Techmeme
April 14, 2025, 1:32 PM

Top News

New York Times:
FTC v. Meta: in opening arguments, FTC lawyers accuse Meta of a “buy-or-bury strategy” to cement a social networking monopoly by buying Instagram and WhatsApp  —  The tech giant went to court on Monday in an antitrust trial focused on its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.
New York Times:
Legal expert: Meta's FTC antitrust trial, where Mark Zuckerberg could take the stand as early as today, is set to be more grueling than Congressional hearings  —  Meta's chief has grown accustomed to tough questioning in courts and hearings, but an antitrust trial starting Monday could be more grueling, experts said.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Nvidia starts making its Blackwell chips at TSMC's Phoenix plant and says it aims to make up to $500B of AI infrastructure in the US in the next four years  —  Nvidia said on Monday that it has commissioned more than a million square feet of manufacturing space to build and test AI chips …
Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:
Sony hikes PlayStation 5 prices in Europe, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, citing a “challenging economic environment”; the PS5 Pro remains the same price  —  Sony hiked the price of its flagship PlayStation 5 console in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, citing a “challenging economic environment” behind its move.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI releases GPT‑4.1, GPT‑4.1 mini, and GPT‑4.1 nano, which excel at coding, instruction following, and long context understanding, available via its API  —  OpenAI on Monday launched a new family of models called GPT-4.1.  Yes, “4.1” — as if the company's nomenclature wasn't confusing enough already.
Dominic Preston / The Verge:
Nikkei Asia:
Sources: Apple asked suppliers in India, Vietnam, and Thailand to ramp up production earlier in 2025; Indian factory utilization rates are already at the limit  —  TAIPEI — Apple is ramping up production of key products in India and Vietnam to take advantage of a 90-day grace period on U.S. tariffs …
Reuters:
Financial Times:
Keith Bradsher / New York Times:
Zaheer Kachwala / Reuters:
Intel says it will sell a 51% stake in Altera to Silver Lake, valuing the programmable chip unit at $8.7B; Intel bought Altera for $15B in 2015  —  Intel said on Monday it would sell a 51% stake in Altera to private equity firm Silver Lake, valuing the programmable chip unit at $8.75 billion.
The Keyword:
Google details DolphinGemma, a new 400M-parameter LLM to decode dolphin communication by analyzing the vocalizations of wild Atlantic spotted dolphins  —  DolphinGemma, a large language model developed by Google, is helping scientists study how dolphins communicate — and hopefully find out what they're saying, too.
Naga Avan-Nomayo / The Block:
Crypto exchange Kraken begins rolling out commission-free trading for over 11,000 US-listed stocks and ETFs, initially in nine US states and DC  —  - Kraken now supports equities trading on its digital asset exchange — powered by a brokerage deal with Alpaca.
Counterpoint Research:
Global smartphone sales grew 3% YoY in Q1 2025; Apple took the top spot, its first ever for Q1, with a 19% share, and Vivo was the fastest growing brand  —  - The global smartphone market continued its growth trajectory in Q1 2025.  Smartphone sell-through grew 3% YoY during the quarter …
New York Times:
How private prison company Geo Group built a lucrative side business making digital tools like smart watches and tracking apps to help ICE surveil immigrants  —  After a Honduran immigrant arrived in the United States in 2022, officials ordered him to use a government-issued app as part of an immigration surveillance program.

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More News

Andy Bounds / Financial Times:
Associated Press:
Financial Times:

Earlier Picks

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer: