Techmeme
December 4, 2023, 9:30 AM

Top News

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Spotify plans to lay off ~17% of its workforce, or ~1,500 staff, to “rightsize” its costs, citing slow growth and rising capital costs, after cutting 6% in June  —  Spotify is eliminating about 17% jobs, its third round of layoffs, as the music streaming looks to become “both productive and efficient.”
Joseph Menn / Washington Post:
Disinformation scholar Joan Donovan claims in a whistleblower filing that her superiors soured on her as Harvard got the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative's $500M gift  —  In a whistleblower complaint, she breaks her silence over events that unsettled other misinformation researchers
New York Times:
A deep dive into the founding of DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic, as many of their backers feared the risks of advanced AI but wanted the power to shape it  —  The people who were most afraid of the risks of artificial intelligence decided they should be the ones to build it.
Peter Martin / Bloomberg:
US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo says her department needs more money to stop China on chips and calls out Nvidia for redesigning for the Chinese market  —  - US commerce secretary cites Nvidia designs as case in point  — Tells chip CEOs ‘such is life’ as US security trumps revenue
Paresh Dave / Wired:
Documents: OpenAI signed a letter of intent in 2019 to spend $51M on brain-inspired chips developed by startup Rain AI, in which Sam Altman had invested $1M+  —  Documents show that OpenAI signed a letter of intent to spend $51 million on brain-inspired chips developed by startup Rain.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Chase Bank could be an ideal Goldman Sachs replacement for Apple Card, as it uses the same Mastercard network and already has a strong relationship with Apple  —  Apple and Goldman Sachs are on the verge of splitting up, and Chase is the ideal partner to step in.
Benjamin Stupples / Bloomberg:
After Meta jumped 172% in the year to November, Mark Zuckerberg sold 682K shares worth almost $185M via trading plans, his first share sale since November 2021  —  - Meta co-founder unloaded $185 million of stock in November  — Sales come as Meta outperforms most major US tech companies
Financial Times:
IBM announces 10 quantum computing projects, focusing on areas like simulating quantum physics and solving problems in chemistry and materials science  —  Use of technology to solve scientific problems still falls short of commercialisation  —  Quantum computing is starting to fulfil …

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More News

Bloomberg:
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Earlier Picks

Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal:
Maria Sherman / Associated Press:
Tara García Mathewson / The Markup: