Techmeme
July 9, 2024, 6:35 PM

Top News

Kate Clark / The Information:
Source: a16z has secured thousands of AI chips, including Nvidia H100 GPUs, and is renting them to portfolio companies, with the aim of expanding to 20K+ GPUs  —  Andreessen Horowitz, one of the most active venture capital investors in generative artificial intelligence …
Michael Kan / PCMag:
The US DOJ and its partners seized two domain names and 968 accounts on X used by Russian actors to create an AI-enhanced bot farm that spread disinformation  —  Russian media outlet RT ran the bot farm to pump out disinformation via 968 Twitter accounts, the US Justice Department says.
Rashi Shrivastava / Forbes:
Skild AI, which is developing a foundational model for robotics, raised a $300M Series A at a $1.5B valuation led by Lightspeed, SoftBank, Coatue, Jeff Bezos  —  Skild AI has raised $300 million to continue building its plug-and-play robotic intelligence with the hope of enabling companies to integrate it into robots of all kinds.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Google begins rolling out speedometers in Google Maps for iOS and CarPlay globally, more than five years after adding the features to the Android app  —  Google Maps has introduced speedometer and speed limits on iOS and CarPlay — more than five years after their debut on Android …
Grace Kay / Business Insider:
Current and former Tesla staff: self-driving data annotation staff were told to prioritize analyzing car data of VIP drivers, like Elon Musk and YouTube stars  —  An curved arrow pointing right.  — Tesla gives special treatment to data from VIPs, including Elon Musk, when training its self-driving AI.
TIME:
Sam Altman and Arianna Huffington announce Thrive AI Health, a new startup backed by OpenAI and Thrive Global to build a “hyper-personalized AI health coach”  —  A staggering 129 million Americans have at least one major chronic disease—and 90% of our $4.1 trillion …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Spotify adds the ability for users to leave comments on podcasts, expanding on polls and Q&As; comments will be private by default, and creators can opt out  —  The company already lets Spotify podcasters offer polls and Q&As, so this new feature could give creators new ways to interact with their audiences.
Cristiano Lima-Strong / Washington Post:
The FTC bans teen messaging app NGL from serving users under 18, a first; NGL agreed to pay $5M and stop marketing to kids and teens to settle the FTC's lawsuit  —  The groundbreaking FTC settlement stems from claims popular app NGL overhyped its anti-bullying efforts and engaged in aggressive marketing to kids and teens.
Don Clark / New York Times:
The Biden administration says it will direct up to $1.6B in CHIPS Act funding towards R&D to accelerate domestic capacity for advanced chip packaging  —  The proposed funding, part of the CHIPS Act, is intended to stoke chip packaging, a process that helps drive progress in semiconductors but that takes place mostly in Asia.
Kamila Wojciechowska / Android Authority:
Source: the Google Pixel Watch 3 will come in 41mm and 45mm sizes, have smaller 4.5mm bezels, a brighter 2,000-nit display, and ultra-wideband support  —  The new Pixel Watch will finally fix some of the series' oldest problems.  —  •  —  The Google Pixel Watch 2 was a massive upgrade …
Anissa Gardizy / The Information:
Sources: xAI ends talks with Oracle to expand an existing arrangement to rent Nvidia chips; source: Oracle is not part of xAI's supercomputer project in Memphis  —  Larry Ellison may be a friend and backer of Elon Musk, but even the Oracle executive chair isn't immune from Musk's impatience.

Sponsor Posts

Airtable:
Meet Airtable ProductCentral  —  The unified solution for managing your entire product development process in the AI era.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
Stay secure while signing documents digitally this Cybersecurity Awareness Month  —  National Cybersecurity Awareness Month was launched in October of 2004 and has been observed every year since.
Notion:
Get up to 6 months free of Notion with unlimited AI  —  Notion is trusted and loved by thousands of startups as their connected workspace—from building product roadmaps to tracking fundraising.  Build and scale your company with one tool!
Techmeme Ride Home:
Wed. 10/30 - M4 MacBook Pros
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:35 PM ET, July 9, 2024.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Rachel Metz / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Financial Times:
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Julian Chokkattu / Wired: