Tech Meme

Reuters: Saudi digital security firm Elm Company agrees to acquire business services firm Thiqah from Saudi Arabia’s PIF, which is also Elm’s majority owner, for $906M  —  Saudi Arabian digital security firm Elm Company (7203.SE) said on Wednesday that it had agreed to acquire business services firm Thiqah … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Sensor Tower: consumer spending in 2024 on AI apps like ChatGPT, Gemini, and ByteDance’s Doubao grew more than 200% YoY to nearly $1.1B  —  Demand for generative AI help drive consumer spending on apps to $150 billion globally in 2024, up 13% from the prior year. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Reuters: ByteDance launches Doubao-1.5-pro, an upgraded AI model, claiming it outperforms OpenAI’s o1 in AIME benchmarks, joining DeepSeek in China’s AI reasoning push  —  TikTok owner ByteDance on Wednesday released an update to its flagship AI model aimed at challenging Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Dina Bass / Bloomberg: Microsoft was mentioned only as a technology partner in Stargate but the company is poised to benefit from the venture by offloading AI computing costs  —  – OpenAI-led venture lets Microsoft offload AI computing costs  — Software giant could still decide to invest more in future Lees verder op Tech Meme

Abner Li / 9to5Google: Google signs an agreement to acquire a part of the HTC VIVE engineering team in Taiwan for $250M in cash, aiming to “accelerate” Android XR development  —  To “accelerate” Android XR development, Google announced this evening that it “signed an agreement to welcome some of the HTC VIVE engineering team to Google.” Lees verder op Tech Meme

Wall Street Journal: Sources: Microsoft and OpenAI were arguing over Microsoft’s ability to fulfill OpenAI’s computing needs, in the months leading up to the Stargate announcement  —  The partnership that launched the AI boom has been strained by disagreements over computing resources Lees verder op Tech Meme

Kat Tenbarge / NBC News: Moderators for 50+ subreddits announce bans of X links in new posts and comments, with several citing Elon Musk’s recent gesture that many saw as a Nazi salute  —  The cascade of link bans came after Musk made a hand gesture at a Monday rally that many compared to a Nazi salute, which many cited in their protests, among other things. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Patrick G. Eddington / Cato Institute: A US district judge rules that the FBI’s warrantless “backdoor” searches of FISA’s Section 702 databases violate the Fourth Amendment  —  Generated with ElevenLabs AI technology.  —  Sometimes when “secret law” is involved—and that is always the case with the Foreign Intelligence … Lees verder op Tech Meme

The Information: Sources: Sam Altman told some colleagues that OpenAI and SoftBank will each commit $19B to Stargate, and OpenAI would effectively hold a 40% interest in the JV  —  OpenAI and Japanese conglomerate SoftBank will each commit $19 billion to fund a joint venture to develop data centers … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg: SK Hynix reports Q4 revenue up 75% YoY to a record ~$13.7B, a ~$5.6B net profit, and a ~$5.6B operating profit, in line with estimates, as HBM chip demand soars  —  – Nvidia supplier is a big beneficiary of AI infrastructure boom  — Demand for high-end memory soaring on datacenter rollouts Lees verder op Tech Meme