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January 22, 2025, 4:30 AM
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Top News

New York Times:
Trump grants a pardon to Ross Ulbricht, the Silk Road creator and a crypto cult hero serving a life sentence since 2015 on money laundering and drug charges  —  Ross Ulbricht was serving a life sentence for creating a site in a shady corner of the internet to sell heroin, cocaine and other illicit substances.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle announce The Stargate Project, a JV to invest in US AI infrastructure, committing $100B now and up to $500B in the next four years  —  OpenAI says that it will team up with both the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank and with Oracle, along with others, to build multiple data centers for AI in the U.S.
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
Netflix reports Q4 revenue up 16% YoY to $10.2B and 301.6M global subs, adding 18.9M subs, more than doubling Wall Street estimates; NFLX jumps 14%+  —  - Netflix is raising subscription prices in its biggest market  — Report marks the end of regular quarterly customer updates
Nicole Sperling / New York Times:
Netflix raises prices in the US, Canada, Portugal, and Argentina; the standard US plan rises from $15.49 to $17.99 and standard with ads jumps a dollar to $7.99  —  The company said those results were buoyed by programming in recent months that exceeded internal expectations.
Drew Lerner / Awful Announcing:
Nielsen: Netflix captured 8.5% of all US streaming viewership in December 2024, its highest share since July 2023, in part due to NFL games; YouTube had 11.1%
Washington Post:
Sources: a deep philosophical rift over how DOGE should operate spurred Vivek Ramaswamy's exit, with Donald Trump's January 20 EO embodying Elon Musk's vision  —  A deep philosophical rift between the two billionaire leaders of the “Department of Government Efficiency” left Musk to run the group.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Trump signs an EO renaming the US Digital Service as the US DOGE Service, directing agency heads to form “DOGE Teams” of at least four employees within 30 days
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Microsoft says it has a new deal with OpenAI that gives Microsoft “right of first refusal”, meaning it's no longer OpenAI's exclusive cloud provider  —  Microsoft was once the exclusive provider of data center infrastructure for OpenAI to train and run its AI models.  No longer.
Bloomberg:
Trump says he would be open to Elon Musk or Larry Ellison purchasing TikTok US as part of a joint venture that would give the US government 50% ownership  —  “I have the right to make a deal,” Trump said at an event alongside Ellison at the White House on Tuesday.
Alexandra S. Levine / Bloomberg:
MrBeast joins an investor group led by Employer.com founder Jesse Tinsley in an all-cash bid to acquire TikTok US operations; several groups have shown interest  —  - YouTube star is part of investor group run by Jesse Tinsley  — TikTok has less than three months to sell or face a US ban
Radhika Rajkumar / ZDNET:
DeepSeek's new MIT-licensed AI models are accesible via DeepSeek's API at a fraction of the cost of comparable OpenAI models, but there are censorship concerns  —  Open-source artificial intelligence (AI) has reached another milestone — and the cost differences it represents could shake up the industry.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Meta aims to debut glasses with a built-in display and new Oakley-branded smart glasses for athletes in 2025, and resumes work on watches and earbuds  —  - Company resumes work on smartwatch and develops AirPods rival  — First real AR glasses, dubbed ‘Artemis,’ are planned for 2027
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
A survey of 3,000+ game developers: 11% were laid off in the past year, 58% back unionization, 30% say GenAI has a negative impact on the industry, and more  —  The 2025 GDC survey revealed the impact of industry-wide layoffs in 2024 where one of every 11 game developers lost a job.
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple says installing macOS Sequoia 15.3, iOS 18.3, or iPadOS 18.3 will turn on Apple Intelligence automatically on compatible devices; users can opt out later  —  When installing macOS Sequoia 15.3, iOS 18.3, or iPadOS 18.3, Apple Intelligence will be turned on automatically on compatible devices …
Becky Bracken / Dark Reading:
The Trump administration removed all advisory committee members within the DHS, including those in CISA and CSRB, which was investigating Salt Typhoon  —  In a letter sent today, the acting DHS secretary terminated membership to all advisory boards, including the Cyber Safety Review Board …
James O'Donnell / MIT Technology Review:
Filing: OpenAI spent $1.76M on lobbying in 2024, up from 2023's $260K, with focus on the AI Advancement and Reliability Act and the Future of AI Innovation Act  —  OpenAI spent $1.76 million on government lobbying in 2024 and $510,000 in the last three months of the year alone …
Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE:
Render, which offers developers cloud services for building, deploying, and running apps and websites, raised an $80M Series C led by Georgian  —  Developer-focused cloud infrastructure startup Render Services Inc. says it's ready to disrupt traditional giants such as Amazon Web Services Inc …
More: Render
MK Manoylov / The Block:
Crypto.com launches its institutional exchange service for US customers, after closing the service in June 2023 due to “limited demand”  —  - Crypto.com Exchange gives users access to over 300 cryptocurrencies and 480 trading pairs, acting as a complement to the existing retail-focused Crypto.com App for U.S. customers.

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More News

Earlier Picks

Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
Tencent unveils Hunyuan3D 2.0, an AI system that turns single images or text prompts into 3D models in seconds, and open sources it on HuggingFace and GitHub
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Perplexity debuts Sonar, an API service to let devs build AI search tools into their apps, with a base tier costing $5/1K searches and a pricier Sonar Pro tier
Jeff Cox / CNBC:
The SEC launches a “Crypto 2.0” task force led by SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, to create a “comprehensive and clear regulatory framework for crypto assets”
Max Goldbart / Deadline:
Parrot Analytics estimates Severance season 1 earned $200M+, with ~50% coming in the year following the finale; Ted Lasso generated $609.4M from Q3'20 to Q3'24
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