~techmeme | Bookmarks (1054)

Mobile Hacker: How spyware, posing as an app from a humanitarian organization, spread among Syrian army officers via Telegram, and fueled the collapse of the Assad regime  —  The investigation into the collapse of the Assad regime reveals a significant technical dimension, particularly a spyware application named STFD-686 …

Reuters: OpenAI is appealing a court order in the NYT case requiring it to keep ChatGPT outputs indefinitely, saying it conflicts with its privacy commitments to users  —  OpenAI is appealing an order in a copyright case brought by the New York Times that requires it to preserve ChatGPT output data indefinitely …

Fortune: Thread AI, which offers a composable infrastructure platform to help companies build AI workflows, raised a $20M Series A led by Greycroft  —  - In communcation.  When Angela McNeal and Mayada Gonimah led the modeling and AI/machine learning products group together at Palantir, they had a lot in common.

Caiwei Chen / MIT Technology Review: Chinese startups and tech giants are racing to create AI agents for both local and global consumers, following the popularity of Butterfly Effect's Manus  —  Last year, China saw a boom in foundation models, the do-everything large language models that underpin the AI revolution.

Belle Lin / Wall Street Journal: Shield Technology Partners, which provides an AI-enabled managed IT service platform, launches with over $100M from Thrive Holdings and ZBS Partners  —  The company established by venture-capital firm Thrive Capital joined with ZBS to invest $100 million into an entity that will integrate AI into IT firms

Nilay Patel / The Verge: An interview with Runway CEO Cris Valenzuela on expediting the movie-making process, copyright cases, why using Runway is like using a camera, and more  —  Today, I'm talking with Runway CEO and cofounder Cris Valenzuela.  This one's special: Cris and I were live at an event in New York City …

Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge: Walmart expands its partnership with Alphabet-owned Wing to bring drone delivery services to Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Orlando, and Tampa, adding 100 stores  —  Customers who shop at Walmart stores in Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Orlando, and Tampa will soon have the ability to request a drone deliver their online shopping orders.

Dylan Martin / CRN: AMD says it has acquired the team behind AI inference chip developer Untether AI, a day after announcing it acquired AI software optimization startup Brium  —  The chip designer confirms to CRN that it has acquired the employees of Untether AI, a developer of AI inference chips marketed …

Katherine Hamilton / Wall Street Journal: Broadcom reports Q2 revenue up 20% YoY to $15B, vs. $14.96B est., net income up 134% YoY to $4.97B, and sales from the AI industry up 46% YoY to $4.4B+  —  Maker of semiconductors and software posted higher profit and sales as artificial intelligence demand continues to drive revenue growth

Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch: Anthropic co-founder Jared Kaplan says Anthropic cut Windsurf's direct access to Claude models because of reports that OpenAI is acquiring Windsurf  —  Anthropic Co-founder and Chief Science Officer Jared Kaplan said his company cut Windsurf's direct access to Anthropic's Claude AI models largely …

Kevin Breuninger / CNBC: Trump says Elon Musk “went CRAZY” and that canceling his government contracts is “the easiest way to save money”, as their One Big Beautiful bill feud escalates  —  President Donald Trump on Thursday called Tesla CEO Elon Musk “CRAZY” and threatened to cut …

Olga Kharif / Bloomberg: Source: Trump's World Liberty Financial sent a cease-and-desist letter to the company behind $TRUMP and to Magic Eden after they announced the $TRUMP Wallet  —  Tensions between the competing factions of Donald Trump's ever-growing crypto empire are ramping up, with a company owned in part …

Tom Warren / The Verge: In May, Microsoft launched Signal, a 120-page print magazine focused on its tech and distributed to business leaders every few months, to counter digital noise  —  Signal is Microsoft's response to a world of noise and ephemeral content. … Of all the many ways Microsoft could mark its 50th anniversary …

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: X changes its developer agreement to prevent third parties from using “the X API or X Content to fine-tune or train a foundation or frontier model”  —  Social network X has changed its developer agreement to prevent third parties from using the platform's content to train large language models.

Bloomberg: Cursor maker Anysphere raised $900M led by Thrive at a $9.9B valuation, bringing its total funding to $1B+ and says its annualized revenue crossed $500M  —  The artificial intelligence rush has enabled some small startups to grow very big very quickly.  But by some estimates …

Arjun Kharpal / CNBC: Counterpoint has revised its 2025 global smartphone shipment growth forecast to 1.9% YoY, down from 4.2%, citing “renewed uncertainties surrounding US tariffs”  —  Forecasts for Apple and Samsung shipment growth this year were sharply slashed by Counterpoint Research on Wednesday amid uncertainty over U.S. tariff policy.

Ryan Lawler / Axios: OatFi, whose APIs handle underwriting, origination, and capital deployment for B2B payment providers, raised a $24M Series A led by White Star Capital  —  OatFi, a startup providing an embedded working capital financing infrastructure, has raised $24 million in Series A funding, CEO Michael Barbosa tells Axios exclusively.

Swathi Moorthy / The Economic Times: A former employee says fewer than 10,000 people use Ola Krutrim's LLM chatbot, which supports 10 Indian languages, and that over 60% of them are random testers  —  Ola founder Aggarwal first announced Krutrim in December 2023, launching an LLM that could support 10 Indian languages …

Helen Reid / Reuters: Pan-European consumer group BEUC files a complaint with the EC against Shein over its alleged use of “dark patterns”, after targeting Temu in 2024  —  Pan-European consumers organisation BEUC filed a complaint with the European Commission on Thursday against online fast-fashion retailer Shein …

Kyt Dotson / SiliconANGLE: Edinburgh-based Wordsmith, whose AI tools help legal teams automate contract and policy reviews, raised a $25M Series A led by Index Ventures  —  Wordsmith AI Ltd., an Edinburgh, Scotland-based artificial intelligence platform for in-house teams announced Tuesday it has raised $25 million …

Steven Church / Bloomberg: 23andMe plans to hold a new auction for its DNA data, opening with a $305M bid led by Anne Wojcicki, after the ex-CEO challenged Regeneron's winning bid in May  —  Bankrupt genetic analysis company 23andMe will hold a second auction for its cache of DNA data with an opening bid of $305 million …

Financial Times: Singapore's Temasek cuts back on startup investments after the fund wrote down hundreds of millions of dollars on a spate of collapsed startups, including FTX  —  State-owned $300bn fund says it is adopting a ‘more cautious approach’ on early-stage companies

Malathi Nayak / Bloomberg: DoorDash, Uber, and Grubhub agree to settle a 2021 lawsuit against New York City over its pandemic-era 15% cap to commissions and fees charged to restaurants  —  The meal-delivery services agreed to drop their challenge to the cap once the city makes adjustments to the law and final terms …

Matthew Gault / Wired: How AI-assisted “vibe hacking”, which often relies on jailbroken versions of mainstream AI models, is leading to a cybersecurity “arms race”  —  In the very near future, victory will belong to the savvy blackhat hacker who uses AI to generate code at scale.