Wired: A look at Itana, a controversial startup city set to be built near Lagos in partnership with Binance and investors like Peter Thiel-backed Pronomos Capital  —  Nigeria’s Itana partnered with Binance and the Charter Cities Institute to build a physical tech hub near Lagos, but the plan has sparked controversy. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Rachel Metz / Bloomberg: Some people are using AI chatbots as a supplement to, or in lieu of, traditional mental health services, despite privacy issues and warnings from experts  —  Milo Van Slyck missed an appointment with his therapist in early April, so he decided to try something new: telling ChatGPT about his problems. Lees verder op Tech Meme

M. Sriram / Reuters: CB Insights: Indian startups raised just $2B in Q1, down 75% YoY and the smallest quarterly total in nearly three years, across 271 startups, down from 561 YoY  —  A funding squeeze at Indian startups that has already led to layoffs and delayed stock listings is set to worsen as investors reckon … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch: The EU establishes the European Centre for Algorithmic Transparency in Seville, Spain, to support oversight of large platforms under the Digital Services Act  —  Seville, Spain-based algorithmic transparency center to support enforcement of EU’s Digital Services Act Lees verder op Tech Meme

Eric Rosenbaum / CNBC: Some software firms are facing large tax bills after US lawmakers failed to renew a provision letting companies to fully expense R&D costs in the year incurred  —  – Congress failed to extend a key tax provision last year allowing companies to fully expense research & development costs … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Christine Hall / TechCrunch: NYC-based Odeko, which offers operations software to independent coffee shops and cafes, raised a $53M Series D, bringing its total equity funding to $177M  —  When the global pandemic hit, independent restaurants and shops that didn’t already have an online ordering system … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Globe and Mail: Miovision, which helps cities manage traffic flows using AI, acquires Global Traffic Technologies for $107M, after raising $150M from Maverix, Telus, and EDC  —  Miovision Technologies Inc. has made a pivotal acquisition financed by three large Canadian technology investors, establishing the Kitchener … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Shirin Ghaffary / Vox: Internal memo: Meta will conduct another mass round of layoffs on April 19, a source says possibly in the range of 4,000 jobs, out of the planned 10,000  —  The company plans to lay off employees on Wednesday, according to sources.  —  Meta will conduct another mass round of layoffs on Wednesday … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Avalor, which lets cybersecurity teams aggregate, normalize, de-duplicate, and track risk data from discovery to remediation, raised a $25M Series A led by TCV  —  Security has a data problem.  That’s according to Kfir Tishbi, who led the engineering team at Datorama, a marketing analytics company … Lees verder op Tech Meme