Techmeme: a16z, which has a ~20% stake in Deel worth $2.5B+, is advising Deel in fighting Rippling, whose CEO, Parker Conrad, said a16z pushed him out of Zenefits in 2016 (The Information)

Top News

Test conversations with some Meta AI digital companions, including celebrity-voiced ones, show them engaging in sexual chats even when users identify as minors — Chatbots on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp are empowered to engage in ‘romantic role-play’ that can turn explicit.

More: TechCrunch and TechSpot

Bluesky: @mims, @wadewarrens, and @patwhite7000

X: @mattyglesias, @wsj, @marcportermagee, and @zamaan_qureshi. LinkedIn: Sarah Gardner

Forums: Hacker News, r/technology, and r/ABoringDystopia

Prachi Verma / The Economic Times:

India faces a shortage of agentic AI professionals, with executives estimating fewer than 100K in the country while demand is projected to hit ~200K by 2026 — India is grappling with a critical shortage of agentic AI professionals as demand surges, driven by the shift towards sophisticated AI agents capable …

More: StartupNews.fyi. X: @ettech and @ettech

Furquan Ameen / Rest of World:

Experts say that India is behind China in deep tech innovation due to its historical focus on services, lower R&D investment, and a brain drain of AI talent — India's government urges the private sector to take the lead in tech innovation, while industry experts say it's complicated.

Bluesky: @restofworld.org and @rinachandran

X: @furquansid, @restofworld, and @nit_set. LinkedIn: Furquan Ameen

Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:

Watching OpenAI's o3 guess a photo's location, a process that included running Python code to examine license plates, is surreal, dystopian, and entertaining — Watching OpenAI's new o3 model guess where a photo was taken is one of those moments where decades of science fiction suddenly come to life.

Bluesky: @wildebees, @stagefright, and @robmanuelyeah. Forums: Hacker News

Financial Times:

Sources: ~300 London-based DeepMind staff have sought to unionize with the CWU in recent weeks, to challenge AI sales to defense groups and Google's Israel ties — Move by employees at Google's AI arm follows discontent after weapons and surveillance pledge is dropped

More: TechCrunch, The Decoder, Cryptopolitan, Reuters, The Economic Times, and StartupNews.fyi

Bluesky: @shashj and @atreyo.dev. X: @zachweinberg. Forums: r/ukpolitics

Wall Street Journal:

Sources: Huawei has approached some clients to test the technical feasibility of the Ascend 910D, Huawei's newest AI chip that it hopes will beat Nvidia's H100 — Superpower rivalry over semiconductors heats up despite Washington's attempts to block Beijing

More: Reuters, Blockchain.News, and StartupNews.fyi

Matt Levine / Bloomberg:

A look at the rise of “pure play” bitcoin companies like Twenty One, as the stock market is paying far more for crypto exposure than the crypto market itself is — Twenty One, Trumpcoin dinner, KKR empathy, carry on co-investments and quantitative analysis of hockey. — Project Mystery

More: CoinDesk and Coinpedia Fintech News

Bluesky: @matt-levine and @jwmason

Isabelle Bousquette / Wall Street Journal:

Prompt engineering, one of the buzziest jobs in 2023, becomes obsolete as AI models better intuit user intent and companies train staff on how to write prompts — Prompt engineering, a role aimed at crafting the perfect input to send to a large language model, was poised to become one of the hottest jobs in artificial intelligence.

Bluesky: @jordisoler, @tappedlands.com, and @skynetandchill.com. Mastodon: @harrymccracken@mastodon …

LinkedIn: Ariel Guersenzvaig and Isabelle Bousquette

Leah Nylen / Bloomberg:

US v. Google: Chrome's GM testified that other companies cannot develop Chrome effectively, given the browser's “interdependencies” on other parts of Google — Google is the only company that can offer the level of features and functionality that its popular Chrome web browser has today …

More: Android Police, The Verge, Livemint, Tech in Asia, Neowin, Morning Brew, Cryptopolitan, CNET, Fortune, Moneycontrol, Türkiye Today, XDA Developers, BGR, and PhoneArena. Mastodon: @mhoye@mastodon.social

Coco Feng / South China Morning Post:

Filing: China's leading flash memory chipmaker YMTC raised ~$219M from Hebei Yangyuan Zhihui Beverage Co. at a ~$22.1B valuation in December 2023 — The deal was signed in December 2023 but was only announced on Friday as it ‘involved commercial secrets’, Yangyuan said

Financial Times:

Trump's tariffs could slow robot adoption in the US, as demand weakens and supplies of components from China, like magnets and precision bearings, are disrupted — Depressed buyers and global supply chains could delay the adoption of futuristic technology — Elon Musk, facing disarray …

More: Futurism. Bluesky: @mattortega.com and @evansutton

Francisco Rodrigues / CoinDesk:

Stripe plans to test a stablecoin payments product aimed at companies outside the US, the UK, and the EU, using tech from Bridge, which Stripe acquired recently — Stripe CEO Patrick Collison said a stablecoin tool for companies outside US, UK and EU is ready for testing. — What to know:

More: ZyCrypto, Bitcoin Insider, The Daily Hodl, and Cointelegraph

X: @patrickc and @backseatvc

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