Sources: Sam Altman is talking to investors, including the UAE government, to raise as much as $5T to $7T for an AI chip project  —  Sam Altman was already trying to lead the development of human-level artificial intelligence.  Now he has another great ambition: raising trillions of dollars …

Sources: Nvidia plans to build a new business unit focused on designing custom chips, including AI chips, for cloud companies; custom chips are a $30B market  —  Nvidia (NVDA.O) is building a new business unit focused on designing bespoke chips for cloud computing firms and others …

Sources: OpenAI's annualized revenue hit $2B in December, up from $1.3B in October 2023, and the company believes it can more than double the figure in 2025  —  San Francisco-based start-up joins Google and Meta as one of the fastest-growing tech companies ever

Source: Disney's $1.5B investment in Epic Games will give Disney a 9% stake in Epic at a valuation of $22.5B, down ~29% from its 2022 valuation of $31.5B  —  Disney's $1.5 billion investment in Epic Games values the Fortnite maker at $22.5 billion, a person familiar with the matter said.

John Walker, a computer programmer and co-founder of 3D design software maker Autodesk, died on February 2 at the age of 75  —  Very sad news on the passing on John Walker, programmer and co-founder of AutoDesk. His contributions to our industry, the rise of the PC, and the modern industrialization of nearly everything were incredibly significant. I thought I would use some of John's own words to show the... [image]

Xiaolang Zhang, a former Apple engineer who pled guilty in August 2022 to IP theft of Apple's car project, is sentenced to 120 days in prison and a ~$147K fine  —  For the last six years, we've been following the case of Xiaolang Zhang, a former Apple engineer who pled guilty to stealing Project Titan trade secrets.

Chris Dixon's book becomes an NYT Best Seller but with a dagger icon denoting bulk orders; a16z and some startups linked to it gave the book to staff and others  —  Motherboard found that firms linked to a16z and general partner Chris Dixon bought numerous copies of his new book promoting cryptocurrencies …

Meta removes the Facebook and Instagram accounts of Iran's supreme leader for repeatedly violating its Dangerous Organizations & Individuals policy  —  Meta on Thursday said it had removed the Facebook and Instagram accounts of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for violating its content policy.

A look at the state of Passkeys, supported by Google, Apple, and others, which offer a seamless vision of a more secure future but the UX still needs work  —  Passkeys are here to replace passwords.  When they work, it's a seamless vision of the future.  But don't ditch your old logins just yet.

Sources: Paytm E-commerce changed its name to Pai Platforms and acquired Bitsila, a seller platform on India's Open Network for Digital Commerce  —  Paytm E-commerce has changed its name to Pai Platforms and has acquired Bitsila, a seller platform on ONDC, gaining share in the online retail business.

Epik, a domain registrar serving far-right and extremist websites, has been acquired by Registered Agents, whose services allow companies to operate anonymously  —  Known for doing business with far-right extremist websites, Epik has been acquired by a company that specializes in helping businesses keep their operations secret.

Ring plans to raise the price of its cheapest subscription by 25% to $5 a month or $50 a year from March 11, 2024  —  In what is fast becoming a trend, another security camera company is raising the price of its subscription plan. … The Basic is Ring's cheapest plan and gives you access …

How Palantir embedded itself in the day-to-day work of Ukraine's wartime government in an unprecedented way, as Ukraine becomes a laboratory for military tech  —  Early on the morning of June 1, 2022, Alex Karp, the CEO of the data-analytics firm Palantir Technologies, crossed the border between Poland …

PWAs no longer work as standalone apps in iOS 17.4 betas, presumably as part of Apple's preparation for EU DMA which forces it to allow alt browser engines  —  PWAs demoted to OWB: Operating Within Browser  —  Apple has argued for years that developers who don't want to abide by its rules …

Stockholm-based Xensam, which offers AI-based tools for software asset management, raised $40M from Expedition Growth Capital  —  Software asset management — enterprise IT aiming, in part, to help companies save money — continues to draw a lot of money itself.

X signs a two-year deal with the WWE for a new exclusive weekly video series called WWE Speed featuring timed matches of 5 minutes or less, coming spring 2024  —  ‘WWE Speed’ will stream timed matches meant to end in five minutes or less on the Elon Musk-owned platform.