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Techmeme
April 26, 2025, 5:01 AM
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Top News

Bloomberg:
Sources: XAI Holdings, the newly combined entity housing xAI and X, is in talks to raise roughly $20B, or possibly more, valuing the company at more than $120B  —  Elon Musk's XAI Holdings is in talks with investors to raise roughly $20 billion in funding for his newly combined artificial intelligence startup …
Wall Street Journal:
Docs and sources detail the opaque market for shares of Elon Musk's private companies; Valor recently offered investors $1B worth of shares in SpaceX and xAI
Gabe Kaminsky / The Free Press:
Leaked letter: interim US Attorney for DC Ed Martin accused Wikipedia of allowing foreign manipulation and propaganda, threatening its tax-exempt status  —  In a letter obtained by The Free Press, Trump appointee Ed Martin accuses the Wikimedia Foundation of violating the law.
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Google says it will end support for 1st- and 2nd-gen Nest thermostats on October 25, and won't launch new models in Europe due to its “unique” heating systems  —  The company is also pulling Nest thermostats out of Europe entirely, citing “unique” heating challenges.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft makes Recall available to all Copilot+ PCs, along with a new AI-powered Windows search and Click to Do, which works like Google's Circle to Search  —  Microsoft's Click to Do image and text tool is also rolling out today. … We knew Microsoft was about to launch Recall for real this time …
Washington Post:
Sources: China has quietly exempted from tariffs at least eight classifications of US-made microchips, as it seeks to exempt “irreplaceable” goods  —  Levies on certain U.S.-made microchips have been dropped, importers say.  Meanwhile, China denied President Trump's claims that talks to reduce tariffs are happening.
Financial Times:
Deliveroo, which listed in London with a £7.6B valuation in 2021, says it received a buyout proposal from DoorDash that would value the company at £2.7B  —  UK food delivery group valued at £7.6bn in London listing four years ago  —  Deliveroo, the food delivery company …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Chinese AI startup Manus raised $75M led by Benchmark at a $500M valuation, and plans to expand to markets including the US, Japan, and the Middle East  —  The Chinese startup behind Manus AI secured a round of financing led by US venture firm Benchmark, scoring capital to explore …
Dario Amodei:
Interpretability, or understanding how AI models work, can help mitigate many AI risks, such as misalignment and misuse, that stem from AI systems' opacity  —  In the decade that I have been working on AI, I've watched it grow from a tiny academic field to arguably the most important economic and geopolitical issue in the world.
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  —  The legal battle between HR software unicorns Deel and Rippling escalated on Friday, with Deel suing Rippling for alleged defamation, libel, and deceptive trade practices.
Hayden Field / CNBC:
Meta and Booz Allen partner to deploy Space Llama, a fine-tuned version of Llama 3.2, for research aboard the International Space Station National Laboratory  —  On Friday, Meta and Booz Allen Hamilton launched “Space Llama.”  —  Llama, Meta's open-source artificial intelligence model …
Newcomer:
Internal presentation by Microsoft's CFO Amy Hood: number of users for Copilot has been flat over the past year with ~20M weekly users, as ChatGPT grew to 400M  —  Mustafa Suleyman hasn't delivered the turnaround he was hired to bring  —  At Microsoft's annual executive huddle last month …
More: XDA Developers, Engadget, and GeekWire
Bluesky: @sadtiric.  Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to.  X: @rustybrick and @cityofthetown.  Forums: Slashdot
Pete Koomen:
Many AI features, like Gmail's AI assistant, feel useless because they don't allow users to edit system prompts, constraining the AI models they're built with  —  I noticed something interesting the other day: I enjoy using AI to build software more than I enjoy using most AI applications—software built with AI.
Asa Fitch / Wall Street Journal:
IBM has booked $6B in sales around generative AI and Red Hat's revenue has about doubled since IBM bought it, fueling a ~2x jump in IBM's stock since April 2020  —  ‘Big Blue’ has clawed back into investor favor, but needs to show staying power in AI to cement its comeback
More: CRN
Nnaemeka Onyekachi / Nairametrics:
A Nigerian tribunal upholds a $220M fine imposed on Meta in July 2024 for discriminatory and exploitative practices against Nigerian consumers  —  Nigeria's Competition and Consumer Protection Tribunal on Friday ordered WhatsApp and Meta Platforms Incorporated to pay a $220 million penalty …

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From Mediagazer

Katie Deighton / Wall Street Journal:
WME is selling sports marketing agency 160over90 to Publicis Groupe for, sources say, $500M+; WME bought the agency in 2018 for about $200M

Reuters:
Australia says it will ban gambling ads featuring celebrities and limit online gambling ads to logged-in users over 18 starting in 2027

Sara Fischer / Axios:
Versant buys StockStory, an AI-powered service that generates reports with investment advice to support CNBC; PitchBook: the startup has raised $3.2M since 2020

More News

John Revill / Reuters:
Swiss National Bank says cryptocurrencies failed to meet its currency reserve standards, as a referendum campaign seeks to require SNB to hold bitcoin reserves

Earlier Picks

CNN:
Temu and Shein raise prices ahead of de minimis tariff exemption expiring on May 2 and urged customers to make purchases prior to April 25 to avoid 120% tariffs
Leo Schwartz / Fortune:
Nous, which plans to launch an AI training system on Solana using people's idle computing power, raised a $50M Series A, a source says at a $1B token valuation
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI expands deep research usage for Plus, Pro, and Team users with an o4-mini-powered lightweight version, which also rolls out to Free users today
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Netflix rolls out subtitles with just spoken dialog, without audio cues or speaker names, and says ~50% of US viewing hours happen with subtitles or captions on
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Facebook will reduce the reach of accounts sharing spammy content and make them ineligible for monetization, after Zuckerberg promised a return to “OG Facebook”
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan announces changes, including an engineering refocus, reductions in unnecessary bureaucracy and workforce, and four-day-per-week RTO policy
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