Techmeme
August 5, 2024, 2:25 PM

Top News

Tanaya Macheel / CNBC:
Bitcoin dropped below $50,000, its lowest level since February 2024 and down 17% since August 3, and ether dropped 15% to ~$2,300, as global markets plummet  —  Cryptocurrencies tumbled amid a global market sell-off spurred by recession fears.  —  The price of bitcoin was last lower by 7% …
Financial Times:
Investor letter: Elliott Management says megacap tech stocks, particularly Nvidia, were in “bubble land”, and AI is “overhyped” and “not ready for prime time”  —  Hedge fund tells clients many supposed applications of the technology are ‘never going to actually work’
Aditya Soni / Reuters:
Apple, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft stocks led a tech stock sell-off amid US recession fears; AAPL drops 5%, NVDA drops 7%+, and MSFT drops 3%+  —  Apple (AAPL.O) and Nvidia (NVDA.O) led a sell-off in technology stocks on Monday as U.S. recession fears and Berkshire Hathaway's …
Samantha Cole / 404 Media:
Sources: Nvidia scraped sources like Netflix and YouTube to train an unreleased foundational model; concerned staff were told they had full clearance to do so  —  Nvidia scraped videos from Youtube and several other sources to compile training data for its AI products, internal Slack chats …
Cade Metz / New York Times:
Elon Musk revives his OpenAI lawsuit, filing a complaint in California to allege that OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Greg Brockman breached OpenAI's founding contract  —  The Tesla chief executive has renewed claims that the A.I. start-up put profits and commercial interests ahead of the public good.
Anne VanderMey / Bloomberg:
AI chip startup Groq raised a $640M Series D led by BlackRock at a $2.8B valuation, up from $1B after raising $300M in 2021, and adds an Intel executive as COO  —  Cisco and Samsung invested in the $640 million deal  —  Artificial intelligence startup Groq Inc. has raised $640 million in new funding …
Washington Post:
In a letter, the secretaries of state from PA, WA, MI, NM, and MN ask Elon Musk to change X's AI assistant Grok to stop it from spreading false election info  —  Grok, the AI search assistant on Musk's X platform, suggested that Kamala Harris had missed the ballot deadline in nine states.  She hasn't.
Bloomberg:
Michael Moritz / Financial Times:
Silicon Valley's Trump supporters are making the same mistake as all powerful people who back authoritarians: they can't control him, and he won't keep promises  —  The financiers who support him have made the same error as all powerful people who back authoritarians  —  The writer is senior adviser, Sequoia Heritage
Berber Jin / Wall Street Journal:
Investor letter: Josh Kushner says Thrive Capital raised a $1B early-stage fund and a $4B late-stage fund, its largest-ever pair, after backing OpenAI in 2023  —  The fundraising reflects optimism over artificial intelligence despite the startup sector's broader struggles
Bart Meijer / Reuters:
The European Commission says TikTok agreed to permanently withdraw and not replace TikTok Lite's “Task and Reward Programme” in the EU to comply with the DSA  —  ByteDance's TikTok has agreed to permanently withdraw its TikTok Lite rewards programme from the EU to comply …
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Memo from Microsoft's chief people officer: “everyone at Microsoft” now has “security” as a “Core Priority”, used in performance reviews  —  Microsoft will elevate security to the status of “core priority” for all employees as part of the process of focusing …
More: The Verge
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Source: Placer.ai, which provides AI-powered market research based on location data, raised $75M at a $1.45B valuation, up from $1B at its Series C  —  Location data, for better or worse, continues to be a part of the bedrock of how apps are built.  Now a startup developing AI market research based …
Rachael Levy / Reuters:
Elon Musk says Neuralink has implanted its device in a second trial patient, who had a spinal cord injury, and 400 of the implant's 1,024 electrodes are working  —  Neuralink has successfully implanted in a second patient its device designed to give paralyzed patients the ability …

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
State of AI: Adoption, Challenges and Recommendations  —  Examining the current state of AI, the key challenges organizations face, and practical recommendations for utilizing AI integration alongside other best practices.
SignalFire:
SignalFire raises another $1 billion to back applied AI startups  —  We build AI too.  It tracks 650M tech employees so we can help companies with recruiting and GTM across enterprise, infra, healthcare, security, and consumer.
Zoho:
How to turn employees into your brand's biggest supporters  —  Turning your employees into your brand's biggest advocates is one of the most powerful ways to grow your brand.  When employees feel connected to your mission …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Techmeme Ride Home:
Zuck Trying To Make Fetch Happen
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
Hard Fork:
Is Google Breaking Up? + Seasteading Is Back + Tool Time
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
The Logan Bartlett Show:
Blake Scholl (Founder and CEO, Boom Supersonic) on Why Supersonic Flight Failed & How Boom is Bringing it Back
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
Subscribe to The Logan Bartlett Show.
BG2 Pod:
Tariffs, Free Trade, Export Controls, H20 & Rare Earth Ban
Open-source podcast on all things tech, markets, investing, and capitalism, hosted by Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley.
Subscribe to BG2 Pod.
Great Chat:
Founders need prenups, too
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 2:25 PM ET, August 5, 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

Alex Wickham / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Zach Dorfman / Politico:
David Shepardson / Reuters:
Nicholas Carlini: