Tech Meme

Gerrit De Vynck / Washington Post: AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and Berkeley CS professor Stuart Russell warn Congress that AI could cause serious harms in a few years  —  Two AI researchers and the CEO of AI startup Anthropic testified about the long-term risks of AI and said Congress needs to institute rules to control it Lees verder op Tech Meme

Newley Purnell / Wall Street Journal: Meta hasn’t labeled propaganda accounts of state-backed media from Russia and other authoritarian governments on Threads, unlike on Facebook and Instagram  —  State-backed media accounts have hundreds of thousands of followers without the labels they are made to carry on Instagram and Facebook Lees verder op Tech Meme

Bloomberg: SK Hynix reports Q2 revenue down 47% YoY to ~$5.7B, beating an average projection of ~$4.7B, and a ~$2.3B operating loss, in line with expectations  —  – AI boosting high-end chip sales, but overall demand still soft  — Hynix gearing up to expand output of high-capacity DRAM Lees verder op Tech Meme

RT Watson / The Block: Flashbots, whose service proposes blocks for validators running the Ethereum blockchain, raised a $60M Series B led by Paradigm at a $1B valuation  —  – Startup Flashbots raised $60 million from both venture capitalists and other players in the blockchain space. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Josh Sisco / Politico: Sources: the FTC is finalizing its antitrust suit against Amazon and is likely to file its case in federal court rather than its own tribunal as soon as August  —  A case would be a high-water mark for FTC Chair Lina Khan who gained prominence criticizing the company’s dominance. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Wall Street Journal: Emails: X offers discounts on new video ads in the US and UK and warns advertisers that they will lose verified status unless they reach spending thresholds  —  Social-media site X is offering hefty discounts to lure back ad dollars  —  X Corp. is cutting ad prices as it tries to woo brands back to the Elon Musk-owned platform. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: CEO Daniel Ek teases ways Spotify could integrate additional AI functionality into its products, including summarizing podcasts and generating audio ads  —  During Spotify’s second-quarter earnings call this morning, CEO Daniel Ek teased a few ways the streaming service could introduce additional AI-powered functionality. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal: Alphabet reports Q2 Google ad revenue of $58.14B, growing 3% YoY after two consecutive quarters of falling ad sales  —  Financial chief Ruth Porat to become Alphabet’s president and chief investment officer  —  Google reported a pickup in revenue growth during the most recent quarter … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Todd Spangler / Variety: YouTube’s ad revenue increased 4.4% YoY to $7.67B in Q2, above expectations of $7.43B and a reversal after three consecutive quarters of declines  —  Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, came in above analyst earnings expectations, with top-line growth of 7%. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Jordan Novet / CNBC: Microsoft reports Q4 Intelligent Cloud revenue up 15% YoY to $23.99B, vs. $23.79B est., with Azure and other cloud services revenue up 26% YoY  —  – Microsoft’s Azure cloud revenue growth slowed to 26% from 27% in the previous quarter.  — Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told employees … Lees verder op Tech Meme