~techmeme | Bookmarks (1014)

Joe Mayes / Bloomberg: AWS plans to spend £8B in the UK to grow its cloud business, expecting to support up to 14,000 jobs and contribute £14B to the UK GDP between 2024 and 2028  —  - Move follows similar investments announced in Spain, Germany  — Chancellor Reeves says decision is ‘start of economic revival’

Maria Deutscher / SiliconANGLE: Maryland-based Forterra, which develops autonomous driving tech for military and commercial vehicles, raised a $75M Series B  —  Forterra, a supplier of autonomous driving technology for military and commercial vehicles, today announced that it has closed a $75 million Series B investment.

Paul Sawers / TechCrunch: MariaDB, which went public via SPAC in late 2022, says it's been acquired by PE firm K1 and names a new CEO, after filing to delist its shares from the NYSE  —  MariaDB's short-lived tenure as a public company is all but over, as the struggling database business is now fully under the auspices of K1 Investment Management.

Jan-Henrik Foerster / Bloomberg: NYC-based Versana, a two-year-old platform that allows lenders to access data about $2.7T worth of loans, raised $26M from Barclays, Bank of America, and others  —  - British bank participated in Versana's $26 million fundraising  — Versana now has data on $2.7 trillion worth of corporate loans

Justine Calma / The Verge: Google plans to buy carbon removal credits from direct air capture provider Holocene for $100 per ton, far below current prices, for delivery by the early 2030s  —  Google just landed a deal to capture planet-heating pollution at a huge bargain: $100 per ton of CO2, the price climate tech startups around …

Michael Roddan / The Information: Sources describe how Stripe was forced to scramble after its payments partnership with Wells Fargo ended and Goldman Sachs decided against taking up the role  —  Last year, staff inside Stripe got some alarming news: The payment giant's relationship with a key bank partner was about to change—for the worse.

Sara Fischer / Axios: The NYT tech guild of 600+ staff, the largest US union of tech workers with bargaining rights, authorizes a strike after two years of talks without a contract  —  - The Wirecutter union held a five-day walkout over the Black Friday holiday weekend in 2021 and struck a deal with management days later.

Ben Schoon / 9to5Google: Google starts rolling out a Google One “Lite” plan in India that offers 30GB storage for Rs. 59, or ~$0.70, per month  —  Google has started rolling out a “Lite” plan for Google One that has a small storage bump, and an even smaller cost.  —  A Google One subscription grants …

David Adams / SmartCompany: Australia-based SafetyCulture, which offers a suite of risk management tools, raised AU$165M led by Airtree at a AU$2.5B valuation, down from AU$2.7B in 2023  —  SafetyCulture has booked a fresh $165 million funding round, marking one of the year's largest single investments in an Australian scale …

Joyce Lee / Reuters: South Korea is hosting a summit in Seoul on September 9-10, seeking to establish a blueprint for the responsible military use of AI; 90+ countries are attending  —  South Korea convened an international summit on Monday seeking to establish a blueprint for the responsible use of artificial intelligence …

Julie Jargon / Wall Street Journal: Parents concerned about students' screen time in school are opting their children out of classroom tech, after working to ban smartphones in the classroom  —  After working to ban phones in the classroom, parents are now seeking a return to pencil and paper

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Bending Spoons plans to lay off 75% of WeTransfer staff after acquiring the file-sharing service in July 2024; WeTransfer reportedly has 350+ employees  —  Italy-based app company Bending Spoons, which owns Evernote and Meetup, is planning to lay off 75% of the staff of file transfer service WeTransfer, TechCrunch has learned.

Joshua Gabert-Doyon / Financial Times: London's e-bike boom is frustrating local councils over parking issues, as Lime and Forest expand; Lime trips during peak hours have grown 91% YoY in 2024  —  Badly parked and abandoned vehicles cause frustration for local authorities  —  London has seen a surge in rented e-bikes this summer …

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources: Apple will launch Image Playground and Genmoji in iOS 18.2; Sonos cuts its plans to build ~1M units of Ace headphones per year, to ~100K per year  —  Apple's AI features keep getting delayed — and that slow rollout likely means that the iPhone 16 won't see a “super cycle” of orders.

Zach Vallese / CNBC: Some creators move from unpredictable algorithm-driven platforms to subscription services; YouTube group The Try Guys launched 2nd Try, a $5/month streamer  —  The Try Guys, one of YouTube's most established creator groups, have successfully abandoned their reliance on Google's algorithms …

Austin Carr / Bloomberg: A profile of Texas-based Tyler Tech, which has become a dominant US local government software provider, despite a history of software flaws and release delays  —  Tyler Tech dominates America's software industry managing parks, courts, municipal offices and prison networks.  And you thought the DMV was rough before.

Mike Masnick / Techdirt: A look at the 2nd Circuit's incredibly damaging ruling favoring publishers in a copyright dispute over The Internet Archive's ebook lending program  —  What would you think if an author told you they would have written a book, but they wouldn't bother because it would be available to be borrowed for free from a library?

Anthony Cuthbertson / The Independent: CelesTrak: SpaceX controls 62%+ of all active satellites in orbit, ~10x more than closest rival OneWeb, after launching its 7,000th Starlink satellite on Sep. 5  —  SpaceX's Starlink network is growing by an average of three satellites per day  —  Your support helps us to tell the story

Wall Street Journal: Sources: xAI discussed a deal that would give Tesla access to its AI models to help power Full Self-Driving in exchange for a share of Tesla's software revenue  —  Under a proposed arrangement, the startup would give Tesla access to its AI technology in exchange for a slice of the carmaker's software revenue

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch: Bluesky says it had over 9M users as of September 6, after adding 3M new users in the week or so since Brazil blocked X, and that video support is “coming soon”  —  Bluesky keeps growing: The company announced that as of Friday morning, it had added 3 million new users, bringing its total user count to more than 9...

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch: Payroll startup Warp, part of YC's W23 batch, disavows a racist post from an affiliate X account, amid claims its affiliates on X are posting “engagement bait”  —  Warp is under the spotlight following controversial posts from an account tied to the company.

Zheping Huang / Bloomberg: Hero Games' Daniel Wu reflects on his studio's 20% stake in Game Science, the creator of China's biggest PC game Black Myth: Wukong, which has sold 18M+ copies  —  - China's biggest PC game reached 18 million sales in two weeks  — Beijing endorsement of ‘Wukong’ seen as positive for industry

New York Times: Analysis of 3.2M+ Telegram messages from 16K+ channels shows how the app is inundated with criminal activity, CSAM, drug dealers, white nationalists, and more  —  Drug dealers, scammers and white nationalists openly conduct business and spread toxic speech on the platform …

Eva Hartog / Politico: A profile of Pavel Durov's older brother Nikolai, who is reportedly still in Russia and is responsible for Telegram's encryption standard MTProto protocol  —  Nikolai Durov, who is also wanted by cops in France, is responsible for the messaging app's encryption standard.