Techmeme
March 20, 2024, 6:35 AM

Top News

Dina Bass / Bloomberg:
Microsoft hires DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman to run consumer AI, reporting to Satya Nadella, and brings on most staff from his Inflection AI startup  —  Suleyman and his team will join from OpenAI rival Inflection AI  —  Microsoft Corp. has named Mustafa Suleyman head …
Satya Nadella / The Official Microsoft Blog:
Microsoft announces Microsoft AI, focused on Copilot and other consumer AI products; Mustafa Suleyman will be its CEO and Karén Simonyan its chief scientist  —  Satya Nadella, Chief Executive Officer, shared the below communication today with Microsoft employees.
Inflection:
Inflection AI names Sean White as CEO and plans to host Inflection-2.5 on Azure, after co-founders Karén Simonyan and Mustafa Suleyman depart for Microsoft AI  —  From day one at Inflection, we've been driven by a simple mission: to create a personal intelligence for everyone.
Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:
Ashley Belanger / Ars Technica:
Glassdoor users complain after the service added real names to profiles without explicit user consent; Glassdoor cross-populates data between its services  —  Anonymous review site Glassdoor now consults public sources to identify users.  —  Glassdoor, where employees go to leave anonymous reviews …
Financial Times:
The US awards Intel $8.5B in CHIPS Act funding and $11B in loans to expand in Arizona, Ohio, New Mexico, and Oregon; Intel plans to spend $100B over five years  —  Preliminary agreement under US Chips Act also includes $11bn loan as company expands capacity in Arizona and other states
Emma Roth / The Verge:
In a brief demo, Meta shows how Threads could handle fediverse sharing, including waiting five minutes before sending a Threads post to the fediverse  —  Threads is coming to the fediverse — and we just got our first official look at how that might work from Meta itself.
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Trend Micro researchers detail Earth Krahang, a China-linked APT campaign that is potentially linked to I-Soon and has breached 70 organizations in 23 countries  —  A sophisticated hacking campaign attributed to a Chinese Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) group known as 'Earth Krahang …
Business Insider:
Sources: OpenAI plans to release GPT-5 in mid-2024, likely during summer, and some enterprise customers have recently received demos of the latest model  —  - OpenAI's main product is the popular generative AI tool ChatGPT.  — Since its last major model upgrade to GPT-4, the tool has run into performance issues.
Kamila Wojciechowska / Android Authority:
Source: Google's Pixel 8a will have a 6.1" 120Hz OLED display, Tensor G3 chip, DisplayPort output support, and the same camera sensor as the Pixel 7a  —  The Pixel 8a's major upgrades will make it even more competitive, but raise further questions over the vanilla Pixel 8.
Ionut Arghire / SecurityWeek:
Researchers say misconfigured Firebase instances exposed 125M+ users' records, including plaintext passwords, email addresses, and messages, across 900 websites  —  A weakness in a Firebase implementation allowed researchers to gain access to names, phone numbers, email addresses, plaintext passwords, confidential messages, and more.
Samuel Stolton / Bloomberg:
France fines Google €250M for failing to broker deals with media outlets over content linking and using press content to train AI, after a €500M fine in 2021  —  - Firm also accused of breaking other commitments in news case  — Watchdog levies €250 million penalty in latest escalation
Kate Irwin / PCMag:
Fitbit is working with Google Research to create an LLM based on Gemini to provide Fitbit mobile app users with personalized data and health recommendations  —  Google is training Gemini on health data, and it's creating a new AI model for the Fitbit app that can give advice tailored to your needs.
Ash Parrish / The Verge:
How Sweet Baby, a small video game narrative development company, became the focus of Gamergate 2.0, a harassment campaign against “forced” diversity in gaming  —  A group of gamers has mobilized a harassment campaign against a story consultant company, marginalized developers …
Harry McCracken / Fast Company:
An interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on how the company's early decisions led to its AI boom, why Nvidia's ubiquity will not be easy to replicate, and more  —  Nvidia's chips sparked the AI revolution.  Now it's in the business of putting the technology to work in an array of industries.
Alex Koller / CNBC:
Mike Rogoway / Oregonian:
PE firm Francisco Partners agrees to acquire Portland, Oregon-based Jama Software, which helps companies develop complex tech products, for $1.2B  —  Jama Software, which helped lead a brief renaissance in Portland technology in the decade after the dot-com bust, sold Monday to a private equity firm for $1.2 billion.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Bengaluru-based audio platform Pocket FM, which offers series with short episodes, raised a $103M Series D led by Lightspeed, a source says at a $750M valuation  —  India-based audio platform Pocket FM has secured $103 million in Series D funding led by Lightspeed Ventures with participation from Stepstone Group.
More: Moneycontrol

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Gemini 2.5 Pro: Our most intelligent AI model  —  Gemini 2.5 Pro (experimental) is now available, with thinking capabilities, enhanced performance, and improved accuracy.  Try it at no cost in the Gemini app.
UiPath:
UiPath Unveils 10 Innovations that Will Shape the Agentic Future  —  Orchestration engine, API workflows and agentic testing among key features of new UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation, launched at UiPath DevCon 2025
Zoho:
How EQ plays a defining role in workplace communication  —  What if everyone you worked with had a psychic ability to understand how you're feeling and respond accordingly?  Wouldn't that be great?
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Techmeme Ride Home:
Airbnb's Midlife Transformation
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
Azeem Azhar's Exponential View:
China's catching up to US AI... Here's why it won't matter
Azeem Azhar explores how AI and exponential technologies are shaping our future.
Subscribe to Azeem Azhar's Exponential View.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
How Apple trapped itself in China
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
The Logan Bartlett Show:
Debunking Healthcare's Biggest Myths with Zach Weinberg and Derek Thompson
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
Subscribe to The Logan Bartlett Show.
Spotlight On:
Supabase's Paul Copplestone on the difference between "playing startup" and strategy
A podcast from Accel about how companies are built, from the people doing the building.
Subscribe to Spotlight On.
Invest Like the Best:
Royce Yudkoff & Rick Ruback - Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:35 AM ET, March 20, 2024.

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

Earlier Picks

New York Times:
Maxwell Zeff / Gizmodo:
Adam James / The Block:
Michael Peel / Financial Times:
Jamie Grierson / The Guardian: