~techmeme | Bookmarks (1039)

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: The UK renames its AI Safety Institute to AI Security Institute in a pivot to cybersecurity, and is exploring ways to use Anthropic's Claude in public services  —  The U.K. government wants to make a hard pivot into boosting its economy and industry with AI, and as part of that …

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Apple and Google restore TikTok to their US app stores after its January 18 removal, following Trump admin assurances that a ban won't immediately be enforced  —  - Companies had removed the app to abide by US legislation  — Trump signed executive order to delay a potential ban

Reuters: Sources: Arm is recruiting executives from its own customers in a push to sell its own chips, and is competing against Qualcomm to sell data center CPUs to Meta  —  Arm (O9Ty.F) has begun recruiting from its own customers and competing against them for deals as it pushes toward selling its own chips …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: OpenAI removes “warning” messages in ChatGPT that indicated when content might violate its terms of service, to cut down on “gratuitous/unexplainable denials”  —  OpenAI says it has removed the “warning” messages in its AI-powered chatbot platform, ChatGPT …

Abner Li / 9to5Google: Google's Gemini can now recall and “reference past chats for more tailored help”; the feature is rolling out in English for Advanced subscribers  —  Google today is rolling out a new Gemini app feature for Advanced subscribers that can recall and “reference past chats for more tailored help.”

Tanaya Macheel / CNBC: Coinbase reports Q4 revenue up 138% YoY to $2.27B, vs. $1.88B est., transaction revenue up 194% to $1.56B, vs. $1.29B est., and trading volume up 185% to $439B  —  Coinbase Thursday reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter results and its biggest quarterly revenue in three years …

Todd Spangler / Variety: Roku reports Q4 revenue up 22% YoY to $1.2B, vs. $1.15B est., a net loss of $35.5M, and streaming households up 12% YoY to 89.8M; ROKU jumps 10%+ after hours  —  Platform revenue tops $1 billion for the first time, with political ads representing 6% of segment revenue in the quarter

J. Edward Moreno / Sherwood News: Airbnb Q4: revenue up 12% YoY to $2.48B, Nights and Experiences Booked up 12%, Gross Booking Value up 13% to $17.6B vs. $17.2B est.; ABNB jumps 13%+ after hours  —  Consumers spent more than $81 billion on Airbnb in 2024.  —  12m  —  Short-term rental giant Airbnb reported quarterly results …

Melissa Heikkilä / Financial Times: At the AI Action Summit, Eric Schmidt urged the West to focus on open-source AI or risk losing to China while calling for AI safety collaboration with China  —  Former Google chief's caution comes following Chinese start-up DeepSeek's breakthrough  —  Former Google chief Eric Schmidt …

Katarina Hoije / Bloomberg: Central African Republic, the first in Africa to adopt Bitcoin as tender, launches CAR MEME on Solana, which traded at $0.03 on Feb. 11, down ~90% since launch  —  - CAR Meme is second cryptocurrency launched by the country  — Nation first in Africa to adopt Bitcoin as tender in 2022

Arjun Neil Alim / Financial Times: The Hang Seng Tech Index, tracking top 30 Hong Kong-listed tech groups, is up 25% since January 13, entering a bull market after the DeepSeek breakthrough  —  Budget AI model triggers global reappraisal of Chinese technology companies  —  A benchmark for Chinese technology stocks has risen …

Stephen Nellis / Reuters: US chip startup Groq says it has secured a $1.5B commitment from Saudi Arabia to expand the delivery of its AI chips to the country over the course of this year  —  U.S. semiconductor startup Groq said on Monday it has secured a $1.5 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia to expand the delivery of its advanced AI chips to the...

Bloomberg: A White House document sent to Capitol Hill shows President Trump plans to nominate Brian Quintenz, a16z Crypto's head of policy, to lead the CFTC  —  - Trump to tap Jonathan Gould as Comptroller of the Currency  — Trump also set to nominate Jonathan McKernan as CFPB director

The Economic Times: Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal says Krutrim has deployed DeepSeek R1 671B on Nvidia's H100 and will be offered to Indian developers starting at ₹1/million tokens  —  Bhavish Aggarwal stated on X that while caution is needed with the DeepSeek app in India, the open-source version of the model …

Paul Sawers / TechCrunch: Miami-based Moderne, which helps companies analyze their software stack and remediate technical debt, raised a $30M Series B led by Acrew Capital  —  When companies take shortcuts to build their software stack, prioritizing speed and quick fixes over quality and long-term scalability …

Emma Roth / The Verge: Meta creates a free, “fully funded” curriculum to teach middle schoolers how to recognize forms of online exploitation, in partnership with nonprofit Childhelp  —  Schools, parents, and organizations can access the Meta-funded curriculum for free.

Emma Goldberg / New York Times: A look at ACTS 17, a nonprofit devoted to introducing Christianity to technologists by inviting Peter Thiel and other tech executives to talk about their faith  —  Everything clicked when Peter Thiel gave the speech about God.  —  The occasion was a 40th birthday party for Trae Stephens …

David DiMolfetta / Nextgov/FCW: Andesite, which combines human expertise and AI in its security operations center platform, raised an additional $23M seed, taking its total funding to $38.25M  —  Cybersecurity firm Andesite secured an added $23 million in seed funding, bringing its total funds to $38.5 million …

Juli Clover / MacRumors: Apple now lets users migrate apps, music, books, shows, and movies between Apple accounts, but the feature isn't available to users in the EU, the UK, or India  —  If you have two Apple Accounts with multiple digital purchases between them, Apple now has a way for you to consolidate the accounts …

Samantha Subin / CNBC: Super Micro forecasts FY 2026 revenue above est. and is “confident” it will file its delayed annual report by the Feb. 25 deadline; SMCI jumps 7%+ after hours  —  Super Micro Computer gave optimistic commentary for its fiscal 2026 and delayed annual report that overshadowed …

Anna Tong / Reuters: Reno, Nevada-based Positron, which sells AI chips intended for inference and manufactured in Arizona, raised a $23.5M seed from Flume, Valor Equity, and others  —  Positron, a startup chip maker that aims to compete with Nvidia (NVDA.O), said Tuesday it raised $23.5 million to scale production …

The Logic: Internal message: Shopify's general council said the company closed Ye's store since the swastika shirt listed for sale “brought with it the real risk of fraud”  —  TORONTO — Shopify's general counsel said the company took down musician Kanye West's online store because of the potential …

The Information: Source: Apple and Alibaba submitted their co-developed AI features for approval by China's cyberspace regulator; Apple considered but rejected DeepSeek's models  —  Apple has recently started working with Chinese internet and e-commerce giant Alibaba Group to roll out artificial intelligence features …

Bloomberg: Sources: Shein asked some top apparel suppliers in China to set up new production lines in Vietnam, with incentives like higher procurement prices of up to 30%  —  - It's offering higher procurement prices and guaranteed orders  — Fast fashion giant racing to mitigate impact of Trump tariffs