Techmeme
April 15, 2026, 6:10 PM

Top News

Bryce Elder / Financial Times:
Shoe company Allbirds, which sold last week for $39M after its valuation fell from $4B+ in 2021, says it aims to become an AI compute provider; BIRD jumps 800%+  —  Ah, zeitgeist:  —  Allbirds is a San Francisco maker of wool trainers that was once valued at more than $4bn.
More: Allbirds, Inc., CNBC, CNN, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, Ars Technica, Fortune, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Implicator.ai, Engadget, Constellation Research, WPXI-TV, DatacenterDynamics, Straight Arrow News, crypto.news, Washington Times, Reuters, Yahoo Finance, WNYW-TV, Fast Company, UPI, Benzinga, CBS News, MarketWatch, San Francisco Chronicle, NBC News, SFGATE, WWD, Proactive, Forbes, ZeroHedge News, Aftermath, The Daily Wire, Newser, Sherwood News, Decrypt, CoinDesk, The Information, Crypto Briefing, Barron's Online, Pulse 2.0, The Verge, The Shortcut, PC Gamer, Wired, and Barchart.com
Alexandra S. Levine / Bloomberg:
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel says the company plans to lay off ~1,000 full-time employees, or 16% of its global workforce, to cut costs and achieve profitability  —  Snap Inc. is laying off roughly 1,000 full-time employees, or 16% of its global workforce, part of an effort by Chief Executive Officer Evan Spiegel …
NBC News:
A jury finds that Live Nation and Ticketmaster illegally maintained monopoly power in the ticketing market, in a case brought by state AGs after the DOJ settled  —  The federal government struck a settlement with Live Nation in March, requiring Ticketmaster to divest up to 13 amphitheaters …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Adobe unveils Firefly AI Assistant, which can orchestrate and execute multistep tasks across Creative Cloud apps, available in public beta in the coming weeks  —  Last October, Adobe previewed a new assistant under the “Project Moonlight” moniker that could do tasks for you by tapping different Adobe apps …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google launches a Gemini Mac app, featuring a keyboard shortcut, screen sharing for better context, image generation with Nano Banana, and more  —  Gemini now has a native Mac app in the first expansion from Android and iOS.  —  This “native desktop experience” is launched via an Option + Space keyboard shortcut.
Dwarkesh Patel / Dwarkesh Podcast:
Q&A with Jensen Huang on Nvidia's supply chain moat, competition from ASICs like Google's TPU, investing in AI labs and neoclouds, selling to China, and more  —  “If our next several years are a trillion dollars in scale, we have the supply chain to do it”
Steven Vaughan-Nichols / ZDNET:
Cal.com, which provides scheduling software, is moving its core open-source codebase to a closed repository, citing the dangers of AI hacking its open code  —  ZDNET's key takeaways  — Cal is reluctantly moving away from open source for security.  — This move isn't about Mythos, but risks from modern AI tools.
Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:
ASML reports Q1 net sales of €8.8B, above €8.5B est., a €2.8B net profit, above €2.5B est., and raises its 2026 net sales forecast from €34B-€39B to €36B-€40B  —  ASML stock fell 6% on Wednesday despite raising its sales forecast for 2026 and beating first-quarter revenue and profit expectations.
Gian Volpicelli / Bloomberg:
The EU unveils an open-source age verification app, which requires showing ID, to shield kids from harmful content, setting the standard for verification tech  —  The European Union has unveiled an app to confirm users' age online, setting the standard for verification technology …
David McCabe / New York Times:
WPP, Dentsu, and Publicis settle with the FTC over claims they colluded on misinformation policies that denied ad revenue to conservative publishers  —  WPP, Dentsu and Publicis settled claims they colluded on policies to combat misinformation, denying ad revenue to publishers on the right.
Molly Taft / Wired:
The US Energy Information Administration plans to implement a mandatory nationwide survey of data centers focused on their energy use  —  In a letter obtained by WIRED, the Energy Information Administration tells two senators that it plans to develop a mandatory assessment of data centers' energy use.
Bloomberg:
Trading firm Jane Street takes an additional $1B stake in CoreWeave and plans to spend ~$6B to access CoreWeave's Nvidia Vera Rubin chips to build and deploy AI  —  Jane Street Group, a trading firm, has taken an additional $1 billion stake in AI cloud services provider CoreWeave Inc. and plans …
Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch:
Spotify launches a feature to buy physical books in the US and UK, powered by Bookshop.org, and expands its Page Match scanning tool to support 30+ languages  —  In February, Spotify made an exciting (and a bit unusual) move when it entered the world of physical book sales.
Google DeepMind:
Google DeepMind introduces Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6, a model for robots that it says shows significant spatial and physical reasoning improvements over ER 1.5  —  For robots to be truly helpful in our daily lives and industries, they must do more than follow instructions, they must reason about the physical world.
Emily Nicolle / Bloomberg:
Tel Aviv-based eToro agrees to acquire crypto wallet provider Zengo, a source says for ~$70M, mostly in cash; Zengo lets traders swap between tokens and fiat  —  EToro Group Ltd. has agreed to acquire Zengo, a crypto wallet provider, as the trading and investment platform expands its reach into decentralized finance.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Apple endorses the ~$11.6B Amazon-Globalstar deal, noting that it has a “proven track record” with Amazon infrastructure; Apple holds a ~20% stake in Globalstar  —  Amazon.com Inc.'s takeover of Globalstar Inc. is poised to benefit one of the company's biggest rivals in hardware devices: Apple Inc.
Chris Metinko / Axios:
NY-based Auctor, which uses AI to curate resource plans and process flows to help companies adopt new software, raised $20M in a combined seed and Series A  —  Auctor, a startup helping companies adopt new software, raised $20 million in a combined seed and Series A, CEO William Sun tells Axios Pro first.
Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch:
Objection, which aims to use AI and experts to evaluate claims in news stories, debuts with funding from Peter Thiel, Balaji Srinivasan; evaluations cost $2,000  —  After helping lead the lawsuit that bankrupted media firm Gawker, Aron D'Souza says he saw something broken in the American media system …
Madison Mills / Axios:
Hilbert, whose AI software connects data across teams to help companies make decisions from a single system, raised a $28M Series A led by a16z  —  Hilbert, an AI startup rethinking how companies drive growth, raised a $28 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, the startup told Axios exclusively.
More: a16z
IDC:
Global smartphone shipments fell 4.1% YoY in Q1, the first drop since mid 2023, amid memory constraints; only Samsung and Apple grew shipments, at 3.6% and 3.3%  —  Limited memory supply and record high memory prices increase pressure on smartphone OEMs to reduce shipments and increase prices that dampen demand.
Juro Osawa / The Information:
ByteDance launches its Seedance 2.0 video model to enterprise clients in 100+ countries, excluding the US amid legal disputes, after a February launch in China  —  ByteDance's cloud computing unit has made the company's Seedance 2. AI video generation model available globally to enterprise customers …

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