Techmeme
December 11, 2023, 10:40 AM

Top News

Associated Press:
X lifts the permanent ban on Infowars host Alex Jones, after Elon Musk conducted a 24-hour poll, resulting in 70.1% voting in favor of restoring Jones' account  —  Elon Musk has restored the X account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, pointing to a poll on the social media platform formerly known …
More: Engadget, Reuters, Telegraph, Politico, Reuters, The Hill, New York Post, New York Magazine, Fortune, Axios, Washington Post, Social Media Today, Silicon Republic, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, Business Insider, The Messenger, PCMag, Deadline, New.blicio.us, New York Daily News, The Messenger, CNN, CNBC, Reclaim The Net, Rolling Stone, South China Morning Post, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Variety, Forbes, WAVY-TV, and New York Times
Sara Dorn / Forbes:
Cade Metz / New York Times:
Paris-based Mistral AI raised €385M from a16z, Lightspeed, and others, sources say at a ~$2B valuation, and releases its open-source La plateforme model  —  The company has publicly released its latest technology so people can build their own chatbots.  Rivals like OpenAI and Google argue that approach can be dangerous.
Olivia Poh / Bloomberg:
TikTok plans to invest $1.5B in a joint venture with GoTo, aiming to comply with regulations in Indonesia so that TikTok can restart its shopping service there  —  - Chinese firm will combine its shopping business with GoTo unit  — TikTok has used Indonesia as template for global shopping push
Randy Nelson / data.ai:
TikTok reaches $10B in gross revenue, including $3.8B in revenue in 2023 so far, $3.3B in 2022, and $1.7B in 2021, the fifth app to do so and the first non-game  —  The short video social phenomenon has added nearly $4 billion this year alone, and it's all from virtual coins used to purchase gifts for the platform's content creators.
More: TechCrunch
Washington Post:
US officials: China's military is ramping up its ability to disrupt key US infrastructure, including targeting a Hawaii utility and a West Coast port in 2023  —  A utility in Hawaii, a West Coast port and a pipeline are among the victims in the past year, officials say
Quynh Nguyen / Bloomberg:
Vietnamese media reports Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sees Vietnam as a potential second home for the Silicon Valley company and plans to open a design center there  —  Huang, speaking at a Hanoi semiconductor and artificial intelligence conference hosted by a Vietnam ministry Monday …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
London-based SumUp, which offers payments and other financial services to ~4M SMBs, raised €285M at a valuation higher than its $8.5B valuation in June 2022  —  SumUp — the fintech that provides payments and related services to some 4 million small businesses in Europe …
Ana Swanson / New York Times:
The US awards the first CHIPS Act grant to BAE Systems, giving the defense contractor $35M to boost production of chips used in F-15 and F-35 fighter jets  —  The award, which will go to BAE Systems, is part of a new government program aimed at creating a more secure supply of semiconductors.
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
A look at the Effective Accelerationism movement, which argues for open sourcing AI tools, says AI's benefits far outweigh its harms, and opposes AI regulation  —  The eccentric pro-tech movement known as “Effective Accelerationism” wants to unshackle powerful A.I., and party along the way.

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