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March 12, 2025, 1:55 PM
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Top News

Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Niantic Labs says it is selling its video game division, including Pokémon Go, to Saudi Arabia-owned developer Scopely for $3.5B, subject to regulatory approval  —  The $3.5 billion Scopely deal could bring Niantic's AR gaming catalog under Saudi ownership.
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google unveils Gemma 3, the “world's best single-accelerator model”, running on a single GPU, in 1B, 4B, 12B, and 27B sizes, and says it outperforms Llama-405B  —  Following version 1 in February 2024 and 2 in May, Google today announced Gemma 3 as its latest open model for developers.
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Google DeepMind launches two AI models, Gemini 2.0-based Robotics and Robotics-ER, to help robots “perform a wider range of real-world tasks than ever before”  —  Gemini Robotics also makes robots more dexterous, allowing them to perform more precise tasks, like folding a piece of paper.
Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
Thoughts on using LLMs for coding, which can often be difficult and unintuitive, and why “vibe coding” is a fantastic way to explore the capabilities of LLMs  —  Online discussions about using Large Language Models to help write code inevitably produce comments from developers who's experiences have been disappointing.
Reuters:
Sources: TSMC has pitched Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, and Qualcomm about taking stakes in a JV to run Intel Foundry; TSMC would hold no more than a 50% stake  —  TSMC (2330.TW) has pitched U.S. chip designers Nvidia (NVDA.O), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O) and Broadcom (AVGO.O) …
Bloomberg:
Roomba maker iRobot warns of “substantial doubt” over its ability to continue operating, after Amazon abandoned a $1B+ takeover in January 2024; IRBT drops 35%+  —  IRobot Corp., the consumer robotics company that Amazon.com Inc. once planned to buy for more than $1 billion …
Financial Times:
Amazon, Google, and Meta join a World Nuclear Association statement, alongside Occidental, Dow, and others, to triple capacity by 2050; Microsoft didn't sign  —  Tech giants join banks in calling for new power stations to meet growing energy demands and combat climate change
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Google updates Chrome's extension rules to ban affiliate link injection without user action or benefit, after Honey allegedly stole creators' affiliate revenue  —  Honey was accused of shadily swapping out affiliate links, and now Google has new rules for extensions targeting exactly that.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
India's largest telco Jio Platforms partners with SpaceX to offer Starlink in the country, just hours after rival Airtel announced a similar partnership  —  Jio Platforms, the subsidiary of India's conglomerate Reliance Industries and the country's largest telecom operator …
Anna Nicolaou / Financial Times:
Spotify says it paid $10B+ in royalties in 2024, “the largest in music history”, making up 60%+ of its $17.13B+ 2024 revenue, with ~1,500 artists earning $1M+  —  Company has long drawn ire from musicians who say streaming model does not remunerate them enough
Olga Kharif / Bloomberg:
Binance says Abu Dhabi's MGX acquired a minority stake for $2B, the first institutional investment in the exchange and MGX's first entry into the crypto  —  Binance said Abu Dhabi's MGX has acquired a minority stake for $2 billion, the first institutional investment in the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange.
Sam Altman / @sama:
Sam Altman says OpenAI trained an AI model that is good at creative writing and shares a short story it wrote; he's “not sure yet how/when it will get released”  —  we trained a new model that is good at creative writing (not sure yet how/when it will get released). this is the first time i have been really struck by something written by AI; it got the vibe of metafiction so right. PROMPT: Please write a metafictional literary short story
Chihiro Ishikawa / Nikkei Asia:
BeReal CEO Aymeric Roffe says Japan is now the photo sharing app's second-largest market with over 4.5M MAUs, 83% aged 14 to 27; BeReal has 40M users globally  —  TOKYO — BeReal is eager to expand in Japan's fast-growing and highly engaged market, said its CEO in an interview with Nikkei Asia.
Luz Ding / Bloomberg:
Alibaba demos R1-Omni, an open-source model that its Tongyi Lab researchers say can read emotions, building on HumanOmni, in a bid to compete with OpenAI  —  In two demonstrations, Alibaba's Tongyi Lab researchers showed their new open source R1-Omni inferring the emotional state of a person …
More: Neowin and WinBuzzer
Ott Tammik / Bloomberg:
Estonian startups aim to turn its thriving tech sector into a military-industrial complex, including making autonomous drones, as Europe boosts defense spending  —  The Baltic country hopes to turn its thriving tech sector into a military-industrial complex, and tap into rising European defense spending.
More: AIN
Stephen Totilo / Game File:
Mike Verdu, who joined Netflix in 2021 to launch its game offering and took on a new role as VP of Generative AI for games four months ago, has left the company  —  Plus: Some key changes for this year's Game Developers Conference  —  Mike Verdu, the executive who led Netflix's foray …
The Reporters' Collective:
A look at community apps like Kutumb mobilizing millions of Indians for politics, spreading disinformation, and inciting hate, beyond civil watchdogs' scrutiny  —  Away From Scrutiny, New Networking Apps Are Mobilising Millions of Indians For Politics, Disinformation and Hate.

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From Mediagazer

Michael M. Grynbaum / New York Times:
Memo: CBS News President and CEO Wendy McMahon is stepping down from the network, saying “it's become clear the company and I do not agree on the path forward”

Andrew Webster / The Verge:
Netflix says Season 56 of Sesame Street will be available on Netflix “later this year”; Sesame Street had searched for a streamer since Max dropped it in 2024

New York Times:
Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway re-sign their Vox Media deal using a novel revenue-sharing contract with no guaranteed payments, potentially earning them ~$70M

More News

Earlier Picks

Krisztian Sandor / CoinDesk:
Mesh raised an $82M Series B, settled mostly in PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin and led by Paradigm, to expand its stablecoin-based payments settlement network
More: Mesh and FinSMEs
X: @kross_roads, @dropalltables, and @galaxyhq.  LinkedIn: Bam Azizi
New York Times:
Filings: Google owns a 14% Anthropic stake but holds no voting rights, board seats, or board observer rights; Google aims to invest $750M more in September 2025
Reuters:
Manus partners with Alibaba's Qwen to integrate Manus' AI agent functions with AI models and computing platforms in China and to collaborate on Qwen's AI models
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Google is in final talks to acquire AdHawk Microsystems, a Canadian maker of eye-tracking tech, for $115M, including $15M in performance-based payments
The Information:
Source: Anthropic's annualized revenue grew from $1B at the end of 2024 to $1.4B in early March; Manus uses tools including Claude 3.7 Sonnet to power its agent
Emma Roth / The Verge:
OpenAI debuts a Responses API to help developers build agents that search the web, scan for files, and perform tasks on PCs, and an Agents SDK for orchestration
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