Techmeme
February 8, 2022, 5:25 AM

Top News

New York Times:
Meta announces that Peter Thiel, one of Facebook's first institutional investors and longest-serving directors, will step down from Meta's board this year  —  The tech billionaire, who has been on the board of the company formerly known as Facebook since 2005, is backing numerous politicians in the midterm elections.
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Nvidia and SoftBank call off Nvidia's Arm acquisition; Arm CEO Simon Segars resigns and Arm's IP group president Rene Haas takes over; Arm is exploring an IPO  —  Nvidia's deal to acquire Arm is off, the two companies and Arm's owner SoftBank announced (PDF) tonight.
Alan Rappeport / New York Times:
The IRS says it will transition away from using facial recognition for identity verification, after a bipartisan backlash regarding its use of ID.me services  —  The tax collection agency will transition away from using a service from the authentication service ID.me amid bipartisan backlash.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Source: Apple acquires London-based AI Music, which uses AI and royalty-free music to create dynamic soundtracks that change based on user interactions or moods  —  Apple Inc. acquired a startup called AI Music that uses artificial intelligence to generate tailor-made music …
Chris Duckett / ZDNet:
Signal now lets users change the phone number associated with their account while retaining their messages, profile information, and groups  —  Users will still need to be able to send and receive Signal messages on their old number in order to port.  —  Signal has announced it will allow …
Nikhil Subramaniam / Inc42 Media:
BharatPe, an Indian fintech unicorn backed by VCs such as Sequoia and Coatue, is facing allegations of embezzlement, impropriety in merchant dealings, and more  —  Calling CEO Suhail Sameer “a puppet of investors”, Grover has alleged a conspiracy behind sending him away and instituting a probe
Karl Freund / Forbes:
Intel announces efforts to accelerate RISC-V development and adoption, including licensing plans, chip manufacturing partners, and a $1B IFS Innovation Fund  —  This announcement will have a long-lasting impact on the entire semiconductor industry:  —  Intel must fabricate chips …
Bloomberg:
Livspace, an online home interiors marketplace that connects customers with designers and vendors, raises a $180M Series F led by KKR at a $1B+ valuation  —  Livspace raised $180 million in a funding round led by KKR & Co. at a valuation of more than $1 billion as the online home interiors …
Jay Graber / Bluesky:
Bluesky, the decentralized social media initiative announced by Twitter in 2019, becomes a Public Benefit LLC with Jack Dorsey as one of the board members  —  In 2019, Twitter announced bluesky, a project it would fund to create an open and decentralized standard for social media.
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Amazon raises its maximum base pay for corporate and tech employees from $160K to $350K, in line with other tech giants, citing a “competitive labor market”  —  Amazon will boost its maximum base pay to $350,000 for corporate and tech employees, from $160,000 previously …
Mario Gabriele / The Generalist:
A deep dive into the rise of “solo capitalists”, who are increasingly competing to lead seed, Series A, and later stage rounds against traditional VC firms  —  Solitary general partners now manage more than many multi-person venture funds.  What are the limits of a one-man band?
Shiona McCallum / BBC:
The UK's Online Safety Bill will mandate porn websites verify users' age or face fines; similar proposals were quietly dropped in 2019 after criticism  —  Porn websites in the UK will be legally required to verify the age of their users under new internet safety laws.
More: Slashdot

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
CIO challenge 6: Can we find an effective solution that also minimizes operational costs?  —  Welcome to the next and final installment of our CIO series!  After what feels like a thousand cups of coffee …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Leaderboards:
Discover the top reporters on AI, VR, policy, and much more  —  We've analyzed Techmeme's news crawl to identify the most influential and prolific writers on 48 news topics.  Download reports immediately for just $100.
Techmeme Ride Home:
(BNS) How To Know When To Kill Your Startup
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:25 AM ET, February 8, 2022.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:

Earlier Picks

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Alex Konrad / Forbes:
Sam Reynolds / CoinDesk:
Michiel Willems / City A.M.: