Techmeme
March 3, 2023, 5:25 PM

Top News

Matt Day / Bloomberg:
Amazon pauses second phase of construction of its HQ2 in Virginia as it reassesses office needs following its deepest-ever job cuts; phase one nears completion  —  Amazon.com Inc. is pausing construction on its sprawling second headquarters near Washington, a decision that coincides …
Wall Street Journal:
Internal docs detail efforts by Tether Holdings and Bitfinex to maintain access to the global banking system by using shadowy intermediaries and shell companies  —  Tether Holdings and related crypto broker obscured identities, documents show  —  In late 2018, the companies behind …
Axios:
Sources: Founders Fund cut Fund VIII, which is expected to start deploying capital in Q2 2023, from ~$1.8B to ~$900M; the money will be pushed to its ninth fund  —  Founders Fund has quietly cut the size of its eighth venture capital fund in half, from around $1.8 billion to around $900 million, Axios has learned from multiple sources.
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
Meta cuts the price of Quest Pro, its mixed and virtual reality headset meant for business users, from $1,500 to $1,000, and its 256GB Quest 2 from $500 to $430  —  Mark Zuckerberg has announced that the Meta Quest Pro, the company's mixed and virtual reality headset focused on business users …
New York Times:
US lawmakers warn about AI, but few are trying regulation and many struggle to understand the tech and its dangers; EU policymakers proposed AI rules in 2021  —  Tech innovations are again racing ahead of Washington's ability to regulate them, lawmakers and A.I. experts said.
Erik Schatzker / Bloomberg:
Coinbase acquires One River, a crypto asset management startup that serves only institutional clients, like pension funds; One River was valued at $186M in 2021  —  Coinbase Global Inc., still reeling from a plunge in trading volume on its exchanges, is expanding into a less-volatile corner …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Foxconn plans to invest ~$700M to build a plant for iPhone parts on a 300-acre site in Bengaluru, India; the plant is expected to create ~100K jobs  —  Apple Inc. partner Foxconn Technology Group plans to invest about $700 million on a new plant in India to ramp up local production …
Financial Times:
Sources: Character.AI, which uses LLMs to let users chat with famous people like Shakespeare, raised between $200M and $250M led by a16z at a ~$1B valuation  —  Pioneering tech venture capital firm makes first big foray into generative artificial intelligence sector

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work  —  Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Zoho:
The quiet power of email marketing to maximize impact for nonprofits  —  A life changed.  A problem solved.  A community strengthened.  A future made a little better than it was yesterday.For nonprofits, that's the metric.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser  —  Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox.  Use local models or your preferred AI provider.  Get started free.

Featured Podcasts

Sources:
A quiet investor's $10 billion bet on AI, chips, and defense
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Cheeky Pint:
The company building America's uranium supply from scratch
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
Grit:
The Difference Between 1% Improvements and 10x Growth | Immad Akhund
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
How a 19-year-old intern built the growth engine behind this $2B AI company | Hector Serrano
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
Big Tech's Ugly Week, Getting Rich At Anthropic, AI Costs Plunge
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Machine Gods:
OpenAI's Latest Discoveries Spark a Backlash + Help! My Kid Hates AI
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:25 PM ET, March 3, 2023.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Earlier Picks

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Mia Sato / The Verge:
Washington Post:
The Verge:
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
John Tozzi / Bloomberg:
CyberScoop: