Techmeme: Salsa, which provides APIs and UI components that let vertical SaaS platforms offer payroll as a feature to their customers, raised a $20M Series A led by Altos (Ryan Lawler/Axios)

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Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:

Watching OpenAI's o3 guess a photo's location, including the model 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: @stagefright, @wildebees, and @robmanuelyeah. Forums: Hacker News

Isabelle Bousquette / Wall Street Journal:

Prompt engineering roles, one of the buzziest jobs in 2023, become obsolete as AI models better intuit user intent and companies train staff in writing 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: @tappedlands.com and @skynetandchill.com

LinkedIn: Isabelle Bousquette and Ariel Guersenzvaig

Jeff Horwitz / Wall Street Journal:

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.

Bluesky: @patwhite7000. X: @wsj, @zamaan_qureshi, @mattyglesias, and @marcportermagee. LinkedIn: Sarah Gardner

Financial Times:

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

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

Bluesky: @atreyo.dev. X: @zachweinberg

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: The Daily Hodl, Cointelegraph, Cryptopolitan, The Block, and crypto.news

X: @patrickc and @backseatvc

Ryan Lawler / Axios:

Salsa, which provides APIs and UI components that let vertical SaaS platforms offer payroll as a feature to their customers, raised a $20M Series A led by Altos — Salsa, a startup providing embedded payroll infrastructure to vertical SaaS platforms, raised $20 million in Series A funding, CEO John Kramer tells Axios exclusively.

More: FinSMEs, Salsa, PYMNTS.com, FinTech Global, The Paypers, Finextra, and VC News Daily

Erin Brodwin / Axios:

NYC-based Healthee, whose AI assistant Zoe lets its clients' workers navigate health insurance and benefits options, raised a $50M Series B led by Key1 Capital — Health benefits navigation startup Healthee raised $50 million in Series B funds led by Key1 Capital.

More: Healthee, FinSMEs, AlleyWatch, and MobiHealthNews

Kate Park / TechCrunch:

Alpaca, which offers APIs for financial firms to connect and trade in US stocks, raised a $52M Series C to expand into the Middle East, Europe, and Asia — For all the turmoil these days, the U.S. stock market remains extremely attractive to investors around the world, simply because of its sheer size and liquidity.

More: VC News Daily, Alpaca Blog, FinTech Global, FinSMEs, and FinTech Futures

Leah Nylen / Bloomberg:

US v. Google: Chrome GM testified that other companies can not 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: The Verge, Neowin, Tech in Asia, CNET, Cryptopolitan, Fortune, PCMag, AzerNews, XDA Developers, BGR, PhoneArena, Yahoo Finance, and PCWorld

Sidhartha Shukla / Bloomberg:

Bitcoin miners' earnings power and stocks have diverged from the asset they help produce, as the hashrate languishes amid technical and macroeconomic headwinds — Bitcoin miners' earnings power and stocks have diverged from the asset they help produce, a stark reminder of the deteriorating economics …

More: GreenBot, Bitcoin News, Bitcoin Insider, NullTX, Motley Fool, Bitcoin Magazine, Benzinga, and CoinShares Research Blog

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

Owen Carry / Know Your Meme:

4chan is back online after being down for 10 days, following a hack that leaked the emails of its lead administrators, known as “janitors” — 4chan is officially back online today. — The imageboard site had been down for 10 days, ever since a hack that restored its /QA/ board …

More: 4chan Blog, Boing Boing, and 4chan Blog

X: @4chan, @4chan, and @4chan. Forums: Slashdot

The Information:

a16z, which owns ~20% of Deel, a stake worth $2.5B+, is advising Deel in fighting Rippling, whose CEO Parker Conrad said a16z pushed him out of Zenefits in 2016 — Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has landed in the middle of a nasty Silicon Valley spy scandal between …

Threads: @parkert. X: @cailen

Dan Primack / Axios:

Deel sues Rippling for alleged defamation, libel, and deceptive trade practices, says Rippling placed an insider within Deel, is not tax compliant, and more

More: StrictlyVC, Deel, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, and The Information

X: @parkerconrad, @maxclark, @nearcyan, @martymadrid, @parkerconrad, @drawl, and @parkerconrad

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