Techmeme: Sources: OpenAI talked to Saudi Arabia's PIF, India-based Reliance, and the UAE's MGX about investing in the next installment of its $40B round led by SoftBank (Sri Muppidi/The Information)

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An Interpol-led law enforcement action in 26 countries disrupted infostealer operations, leading to takedowns of 20K+ malicious IPs and domains and 32 arrests — An international law enforcement action codenamed “Operation Secure” targeted infostealer malware infrastructure …

Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media:

Meta sues Joy Timeline, which makes nudify app CrushAI, in Hong Kong to prevent it from advertising on Meta apps; in January, 90% of its traffic came from Meta — As part of what it claims is a new crackdown, Meta is suing a nudify app and “strengthening” its enforcement.

More: Meta Newsroom, The Verge, Engadget, CNN, BBC, Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg, UPI, TechCrunch, CBS News, and CNBC. X: @metanewsroom

Marcus Mendes / 9to5Mac:

Apple unveils updates to help parents protect kids and teens online, such as easier Child Accounts setup, stronger defaults, and granular App Store age ratings — Apple today announced a sweeping set of updates aimed at helping parents protect kids and teens online, as part of its broader push …

More: Apple, Thurrott, Engadget, iDownloadBlog.com, Business Standard, The Mac Observer, The Verge, iThinkDifferent, iClarified, Cult of Mac, and AppleInsider

Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica:

An interview with Craig Federighi on iPadOS 26's multitasking UI, Stage Manager's interface limitations, and why the iPad's Mac-style multitasking took so long — Federighi talks to Ars about why the iPad's Mac-style multitasking took so long. — CUPERTINO, Calif.—When Apple Senior Vice President …

More: 9to5Mac, MacRumors, BGR, zollotech on YouTube, Spyglass, Creative Strategies, Max Tech on YouTube, Tom's Guide, ZDNET, 9to5Mac, Android Central, iPhone in Canada, Pixel Envy, and iDrop News

X: @caro_milanesi, @leakerapple, @vadimyuryev, @mgsiegler, and @rjeytech

Forums: r/apple, Ars OpenForum, and MacRumors Forums

Erik Hayden / The Hollywood Reporter:

SAG-AFTRA ends the 320+ day video game performers strike after reaching a tentative new Interactive Media Agreement contract with the major video game companies — The union had taken a stand on artificial intelligence, among other concerns, as it looked to advocate for voice and performance capture workers.

More: SAG-AFTRA, Polygon, TechRaptor, Eurogamer.net, PocketGamer.biz, PC Gamer, Variety, Engadget, NBC News, and Deadline. Bluesky: @sagaftra.org

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Bloomberg:

Arm CEO Rene Haas sides with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, saying US export controls on China threaten to slow overall tech advances and harm consumers and companies — “If you narrow access to to technology and you force other ecosystems to grow up, it's not good,” Haas said Thursday in an interview …

More: Benzinga, South China Morning Post, CNBC, Cryptopolitan, and Blockchain.News. Forums: r/China

The Information:

Sources: Meta's Scale AI bet came from Mark Zuckerberg wanting new leadership for Meta's AI efforts, Meta executives' relationships with Alexandr Wang, and more — Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg has tried to fix a seemingly existential problem in recent months.

More: Futurism and implicator.ai. Bluesky: @prietschka

Bloomberg:

Sources: Meta has poached Jack Rae, a principal researcher at Google DeepMind, for its “superintelligence” team, and an ML lead from AI voice startup Sesame AI

More: TechCrunch, Hindustan Times, Tech in Asia, AIwire, Insider Monkey, PYMNTS.com, TechSpot, and The Guardian

X: @raddiaccount, @tsgiles, @shiringhaffary, and @dylan522p. LinkedIn: Saanya Ojha

Martin Young / Cointelegraph:

Gemini and Glassnode research: centralized treasuries, including governments, ETFs, and public companies, hold and control 30.9% of bitcoin's circulating supply — Centralized treasuries, including governments, ETFs and public companies, now control approximately $668 billion of Bitcoin's circulating supply.

More: Blockworks, Gemini, Gemini, crypto.news, BeInCrypto, and CoinDesk

Ryan Whitwam / Ars Technica:

Android 16 review: live update notifications and Advanced Protection are neat, but features like desktop mode and Material 3 Expressive are coming later in 2025 — After months of speculation and beta testing, Google is rolling out Android 16 starting today.

More: 9to5Google, TalkAndroid.com, AzerNews, MakeUseOf, Ubergizmo, Chrome Unboxed, Droid Life, Android Police, CyberInsider, TechSpot, The Keyword, and Android Developers Blog

Forums: r/Android and Ars OpenForum

Nitasha Tiku / Washington Post:

TollBit: from Q4 2024 to Q1 2025, traffic from AI retrieval bots to 266 websites, half run by national and local news organizations, grew 49%, as AI usage jumps — As consumers switch from Google search to ChatGPT, a new kind of bot is scraping data for AI. — Summary4

More: TollBit. Bluesky: @jacklynch000

Samantha Cole / 404 Media:

A spam marketing operation exploited some domains owned by Nvidia, Stanford, NPR, and the US CDC to host AI slop articles redirecting users to an SEO spam site — Web domains owned by Nvidia, Stanford, NPR, and the U.S. government are hosting pages full of AI slop articles that redirect to a spam marketing site.

More: TechRadar, TechCrunch, and Futurism

Bluesky: @bartona104 and @jasonkoebler. Mastodon: @andybaio@xoxo.zone

Forums: r/technology and Slashdot

MIT Technology Review:

How Amsterdam's experiment to create a fair welfare AI model, which considered 15 characteristics to evaluate welfare applicants for potential fraud, failed — This story is a partnership between MIT Technology Review, Lighthouse Reports, and Trouw, and was supported by the Pulitzer Center.

More: Lighthouse Reports and Lighthouse Reports

Bluesky: @wavesblog, @niallfirth, @jtemple, and @eileenguo. Forums: r/Amsterdam

Zoe Kleinman / BBC:

The UK passes the Data (Use and Access) Bill, criticized by creatives, without an amendment to force companies to declare using copyrighted material to train AI — A bill which sparked an extraordinary stand-off between some of the UK's most high-profile artists - and their backers in the House of Lords - has finally been passed.

More: Taylor Wessing, BusinessCloud, and UKTN

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Ian Thomas / CNBC:

Pittsburgh-based Gecko Robotics, which makes robots to inspect infrastructure, raised a $125M Series D at a $1.25B valuation, up from $633M in December 2023 — Gecko Robotics announced on Thursday that it raised $125 million in a Series D funding round, raising the AI and robotics company's valuation to $1.25 billion.

Sri Muppidi / The Information:

Sources: OpenAI talked to Saudi Arabia's PIF, India-based Reliance, and the UAE's MGX about investing in the next installment of its $40B round led by SoftBank — OpenAI has talked to Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries and existing shareholder …

More: Reuters, MENAbytes, Analytics India Magazine, Fortune India, Business Standard, Tech in Asia, Arabian Business, Business Today, The Economic Times, Reuters, and Benzinga

Jordan Novet / CNBC:

Databricks says it expects to generate $3.7B in annualized revenue by July, up 50% YoY, with nearly 50 of its 15,000+ customers spending over $10M annually — Databricks, a data analytics software vendor, said on Wednesday that it expects to generate $3.7 billion in annualized revenue by July, with year-over-year growth of 50%.

More: Databricks and Tech in Asia

Julie Bort / TechCrunch:

Spain-based Multiverse Computing, which makes tools to compress LLMs by up to 95% using “quantum-inspired” networks, raised a €189M Series B and has 100 clients — Spanish startup Multiverse Computing on Thursday said it has raised an enormous Series B round of €189 million …

More: SiliconANGLE, Tech.eu, Proactive, Verdict, WinBuzzer, HPCwire, InsideHPC, The Quantum Insider, and EU-Startups

Paayal Zaveri / Bloomberg:

Nominal, which makes industrial design software for space, energy, and defense tech, raised $75M led by Sequoia, after raising $27M in April 2024 — Nominal wants to make it easier for companies in defense, energy and manufacturing to develop new products.

More: FinSMEs and Lightspeed Venture Partners

Julie Bort / TechCrunch:

Landbase, whose GPT-4o-based AI tool automates outreach marketing, raised a $30M Series A co-led by Ashton Kutcher's Sound Ventures and Picus Capital — When Daniel Saks was working as a co-CEO of the previous startup he co-founded, AppDirect, billionaire Michael Dell sent him a LinkedIn message asking for a meeting.

More: SiliconANGLE

Ricardo Brito / Reuters:

A majority of six of the 11 judges on Brazil's Supreme Court vote to hold social media companies liable for some types of users' content seen as illegal — Brazil's Supreme Court formed a majority on Wednesday to hold social media companies accountable for some types of content published by users on their platforms in the country.

More: Bloomberg and Associated Press. Forums: Hacker News

Reuters:

Nvidia plans to build its first industrial AI cloud platform in Germany for European manufacturers, combining AI with robotics to assist carmakers like BMW — Nvidia (NVDA.O) will build its first artificial intelligence cloud platform for industrial applications in Germany …

Financial Times:

Visa: stablecoin transaction volumes hit $752B in May, up from $409B in May 2024, and wallets that regularly send and receive payments hit a record 46M average — Usage of the digital assets is growing rapidly, but concerns remain about supervision and their impact on other parts of the financial system

More: The Information, Rolling Stone, Bitcoin Insider, Coinmonks, Coinpedia Fintech News, and Tech in Asia. Bluesky: @tonytassell

Michael J. de la Merced / New York Times:

Meter, which sells and maintains packages of custom data center networking equipment, raised $170M led by General Catalyst at a $1B+ valuation — The company has collected $170 million in new capital as it seeks to help connect data centers and other businesses in the age of artificial intelligence.

Pedro Nakamura / Rest of World:

How an AI assistant developed by Brazilian nonprofit NoHarm is helping pharmacists in remote Amazon clinics process prescriptions more quickly and catch errors — At overburdened clinics, pharmacists use AI to catch dangerous errors. It's frontier tech meets frontier medicine — with global implications.

Bluesky: @restofworld.org

Cynthia Littleton / Variety:

A look at Apple's vision for Apple TV+ and its film business, as Tim Cook says the company's $200M+ bet on the F1 movie is about more than selling iPhones — Apple CEO and Formula 1 superstar Lewis Hamilton join forces on ‘F1 the Movie’ to take the tech giant's film business to new heights

More: The Sun, Benzinga, Latest from Short list, The Mac Observer, iClarified, MacRumors, On my Om, AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, and MacDailyNews

X: @impatrickt, @dylanbyers, @variety, @vincenzolandino, @simsgazette, @om, @om, @maxwinebach, and @parkerortolani

Forums: r/MediaMergers, r/boxoffice, r/apple, r/tvPlus, and MacRumors Forums

See also Mediagazer

Chris Dolmetsch / Bloomberg:

The US prosecution of quant trader Richard Ho could define how quant algorithms can become stolen property and have a major impact on Wall Street's talent war — The prosecution of a trader could define how a quant algorithm can become stolen property and have a huge impact on Wall Street's talent war.

X: @alephblog

Nikkei Asia:

TSMC opens a joint research lab with the University of Tokyo, the company's first with a university outside Taiwan, expanding a relationship that began in 2019 — TOKYO — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has launched a joint research laboratory with the University of Tokyo …

More: Benzinga, TSMC, Focus Taiwan, and The Japan Times

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