~techmeme | Bookmarks (1039)

Dan Whateley / Business Insider: Maryland-based Uscreen, which helps creators launch apps, engage fans, monetize memberships, and more, raised $150M from PSG Equity, giving PSG a majority stake  —  - Uscreen, a startup that helps creators make apps, scored a $150 million investment from PSG Equity.

Wall Street Journal: Sources: Broadcom has informally explored a bid for Intel's chip design and marketing unit, but only if it could secure a partner for Intel's foundry business  —  Broadcom has interest in Intel's chip-design business, while TSMC is looking at the company's factories

Olga Kharif / Bloomberg: The website of President Trump's World Liberty Financial shows the crypto project sold 24B+ of its 25B WLFI tokens after a slow start, implying sales of $1.25B  —  - The project has sold more than 24 billion tokens so far  — Chinese crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun is a project investor

Hugh Son / CNBC: Zelle's payment volume crossed $1T in 2024, the most ever for a P2P platform, user base jumped 12% YoY to 151M accounts, and the total dollars sent grew 27% YoY  —  Zelle, the payments network run by banks-owned Early Warning Services, crossed $1 trillion in total volumes last year …

Emily Nicolle / Bloomberg: Tether acquires a minority stake in the iconic Italian football club Juventus, as part of a broader push to integrate digital assets into sports franchises  —  Tether Holdings SA de CV said it's acquired a minority stake in Juventus Football Club SpA, as one of crypto's most valuable companies continues …

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Identity security startup SGNL, which lets enterprises enforce policies in real-time for privileged access to systems, raised a $30M Series A led by Brightmind  —  Security experts often describe identity as the “new perimeter” in the world of security: in the world of cloud services …

Lauren Faith Lau / Bloomberg: DeepSeek's rise has turned the spotlight on its hometown, Hangzhou, the capital of the Zhejiang province, which has earmarked ~$13.7B to fund tech companies  —  Plus: The struggle over improving 7-Eleven, and how Silicon Valley swung to Trump. … There's Shenzhen, whose designation …

Lucy Adams / Tech.eu: Fal.ai, a Turkish startup specializing in AI-generated media for enterprise use, raised a $49M Series B led by Notable Capital, taking its total funding to $72M  —  The funding will support infrastructure expansion, a model marketplace, and team growth.  —  Turkish mediatech startup …

The Information: Sources: Anthropic expects to burn $3B in 2025, down from $5.6B in 2024, and make up to $3.7B in revenue in 2025, as it seeks to catch up with OpenAI  —  After burning $5.6 billion in cash last year, Anthropic said it would reduce that amount by nearly half in 2025 and projected up to $3.7 billion …

Sharon Goldman / Fortune: Harvey, which builds generative AI tools for law firms, raised a $300M Series D led by Sequoia at a $3B valuation; CEO Winston Weinberg says ARR surpassed $50M  —  Harvey, a San Francisco AI startup focused on the legal industry, has raised $300 million in a funding round led by Sequoia …

Eric Geller / Wired: Memo: CISA halts election security work and reviews related activities conducted since 2017, to comply with Trump's January 20 EO on “ending federal censorship”  —  The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has frozen efforts to aid states in securing elections, according to an internal memo viewed by WIRED.

Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg: Sources: Spotify hopes to launch a Music Pro tier in 2025, a $6/month add-on that will include higher-quality audio, early access to concert tickets, and more  —  - Spotify is hoping to roll out its new Music Pro this year  — Customers may get early access to concert tickets, other perks

Wall Street Journal: Sources detail Sam Altman and Elon Musk's disintegrating relationship and how Altman secretly worked around Musk to blindside him with the Stargate announcement  —  On the first full day of the second Trump presidency, Elon Musk was in the White House complex when he got word that his nemesis …

Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat: Perplexity releases Deep Research, offering five queries daily to free users and 500 to subscribers, available now on the web and soon on iOS, Android, and Mac  —  Perplexity shattered the artificial intelligence market's status quo today by launching Deep Research, a tool …

New York Times: Sources: Intel has spoken with the Trump administration and TSMC over the past few months about a deal for TSMC to take control of Intel's foundry business  —  The Silicon Valley giant is trying to cut a deal it hopes would help it pull out of a yearslong slump.

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Kadrey v. Meta: Meta paused some AI-related book licensing efforts in April 2023 after contacting publishers and seeing “slow uptake” and logistical setbacks  —  New court filings in an AI copyright case against Meta add credence to earlier reports that the company “paused” …

Jordan Novet / CNBC: Filing: Trump Media reports 2024 revenue down 12% YoY to $3.6M and a $400M net loss, up from $58.2M in 2023; the company has a $6.6B market cap  —  Trump Media & Technology Group shares were down about 1% in extended trading on Friday after the operator of Truth Social released its 2024 results.

PYMNTS.com: London-based OneID, which provides bank-verified digital ID services, raised £16M led by ACF Investors, with participation from over 200 angel investors  —  United Kingdom-based OneID raised over 16 million pounds (about $20 million) to grow its bank-verified digital identity service.

Paayal Zaveri / Bloomberg: Eudia, which provides in-house legal teams with AI agents and other tools for common tasks, exits stealth with an up to $105M Series A led by General Catalyst  —  - Most of the cash is conditional on Eudia making acquisitions  — Investment firm General Catalyst is leading the deal

Reuters: Baidu says it plans to make its next-generation AI model, Ernie 4.5, open-source starting June 30, marking a major shift in strategy as competition heats up  —  China's Baidu (9888.HK) said on Friday that it would make the next-generation artificial intelligence model Ernie open-source from June 30.

New York Times: Sources: banks sold ~$4.7B of X's debt on February 13, more than the $3B they originally intended to sell, leaving ~$1B of X debt on their balance sheets  —  The social media company is attracting investor interest because of Elon Musk's close ties to President Trump and a recent jump in revenue.

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources: Apple plans to launch its AI features in China as early as May 2025, using its own on-device models with Alibaba software to censor or filter AI output  —  - Company to use own models, with help from Alibaba and Baidu  — Work includes system to censor or block content for government

Kendra Barnett / Adweek: Reddit says content licensing deals with Google and OpenAI account for ~10% of its revenue, but its primary focus is on ad revenue, which grew 60% YoY in Q4  —  Despite this new revenue, Reddit remains focused on its growing advertising business, its COO says

The Indian Express: JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar officially merge to launch JioHotstar, a new streaming service in India that brings together content from the two platforms  —  Jio Cinema and Disney+ Hotstar have officially merged as JioHotstar, making it one of the biggest streaming platforms in India.