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Andrew Hayward / Decrypt: Donald Trump is promoting a Solana memecoin called TRUMP from his social media accounts, with 200M $TRUMP available now and growing to 1B “over three years”  —  Talk about a Friday night surprise.  President-elect Donald Trump's social media accounts shared what appears …

Zaheer Kachwala / Reuters: Filing: Nasdaq-listed Qorvo reveals activist investor Starboard's 7.7% stake, amid stiff competition and slowing orders for the company's smartphone chips  —  Starboard Value has built a 7.7% stake in Qorvo (QRVO.O), the chipmaker revealed in a filing on Friday, as the activist investor looks to boost the company's weak share price.

Jasper Goodman / Politico: Leading crypto firms have given at least $10M to the Trump inaugural fund; Ripple, a major target of SEC enforcement action, donated $5M in digital tokens  —  Crypto executives and their lobbyists are scrambling to gain sway over the incoming administration.

Antonio Regalado / MIT Technology Review: OpenAI worked with Retro Biosciences to develop GPT-4b micro, an AI model that it says can engineer proteins capable of turning regular cells into stem cells  —  When you think of AI's contributions to science, you probably think of AlphaFold, the Google DeepMind protein-folding program that earned its creator a Nobel Prize last year.

Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC: TikTok says it will go dark in the US on Sunday unless the Biden admin provides a “definitive statement” to critical service providers assuring non-enforcement  —  TikTok said its services will go dark on Sunday unless the Biden administration gives a definitive statement providing assurances …

Karissa Bell / Engadget: Zuckerberg says there's a “bogus narrative saying I blamed Sheryl for a bunch of stuff” and he was just addressing the origin of “bring your whole self to work”  —  Well, specifically, they want me to know.  —  On Thursday, The New York Times published a lengthy story …

Charles Rollet / TechCrunch: Filing: ChatGPT's head of product, Nick Turley, will testify as a witness for the US DOJ in its antitrust case against Google, as a court decides penalties  —  The U.S. government wants to prove that Google's competitors face overwhelming barriers to entry as part of its antitrust case against the tech giant.

Brady Dale / Axios: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong endorses a US bitcoin strategic reserve in a blog post on “economic freedom” that calls on world leaders to embrace crypto  —  - This is the first time Coinbase has specifically addressed the idea of a strategic bitcoin reserve, doing …

Matt Day / Bloomberg: Amazon suspends drone deliveries in Texas and Arizona to fix the drones' software after two of its latest models crashed in rainy weather at a testing facility  —  - Deliveries halted in Texas, Arizona, pending a software repair  — Drone program suffering setbacks 11 years after its unveiling

Mia Sato / The Verge: Instagram adds a new tab in the Reels feed that will show videos that a user's friends have liked or added commentary to  —  Instagram is bringing back one of its more chaotic features, now reworked for the short-form video era.  —  A new tab in the Reels feed will serve up videos …

Edith Hancock / Wall Street Journal: A group of 18 former European heads of state call on the EC to break up Google's advertising tech business, claiming it erodes Europe's media landscape  —  18 former European heads of state are claiming Google's highly lucrative advertising-technology business erodes Europe's media landscape

Kalley Huang / The Information: Source: Meta plans to break up its civil rights team, which helped develop tech to address racial and other disparities in how Meta distributed ads on its apps  —  Meta Platforms will break up a team that trained employees on civil rights, sought to prevent the company's algorithms …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Perplexity acquires Read.cv, a social media platform for professionals; Read.cv will shut down and let users export their profiles, posts, and more until May 16  —  Read.cv, a social media platform for professionals that competed with LinkedIn, has been acquired by AI-powered search engine Perplexity.

Sarah Wynn / The Block: Digital Currency Group agrees to settle and pay $38.5M in civil penalties to the US SEC over charges that it misled investors via crypto lender Genesis Global  —  - The SEC said that one of Genesis' largest borrowers was asset hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and said on June 13 that the fund “failed to meet a margin call.”

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Bluesky 2024 moderation report: Bluesky gained 23M+ users, its moderation team grew to ~100, and its moderation service received 6.48M reports, up 17x from 2023  —  Bluesky on Friday published its moderation report for the past year, noting the sizable growth the social network experienced …

Jane Lanhee Lee / Bloomberg: TSMC reports Q4 sales up 38.8% YoY to ~$26.38B, net income up 57% YoY to ~$11.4B, both above estimates; stock jumped 80%+ in 2024, its biggest gain since 1999  —  - Revenue, capex projections surpass analysts' estimates  — TSMC is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI boom

Omkar Godbole / CoinDesk: Jio Platforms partners with Polygon Labs to integrate Web3 and blockchain services into Jio's apps and services; Jio Platforms has over 450M users in India  —  Indian telecom and technology company Jio Platforms (JPL) is taking significant steps to enhance the digital experience for its more than 450 million users.

NBC News: An official says the Biden administration is “exploring options” to implement the law without causing TikTok to go dark for US users on January 19  —  Barring action by the Supreme Court, a ban in the U.S. on the popular app is set to begin on Sunday.

Semafor: Sources: Satya Nadella and Brad Smith had lunch with Trump, Vance, and Musk at Mar-a-Lago on January 15; Microsoft says its two execs had a “Productive meeting”  —  THE SCOOP  —  President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance had lunch with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Wednesday …

Yazhou Sun / Bloomberg: Germany-based Neura Robotics, which is building cognitive, humanoid robots for logistics and other sectors, raised a €120M Series B led by Lingotto Investment  —  Neura Robotics, a German startup that manufactures robots that can “see, hear and touch,” has raised $120 million …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Chinese AI company MiniMax, which has raised ~$850M, debuts three LLMs, including a 456B-parameter model that it claims performs better than Gemini 2.0 Flash  —  Chinese firms continue to release AI models that rival the capabilities of systems developed by OpenAI and other U.S.-based AI companies.

Karen Freifeld / Reuters: The US Commerce Department adds 25 China-based companies, including Alibaba-backed LLM developer Zhipu AI and chip designer Sophgo, to its restricted trade list  —  The Biden administration added more than two dozen Chinese entities to a U.S. restricted trade list on Wednesday, including Zhipu AI …

Lindsay Whitehurst / Associated Press: During oral arguments, SCOTUS seemed open to a Texas law requiring age checks to view online porn, but could send the case back to a lower court  —  The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed open to a Texas law aimed at blocking kids from seeing online pornography, though the justices could still send …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: AI researcher François Chollet and Zapier co-founder Mike Knoop launch Ndea, an AI research and science lab focused on “developing and operationalizing AGI”  —  François Chollet, an influential AI researcher, is launching a new startup that aims to build frontier AI systems with novel designs.