Techmeme
April 1, 2025, 12:35 AM

Top News

CNBC:
OpenAI closes a $40B funding round, the most ever raised by a private tech company, at a $300B post-money valuation; SoftBank led the round with $30B  —  OpenAI on Monday announced it had closed what amounts to the largest private tech funding round on record.
Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:
Source: SoftBank will invest an initial $7.5B in OpenAI's $40B round, plus $22.5B by 2025's end; other backers include Microsoft, Coatue, Altimeter, and Thrive  —  OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT, said it has finalized a funding round that will bring in $40 billion …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Sam Altman says OpenAI is planning to “release a powerful new open-weight language model with reasoning in the coming months”  —  OpenAI says that it intends to release its first “open” language model since GPT‑2 “in the coming months.”  —  That's according to a feedback form …
Kylie Robison / The Verge:
Sam Altman says “we added one million users in the last hour”, following last week's Images for ChatGPT launch; over the weekend he said “our GPUs are melting”  —  Last week, OpenAI released Images for ChatGPT which led to an explosion of interest thanks to its ability …
Ian King / Bloomberg:
At the Intel Vision conference, CEO Lip-Bu Tan says Intel plans to spin off non-core assets, create new products including custom semiconductors, and more  —  Intel Corp. Chief Executive Officer Lip-Bu Tan said the chipmaker will spin off assets that aren't central to its mission and create …
Sean Endicott / Windows Central:
Microsoft expands Copilot+ PC features like Live Captions and Cocreator, previously exclusive to models with Snapdragon chips, to models with AMD or Intel chips  —  Staggered feature releases make me ask “what even is a Copilot+ PC?”  —  Microsoft has a big update for Copilot+ PCs powered by Intel or AMD processors.
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple releases iOS 18.4 with Priority notifications for Apple Intelligence, which gets support for eight more languages, Ambient Music via Control Center, more  —  Apple today released iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4, the fourth major updates to the iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 operating system updates …
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Reuters:
Cheng Ting-Fang / Nikkei Asia:
Sources: GlobalFoundries mulls merging with UMC, Taiwan's 2nd-largest chipmaker, to form a bigger, US-based company with production in Asia, the US, and Europe  —  TAIPEI — U.S. contract chipmaker GlobalFoundries and United Microelectronics Corp., Taiwan's No. 2 chipmaker …
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Amazon's AGI Lab unveils Nova Act, a general purpose AI agent to control a web browser and independently perform some simple actions, and a Nova Act SDK  —  Amazon on Monday unveiled Nova Act, a general-purpose AI agent that can take control of a web browser and independently perform some simple actions.
Caroline O'Donovan / Washington Post:
Alexa+ will start rolling out to users today; sources: some features demoed in February are slated to arrive in two months, while others will take longer  —  Alexa+, Amazon's AI-enhanced voice assistant, will launch to some customers Monday, though not every feature will be available right away
Vicky Ge Huang / Wall Street Journal:
Dan Primack / Axios:
Sources: CaaStle, a clothing inventory monetization platform that had raised $530M+, is almost broke and is accusing its founder of financial misconduct  —  Fashion technology company CaaStle is almost broke and is accusing its founder and former CEO Christine Hunsicker of financial misconduct, Axios has learned from multiple sources.
More: Puck and TechCrunch
Michael J. de la Merced / New York Times:
Isomorphic Labs, a DeepMind spinoff focusing on drug discovery, raised $600M led by Thrive to research treatments, including for cancer and immune disorders  —  The company, which uses artificial intelligence to develop new treatments, now counts the venture capital firm Thrive Capital as a backer.

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Earlier Picks

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Bloomberg: