Tech Meme

Leah Nylen / Bloomberg: The judge overseeing the Google ad trial calls Google’s testimony that it faces “fierce competition” from the likes of Microsoft and Meta “highly questionable”  —  – Search giant starts defense in antitrust ad tech lawsuit  — Justice Department alleges company monopolized several markets Lees verder op Tech Meme

FinTech Global: Akur8, which uses AI to automate the generation of insurance pricing models, raised a $120M Series C led by One Peak, bringing its total raised to $180M  —  Akur8, the machine learning-powered insurance pricing and reserving platform, has announced the closure of a $120m Series C funding round. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Wall Street Journal: Sources: Qualcomm made a takeover approach to Intel in recent days, but a deal is far from certain; Intel’s market cap is ~$93B and Qualcomm’s is ~$188B  —  A deal for Intel would be massive and come at a time when the chip maker is sputtering. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Allie Garfinkle / Fortune: Google Ventures CEO David Krane on GV’s first 15 years, operating independently from Alphabet, early investments in Nest and Uber, generative AI, and more  —  One of the first things David Krane and I do is look at some weird sculptures.  —  Walking through Google’s Mountain View … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters: Filing: the US SEC says it intends to seek sanctions against Elon Musk for failing to appear for scheduled testimony for a probe into his $44B Twitter takeover  —  The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Friday it intends to seek sanctions against Elon Musk after he failed to appear … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Timothy B Lee / Understanding AI: OpenAI’s o1 models are dramatically better at reasoning than previous LLMs, but they struggle with spatial reasoning and are far from human-level intelligence  —  It’s not easy to stump OpenAI’s new o1 models. … You might remember around Thanksgiving last year when news broke about Q* … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Sources: Black Forest Labs, whose Flux.1 model powers Grok’s image generator, is raising $100M at a $1B valuation; it came out of stealth with $31M in August  —  While OpenAI pursues yet another monster fundraise, it is not stealing all the oxygen in the room: AI startups building promising … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Tom Warren / The Verge: Microsoft overhauls the Fluent design illustrations used across its products and services, shifting towards playful, 3D designs that bring back skeuomorphism  —  Microsoft is overhauling the illustrations it uses throughout its products and services to make them less flat and more playful and interesting. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Jillian Deutsch / Bloomberg: A German court rules Nokia can stop Amazon from selling some Fire TV Sticks in Germany after Amazon lost a patent case; Nokia has yet to enforce the injunction  —  – Nokia has not enforced the Munich court’s injunction yet  — Amazon lines affected are Fire TV Smart TV, Fire TV 4K Sticks Lees verder op Tech Meme

Allie Garfinkle / Fortune: Google Ventures CEO David Krane about GV’s first 15 years, operating independently from Alphabet, early investments in Nest and Uber, generative AI, and more  —  One of the first things David Krane and I do is look at some weird sculptures.  —  Walking through Google’s Mountain View … Lees verder op Tech Meme