← Back to news

T

Techmeme RSS Feed

Sources: Microsoft asks its Xbox unit to hit 30% "accountability margins", or profit margins, and Xbox canceled products, cut jobs, and raised prices to meet it (Bloomberg)

UnifyApps, which lets companies build AI chatbots by connecting SaaS apps and data, raised a $50M Series B led by WestBridge, after a $20M Series A in 2024 (Chris Metinko/Axios)

Email: Indian crypto exchange WazirX plans to resume operations on October 24, following a court-approved restructuring, after hackers stole $230M in July 2024 (Shaurya Malwa/CoinDesk)

Chinese state media: China's new five-year development plan aims to achieve tech self-reliance and expand the domestic market, after a four-day CCP conclave (Bloomberg)

Alibaba launches a free consumer-focused AI chatbot in its Quark app, powered by Qwen 3, and plans to open pre-sales for its $660 Quark AI Glasses on October 24 (Reuters)

AI creative studio Wonder Studios, backed by OpenAI and Google DeepMind execs, raised a $12M seed led by Atomico and aims to release its first content in 2026 (Najat Kantouar/Wall Street Journal)

Chinese robovan startup Neolix raised $600M led by UAE-based Stone Venture without disclosing its valuation, ahead of a potential Hong Kong IPO as soon as 2026 (Wataru Suzuki/Nikkei Asia)

Ukraine says it has now deployed 30K free physical security keys, called YubiKeys, including 22K to access battle system Delta, up from ~10K in April 2022 (Katrina Manson/Bloomberg)

Europe's startup ecosystem, which had 35,000 early-stage companies in the EU and the UK in 2024, per Atomico, is hindered by complex and varying regulations (Niki Kitsantonis/New York Times)

Airbus, Leonardo, and Thales agree to a deal to combine their space businesses, promising "significant synergies" in a bid to build a European SpaceX competitor (Financial Times)

OpenAI, Oracle, and Vantage Data Centers plan to build a data center in Wisconsin called Lighthouse, costing $15B+ and set to open in 2028, as part of Stargate (Juby Babu/Reuters)

Lawyers for a teen who died by suicide after allegedly discussing methods with ChatGPT call OpenAI's request for all memorial documents "intentional harassment" (Cristina Criddle/Financial Times)

How Meesho and the rise of quick commerce companies disrupted Flipkart and Amazon's e-commerce duopoly that had existed in India for over a decade until 2023 (Manish Singh/India Dispatch)

A look at DeepSeek's rise in Africa, as China's lightweight, low-cost AI models make inroads into the continent via tech infrastructure built by Huawei and ZTE (Bloomberg)

The Atlanta Fed estimates delays faced by claimants in COBOL-based unemployment insurance systems cut US GDP by at least $40B between March 13 and year-end 2020 (Bryce Elder/Financial Times)

STMicro reports Q3 revenue down 2% YoY to $3.19B and operating income down 53% YoY to $180M, missing est., and forecasts Q4 revenue of $3.28B, below $3.35B est. (Christina Kyriasoglou/Bloomberg)

Sources: Nexperia's China unit has resumed chip sales to local distributors, with transactions now settled in yuan instead of foreign currencies such as the USD (Reuters)

Top AI researchers and executives in SV are working 80 to 100 hours a week, driven by intense competition, as AI's rapid progress compresses product timelines (Wall Street Journal)

Ofcom: UK traffic to porn sites has fallen by almost a third since introducing new age verification rules in July; Aylo says Pornhub's traffic has fallen by 77% (Daniel Thomas/Financial Times)

Starlink VP Lauren Dreyer says the company "proactively identified and disabled over 2,500 Starlink Kits in the vicinity of suspected 'scam centers'" in Myanmar (James Reddick/The Record)

OpenAI CISO Dane Stuckey outlines prompt injection mitigations in ChatGPT Atlas, including a "logged out mode" that blocks agent access to user credentials (Dane Stuckey/@cryps1s)

Elon Musk says Tesla's AI5 chip will be made by Samsung in Texas and TSMC in Arizona, with the "oversupply" of chips not used by Tesla going to his data centers (Kif Leswing/CNBC)

Sources: IonQ, Rigetti, D-Wavequantum, and other computing companies are in talks to give the US Commerce Department equity in exchange for $10M+ funding each (Amrith Ramkumar/Wall Street Journal)

Sources: a16z is aiming to raise $6B for its growth fund, $3B for AI deals, and $1B for American Dynamism; the $10B total would be its largest fundraise to date (Financial Times)

Sources: Polymarket is in early talks with investors to raise funds at a $12B to $15B valuation, up from ~$8B pre-investment in a raise earlier in October (Kate Clark/Bloomberg)

The UK FCA sues Justin Sun-linked crypto exchange HTX in London's High Court for alleged illegal promotion of "cryptoasset services" to UK consumers (Lucca De Paoli/Bloomberg)

Amazon is testing AR glasses for delivery drivers, using AI and computer vision to help them scan packages, follow walking directions, and get proof of delivery (Todd Bishop/GeekWire)

Q&A with GM CEO Mary Barra and CPO Sterling Anderson on GM's plans for AI and autonomous driving, ditching Apple CarPlay and Android Auto on all its cars, more (Nilay Patel/The Verge)

SAP reports Q3 revenue up 7% YoY to €9.08B, cloud revenue up 22% to €5.29B, below €5.33B est., and current cloud backlog up 23% to €18.84B (Christina Kyriasoglou/Bloomberg)

IBM reports Q3 revenue up 9% YoY to $16.3B, above $16.1B est., and Hybrid Cloud (Red Hat) revenue up 14%, below 16% est.; IBM drops 6%+ after hours (Brody Ford/Bloomberg)

A teen's parents allege OpenAI loosened ChatGPT's suicide-talk rules to boost engagement before their son died by suicide using a method discussed with ChatGPT (Wall Street Journal)

Tinder plans to expand its facial verification feature to all new US users in the coming months, following its rollout in seven countries and in California (Lauren Forristal/TechCrunch)

Canada's financial crime watchdog fines crypto exchange Cryptomus a record ~$126M for infractions including failing to flag suspicious transactions (Canadian Press)

Sources: Kalshi is receiving funding offers from VC investors at $10B-$12B or higher valuations, just weeks after it announced a $300M round at a $5B valuation (Bloomberg)

TikTok pushes merchants to use a new ad-buying tool that promotes videos linking to TikTok Shop rather than merchants' own sites, frustrating some merchants (Ann Gehan/The Information)

Apple removes controversial dating safety apps Tea and TeaOnHer from the App Store for failing to meet requirements around content moderation and user privacy (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

Reddit files a lawsuit against Perplexity and three data scraping companies, accusing them of illegally stealing its data by scraping Google search results (Mike Isaac/New York Times)

Sources: Trump administration is considering barring exports of products made with US software to China in response to the country's rare earth restrictions (Reuters)

Meta removes an AI video designed to look like RTÉ news bulletin that falsely showed Irish presidential candidate Catherine Connolly withdrawing from the race (Órla Ryan/The Irish Times)

Google says its Willow quantum chip using a new Quantum Echoes algorithm ran computations 13,000x faster than supercomputers, aiding drug and materials research (Cade Metz/New York Times)

GM plans to roll out Google Gemini in its vehicles starting in 2026 and plans an advanced driver-assistance system with eyes-off driving capabilities in 2028 (Michael Wayland/CNBC)

ShopMy, which lets brands run influencer marketing efforts, raised $70M led by Avenir at a $1.5B valuation, up from ~$410M after raising $77.5M in March 2024 (Diana Pearl/The Business of Fashion)

Starbridge, which helps businesses monitor public sector opportunities by consolidating fragmented data, raised a $42M Series A led by David Sacks' Craft (Dominic-Madori Davis/TechCrunch)

The UK CMA says it will label Apple and Google as having "strategic market status", imposing stricter rules on how they run their platforms to boost competition (Financial Times)

Sumble, which offers an AI sales intelligence service, emerges from stealth and raised a $30M Series A led by Canaan Partners and $8.5M seed led by Coatue (Ram Iyer/TechCrunch)

YouTube now lets mobile users set a customizable daily limit to restrict how long they can scroll Shorts feeds; the limit notifications are dismissible (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)

Meta is cutting roughly 600 jobs out of several thousand roles within its Superintelligence Lab, including in its FAIR unit, to create a more agile operation (Ina Fried/Axios)

The NHL reaches multiyear licensing agreements with prediction market startups Kalshi and Polymarket, the first major US league to allow use of its trademarks (Alexander Osipovich/Wall Street Journal)

Shenzhen-based humanoid robot maker Leju Robotics raised $200M+ led by Citic Goldstone and Shenzhen Investment Holdings ahead of a planned IPO (Bloomberg)

Crypto trading firm FalconX agrees to acquire 21shares, one of the main crypto ETF managers, for an undisclosed sum; 21shares had $11B+ in assets in September (Vicky Ge Huang/Wall Street Journal)