Techmeme
May 1, 2024, 7:50 PM

Top News

Jennifer Elias / CNBC:
Sources: Google laid off at least 200 employees from its “Core” teams, including its Python developer team, and plans to move some roles to Mexico and India  —  Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc., during Stanford's 2024 Business, Government …
Hayden Field / CNBC:
Anthropic launches a free iOS app and Team, its first enterprise plan, which offers access to its Claude 3 Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku models for $30/user/month  —  Anthropic on Wednesday announced its first-ever enterprise offering and a free iPhone app.  —  The generative artificial intelligence startup …
Ashley Capoot / CNBC:
In a US Senate hearing, the UnitedHealth CEO says the company paid a $22M ransom to hackers who accessed a Change Healthcare server that wasn't protected by MFA  —  UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty testifies before the Senate Finance Committee on Capitol Hill on May 1, 2024 in Washington, DC.
Bloomberg:
US v. Google: Microsoft invested in OpenAI over fears of falling behind Google; Kevin Scott said he was “very, very worried” in a 2019 email to Satya Nadella  —  - Google faces US antitrust case about its dominance in search  — Microsoft's communications deemed relevant to defense by judge
Leah Nylen / Bloomberg:
US v. Google: Google paid Apple $20B in 2022 to be the default search engine in Safari; in 2020, Google's payments constituted 17.5% of Apple's operating income  —  The deal between the two tech giants is at the heart of the landmark case, in which antitrust enforcers allege Google …
Asa Fitch / Wall Street Journal:
New Jersey-based CoreWeave, which offers GPUs in the cloud, raised $1.1B led by Coatue at a $19B valuation, up from $7B after raising $642M in December 2023  —  Company raises $1.1 billion from investors including Fidelity, Magnetar Capital  —  CoreWeave, a cloud-computing company backed by Nvidia …
Gretchen Morgenson / NBC News:
Sources: US federal prosecutors are digging into internal practices at Block, discussing with an ex-employee alleged widespread and yearslong compliance lapses  —  Internal documents indicate Block processed crypto transactions for terrorist groups and Square processed transactions involving nations subject to economic sanctions.
Orlando Mayorquín / New York Times:
Airbnb launches Icons, a new category of experiences that lets users meet celebrities and stay in outlandish venues, like a replica of the house from Pixar's Up  —  The company announced a new category of outlandish stays in partnership with brands and celebrities, building on the success of gimmicks like the Barbie Malibu DreamHouse.
Ash Parrish / The Verge:
Meta unveils Batman: Arkham Shadow, a VR game and the next entry in the iconic Batman: Arkham game series, launching exclusively on the Quest 3 later in 2024  —  Iron Man VR developer Camouflaj and Oculus Studios are developing the game, which is set to release later this year.
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Karissa Bell / Engadget:
LinkedIn debuts three Wordle-style puzzle games: theme-based guessing game Pinpoint, Sudoku- and Minesweeper-style crossover Queens, and trivia game Crossclimb  —  How long until “What I learned about B2B sales from playing Crossclimb”?  —  LinkedIn, the professional network known …
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Elliptic, MIT, and IBM release an AI detection model and its 200M-transaction training dataset to help identify money laundering on Bitcoin's blockchain  —  Blockchain analysis firm Elliptic, MIT, and IBM have released a new AI model—and the 200-million-transaction dataset it's trained on …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Reuters:
Reuters/Ipsos poll: ~58% agree with the statement that the Chinese government uses TikTok to “influence American public opinion”, and 50% support banning TikTok  —  - A majority of Americans believe that China uses TikTok to shape U.S. public opinion, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted …
Steven Levy / Wired:
Q&A with White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Arati Prabhakar on her role, working at DARPA, AI, showing ChatGPT to Biden, and more  —  Arati Prabhakar has the ear of the US president and a massive mission: help manage AI, revive the semiconductor industry, and pull off a cancer moonshot.

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:
We can build it.  Can we judge it?  —  As agentic AI shortens the path from idea to shipped code, journey evaluation becomes a critical design skill.
Will Reed:
The best sales leaders aren't job hunting.  Here's how to reach them without months of cold outreach.  —  Our team came from Box, Square, and Brex, so we already know the GTM leaders worth meeting.
Zoho:
App Spotlight: Map My Client Location for Zoho CRM  —  App Spotlight brings you hand-picked solutions that enhance your Zoho apps and tools.  Visit Zoho Marketplace to explore all of our apps, integrations …
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.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
Google's Potential, AI Money Spigot Shutting?, PHP Bug & Cybersecurity's "Black October"
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:
Fired OpenAI Safety Researchers Speak Out + We Look Inside Pandora's Box
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.
The Upstarts Podcast:
The Parking Startup That Swallowed A 100-Year-Old Giant | Metropolis CEO Alex Israel
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Great Chat:
AI's Spooky Season
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Sources:
Sundar Pichai on what's next for Google Gemini, Waymo, and data centers in space
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Netflix in Turmoil + Derek Thompson on AI & The Antisocial Century
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:50 PM ET, May 1, 2024.

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

Allison Johnson / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

Politico:
David Gilbert / Wired:
Justine Calma / The Verge:
Antonio Olivo / Washington Post:
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Maxwell Zeff / Gizmodo: