Techmeme: MasterClass, which offers celebrity-taught online classes, lays off ~120 employees, or 20% of its team; sources: MasterClass was valued at $2.75B in May 2021 (Natasha Mascarenhas/TechCrunch)

Top News

Jeffrey Dastin / Reuters:

Amazon is working on letting Alexa mimic any voice after hearing less than a minute of audio, as a way to “make the memories last” of deceased family members — Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) wants to give customers the chance to make Alexa, the company's voice assistant, sound just like their grandmother — or anyone else.

Sander Lutz / Decrypt:

Coinbase plans to shut down its standalone, trader-focused Pro service by the end of 2022 and replace it with Advanced Trade across its main app and website — The standalone service will be replaced by Advanced Trade, a feature within the main Coinbase app.

More: The Coinbase Blog, The Block, CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, CryptoPotato, Cryptopolitan, Benzinga, Blockworks, and Ethereum World News

Tweets: @rager, @mdudas, @iamtexture, @fintechfrank, @worm_emoji, @scottshapiro, @titanxbt, @8bit, and @rleshner

Wall Street Journal:

An in-depth look at the LUNA and UST fallout, as Do Kwon says he has been “devastated” but has “great confidence in our ability to build back even stronger” — Luna's relaunch might be the ultimate act of chutzpah by the South Korean entrepreneur

More: Fortune, Coinspeaker, CoinGeek, and The Block

Tweets: @matigreenspan, @fatmanterra, @aosipovich, and @wublockchain

Mitchell Clark / The Verge:

Meta rebrands Facebook Pay as Meta Pay; Mark Zuckerberg says Meta is working on an interoperable “wallet for the metaverse” that will have “proof of ownership” — Also, the Meta Pay rebrand is here — Mark Zuckerberg announced on Wednesday that Facebook Pay …

More: The Economic Times, Facebook, Engadget, CryptoSlate, CNBC, Cointelegraph, CNBC, Social Media Today, Khaleej Times, and Laptop Mag

Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg. Tweets: @ldrogen and @lisapease

Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:

Brave says its search engine had 411.7M queries in May, up ~5,000% since its June 2021 launch, and launches Goggles, which lets users customize searches — Brave Search, the browser developer's privacy-centric Internet search engine, is celebrating its first anniversary after surpassing 2.5 billion queries …

More: Brave Browser, Wired, GitHub, The Verge, Engadget, PCMag, and TechRadar

Tweets: @brave, @brave, @perpetualmaniac, @brave, and @brendaneich

Maddie Ellis / Wall Street Journal:

Instagram begins testing tools to verify ages, starting with 17 or under, using either Yoti's facial analysis tech, photo IDs, or adults vouching for users — Meta's new policy will make it tougher for teens to update to adult accounts. But they can still lie about their age in the first place

More: TechCrunch, The Verge, Washington Post, Engadget, The Economic Times, Protocol, Meta, and Instagram

Francisco Pires / Tom's Hardware:

Cerebras says its “wafer-scale” chip sets a record for the largest AI model trained on a single device with up to 20B parameters — Democratizing large AI Models without HPC scaling requirements. — Cerebras, the company behind the world's largest accelerator chip in existence …

More: Silicon Republic, Business Wire, VentureBeat, Protocol, HPCwire, SiliconANGLE, Protocol, and insideHPC

Tweets: @peterjansen_ai and @karlfreund

Bloomberg:

A profile of Changpeng Zhao, who built Binance into the largest crypto exchange, as he navigates a regulatory crackdown in a brutal crypto winter — During the first few months of this year—back when buying digital tokens named after dog memes was still seen, at least in some of the most …

Tweets: @calvinayre, @alastairjmarsh, and @emilyjnicolle

Financial Times:

Singapore's fintech policy chief says the country will be “brutal and unrelentingly hard” on “any market bad behaviour” in the crypto industry — Stance marks shift in rhetoric from city-state that had courted digital currency companies

More: The Block. Tweets: @techwontsaveus, @deweysim, @davidgura, @wublockchain, and @katie_martin_fx

Natasha Mascarenhas / TechCrunch:

MasterClass, which offers celebrity-taught online classes, lays off ~120 employees, or 20% of its team; sources: MasterClass was valued at $2.75B in May 2021 — MasterClass, an education platform that sells subscriptions to celebrity-taught classes, has cut 20% of its team to …

More: The Economic Times, SFGATE, Inc42 Media, and Variety. Tweets: @frankcatalano

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:

India-based Cashify, a marketplace for selling and buying used smartphones and other gadgets, has raised a $90M Series E, bringing its total funding to $130M+ — Cashify, a marketplace for gadgets trade-ins and buybacks in India, has raised $90 million in a new financing round as it looks …

More: Entrackr, Tech in Asia, The Economic Times, YourStory.com, and Business Standard

Washington Post:

The Senate's $52B US chip production bill, passed in June 2021, has become mired in unrelated disputes, like climate provisions, delaying the release of funds — Proponents are racing to salvage a bipartisan measure that would provide $52 billion for domestic chip production

More: 9to5Mac and The New Stack

Tweets: @markseibel, @toddntucker, and @mariannareports

Wall Street Journal:

Sources: Comcast and Google have emerged as the top contenders to help Netflix develop an ad-supported tier, and Netflix has discussed ad partnerships with Roku — Deals with the streaming company could include exclusive agreements and revenue-sharing — Comcast Corp.'s NBCUniversal …

More: The Economic Times, PYMNTS.com, Tubefilter, and 9to5Google

Tweets: @asharma, @matt_cochrane7, and @digitalshields

See also Mediagazer

Financial Times:

London-based payments services company SumUp raised €295M equity and €295M debt at an €8B valuation; a January report said it targeted an up to €20B valuation — London-based payment-services group had earlier hoped to raise funds at €20bn pricetag

More: Reuters, TechCrunch, EU-Startups, Tech.eu, and Bloomberg

Oliver Knight / CoinDesk:

eBay acquires NFT marketplace KnownOrigin for an undisclosed sum; DappRadar: KnownOrigin enabled $7.8M in digital collectible trade volume since its 2018 launch — The move comes one month after eBay released its debut collection of NFTs. — E-commerce giant eBay (EBAY) …

Annie Njanja / TechCrunch:

Ghana-based Fido, which offers financial tools and loans to individuals and businesses via its mobile app, raised a $30M Series A led by Fortissimo Capital — After extending credit to thousands of customers over mobile phones since 2015, Ghana-based fintech Fido is now in search …

More: PYMNTS.com and FinSMEs

Bloomberg:

Seeking to regain relevance, screenshots show Clubhouse is testing private rooms, called Houses, to encourage friendlier social interactions — Clubhouse, the voice chat app that captured the attention of Hollywood and Silicon Valley early in the pandemic, is experimenting with a new feature that lets users join private groups.

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Mountain View-based Sanas, which develops a call center voice AI that changes users' accents in real time, raised a $32M Series A led by Insight Partners — A startup called Sanas has built voice AI to change accents, now it's raised $32M from GV and others

More: FinSMEs, PR Newswire, Bestgamingpro, Techzine Europe, and San Francisco Examiner

Tweets: @mrinaldesai and @ingridlunden

New York Times:

Sources: the metaverse, not securing elections, is now Mark Zuckerberg's top priority; Meta has ~60 people focused on elections, down from 300 in 2020 — Mark Zuckerberg, who once said securing elections was “the most important thing,” has shifted Meta's focus to the metaverse.

Tweets: @therickwilson, @ellisitems, and @nythaikus

Mia Tsuchida / Bloomberg:

Japan-based LegalForce, which uses AI to scan contracts for loopholes and risks, raised a $101M Series D led by Vision Fund 2 and says it has 2,000 clients — SoftBank Group Corp.'s Vision Fund will lead a 13.7 billion yen ($101 million) Series D fundraising into Japanese startup LegalForce Inc. …

More: LegalForce

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:

Deno, the company behind a JavaScript, TypeScript, and WebAssembly runtime based on Rust and the V8 JavaScript engine, raised a $21M Series A led by Sequoia — Deno, the development company behind the eponymous Deno runtime, today announced that it closed a $21 million Series A round led …

More: Deno. Tweets: @championswimmer

Financial Times:

A look at Alibaba's plans to expand into South Asia as its growth in China falters, including through its Daraz unit in Pakistan, acquired for $194M in 2018 — In a vast warehouse on the arid outskirts of Pakistani megacity Karachi, hundreds of young workers sort through boxes of nappies, cooking oil and mobile phones.

Tweets: @dreyerchina, @rencapman, and @b_parkyn

Reuters:

Sources: eight buyout offers taking Toshiba private value the deal at up to ~$22B, a 27% premium on its stock; Toshiba had two offers that would keep it public — Bidders for Toshiba Corp (6502.T) are considering offering up to 7,000 yen ($51.41) per share to take the troubled Japanese conglomerate private …

More: Bloomberg. Tweets: @reutersbiz

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