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April 1, 2025, 10:55 AM
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memeorandum
WeSmirchTop News
| CNBC: |
OpenAI closes a $40B round, the most raised by a private tech company, at a $300B post-money valuation; SoftBank led with $30B; source: ~$18B is for Stargate — OpenAI on Monday announced it had closed what amounts to the largest private tech funding round on record.
More: OpenAI, The Verge, Laptop Mag, Wall Street Journal, Sherwood News, Reuters, Financial Times, VentureBeat, Benzinga, Maginative, Axios, Fortune, Nairametrics, StrictlyVC, Forbes, Cryptopolitan, YourStory.com, Interesting Engineering, Neowin, TechCrunch, AIN, Tech Xplore, SiliconANGLE, Decrypt, PYMNTS.com, San Francisco Business Times, Thurrott, Tech in Asia, The Wrap, and VC News Daily
Bluesky: @carnage4life, @edzitron.com, @andrewparker, @edsbs, and @edzitron.com
X: @sama, @mikeisaac, @mikebutcher, @garymarcus, @rogoswami, @kyliebytes, @apompliano, @edzitron, @danprimack, and @gavinpurcell
LinkedIn: Hayden Field and Geoff Lewis
Forums: Hacker News, r/OpenAI, r/singularity, and r/technology
| Bloomberg: |
Sources: SoftBank is seeking a bridge loan of as much as $16.5B to help fund AI investments in the US, its largest-ever borrowing denominated solely in USD — The bridge loan under discussion has a tenor of about 12 months, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private matters.
More: PYMNTS.com, Sherwood News, Fortune, Tech in Asia, and Analytics India Magazine. LinkedIn: Kari Lindberg
| Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg: |
Source: SoftBank will invest an initial $7.5B in OpenAI's $40B round, plus $22.5B by 2025's end; other backers include Microsoft, Coatue, Altimeter, and Thrive — OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT, said it has finalized a funding round that will bring in $40 billion …
More: SoftBank Group Corp., Barron's Online, Washington Post, Reuters, Global Corporate Venturing, The Decoder, Quartz, PitchBook, CNBC, Arabian Business, Benzinga, New York Times, Tech Funding News, Euronews, Yahoo Finance, Silicon Republic, YourStory.com, Business Today, Proactive, Blockonomi, TNGlobal, Pulse 2.0, Financial Express, Times of India, The Information, Wall Street Journal, Australian Financial Review, Hindustan Times, Verdict, The Crypto Times, CRN, Sherwood News, Nikkei Asia, The Japan Times, and DigiTimes
Forums: r/Economics and Beehaw
| Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: |
OpenAI's new GPT-4o-powered image generator is now available to all users; Sam Altman last week mentioned a limit of three images per day for free-tier users — OpenAI's new image generator, powered by its GPT-4o model, is now available to all users, CEO Sam Altman said in a post on X … | Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: |
Sam Altman says OpenAI plans to “release a powerful new open-weight language model with reasoning in the coming months”, its first open-weight model since GPT-2 — OpenAI says that it intends to release its first “open” language model since GPT‑2 “in the coming months.”
More: OpenAI, Tech Monitor, Reuters, Business Standard, The Decoder, Tom's Guide, The Indian Express, The Crypto Times, Silicon UK, Cointelegraph, Digit, Benzinga, Analytics India Magazine, WinBuzzer, CoinGape, SiliconANGLE, VentureBeat, Neowin, CNET, Business Insider, Decrypt, The Information, and Wired
X: @sama, @joheidecke, @clementdelangue, @garrytan, @dorialexander, @thexeophon, @gdb, @altcap, @levie, @joheidecke, and @sama
LinkedIn: Jake Saper and Romain Huet
Forums: r/LocalLLaMA and Slashdot
| Kylie Robison / The Verge: |
| Sean Endicott / Windows Central: |
Microsoft expands Copilot+ PC features exclusive to Snapdragon, like Live Captions, Cocreator, Restyle Image, and Image Creator, to PCs with AMD or Intel chips — Staggered feature releases make me ask “what even is a Copilot+ PC?” — Microsoft has a big update for Copilot+ PCs powered by Intel or AMD processors.
More: Windows Experience Blog, PCWorld, Tom's Hardware, The Verge, Beebom, WinBuzzer, Ghacks, TechRadar, BetaNews, Guru3D, Business Standard, Cryptopolitan, Digital Trends, TechPowerUp, MakeUseOf, Liliputing, CRN, VideoCardz.com, XDA Developers, Neowin, and Thurrott
X: @zacbowden, @pavandavuluri, @windowsblog, @sasamarinkovic, @dylanonchips, @yusuf_i_mehdi, @amdryzen, and @dylanonchips. LinkedIn: Mark Linton
| Wall Street Journal: |
Sources: in recent weeks, Meta executives including Mark Zuckerberg have pressed US trade officials to oppose an impending EU fine and cease-and-desist order — Facebook owner presses trade officials to push back against European law that could undermine its ad business| Ian King / Bloomberg: |
Intel Vision conference: CEO Lip-Bu Tan says that Intel plans to spin off non-core assets, create new products including custom chips, hire engineers, and more — Intel Corp. Chief Executive Officer Lip-Bu Tan said the chipmaker will spin off assets that aren't central to its mission …
More: TechRadar, Investor's Business Daily, TechCrunch, Reuters, PC Gamer, Intel, Intel on YouTube, Cryptopolitan, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, TrendForce News, Business Insider, Capacity Media, Benzinga, Tech in Asia, Oregonian, MarketWatch, Nikkei Asia, Wall Street Journal, CRN, PCWorld, Barron's Online, Thurrott, and DigiTimes
Threads: @sung.kim.mw. X: @greengart, @intelnews, @iancutress, @iancutress, @greengart, @firstadopter, @underfox3, @underfox3, @intelnews, @iancutress, @intelnews, @intelnews, @iancutress, and @iancutress
| Bloomberg: |
Sources: US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick signals withholding promised CHIPS Act grants as he pushes companies to substantially expand their US projects — Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has signaled he could withhold promised Chips Act grants as he pushes companies in line … | Financial Times: |
Current and former Google DeepMind scientists say a tougher vetting process and more bureaucracy at the Google AI arm have made it harder to publish AI research — Google's AI arm led by Demis Hassabis makes it harder for its researchers to publish studies in major change in approach| Bloomberg: |
With the Switch 2, Nintendo must do what it has rarely done before: follow one hit console with another; Nintendo sold 150M+ Switch units since its 2017 launch — The Japanese gaming giant is about to release its latest console. The stakes have never been higher to end the boom-bust cycle that's plagued the company for years.
More: Gameranx, Forbes, The Indian Express, Tech4Gamers, Tom's Guide, Comic Book, Laptop Mag, T3, and Engadget
| Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg: |
Samsung says TM Roh, who oversees mobile, will temporarily step into a broader role overseeing its consumer electronics, after the death of co-CEO Han Jong-Hee — Roh will fill the vacancy at the top of Samsung's Device Experience group until the company's board approves a formal successor to Han …
More: Samsung Newsroom and SamMobile
| Financial Times: |
The Alan Turing Institute, the UK's flagship AI agency, plans to focus on defense, environment, and health, after staff criticized its leadership in December — Agency responds to criticism and rapidly evolving technology by cutting back initiatives — Britain's flagship artificial intelligence agency … | The Information: |
OpenAI says ChatGPT has hit 20M paid subscribers, up from 15.5M at the end of 2024, suggesting the company is making at least $415M in monthly revenue — Before today's main column about the AI attention war between OpenAI and Google, there's OpenAI news from my colleague Natasha … | Bloomberg: |
Builder.ai lowers its H2 2024 revenue estimates by ~25% after some sales channels “did not come through” and says it expects a full audit report by summer 2025 — The London-based company, which has raised more than $450 million, dropped its revenue estimates for the second half … | Financial Times: |
TTP: Apple's and Google's app stores host popular “private browsing” apps operated by Shanghai-listed Qihoo 360, sanctioned by the US in 2020 for military ties — New findings reveal free ‘private browsing’ apps popular with US users have ties to blacklisted Qihoo 360
More: 9to5Mac, Telecoms Tech News, and Tech Transparency Project
| Wency Chen / South China Morning Post: |
Earlier in 2025, Microsoft closed its IoT & AI Insider Lab in Shanghai, opened in May 2019, marking a pullback from China amid geopolitical tensions with the US — The IoT & AI Insider Lab in the Zhangjiang hi-tech zone likely closed in January or February, nearby workers say| Zoë Schiffer / Wired: |
The USPTO suspends xAI's Grok trademark application, saying the name could be confused with companies Groq and Grokstream; startup Bizly claims it owns “Grok” — Elon Musk said he borrowed the name from a 1960s science fiction novel, but another AI startup applied to trademark it before xAI launched its chatbot.
More: eWeek. Bluesky: @paleofuture, @destroyer267, @mikewilsoninoz, and @elleisanisland
Forums: r/NewsOfTheStupid and r/inthenews
| Megan Specia / New York Times: |
How some UK parents created a “Smartphone Free Childhood” pledge, signed by 124K+ people, after the UK government watered down a bill banning phones in schools — In Britain, amid growing evidence of harm to young people from extreme content online, a “Smartphone Free Childhood” campaign is going viral.| Marcus Hutchins / MalwareTech: |
The US needs a new cybersecurity strategy, but offensive cyber operations are unlikely to deter Chinese state-sponsored hacking and come with significant risk — Ever since China's ‘Salt Typhoon’ hacking operations against US telecom networks was uncovered, there's been a lot of discussion about “hacking back”.
More: Decrypt, Cybersecurity Insiders, and The Maritime Executive
Bluesky: @malwaretech.com, @malwaretech.com, and @swiftonsecurity.com
| Stephen Nellis / Reuters: |
Lightmatter, which uses silicon photonics to move data in chips via light, unveils an interposer and chiplet for AI chips; the startup has raised $850M so far — Lightmatter, a startup valued at $4.4 billion, on Monday released two pieces of technology aimed at speeding up the connections between artificial intelligence chips.
More: eeNews Europe, Network World, Lightmatter, Lightmatter, and SiliconANGLE
LinkedIn: Lightmatter and Lightmatter
| Kendra Barnett / Adweek: |
Google is bringing its immersive Rewarded Video ads to Roblox, letting users watch ads in exchange for in-game benefits like virtual currency or power-ups — Advertisers can buy Rewarded Video ads on Roblox via Google Ad Manager, the company announced Tuesday
More: Roblox Corporate, Bloomberg, Reuters, Ad Age, Wall Street Pit, MediaPost, Variety, Investing.com, Marketing Brew, and Google
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