Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter:âą The Big Read: How a Chinese megabillionaire became the Jensen Huang of batteries. ⹠Style and Shopping: Tech invaded Cannes. Then we went shopping.âą Plus, Recommendationsâour weekly pop culture picks: âLong Buried,â âHow to Not Die in Prisonâ and âDust BunnyâOn Tuesday, a closely watched Congressional primary in New York City ended in defeat for Alex Bores, a former Palantir engineer turned state legislator who... Read more âș
0
When then-President Donald Trump tried to ban Chinese-owned app WeChat in 2020, hundreds of WeChat users banded together to sue. They argued that WeChat was a vital communications tool for many elderly Chinese Americans. The tactic worked and the court blocked the ban. Now TikTok, which is facing a potential ban in a bill now before the Senate, is hoping to repeat WeChatâs feat. Its prospects look good, say lawyers.... Read more âș
0
Many of the big investors weighing Redditâs initial public offering werenât convinced by the companyâs pitch in the weeks leading up to the listing, fretting about the firmâs lack of profits or uncertainty around big licensing deals for its data. But the doubts dissipated for many by the time Redditâs bankers closed the deal, which valued the company richly compared to some competitors. Redditâs strong performanceâas of Monday afternoon, its... Read more âș
0
As time goes on and some buyers of generative AI grow disillusioned with the meager returns theyâve seen, many are experimenting with new ways to eke better performance out of large language models without paying up for the latest, state-of-the-art LLM.One way to do this is through a technique called retrieval augmented generation, which aims to reduce the AIâs tendency to hallucinate or give incorrect answers by giving it access... Read more âș
12
To better compete for artificial intelligence researchers, Meta Platforms is making unconventional moves, including extending job offers to candidates without interviewing them and relaxing a longstanding practice of not increasing compensation for employees threatening to leave. In a sign of how seriously the social media company is taking the competition for AI talent, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has personally written to researchers at Googleâs DeepMind unit to recruit them, according to... Read more âș
81
In March 2023, Musk and his 16 top executives on Tesla Investor Day. Photo: Via YouTubeFor months after Elon Muskâs 2022 acquisition of Twitter, investors voiced increasing concerns about his capacity to juggle the leadership of both the social media platform and Tesla, the electric vehicle manufacturer where he is CEO. So in March 2023, Musk organized a live demonstration of why he could effectively run both companies: At Teslaâs... Read more âș
0
HeyGen, a three-year-old startup that uses artificial intelligence to generate avatars and voices for videos, is raising $60 million at a pre-investment valuation of $440 million, six times higher than the startupâs valuation four months ago, according to a person with direct knowledge of the round. Benchmark, the early-stage venture capital firm that bet early on Snap and Uber, is leading the round, which has not yet closed, the person... Read more âș
3
Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter:Inside Jeff Bezosâ plan for Blue Origin to rocket past Elon Muskâs SpaceXThey counsel Zuckerberg and advise Sam Altman: our picks of the top lawyers for startupsPlus: â3 Body Problemâ; a startupâs glowing Frankenplant; and an unshakable source of American anxietyOver the last few days, Iâve spent much of my time thinking about Jeff Bezos and his ambition to transform life on Earth by extending life... Read more âș
0
Anyone who was thinking of taking their company public this year must be feeling more upbeat today. Shares of Reddit, the newest social media firm to go public, finished the week up 35% from the companyâs IPO price, having lost only a bit of Thursdayâs opening-day pop on Friday. Meanwhile, shares of Astera Labs, an artificial intelligence data center that went public a day before Reddit, are now up 94%... Read more âș
0
Nvidia isnât the only beneficiary of the unprecedented boom in artificial intelligence chips. One of its key suppliers, memory chip maker Micron, is sold out for this year and into 2025. Yet a senior executive acknowledged that even Micron doesnât know how long the frenzy will last, given the high costs businesses face in using the latest AI. âWeâre all wondering, how much of this is going to be sustained?... Read more âș
26
Find the right lawyer and they can fill many roles: advisor, defenderâletâs be realâtherapist. In recent decades, the white-shoe law firms that once mostly catered toâand chasedâblue-chip industrial companies, conglomerates and banks have set up practices targeting startups, and as Silicon Valley has boomed, plenty of tech-focused specialist firms have popped up in the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere. Many have long track records of representing companies from seed... Read more âș
0
Cameo authorized a $28 million round of funding last week that will drastically reduce its valuation, the company told shareholders, reflecting a big slowdown in the celebrity video shoutout appâs business. The funding, led by existing investor Valor Equity Partners, would value the company at less than $100 million, measured after the investment, an investor said. That would represent at least a 90% drop from its previous value. Its $1... Read more âș
1
There are weeks when it is really fun to be a reporter! And then even more fun to discuss what is happening with your friends! This was one of those.  Lots of AI news, a Reddit IPO and more. I hope you enjoy! Apple Spotify YouTube Read more âș
0
At some point during the second half of this year, Jeff Bezos, Amazonâs founder, will stuff his feet into a pair of cowboy boots and, if everything goes as planned, watch as a rocket made by his space startup, Blue Origin, blasts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The boots are a good luck charm that Bezos wears whenever Blue Origin launches a rocket. For the launch... Read more âș
54
Yesterday, we published the results of our March subscriber survey, in which more than half of the 742 respondents said they had bought goods or services through social media. Another result that interested me: 53% of respondents said a creator had inspired them to buy something, regardless of whether they bought it on social media or not.Jasmine Enberg, a principal social media analyst at market researcher eMarketer, said creators may... Read more âș
0
Rippling, a human-resources software startup valued at more than $11 billion, was a relative latecomer to the business of helping companies hire staff overseas. Now its expansion into dozens of countries, including the U.K. and Ireland, is starting to pay off. The eight-year-old startupâs annual recurring revenue roughly doubled to more than $350 million by the end of 2023 compared with a year earlier, according to two people who spoke... Read more âș
0
The Justice Departmentâs antitrust lawsuit against Apple completes the set of antitrust cases now outstanding against four big tech firms, also including Amazon, Meta Platforms and Alphabet (which faces two, one of which has gone through a trial and is awaiting a judgment). But the Apple case is symbolically important, given how respected and rich the company is. Perhaps thatâs why DOJ antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter drew a parallel between... Read more âș
39
Itâs been a busy week. Reddit went public Thursday, marking a rare initial public offering after a two-year winter for new listings. Shares jumped 48% in its first day trading, earning the company a market cap of over $9 billion.Thatâs a promising sign for IPO-ready, aging unicorns, and good news for Redditâs backers, especially CondĂ© Nast parent company Advance Publications, Tencent and Sequoia Capital, Cory reports. But the more noteworthy... Read more âș
0
TikTok has poured hundreds of millions of dollars to coax its U.S. users to shop on the app. But for The Informationâs readers, Instagram is still the number one social media destination, according to a new survey of subscribers.About 35% of the 742 respondents said they have shopped using Instagram and 20% said they have shopped on Facebook Marketplace, where users can buy and sell goods similar to Craigslist. Less... Read more âș
0
Microsoft doesnât want its plan to hire two of Inflection AIâs co-founders and most of its 70-person staff to be seen as an acquisition. But itâs still writing a hefty check to the two-year-old artificial intelligence startup. The software giant has agreed to pay Inflection approximately $650 million, mostly in the form of a licensing deal that makes Inflectionâs models available for sale on the software giantâs Azure cloud service,... Read more âș
14
More than half of The Informationâs readers say theyâve bought goods or services through social media, most frequently through Instagram, according to our latest subscriber survey. Survey respondents remain optimistic about the outlook for technology companies, though they are less bullish than they were earlier in the year. In total, 742 people answered the survey between March 14 and Tuesday. Read more âș
0
Most popular sources
VentureBeat
|
0% |
Ubergizmo
|
0% |
Tech Wire Asia
|
0% |
StartUs Magazine
|
0% |
ReadWrite
|
0% |
| View sources » | |
LIKE us on Facebook so you won't miss the most important news of the day!
02.07.2026 15:41
Last update: 15:35 EDT.
News rating updated: 22:32.
What is Times42?
Times42 brings you the most popular news from tech news portals in real-time chart.
Read about us in FAQ section.