~techmeme | Bookmarks (1010)

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.

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 …