~techmeme | Bookmarks (1043)

New York Times: Eric Schmidt becomes CEO of Relativity Space; sources: he made a significant investment in the rocket-building startup to take a controlling stake  —  Eric Schmidt, 69, has not served as a chief executive since he gave up the job at Google in 2011.  Benoit Tessier/Reuters

Jonathan Vanian / CNBC: Asana announces CEO Dustin Moskovitz is retiring, and reports Q4 sales rose 10% YoY to $188.3M, in line with estimates; ASAN drops 25%+ after hours  —  Dustin Moskovitz, the CEO of Asana and one of the original founders of Facebook, is retire from the software company he started in 2008.

Zaheer Kachwala / Reuters: Oracle reports Q3 revenue grew 6% YoY to $14.13B, vs. $14.39B est., and cloud revenue rose 23% YoY to $6.2B  —  Oracle (ORCL.N) missed Wall Street expectations for third-quarter revenue on Monday, weighed down by softer enterprise spending on its cloud infrastructure services, and strong competition from larger players.

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources: Apple preps a major interface revamp for iOS 19, iPadOS 19, and macOS 16, loosely based on visionOS, with consistent design, simpler navigation, more  —  Apple Inc. is preparing one of the most dramatic software overhauls in the company's history, aiming to transform the interface of the iPhone …

Jez Corden / Windows Central: Sources: Microsoft is working on an Xbox-branded gaming handheld, slated for later in 2025, and successors to the Xbox Series X|S, tentatively slated for 2027  —  Microsoft's first full foray into PC gaming handhelds begins with a partner device set to launch later this year, with its own Xbox Series X|

Bloomberg: Starting September 1, schools in Beijing will offer at least eight hours of AI classes per academic year for primary and secondary students  —  Schools in Beijing will introduce artificial intelligence courses to primary and secondary students to strengthen China's goal to dominate the sector.

Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat: Zoom researchers detail a “Chain of Draft” method to let LLMs accurately solve reasoning problems with as little as 7.6% of the tokens used by current methods  —  A team of researchers at Zoom Communications has developed a breakthrough technique that could dramatically reduce …

Kerry Flynn / Axios: NYC-based Firsthand, whose tools let marketers and publishers engage consumers through AI agents on their own sites or other sites, raised a $26M Series A  —  - The New York-based startup previously raised $6.6 million in seed funding, led by Radical Ventures.

Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer: Tarlogic researchers find an undocumented “backdoor” in Chinese manufacturer Espressif's ESP32 microchip used in 1B+ devices for WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity  —  The ubiquitous ESP32 microchip made by Chinese manufacturer Espressif and used by over 1 billion units as of 2023 contains …

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch: A US federal judge allows the Kadrey v. Meta case, in which authors allege Meta violated IP rights by using their books to train Llama models, to move forward  —  A federal judge is allowing an AI-related copyright lawsuit against Meta to move forward, although he dismissed part of the suit.

Fortune: Sources describe the collapse of fintech middleman Synapse that left ~$200M in customer money frozen, with entities blaming each other for shoddy recordkeeping  —  In 2022, after her family had a series of health scares, Kayla Morris sold her house.  She cleared $280,000, representing 15 years of her life savings.

Bloomberg: As Japan copes with a labor shortage, its market for service robots, which assist people with tasks like waiting tables, is expected to almost triple by 2030  —  As Japan copes with a labor shortage, the service robot market is expected to triple in the next five years.

Wall Street Journal: Sources detail how crypto flooded Trump with cash, including $50M+ in donations from at least eight execs, and how he is doing much of what the industry wants  —  The president had called cryptocurrency a ‘scam’ but during his campaign last year he was persuaded of its value, especially as an investment for the Trump family

Todd Spangler / Variety: A look at YouTube's origins, growth, and domination as the platform turns 20, including an interview with CEO Neal Mohan, who is nearing 10 years at the company  —  It's a muggy morning the day before the 2025 Super Bowl in New Orleans, and YouTube CEO Neal Mohan is stuck in parade traffic and not happy about it.

Reuters: Sources detail the nearly 10-hour-long tech meltdown of the European Central Bank's main payment system on February 27 due to a piece of malfunctioning hardware  —  The European Central Bank's payments crash last week meant salaries and welfare funds were delayed for thousands of people.

Wall Street Journal: After the ~$1.5B hack, Bybit borrowed about $280M in ether from crypto industry peers to help process 350,000 customer withdrawal requests over 10 hours  —  Bybit survived, thanks to emergency loans from its peers, but questions over crypto industry's security linger

David Yaffe-Bellany / New York Times: Source: Bybit hackers planted malicious code to manipulate transactions by compromising a developer's computer at crypto wallet provider Safe, used by Bybit  —  On the night of Feb. 21, Ben Zhou, the chief executive of the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, logged on to his computer to approve what appeared to be a routine transaction.

Ashley Capoot / CNBC: Freed, which offers an AI scribe that automates clinical notetaking in real time and is used by 17K+ clinicians, raised a $30M Series A led by Sequoia Capital  —  For Erez Druk, who spent almost four years working at Facebook, building health-care startup Freed has been a labor of love, quite literally.

David Heaney / UploadVR: Meta will recommend using Unity and Unreal's built-in OpenXR support, after developers said Meta's Unity and Unreal integrations blocked other PC VR headsets  —  Meta will recommend that developers use the built-in OpenXR support of Unity and Unreal from next week.  —  What Is OpenXR?

Wall Street Journal: Sources: activist investor Mantle Ridge has built a $1B+ stake in Cognizant and believes the tech services firm, which has a $41B+ market cap, is undervalued  —  The investor has been working behind the scenes at the tech-services firm and isn't currently planning to nominate directors

Julie Bort / TechCrunch: CoreWeave's S-1 reveals its three co-founders own less than 3% of Class A shares after cashing out ~$488M, but still control ~80% of votes though Class B shares  —  CoreWeave's initial S-1 document for its upcoming IPO is full of surprises.  —  Backed by Nvidia, CoreWeave runs …

Aditya Kalra / Reuters: The CCI will review the antitrust case filed by an Indian distributors' federation over alleged deep discounting practices by Zomato, Swiggy, and Zepto  —  Indian consumer products distributors have filed an antitrust case against big fast-delivery businesses of Zomato, Swiggy and Zepto …

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Crogl, whose AI agent helps cybersecurity researchers analyze daily network alerts to find and fix security incidents, raised a $25M Series A and a $5M seed  —  AI agents are marching across the world of IT, and on Thursday a startup called Crogl is debuting its contribution to the field …

Josh Sisco / Bloomberg: The FTC told a US district judge it is still determining who Amazon's competitors are for its 2023 antitrust lawsuit and the list could include Walmart and eBay  —  Lawyers for the company and the agency appeared Friday before US District Judge John Chun in Seattle to provide a high-level overview …