~techmeme | Bookmarks (1023)

Bloomberg: Chinese startup Manus, whose AI agent service is still in the beta testing phase, announces a $39/month Manus Starter plan and an upgraded $199/month Pro tier  —  The Beijing-based startup behind Manus has set up a $39-per-month tier and a $199 upgraded option, the latter in line with OpenAI's ChatGPT Pro.

Wall Street Journal: A look at the race between China and the US to build truly useful humanoid robots, as China lists “embodied” AI as a priority for a $138B state investment fund  —  U.S. and China are racing to build a truly useful humanoid worker.  Whoever wins could gain a huge edge in countless industries.

Bloomberg: Japan earmarks up to ~$5.4B in additional aid for chipmaker Rapidus, which aims to begin mass production of 2nm chips in 2027, a highly ambitious target  —  Japan is preparing as much as ¥802.5 billion ($5.4 billion) in additional aid for chip startup Rapidus Corp. …

Isaac Schultz / Gizmodo: Report: 79% of 475 AI experts believe current public perceptions of AI do not match R&D realities, while 76% said scaling current approaches will not yield AGI  —  An extensive report on the future of AI research indicated that there's skepticism about current approaches to AGI.

Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg: South Korea-based Wrtn, a free-to-use AI platform with 5M+ users aggregating LLMs like GPT-4, Stable Diffusion 3, and Claude 3, raised a $56M Series B extension  —  Existing backers BRV Capital Management and Capstone Partners participated in the so-called extension round …

CNBC: After Trump signed an EO to end the government's DEI programs, tech firms like Google are rebranding DEI efforts, using terms like “learning” or “hiring”  —  After Google scrapped its diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, hiring aspirations in February …

Dia Rekhi / The Economic Times: Sources: Foxconn plans to assemble 25M to 30M iPhones in India in 2025, up from ~12M in 2024, and is conducting production trials at its new Bengaluru plant  —  Foxconn has also been conducting limited trials at its Bengaluru campus in the last three-four months, signalling swift progress …

Wall Street Journal: Sources detail tensions between Apple and Elon Musk's SpaceX over efforts to expand satellite cellphone services  —  The iPhone maker and SpaceX are competing in the race to eliminate cellphone dead spots, a rift that is set to intensify  —  Apple is clashing with Elon Musk in its push …

Counterpoint Research: Global foldable smartphone shipments increased by just 2.9% YoY in 2024, and shipments are expected to decline by about 4% YoY in 2025  —  - 2024 saw the global foldable market growing at a comparatively flat annual rate of 2.9%.  — Samsung and OPPO's unusually weak Q4 negatively impacted broader market dynamics.

Bethan Staton / Financial Times: Many LinkedIn users put part-time job-level effort to maintain their pages; LinkedIn: 85% of FTSE 100 CEOs have a presence on the platform, up from 12% in 2023  —  More users are chasing high follower counts as the professional network expands its reach  —  Soon after lawyer Paul Verrico posted …

Ernie Smith / Tedium: Apple's current enterprise offerings are built for single machines and have complex virtualization rules, saddling high-end users with inefficient remote setups  —  Whether it was trying to or not, Apple exposed a huge flaw with its pitch to professional video editors with a new Severance promotional video.

Bloomberg: Ethereum is struggling to keep the interest of investors and developers, having fallen out of step in an industry transformed by the embrace of Donald Trump  —  Vitalik Buterin was long viewed as the wunderkind of the cryptocurrency world.  —  The gawky, playful founder of Ethereum …

Abner Li / 9to5Google: Google announces it is rolling out Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental to all Gemini users, after initially launching it for Gemini Advanced subscribers on March 25  —  In a rather unexpected move, Google announced Saturday that it is rolling out the latest 2.5 Pro (experimental) model to all (free) Gemini app users.

New York Times: A look at the RainbowEx crypto Ponzi scheme, which ensnared 16,000 people in San Pedro, Argentina; different versions of the scam have emerged around the world  —  In San Pedro, Argentina, 16,000 people, a fifth of the population, signed up for a cryptocurrency exchange where everyone won.

Duncan Riley / SiliconANGLE: Straiker, which develops tech for securing enterprise AI applications, emerges from stealth with a $21M Series A from Lightspeed and Bain Capital  —  Artificial intelligence-native security company Straiker launched today with an announcement that it has raised $21 million from Lightspeed Venture Partners LP and Bain Capital Ventures.

Ashwin Manikandan / Reuters: Bain and Flipkart report: quick commerce made up over two-thirds of India's e-grocery orders in 2024, with GMV rising nearly five times to $6B-$7B from 2022  —  India's quick commerce sector accounted for over two-thirds of all e-grocery orders last year, with its total market share growing …

Catherine McGrath / Fortune: NYC-based Rain, which issues credit cards that let customers settle payments in stablecoins, raised $24.5M led by Norwest, taking its total funding to $30.5M  —  Rain, which issues credit cards that let customers settle payments in stablecoins, has raised $24.5 million in a funding round led …

Dan Primack / Axios: Brooklyn-based Underdog, a fantasy sports and sports betting app, raised $70M in a first Series C tranche at a $1.23B valuation from Spark Capital  —  Underdog, a Brooklyn-based fantasy sports and sports betting app, tells Axios that it raised $70 million in Series C funding at a $1.23 billion valuation from Spark Capital.

Debarghya Sil / Inc42 Media: Gensol's financial woes have cast doubt on the future of BluSmart, an Indian EV ride-hailing startup founded by Gensol's promoters, Anmol Jaggi and Puneet Jaggi  —  There seems to be no respite for Gensol Engineering and ride-hailing startup BluSmart.  In a fresh development …

Steven Church / Bloomberg: FTX tells a US bankruptcy judge it will make the first payment to its main creditors on May 30 using the $11.4B cash hoard it has collected since shutting down  —  Former cryptocurrency firm FTX will start paying its main creditors at the end of May using a cash hoard of $11.4 billion the company has collected since its shut...

Patience Haggin / Wall Street Journal: Adalytics: DoubleVerify, IAS, and Human Security, paid by advertisers to detect bots, regularly miss such traffic; DoubleVerify missed 21% of bot visits  —  Companies that claim to help brands avoid serving digital ads to bots regularly miss nonhuman traffic

Zac Bowden / Windows Central: In the latest Windows 11 preview build, Microsoft removed the “bypassnro” command, which let users skip signing into a Microsoft Account when installing Windows  —  The popular “bypassnro” command, which let users to skip connecting to the Internet and signing into a Microsoft Account, is being removed.

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters: A US judge rejects Musk's bid to dismiss a lawsuit claiming he defrauded ex-Twitter shareholders by delaying the disclosure of his initial Twitter investment  —  A U.S. judge on Friday rejected billionaire Elon Musk's bid to dismiss a lawsuit claiming he defrauded former Twitter shareholders …

Bloomberg: Source: the new combined entity housing xAI and X is called XAI Holdings and is valued at more than $100B, not including debt  —  - New joint entity is valued at over $100 billion, person says  — X, xAI already partnered on data sharing and Grok distribution