Techmeme
January 10, 2023, 12:50 PM

Top News

Semafor:
Sources: Microsoft is in talks to invest $10B in OpenAI at a $29B valuation, taking 75% of OpenAI's profits until the investment is recouped and then owning 49%  —  Microsoft has been in talks to invest $10 billion into the owner of ChatGPT, the wildly popular app that has thrilled casual users …
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
Microsoft unveils VALL-E, a text-to-speech AI model trained on 60K hours of English speech that can simulate a person's voice from three seconds of sample audio  —  Text-to-speech model can preserve speaker's emotional tone and acoustic environment.  —  On Thursday, Microsoft researchers announced …
Kate Rooney / CNBC:
Coinbase plans to lay off a further ~950 employees, or ~20% of its workforce, seeking to reduce its operating expenses by 25% QoQ; Coinbase laid off 18% in June  —  - Coinbase is cutting a fifth of its workforce following an 18% staff reduction in June.  — CEO Brian Armstrong pointed …
Olga Kharif / Bloomberg:
Cameron Winklevoss writes to DCG's board, demanding CEO Barry Silbert's removal and alleging he and Genesis publicly lied, after his resolution deadline passed  —  Gemini crypto exchange co-founder Cameron Winklevoss called for the board of Digital Currency Group to remove Barry Silbert …
Javier Paz / Forbes:
A breakdown of Binance's known assets, using data from Nansen and others, estimates the exchange has around $50B, including ~$10B in BNB, down 24% from November  —  The outflow of cash from Binance is worse than the CEO Changpeng Zhao indicated last month, and it's become considerably more severe since then, a Forbes analysis shows.
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple's Eddy Cue says App Store developers have made $320B+ since 2008, there are 900M paid subscriptions, 200+ Arcade games, 70B all-time Shazams, and more  —  Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of services, has penned an open letter celebrating what he calls a “groundbreaking year for entertainment.”
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Microsoft acquires Fungible, which makes data processing units for data centers and has raised over $300M; reports from December say the deal is worth ~$190M  —  In December, reports suggested that Microsoft had acquired Fungible, a startup fabricating a type of data center hardware known …
Bloomberg:
Sources: former FTX engineering chief Nishad Singh, who has not been accused of wrongdoing, met with US federal prosecutors last week to seek a cooperation deal  —  Former FTX engineering chief Nishad Singh met with federal prosecutors in a bid to become the third member of Sam Bankman-Fried's inner circle …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Amazon plans to launch Buy with Prime for all US-based merchants on January 31, letting them access Prime benefits, expanding on Fulfillment by Amazon merchants  —  Amazon announced this morning it's expanding its Buy with Prime service to U.S.-based merchants by the end of the month.
Cecilia Kang / New York Times:
Common Sense Media survey of 1,358 US teenagers: 75% report having viewed porn online by 17, including 41% seeing images of nudity or sexual acts during school  —  Sexually explicit content has become so prevalent online that teenagers are deluged, according to a new report by a nonprofit child advocacy group.
Washington Post:
A New York University study finds Russian troll Twitter accounts had a minimal impact on 2016 US election voters; 1% of users accounted for 70% of the exposure  —  Welcome to The Cybersecurity 202!  I caught up on some time hanging out with friends this past weekend.  Friends are cool.
Financial Times:
Meta contractor Sama plans to cut ~200 staff and close its east African content moderation hub in March 2023; Meta plans to keep 1,500 Sama staff to label data  —  Staff at Nairobi office were moderating graphic and harmful material  —  Meta's east African content moderation hub is shutting …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is working on a combined Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip to replace Broadcom components by 2025; plans to swap the Qualcomm modem in 2023 have hit snags  —  Apple Inc.'s push to replace the chips inside its devices with homegrown components will include dropping a key Broadcom Inc. part in 2025 …
Financial Times:
VaynerMedia: in 2022, 1,000 video ad impressions on TikTok cost ~50% less than on Instagram Reels, ~33% less than on Twitter, and 62% less than on Snapchat  —  Advertisers and brands say an increasing amount of digital ads spend is moving away from Meta, YouTube and Twitter

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