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Techmeme
March 29, 2025, 2:50 PM

Top News

Arfa Javaid / Financial Express:
Replit CEO Amjad Masad says learning to code is a waste of time, citing Dario Amodei's prediction that AI may generate essentially all code by next year  —  Repli CEO Amjad Masad said that since AI will take over coders in future, one should not waste time on studying coding now.
CNBC:
Elon Musk says xAI acquired X in an all-stock deal valuing xAI at $80B and X at $33B; xAI was reportedly in talks to raise funds in February at a $75B valuation  —  Elon Musk said on Friday that his startup xAI has merged with X, his social network, in an all-stock transaction that values …
More: New York Times, TechCrunch, NBC News, The Verge, Wired, Reuters, TechSpot, Axios, Nairametrics, Washington Post, Fox Business, International Business Times, Us Weekly, Social Media Today, Semafor, GSMArena.com, Associated Press, Cointelegraph, Deutsche Welle, E! Online, BBC, Ars Technica, UPI, Greek City Times, Mashable, PC Gamer, Rolling Stone, SiliconANGLE, Cryptopolitan, BGR, Türkiye Today, Dexerto, TVNewsCheck, Gizmodo, Benzinga, Engadget, Variety, Deadline, The Wrap, Business Insider, Fortune, The Hollywood Reporter, Cord Cutters News, Tech in Asia, Bloomberg, The Post Millennial, San Francisco Chronicle, and Curryalley
Bloomberg:
Source: the new combined entity housing xAI and X is called XAI Holdings and is valued at more than $100B but less than $113B, since X already owned part of xAI  —  - New joint entity is valued at over $100 billion, person says  — X, xAI already partnered on data sharing and Grok distribution
Alex Kantrowitz / Big Technology:
World History Encyclopedia, the second most visited history site, says its traffic fell 25% in Nov. 2024 after AI search tools began presenting its information  —  World History Encyclopedia CEO Jan van der Crabben saw his site show up in Google's AI Overviews and ChatGPT.  Then traffic dropped 25%.
Bain:
India's e-commerce market grew 10%-12% YoY to ~$60B in GMV in 2024, versus historical rates of over 20%, with 270M+ people shopping online, second only to China  —  Executive summary  —  India has become a retail powerhouse over the last decade, ascending to the third largest retail market globally in 2024.
Keach Hagey / Wall Street Journal:
A book excerpt details how the OpenAI board ousted Sam Altman with help from Mira Murati, who provided examples of his alleged lies and other toxic behavior  —  Secrets, misdirection and broken trust.  The inside story of how the CEO of the hottest tech company was ousted and, just as quickly, resurrected.
Forums: Hacker News
Zac Bowden / Windows Central:
In the latest Windows 11 preview build, Microsoft removed the “bypassnro” command, which let users skip signing into a Microsoft Account when installing Windows  —  The popular “bypassnro” command, which let users to skip connecting to the Internet and signing into a Microsoft Account, is being removed.
Hamish McKenzie / @hamishmckenzie:
Hamish McKenzie says Substack is partnering with FIRE to support “writers residing lawfully” in the US targeted by the government for their writing  —  We are partnering with @TheFIREorg to stand up for free speech in the face of recent government actions against critics of U.S. foreign policy. We will work to protect writers who are targeted in this way. [image]
Robert Burnson / Bloomberg:
Kalshi sues Nevada's gaming regulators to keep offering event contracts to bet on sports and politics, citing federal regulation by the US CFTC  —  Kalshi sued Nevada's gaming regulators to keep offering so-called event contracts to bet on sports and politics, setting up a clash between state and federal regulators.
New York Times:
US tech companies are racing to establish more and bigger offshore campuses in India, fully staffed with highly skilled professionals in cities like Bengaluru  —  An abundance of motivated young professionals is luring American businesses to base their global operations in Indian cities.

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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
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