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April 26, 2025, 2:55 PM
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| Bloomberg: |
Sources: XAI Holdings, the newly combined entity housing xAI and X, is in talks to raise roughly $20B, or possibly more, valuing the company at more than $120B — Elon Musk's XAI Holdings is in talks with investors to raise roughly $20 billion in funding for his newly combined artificial intelligence startup …
More: TechCrunch, CNBC, Neowin, WinBuzzer, Reuters, StartupNews.fyi, and nextbigwhat
Bluesky: @prietschka and @motorcityadam.com
X: @smdcapital1010 and @newsynick
| Wall Street Journal: |
Docs and sources detail the opaque market for shares of Elon Musk's private companies; Valor recently offered investors $1B worth of shares in SpaceX and xAI — Lucrative stock deals have allowed SpaceX to avoid public scrutiny even as it has grown into one of the largest companies in the U.S.
More: MarketWatch, TESLARATI, SPACE.com, and Politico
| Alex Heath / The Verge: |
Q&A with Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas on Motorola partnership, Perplexity's upcoming browser Comet, TikTok bid, ChatGPT's scale, Google's DOJ trial, and more — Aravind Srinivas discusses his partnership with Motorola, fighting Google, and why AI assistants are coming for browsers.
More: TechCrunch, Pixel Envy, BGR, Futurism, Moneycontrol, Chrome Unboxed, MediaPost, Android Headlines, Breakfast At Ralf's, Tech in Asia, and nextbigwhat
Bluesky: @alexeheath.com. Mastodon: @henriquelalves@mastodon …, @brucelawson@social …, and @kagihq@mastodon.social
X: @richontech and @ben_kaplan
LinkedIn: Tim Brooks, Bob Olwig, Derek Fisher, Dr. Augustine Fou, Bernd Korz, Myles Younger, and Moses Kemibaro
| Leah Nylen / Bloomberg: |
US v. Google: Chrome General Manager Parisa Tabriz testified that only Google can run Chrome, given the browser's “interdependencies” on other parts of Google — Google is the only company that can offer the level of features and functionality that its popular Chrome web browser has today …
More: The Verge, Neowin, Fortune, PCMag, Moneycontrol, Türkiye Today, AzerNews, XDA Developers, BGR, PhoneArena, Yahoo Finance, PCWorld, DevX, Android Headlines, Tech Xplore, and TechSpot
| Gabe Kaminsky / The Free Press: |
Leaked letter: interim US Attorney for DC Ed Martin accused Wikipedia of allowing foreign manipulation and propaganda, threatening its tax-exempt status — In a letter obtained by The Free Press, Trump appointee Ed Martin accuses the Wikimedia Foundation of violating the law.
More: The Verge, Washington Post, U.S. Department of Justice, Gizmodo, WinBuzzer, and Raw Story
Bluesky: @brewster.kahle.org, @sanho, @sybren, @elisethomas, @johnrhutchinson, @seth-stern, @justcallmefrank, @rop.gonggri.jp, @juurd, @scotinus, @cartogeek, @adzebill, @scottnover, @carnage4life, @jvagle.me, @noupside, @willoremus.com, @mmasnick, @paleofuture, @teddyrosenbluth, and @sarahemclaugh
Mastodon: @johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz, @brucelawson@social …, @remixtures@tldr.nettime.org, @storytracer@mastodon.social, @molly0xfff@hachyderm.io, @petersuber@fediscience.org, @TheDJ@mastodon.social, @a@paperbay.org, and @cwebber@social.coop. Threads: @willoremus
X: @molly0xfff, @ryangrim, @wikibias2024, @molly0xfff, @gekaminsky, and @jamesrbuk
LinkedIn: Tamara Tal, Guillaume Paumier, Ph.D, and Georg Zoeller
Forums: Hacker News, r/law, r/opensource, r/wikipedia, r/politics, r/technology, r/Destiny, r/prolife, r/politics, r/Conservative, r/politics, and Slashdot
| The Information: |
a16z, which owns ~20% of Deel, a stake worth $2.5B+, is advising Deel in fighting Rippling, whose CEO Parker Conrad said a16z pushed him out of Zenefits in 2016 — Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has landed in the middle of a nasty Silicon Valley spy scandal between …
X: @cailen
| Dan Primack / Axios: |
More: StrictlyVC, Deel, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, and The Information
X: @parkerconrad, @nearcyan, @martymadrid, @parkerconrad, @drawl, and @parkerconrad
| Gregory Barber / MIT Technology Review: |
A look at efforts by Apple and others to become carbon neutral by investing in eucalyptus farms in Brazil's Cerrado region, amid skepticism from some ecologists — We were losing the light, and still about 20 kilometers from the main road, when the car shuddered and died at the edge of a strange forest.
More: Pixel Envy. Mastodon: @peterpur@hci.social. X: @shehzadyounis. LinkedIn: Niall Firth and Robin Chazdon
| Financial Times: |
Sources: ~300 London-based DeepMind staff sought to unionize with the CWU in recent weeks, to challenge AI sales to defense groups and Google's ties to Israel — Move by employees at Google's AI arm follows discontent after weapons and surveillance pledge is dropped| Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog: |
Watching OpenAI's o3 guess a photo's location feels surreal, dystopian, and entertaining, including running Python code to examine details like license plates — Watching OpenAI's new o3 model guess where a photo was taken is one of those moments where decades of science fiction suddenly come to life.| Bloomberg: |
NetEase has lost at least three senior executives in recent months, as CEO William Ding pulls back on investments and cuts jobs in a bid to boost profits — Simon Zhu, NetEase's president for global investments and partnerships, said he was leaving the Chinese video-game company in a social media post on Friday.| Chris Welch / The Verge: |
Google says it will end support for 1st- and 2nd-gen Nest thermostats on October 25, and won't launch new models in Europe due to its “unique” heating systems — The company is also pulling Nest thermostats out of Europe entirely, citing “unique” heating challenges.
More: Google Nest Community, PCMag, Digital Trends, Ars Technica, TechRadar, Inc, Forbes, Android Authority, TechIssuesToday.com, StartupNews.fyi, Tom's Guide, Android Authority, Android Police, Android Central, How-To Geek, Neowin, Engadget, PCWorld, Droid Life, 9to5Google, 9to5Google, and Pixel Envy
Bluesky: @damon.kiesow.net, @anthonypainter, @carnage4life, @quinnypig.com, @silellak, @jjaron, and @martinsfp
X: @ow, @lazymanandmoney, and @nexusben
LinkedIn: Dominic Connor and Vic Moschitto
Forums: Hacker News, r/degoogle, r/homeassistant, and Slashdot
| Dario Amodei: |
Interpretability, or understanding how AI models work, can help mitigate many AI risks, such as misalignment and misuse, that stem from AI systems' opacity — In the decade that I have been working on AI, I've watched it grow from a tiny academic field to arguably the most important economic and geopolitical issue in the world.
More: TechCrunch, ZDNET, and nextbigwhat
Bluesky: @israelson.org and @michaelcaley
X: @darioamodei, @nxthompson, @pdhsu, @nickcammarata, @neelnanda5, @jam3scampbell, @myra_deng, @clementdelangue, and @davidmanheim
Forums: r/ArtificialSentience, r/artificial, r/technews, r/technology, and r/singularity
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