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Top News

Sara Fischer / Axios:

Meta adds Dina Powell McCormick, who served as deputy national security adviser to Trump in his first term, and Stripe CEO Patrick Collison to its board — Dina Powell McCormick, a prominent banking executive and former Republican official, and Stripe CEO Patrick Collison are joining Meta's board, Axios has learned.

More: CNBC, Meta, Tech in Asia, RTÉ, Reuters, The Information, TechCrunch, The Hollywood Reporter, and Irish Independent

Bluesky: @chadbourn. Threads: @mwi.invest and @vishwanathsarangkeller

X: @campbell_brown, @cernovich, @sarafischer, @donaldjtrumpjr, and @jasonmiller. Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg

Bloomberg:

Netflix is testing an OpenAI-powered search engine that lets users find shows via inquiries that go beyond genres or actors' names, like the subscriber's mood — The OpenAI-powered search engine lets customers look for shows using far more specific terms, including the subscriber's mood, for example, the company said.

More: The Verge, Financial Express, T3, Tech in Asia, and Trusted Reviews

Bluesky: @quinnypig.com. X: @jakuuire

See also Mediagazer

Financial Times:

Sources: Ilya Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence raised $2B led by Greenoaks at a $32B valuation; SSI last raised $1B at a $5B valuation in September 2024 — Start-up raises $2bn, underscoring investors' keen appetite for bankrolling AI groups despite US economic tumult

More: StrictlyVC, The Information, and Windows Central

Threads: @jjackyliang. X: @emollick

Reuters:

Source: Alphabet and Nvidia are among investors backing Safe Superintelligence; Google Cloud announced on April 9 that SSI is using its TPUs for AI research

More: Neowin and The Motley Fool

Bluesky: @nosunkcosts. Forums: r/singularity

Wall Street Journal:

Sources: Binance asked the US Treasury last month to loosen oversight on its AML compliance, after Binance entered into deal talks with Trump's crypto venture — Executives for the cryptocurrency exchange met with Treasury officials last month after the company entered into talks with a Trump family venture

More: DL News, Reuters, Bloomberg, Cryptopolitan, CoinGape, The Crypto Times, Coinpedia Fintech News, Crypto Briefing, and Cointelegraph. X: @tier10k

Sophie McEvoy / GamesIndustry.biz:

Newzoo: global consumer spending for PC and console gaming fell 2% YoY to $80.2B in 2024, with console revenues leading market share with $42.8B, down 3.9% YoY — Firm estimates PC and console gaming market to reach $92.7 billion by 2027 — Global consumer spending for PC and console gaming fell …

More: Newzoo, TechSpot, Mezha.Media, ITC.UA, Game Rant, Kotaku, Game File, PC Games Insider, CNET, and PC Gamer

Bluesky: @gtelephant. X: @gamer_matheusx, @newzoohq, and @stephentotilo. Forums: r/pcmasterrace

Ari Levy / CNBC:

Filing: Founders Fund has closed a $4.6B late-stage venture fund; source: a substantial amount of the capital was provided by the firm's general partners — Founders Fund, the venture capital firm run by billionaire Peter Thiel, has closed a $4.6 billion late-stage venture fund …

More: The Economic Times, Bloomberg, Tech in Asia, and US SEC

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:

A group of former OpenAI employees files an amicus brief in support of Elon Musk in his lawsuit opposing OpenAI's for-profit transition — A group of ex-OpenAI employees on Friday filed a proposed amicus brief in support of Elon Musk in his lawsuit against OpenAI, opposing OpenAI's planned conversion …

More: Chat GPT Is Eating the World, CNBC, The Verge, The Decoder, Benzinga, Fortune, Bloomberg, PC Gamer, and The Guardian

Bluesky: @lorak. X: @todor_m_markov and @raopoornima. Forums: Slashdot

Makena Kelly / Wired:

Sources: Palantir is helping DOGE build an API layer above all IRS databases; DOGE wants Palantir's Foundry software to be the “read center of all IRS systems” — For the past three days, DOGE and a handful of Palantir representatives, along with dozens of career IRS engineers …

Bluesky: @sbyrnes, @whodat35, @techviews, @couts, and @katie-drummond

Forums: r/technology, r/politics, r/feddiscussion, r/fednews, and r/TrueReddit

Anton Shilov / Tom's Hardware:

China exempts products from AMD, Nvidia, Intel, Qualcomm, and others that are made by Taiwanese companies like TSMC from the 125% tariff on US products — Killing two birds with one stone. — Amid a fierce trade war with the US, China's General Administration of Customs has changed …

More: Appuals, Reuters, Benzinga, Wccftech, Tech in Asia, Wall Street Pit, HotHardware, and South China Morning Post

Bluesky: @marypcbuk. X: @wmhuo168 and @danielnewmanuv. Forums: r/hardware

Meaghan Tobin / New York Times:

ByteDance, which spent an estimated $11B in 2024 on infrastructure for AI, is using data from ~1B users of its apps as the linchpin of its growing AI business — A set of popular apps helped China's ByteDance develop a key component of advanced artificial intelligence: information on how a billion people use the internet.

Ryan Weeks / Bloomberg:

Architect Partners: Q1 2025 was a record quarter for crypto M&A with 61 deals and $2.2B in total deal value, including Kraken's $1.5B acquisition of NinjaTrader — A false dawn for M&A? — Is the crypto M&A boom for real? We asked Casper Johansen, partner at The Spartan Group, a digital assets advisory firm.

More: Architect Partners and Architect Partners. X: @business

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Appfigures: ChatGPT was the most downloaded app globally in March, excluding games, with 46M downloads across App Store and Google Play, its biggest month ever — ChatGPT became the world's most downloaded app in March, excluding games, topping the usual contenders for the No. 1 spot, Instagram and TikTok.

More: 9to5Mac, Moneycontrol, Nairametrics, The Economic Times, and Redmond Pie

Chris Metinko / Crunchbase News:

Asia's startup funding fell 40% YoY to ~$13B in Q1 2025, the lowest funding for a quarter since $12.3B in Q4 2014; AI startup funding fell 50% YoY to just $1.8B — While OpenAI's massive $40 billion funding boosted global and North America's funding totals, Asia was not so lucky.

X: @crunchbasenews

Counterpoint Research:

In Q1 2025, SK Hynix overtook Samsung for the first time to lead global DRAM revenues with a 36% share, driven by its dominant 70% market share in HBM — - SK Hynix takes lead for first time ever in DRAM, grabbing 36% share of revenues in Q1 2025 — In particular, the company dominated in critical HBM with 70% market share

More: SamMobile, KED Global, SammyGuru, DigiTimes, and Tech in Asia. X: @counterpointtr

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:

OpenAI plans to retire GPT-4, launched in March 2023, from ChatGPT on April 30, to be “fully replaced” by GPT-4o; GPT-4 will remain available via OpenAI's API — OpenAI will soon retire GPT-4, an AI model it launched over two years ago, from ChatGPT, according to a changelog posted on Thursday.

More: OpenAI, Livemint, CNET, Mashable, PCMag, ZDNET, Engadget, The Economic Times, Techstrong.ai, Thurrott, The Decoder, The Verge, and 9to5Mac

X: @tomwarren. LinkedIn: Colin Robertson, Gonçalo Gomes, and Renata Santos

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