Techmeme: Microsoft unveils AI “deep reasoning” agents for 365 Copilot: Researcher, based on OpenAI's deep research model, and Analyst, based on o3-mini, coming in April (Richard Lawler/The Verge)

The US adds export restrictions to 80 organizations, primarily targeting Chinese companies, including server maker Nettrix and clients of Nvidia, Intel, and AMD — The additions included companies that are customers of Intel and Nvidia, and one firm that was the focus of a New York Times investigation last year.

More: Bureau of Industry and Security, Wall Street Journal, Tom's Hardware, The Verge, The Register, Nikkei Asia, New York Post, CNBC, Quartz, Reuters, Tech Monitor, Taipei Times, Associated Press, Silicon UK, Investor's Business Daily, Benzinga, TechSpot, Hürriyet Daily News, and Financial Times

Richard Lawler / The Verge:

Microsoft unveils AI “deep reasoning” agents for 365 Copilot: Researcher, based on OpenAI's deep research model, and Analyst, based on o3-mini, coming in April — Multi-step reasoning AI is coming to Microsoft Copilot. … After Google and OpenAI offered up AI news on Tuesday …

More: Microsoft 365 Blog, Engadget, VentureBeat, Techstrong.ai, Microsoft Copilot Studio on YouTube, Microsoft Copilot Studio on YouTube, Computerworld, Microsoft 365 on YouTube, TechCrunch, and ZDNET. X: @satyanadella

Blake Brittain / Reuters:

Anthropic convinced a California federal judge to reject a preliminary bid to block it from using lyrics owned by UMG and other music publishers to train Claude — Artificial intelligence company Anthropic convinced a California federal judge on Tuesday to reject a preliminary bid to block …

More: Music Business Worldwide, The Hollywood Reporter, Plagiarism Today, Digital Music News, Wall Street Journal, Engadget, Billboard, TechSpot, TorrentFreak, MEDIANAMA, WinBuzzer, Silicon Republic, StrictlyVC, and Verdict

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Financial Times:

IPO filings: CoreWeave, set to launch a $32B IPO on March 28, violated key terms of a $7.6B Blackstone loan in 2024, triggering a series of technical defaults — US cloud company seeking blockbuster $32bn IPO had to remedy serious administrative errors in December

More: Forbes, WinBuzzer, Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, and DigiTimes. X: @jfk_america

Bloomberg:

TD Cowen: Microsoft walked away from new data center projects in the US and Europe that had been set to consume 2 gigawatts, a sign of AI computing oversupply — The analysts, who rattled investors with a February note highlighting leases Microsoft had abandoned in the US …

More: Reuters and Finbold

Bluesky: @drdoofenschmirtz, @edzitron.com, @mattmday, and @carlquintanilla. X: @buccocapital. Forums: Beehaw

Angel Au-Yeung / Wall Street Journal:

Mercury, a neobank serving early-stage startups, raised $300M led by Sequoia at a $3.5B valuation; the fintech company saw $2B in deposits after SVB's collapse — Fintech banking startup Mercury says it has more than doubled its valuation to $3.5 billion after raising $300 million in its latest funding round.

More: TechCrunch, FinSMEs, The Bottom Line, and Portland startups …

X: @jonfortt and @mercury. LinkedIn: Sonya Huang

Stanley Widianto / Reuters:

Apple says the iPhone 16 series will be available in Indonesia from April 11, after Jakarta lifted a sales ban following Apple's $300M+ investment plan — Apple's (AAPL.O) iPhone 16 series will be available in Indonesia from April 11, it said on Wednesday, after Jakarta lifted a ban …

More: MacRumors, iClarified, 9to5Mac, AppleInsider, Tech in Asia, Patently Apple, iPhone in Canada Blog, Apple Must, and MacDailyNews. Forums: MacRumors Forums

Philip Stafford / Financial Times:

Sources: Fidelity Investments is in the advanced stages of testing its own stablecoin, managed by its digital assets arm; Trump pledged to back USD stablecoins — Asset manager is in advanced stages of testing token as the Trump administration prepares to overhaul crypto oversight

TechCrunch:

Leaked email: Block lays off 931 employees, or ~8% of staff, and moves 193 managers to individual contributor roles, after cutting ~1,000 roles in January 2024 — Fintech Block laid off 931 people, roughly 8% of the company's staff, on Tuesday, according to a leaked message from the company seen by TechCrunch.

More: Livemint, San Francisco Business Times, Engadget, The Guardian, PYMNTS.com, PR Daily, Benzinga, Newser, crypto.news, Fast Company, The Economic Times, and Finextra

Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to. Threads: @tomgara. Forums: r/technology

Annie Palmer / CNBC:

Amazon rolls out AI tool Interests, which checks for new inventory by interests, price limits, and preferences, to US users, and is testing chatbot Health AI — Amazon, in an effort to infuse generative artificial intelligence across a wider swath of its e-commerce universe …

More: About Amazon, CNET, Thurrott, GeekWire, TechCrunch, Neowin, iPhone in Canada Blog, and Sherwood News

Bluesky: @wavesblog and @quinnypig.com. LinkedIn: Pasi Kemppainen

Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:

Developers say aggressive AI crawlers are overwhelming open-source infrastructure; LibreNews: up to 97% of some projects' traffic comes from AI companies' bots — Software developer Xe Iaso reached a breaking point earlier this year when aggressive AI crawler traffic from Amazon overwhelmed …

More: LibreNews, WinBuzzer, Schneier on Security, mjtsai.com, and MEDIANAMA

Bluesky: @kirb.me, @cyberciti.biz, @fastly.com, @iethics, @alexmontgomery, @xeiaso.net, @ilpeach, @kristi.nikolla.me, @akkartik.name, and @nishtahir.com

Mastodon: @stsquad@mastodon.org.uk, @bagder@mastodon.social, @pftg@ruby.social, and @veronica@mastodon.online

X: @frimelle, @geeknik, and @bibryam

Forums: Hacker News, Hacker News, r/technews, r/artificial, Slashdot, and Ars OpenForum

Emma Roth / The Verge:

Waze says it is removing Google Assistant for iPhone users, citing “ongoing difficulties” with the integration, after recently testing a Gemini-based assistant — Google has already started replacing Assistant with Gemini across its devices.

More: Waze Discuss, Engadget, TechCrunch, 9to5Mac, TechIssuesToday.com, iPhone in Canada Blog, MacRumors, and iClarified

Reuters:

Sources: Italy hands tax demands to Meta, X, and LinkedIn in the last step in its VAT case, seeking €887.6M from Meta, €12.5M from X, and ~€140M from LinkedIn — Italy has handed tax demands to Meta (META.O), X and LinkedIn in the last formal step in an unprecedented VAT claim …

Kyt Dotson / SiliconANGLE:

Island, which offers a Chromium-based secure enterprise browser, raised a $250M Series E led by Coatue at a $4.8B valuation, taking its total funding to ~$730M — Island Technology Inc., the developer of a secure Chromium-based browser for the enterprise, today announced that it has raised $250 million …

More: Dallas Business Journal, Crunchbase News, FinTech Global, Wall Street Journal, Island.io, Globes Online, and Reuters

Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:

eMarketer expects X to generate $1.31B in US ad sales in 2025, up 17.5%, and $2.26B in global ad sales, up 16.5%, its first year of ad revenue growth since 2022 — - Projections from Emarketer show sales up 17.5% this year — Sales remain significantly lower than before Musk's purchase

More: Gizmodo and Reuters

Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:

In an addendum to the GPT-4o System Card, OpenAI says it is “not blocking the capability to generate adult public figures” and that public figures can opt out — Introducing 4o Image Generation. When OpenAI first announced GPT-4o back in May 2024 one of the most exciting features …

More: OpenAI, Business Standard, Gizchina.com, PCMag, TestingCatalog, Music Ally, KnowTechie, AIN, MSPoweruser, Nairametrics, Ghacks, Moneycontrol, Business Today, Analytics India Magazine, The Indian Express, Verdict, Wall Street Journal, WinBuzzer, Decrypt, Digital Trends, Thurrott, BGR, Tom's Guide, and The Verge

Bluesky: @cooltimesonline and @edzitron.com. Threads: @filatov.design

X: @kyliebytes, @elder_plinius, @zestular, @simonw, and @simonw

Jeff Dunn / Engadget:

iPad (A16) review: fast chip, double the storage, 2GB more RAM, good build quality and battery, and loads of apps, but an aging display and no M chips or AI — Apple's base tablet gets a few common-sense upgrades, but display and accessory issues remain. — When it debuted in 2022 …

More: 9to5Mac, The Verge, New York Times, Pocket-lint, CNET, and PhoneArena. Bluesky: @quinnypig.com

Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:

Gemini 2.5 Pro hands-on: a very strong model with 1M input tokens, 64K output tokens, a January 2025 knowledge cut-off, and very, very impressive coding skills — There's a new release from Google Gemini this morning: the first in the Gemini 2.5 series. Google call it “a thinking model …

More: The Keyword, Ars Technica, Stratechery, SD Times, CNET, and 9to5Google

Bluesky: @simonwillison.net. X: @artificialanlys, @maxwinebach, @beinghamed, @emollick, @maxwinebach, @levie, @simonw, @simonw, @amperlycom, @alexanderchen, @officiallogank, @ai_for_success, @mrdoob, @kellynewso, @matthewberman, and @_philschmid

Cory Weinberg / The Information:

Leaked financial figures: Stripe doubled its free cash flow in 2024 to about $2.2B and grew revenues by about 28% to $5.1B; Chime grew revenues by 31% to $1.7B — Stripe is putting up the kind of numbers that would send its stock soaring, if it had public stock.

X: @coryweinberg

Jason Kehe / Wired:

A look at RISC architecture's origins, the Arm vs. RISC-V war, and how RISCites beat the CISCites, as RISC's increasing adoption risks US companies' dominance — “RISC architecture is gonna change everything.” Those absurdly geeky, incredibly prophetic words were spoken 30 years ago.

Bluesky: @emilprotalinski, @wired.com, @waterslicer, and @wired.com. Mastodon: @benbrown@hackers.town. X: @bonybean. Forums: r/programming

Will Knight / Wired:

Databricks details Test-time Adaptive Optimization, or TAO, a new approach that lets its customers boost LLM performance without the need for clean labeled data — Using several recent innovations, the company Databricks will let customers boost the IQ of their AI models even if they don't have squeaky clean data.

More: InfoWorld, SiliconANGLE, Databricks, and Cautious Optimism. X: @jefrankle

Bloomberg:

BMW partners with Alibaba to use Qwen-powered AI cockpit tech from Alibaba-backed Banma in its upcoming car models for the Chinese market, rolling out in 2026 — BMW will adopt AI cockpit technology from Alibaba-backed Banma for its upcoming models tailored for the Chinese market, the companies said Wednesday in a joint statement.

More: Alizila, BMW BLOG, Euronews, Benzinga, Analytics India Magazine, Yahoo Finance, and Tech in Asia. Forums: r/baba

Adi Robertson / The Verge:

Character.AI adds a Parental Insights feature that lets teens send reports of their chatbot usage to their parents, including which bots they are talking to — They won't see the contents of the chats. … Chatbot service Character.AI is adding a new ‘Parental Insights’ feature …

More: Character.AI Blog, Digital Trends, Android Headlines, Mashable, and Neowin

Laura Dubois / Financial Times:

Sources: the EU's Huawei corruption probe is looking at alleged exchanges of soccer tickets and phones for political favors; one detainee is a Huawei lobbyist — Representatives for Chinese tech giant accused of offering cash, football tickets and smartphones to parliament staff

More: Euractiv

Anup Kaphle / Rest of World:

Q&A with Careem CEO Mudassir Sheikha on the MENA ride-hailing giant becoming a super app, the spinout of its non-ride-hailing services from Uber, AI, and more — • DUBAI, THE UAE — Mudassir Sheikha likes to tell the story of Careem's growth in chapters.

Bluesky: @anup

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