Techmeme
April 14, 2025, 8:35 PM

Top News

New York Times:
FTC v. Meta: in opening arguments, FTC lawyers accuse Meta of a “buy-or-bury strategy” to cement a social networking monopoly by buying Instagram and WhatsApp  —  The tech giant went to court on Monday in an antitrust trial focused on its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.
Brendan Bordelon / Politico:
FTC v. Meta: the US argued Meta has a monopoly in the “personal social networking” market, which it claims includes only Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and MeWe  —  The government wants to show the Meta CEO bought Instagram and WhatsApp to snuff out social media competition.
New York Times:
Legal expert: at Meta's FTC antitrust trial, Mark Zuckerberg is likely to face a more grueling time on the stand compared to his former Congressional hearings  —  Meta's chief has grown accustomed to tough questioning in courts and hearings, but an antitrust trial starting Monday could be more grueling, experts said.
Ben Smith / Semafor:
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI releases GPT‑4.1, GPT‑4.1 mini, and GPT‑4.1 nano, which excel at coding, instruction following, and long context understanding, available via its API  —  OpenAI on Monday launched a new family of models called GPT-4.1.  Yes, “4.1” — as if the company's nomenclature wasn't confusing enough already.
The Information:
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Nvidia starts making its Blackwell chips at TSMC's Phoenix plant and says it aims to make up to $500B of AI infrastructure in the US in the next four years  —  Nvidia said on Monday that it has commissioned more than a million square feet of manufacturing space to build and test AI chips …
Zaheer Kachwala / Reuters:
Intel agrees to sell a 51% stake in Altera to Silver Lake in a deal valuing the programmable chip unit at $8.75B; Intel bought Altera for ~$17B in 2015  —  Intel said on Monday it would sell a 51% stake in Altera to private equity firm Silver Lake, valuing the programmable chip unit at $8.75 billion.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Apple plans to begin on-device, privacy-centric analysis of user data, comparing it to synthetic data, to improve AI, in beta versions of iOS 18.5, macOS 15.5  —  Apple Inc. will begin analyzing data on customers' devices in a bid to improve its artificial intelligence platform …
The Keyword:
Google details DolphinGemma, a new 400M-parameter LLM to decode dolphin communication by analyzing the vocalizations of wild Atlantic spotted dolphins  —  DolphinGemma, a large language model developed by Google, is helping scientists study how dolphins communicate — and hopefully find out what they're saying, too.
Dominic Preston / The Verge:
Nikkei Asia:
Sources: Apple asked suppliers in India, Vietnam, and Thailand to ramp up production earlier in 2025; Indian factory utilization rates are already at the limit  —  TAIPEI — Apple is ramping up production of key products in India and Vietnam to take advantage of a 90-day grace period on U.S. tariffs …
Reuters:
Financial Times:
Andy Bounds / Financial Times:
Sources: the European Commission is issuing burner phones and laptops to some US-bound staff to mitigate espionage risks, a move typically reserved for China  —  European Commission officials heading to IMF and World Bank spring meetings advised to travel with basic devices
Counterpoint Research:
Global smartphone sales grew 3% YoY in Q1 2025; Apple took the top spot, its first ever for Q1, with a 19% share, and Vivo was the fastest growing brand  —  - The global smartphone market continued its growth trajectory in Q1 2025.  Smartphone sell-through grew 3% YoY during the quarter …
Naga Avan-Nomayo / The Block:
Crypto exchange Kraken begins rolling out commission-free trading for over 11,000 US-listed stocks and ETFs, initially in nine US states and DC  —  - Kraken now supports equities trading on its digital asset exchange — powered by a brokerage deal with Alpaca.

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SignalFire:
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Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer: