~techmeme | Bookmarks (1043)

Brendan Bordelon / Politico: Lina Khan, Steve Bannon, and others worry the FTC could abandon its Meta antitrust case after Zuckerberg's concessions to Trump; the trial is set for April 14  —  With a historic antitrust suit looming against Meta, could the company get a reprieve from its new ally in the White House?

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources: Apple is keeping TikTok and other ByteDance apps on its US App Store for at least another 75 days, following assurances from AG Pam Bondi  —  Apple Inc., following assurances from the Trump administration, is keeping TikTok and other apps from ByteDance Ltd. on its US App Store for at least another 75 days.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge: Z-Wave, popular among smart home enthusiasts, becomes an open-source protocol with a new long-range technology as it seeks Matter support to avoid obsolescence  —  Now an open-source protocol and with a new long-range technology, the path forward for Z-Wave looks clearer, with a little help from Matter.

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: How Apple may adjust to the US tariffs; sources: the iPhone 17 Pro's camera panel will span the width of the phone and will be the same color as the device  —  After years of avoiding iPhone price hikes in the US, Apple could finally be forced to to make increases.

New York Times: A look at the US market for humanoids in homes and businesses; PitchBook says investors have poured $7.2B into 50+ startups since 2015, including $1.6B in 2024  —  By getting its humanoids into people's homes, 1X hopes to gather enormous amounts of data that can show these robots how to handle …

Emilia David / VentureBeat: Anthropic's Alignment Science team: “legibility” or “faithfulness” of reasoning models' Chain-of-Thought can't be trusted and models may actively hide reasoning  —  We now live in the era of reasoning AI models where the large language model (LLM) …

Wall Street Journal: Analysis: newly announced US tariffs for goods from China could raise the bill of materials for the iPhone 16 Pro with 256GB of storage from ~$550 to ~$850  —  This is what the company pays for components inside its bestselling phone, and how Trump's China tariffs could raise the bill.

Xinmei Shen / South China Morning Post: DeepSeek and Tsinghua University researchers detail an approach combining reasoning methods to let LLMs deliver better and faster results to general queries  —  In collaboration with Tsinghua University, DeepSeek developed a technique combining reasoning methods to guide AI models towards human preferences

Ben Blanchard / Reuters: Foxconn reports Q1 revenue up 24.2% YoY to $49.5B, driven by AI demand, but says the impact of evolving global political conditions will need “close monitoring”  —  Taiwan's Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics maker, posted its highest first-quarter revenue ever …

Bloomberg: Analysis: tech companies have pledged at least $1.4T in US spending since Trump was elected, although many of the plans aren't new and not all will be fulfilled  —  Business leaders have pledged at least $1.6 trillion in US spending since Trump was elected to a second term as president.

Duncan Riley / SiliconANGLE: Crunchbase: global VC funding reached $113B in Q1 2025, up 54% YoY, buoyed by OpenAI's $40B deal; PitchBook says 77% of US deal value in Q1 2025 went to AI  —  New reports out today from Crunchbase Inc. and PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor reveal that global venture capital rebounded sharply …

Ashley Belanger / Ars Technica: New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signs a law criminalizing the “deceptive and dangerous” creation and sharing of deepfakes, including fake AI nudes of minors  —  When Francesca Mani was 14 years old, boys at her New Jersey high school used nudify apps to target her and other girls.

Google Online Security Blog: Google announces Sec-Gemini v1, an experimental AI model for cybersecurity, claiming it outperforms others on the leading CTI-MCQ threat intelligence benchmark  —  Today, we're announcing Sec-Gemini v1, a new experimental AI model focused on advancing cybersecurity AI frontiers.

FinSMEs: Utah-based SchoolAI, an AI-powered teaching and learning platform used in 1M+ classrooms across 80+ countries, raised a $25M Series A led by Insight Partners  —  SchoolAI, a Lehi, UT-based provider of an AI platform for teaching and learning, raised $25M in Series A funding.

Anna Tong / Reuters: A US federal judge decides Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI will go to a jury trial in spring 2026; Musk and OpenAI agreed to fast-track the trial last month  —  - Billionaire Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI will go to a jury trial in spring 2026, the federal judge presiding over the case decided on Friday.

TechCrunch: SensorTower: users in India have spent $8M on ChatGPT subscriptions through IAP since 2023, not including web app purchases, versus ~$330M spent by US users  —  For years, U.S.-based tech companies have tapped into India's vast and increasing internet user base for growth.  OpenAI is no exception.

Sri Muppidi / The Information: Sources: enterprise AI search startup Glean is in talks to raise hundreds of millions, including money to buy employee shares, at an estimated ~$7B valuation  —  Glean, a developer of search chatbots for businesses, is in talks with investors to potentially raise hundreds of millions of dollars …

Marina Temkin / TechCrunch: Turbine, which allows LPs to borrow funds secured by their position in venture funds, emerges from stealth with a $13M Series A and an $8.75M seed  —  Since IPOs slowed to trickle a few years ago, limited partners who invest in venture capital funds have had one giant problem: a dearth of liquidity.

Taylor Soper / GeekWire: Ring founder Jamie Siminoff rejoins Amazon as a VP of product overseeing Ring and related businesses, replacing Elizabeth Hamren, who succeeded him in 2023  —  Jamie Siminoff has returned to Amazon as a vice president of product overseeing the company's home security camera arm and related businesses.

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: Amazon introduces a Kindle Recaps feature that uses GenAI and moderators to create short summaries of books in a series  —  Amazon is introducing a new “Recaps” feature for Kindle users to help them recall plot points and character arcs before picking up the latest book in a series.

Fareed Sahloul / Bloomberg: Sources: StubHub, Klarna, eToro, and adtech group MNTN have paused their IPO plans as President Trump's trade war upends the global economy  —  Billions of dollars worth of acquisitions and initial public offerings are on hold as Donald Trump's trade war upends the global economy …

Fortune: Analysts say Microsoft, whose shares fell the least among top tech companies, is shielded from the worst tariff impacts due to Azure and a broad enterprise base  —  As Microsoft celebrates its 50th anniversary Friday with a Seattle event spotlighting its latest AI developments …

Reuters: Sources: a TikTok deal, which was largely finalized by April 2, was put on hold after China indicated it would reject the deal over Trump's tariffs  —  A deal to spin off the U.S. assets of TikTok was put on hold after China indicated that it would not approve the deal following President …

Todd Spangler / Variety: The Nasdaq fell 5.8% on the second day following Trump's tariffs announcement, with Nvidia closing down 7.4%, Apple 7.3%, Netflix 6.7%, Meta 5%, and Amazon 4.2%  —  Amid steep losses, U.S. president says ‘my policies will never change’  —  Stocks dropped sharply for a second day …