tech listing this year

Gaby Del Valle / The Verge: USCIS proposes to review social media accounts of people applying for US citizenship, green cards, and asylum or refugee status, to comply with Trump's EO  —  People applying for US citizenship or personal residency may soon have to disclose their social media handles to the government.

Charles Rollet / TechCrunch: NY-based Ataraxis AI, which uses AI to predict if a patient has cancer and what their cancer outcome looks like, raised a $20.4M Series A led by AIX Ventures  —  Artificial intelligence is a big trend in cancer care, and it's mostly focused on detecting cancer at the earliest possible stage.

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters: Intel defeats a shareholder lawsuit accusing it of fraudulently concealing problems in its foundry unit, leading to job cuts and a $32B stock plunge  —  Intel (INTC.O) won the dismissal of a shareholder lawsuit accusing the chipmaker of fraudulently concealing problems in its foundry business …

Todd Bishop / GeekWire: Microsoft unveils Sales Agent and Sales Chat AI agents, available in public preview in May, designed to work with Dynamics 365 business apps and with Salesforce  —  Microsoft announced two AI agents for sales that double as a competitive response to Salesforce in an area where both companies are placing big bets.

Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat: Salesforce announces Agentforce 2dx, letting AI agents work proactively and autonomously across enterprise systems without constant human supervision  —  Salesforce announced Agentforce 2dx today, a major update to its digital labor platform that enables autonomous AI agents to work proactively behind …

The Economic Times: Ola's AI venture Krutrim partners with Lenovo to develop the 700B-parameter Krutrim 3 LLM and India's largest supercomputer, as India grows its AI capabilities  —  Ola has a 700-strong team building its full-stack AI offerings, said CTO Navendu Agarwal at the Lenovo Tech World India 2025 in Mumbai.

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Tel Aviv-based Grain, which helps businesses find the best FX hedges using FX derivatives and AI, emerges from stealth with a $33M Series A and an $18M seed  —  Foreign exchange fluctuations can make or break a business that trades across borders, but keeping up and responding to the FX market …

Jordan Novet / CNBC: MongoDB Q4: revenue up ~20% YoY to $548.4M, vs. $519.6M est., and projects the slowest growth for FY 2026 since going public in 2017; MDB drops 16%+ after hours  —  MongoDB shares sank 16% in extended trading on Wednesday after the database software maker issued disappointing guidance.

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer: Broadcom fixes three VMware zero-days exploited in the wild; attackers with admin privileges can chain the flaws to escape the virtual machine's sandbox  —  Broadcom warned customers today about three VMware zero-days, tagged as exploited in attacks and reported by the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center.

William Gallagher / AppleInsider: The new M4 MacBook Air supports two monitors of up to 6K resolution each, plus the built-in display simultaneously, addressing a limitation of previous models  —  The new M4 MacBook Air fixes what's been a key problem with the line, and now supports up to two external monitors …

Lauren Feiner / The Verge: Utah becomes the first state to pass an app store age-verification bill and require parental consent for minors to download apps; the bill heads to the governor  —  And Meta, Snap, and X are applauding it. … Utah became the first state in the country to pass legislation requiring …

Bloomberg: Shares of the chipmaker SiTime closed up 19.53% on Wednesday after an iPhone 16e teardown revealed that its timer chips are used in the smartphone  —  The appearance of SiTime Corp. components in the new iPhone 16e is fueling a stock rally for the little-known chipmaker, sending the shares up as much as 17% on Wednesday.

Duncan Riley / SiliconANGLE: SpecterOps, a cybersecurity company focused on detecting and addressing identity-based attack paths, raised a $75M Series B led by Insight Partners  —  Cybersecurity solutions and services provider Specter Ops Inc. today announced that it has raised $75 million in new funding to support …

Zvi Mowshowitz / Don't Worry About the Vase: GPT-4.5 review: improved verbal intelligence, contextual adaptation, abstract writing, and better taste and aesthetics, but not ideal for reasoning or coding  —  It's happening.  —  The question is, what is the it that is happening?  An impressive progression of intelligence?

Amy Stillman / Bloomberg: Jalisco's governor says Foxconn's $900M Guadalajara plant, the largest Nvidia GB200 server assembly site, will be built in a year despite Trump's tariff threat  —  - The Taiwanese company is investing nearly $1 billion  — Lemus welcomes Chinese investment in spite of Trump's tariffs

Dong Cao / Bloomberg: Sources: Didi Autonomous Driving is seeking to raise new funding at a $5B valuation; it raised a $298M Series C led by Guangzhou Automobile in October 2024  —  - Firm in talks with investors including Beijing-based fund  — Unit operates robotaxi services in some major Chinese cities

Bailey Lipschultz / Bloomberg: CoreWeave's S-1 shows ~77% of its $1.9B revenue in 2024 came from its top two customers, one of them being Microsoft, which accounted for 62% of total sales  —  CoreWeave, a cloud-computing provider that's one of the hottest startups in artificial intelligence, filed for an initial public offering disclosing rapidly growing revenue.

Craig Barrett / Fortune: A former CEO and chair of Intel says the company shouldn't be broken up since its foundry unit now has the tech and manufacturing know-how to compete with TSMC  —  Four former Intel board members have written two opinion pieces for Fortune arguing that the only solution to Intel's problems …

Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch: Creator monetization platform Passes and its CEO, Lucy Guo, are sued for allegedly distributing CSAM; the suit claims Guo intervened to override safety measures  —  Passes, a direct-to-fan monetization platform for creators backed by $40 million in Series A funding, has been sued …

Abner Li / 9to5Google: Google updates the iOS Gemini app, adding six new widgets for the lock screen and the Control Center, including one for its conversational mode Gemini Live  —  Following last week's homescreen redesign, the Google Gemini app on iPhone has been updated with lockscreen widgets and direct access in Control Center.

Jay Peters / The Verge: Google updates Google Play on Android to highlight apps with widgets, adding a widget search filter, widget badges on app pages, and a curated editorial page  —  There will be a new search filter for widgets, widget gadgets on app detail pages, and a curated editorial page.

Bloomberg: A deep dive into how Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, Tinder, and Airbnb are being used to facilitate cross-border underage sex trafficking in Colombia  —  Better internet service, the proliferation of US apps and an influx of tourists have converged to facilitate the exploitation of minors in Colombia