Tech Meme

Wall Street Journal: How Spotify’s $1B+ bet on building a podcast empire has not paid off: most shows are not profitable, debates over exclusivity, cutting original shows, and more  —  The prospect of podcast riches led to aggressive investments in celebrity deals and original programming for what appeared a sky’s-the-limit media frontier Lees verder op Tech Meme

Manya Saini / Reuters: Filing: SoftBank prices Arm’s shares at $47 and $51, aiming to raise up to $4.87B by selling 95.5M shares, for a $52B+ valuation and the biggest US IPO of 2023  —  SoftBank Group’s (9984.T) Arm is aiming to raise up to $4.87 billion in the chip designer’s U.S. initial public offering, a regulatory filing showed on Tuesday. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Globes Online: Israeli payments company ThetaRay, which uses AI to monitor financial transactions, raised $57M led by Portage, taking its total funding to $148M  —  The investment will allow ThetaRay to capitalize on significant market demand as banks and fintech companies look to replace legacy tools … Lees verder op Tech Meme

George Hammond / Financial Times: Sources detail a tumultuous 12 months for Sequoia: spinning off its highly profitable Chinese arm, its FTX and Twitter bets souring, and Michael Moritz leaving  —  Silicon Valley’s premier venture firm undergoes ‘profound change’ after China splits and bets on FTX and Twitter sour Lees verder op Tech Meme

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Indian telecoms giants Jio, Airtel, and Vodafone-Idea ask regulators to consider forcing internet companies to pay for network usage, echoing efforts globally  —  Telecom operators in India, the second largest wireless market, would like internet companies to compensate for using their networks … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Reuters: Sources: China plans to launch a new state-backed fund that aims to raise ~$41B for its chip sector, larger than the ~$19B and ~$27B funds from 2014 and 2019  —  China is set to launch a new state-backed investment fund that aims to raise about $40 billion for its semiconductor sector … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Reuters: Malaysia says the government is in talks with Google, Meta, and others over a regulatory framework to pay news outlets for their content on online platforms  —  Malaysia said on Tuesday it is considering regulations that will make internet giants Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) … Lees verder op Tech Meme

David Heaney / UploadVR: Korean media report: Meta partnered with LG to launch a new Quest Pro in 2025 to compete with Apple’s Vision Pro; Meta also plans a sub-$200 headset in 2024  —  Meta is reportedly partnering with LG for future Quest Pro headsets.  —  In November last year South Korean news outlet SBS Biz reported Meta … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Scharon Harding / Ars Technica: Reddit hastily replacing some of its long-time mods raises questions about the company prioritizing reopening protesting subreddits over finding the best people  —  Concerns of Redditor safety, jeopardized research amid new mods and API rules.  —  Did you know that improper food canning can lead to death? Lees verder op Tech Meme

Kate Knibbs / Wired: Copyright activists are working to wipe Books3 from the internet, which may only benefit the big companies that have already been using the AI training dataset  —  Copyright activists are on a mission to wipe a popular generative AI training set from the internet.  Success could alter the industry—and who controls it. Lees verder op Tech Meme