~techmeme | Bookmarks (1045)

Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg: SK Hynix reports Q1 revenue of ~$9B, more than doubling YoY, and ~$2B in operating income, above estimates of ~$1.3B and the biggest quarterly profit since 2022  —  Sales at the world's No. 2 maker of memory more than doubled to 12.4 trillion won ($9 billion) in the March quarter, beating expectations.

Annie Palmer / CNBC: Memo: Thrasio CEO Greg Greeley plans to resign and five other senior executives will “step down when Thrasio emerges from Chapter 11 in the coming weeks”  —  Thrasio, an early leader in the big business of Amazon aggregators, had a booth at the popular Prosper Show for Amazon sellers in Las Vegas, Nevada, on July 14, 2021.

David Pierce / The Verge: Hands-on with the Rabbit R1: a fun and funky AI device that feels pretty nice and does a solid job with basic AI questions, but the Rabbithole app is unfinished  —  There were times I wasn't sure the Rabbit R1 was even a real thing.  The AI-powered, Teenage Engineering-designed device came …

Ken Yeung / VentureBeat: Nooks, whose AI tools can analyze sales calls and summarize customer interactions, raised a $22M Series A led by Lachy Groom, bringing its total funding to $27M  —  AI startup Nooks has raised a new round of funding.  It announced a $22 million Series A fundraising effort led …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: AI coding assistant startup Augment emerges from stealth with a $227M Series B at a $977M post-money valuation, following a $25M Series A led by Sutter Hill  —  AI is supercharging coding — and developers are embracing it.  —  In a recent StackOverflow poll, 44% of software engineers …

CNBC: Cloud data management startup Rubrik priced its NYSE IPO at $32 a share, above its expected $28-$31 range, raising $752M and valuing the company at $5.6B  —  Bipul Sinha, co-founder and CEO of data security software company Rubrik.  Sinha previously backed cloud management company Nutanix.

Mary Jo Foley / Directions on Microsoft: Microsoft must take security seriously again by being transparent about breaches and no longer charging its subscribers extra for must-have security features  —  Microsoft charges extra for many core security and compliance features.  What can customers do to try to minimize risk and save money?

Paul Sawers / TechCrunch: Paris-based FlexAI, which is developing an on-demand cloud service for AI training, emerges from stealth with a $30M in seed funding  —  Nvidia, Apple, Tesla and Intel are on CEO Brijesh Tripathi's resume  —  A French startup has raised a hefty seed investment to “rearchitect compute infrastructure” …

Filipe Pacheco / Bloomberg: Mobvoi, a Google-backed Chinese smartwatch and AI company, fell as much as 22% in the first day of trading, after raising $41M in its Hong Kong IPO  —  - Mobvoi drops as much as 22% in first day of trading after IPO  — It's the city's third stock this week to drop in opening day

Edward Zitron / Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At: Emails released as part of US v. Google show how Google's finance and ad teams led by Prabhakar Raghavan made Search worse to make the company more money  —  This is the story of how Google Search died, and the people responsible for killing it.  —  The story begins on February 5th 2019 …

Bloomberg: China approves US listing of self-driving startup Pony.ai, which plans to sell up to 98M shares and list on Nasdaq or NYSE, signaling an ease on the crackdown  —  - Pony.ai plans to sell some 98 million shares on Nasdaq or NYSE  — Chinese tech IPOs in the US dwindled after crackdown in 2021

Reuters: Huawei unveils Qiankun, a new business unit focused on providing self-driving systems, marking the company's latest push to become a major EV industry player  —  Chinese tech company Huawei (HWT.UL) unveiled on Wednesday a new software brand for intelligent driving, marking its latest push …

Bloomberg: SenseTime's stock rises 30%+ after the company unveiled the latest version of its SenseNova AI model; SenseTime's stock is down 80%+ since its 2021 HK IPO  —  - US-blacklisted firm unveils fifth version of its AI platform  — The company is one of many racing to develop generative AI

Nami Matsuura / Nikkei Asia: Samsung starts mass production of its 9th-generation 286-layer 3D NAND memory chips, which increases data I/O speeds by 33% compared to 8th-gen 236-layer chips  —  286-layer product boosts data storage capacity by 50%, aiding AI  —  SEOUL — Samsung Electronics said Tuesday …

Tom Matsuda / Sifted: Paris-based Payflows, whose automated financial management SaaS could be deployed on top of existing ERP systems, raised a €25M Series A led by Balderton  —  The funding round is the latest sign that fintech investors are continuing to focus on the B2B segment

Marina Temkin / TechCrunch: NY-based Campus, which is building an online alternative to traditional community colleges, raised a $23M Series A extension following a $29M Series A in 2023  —  Although many students in the United States enter community colleges intending to transfer to four-year universities …

Casey Newton / Platformer: Legal scholars discuss how the TikTok divestment bill could survive a First Amendment challenge and why the US will likely rely on a national security argument  —  The First Amendment is a major obstacle, scholars say — but it isn't insurmountable  —  On Tuesday, the Senate voted overwhelmingly …

Lauren Feiner / The Verge: The US Senate passes the TikTok divestment bill by a margin of 79-18; the legislation now heads to President Biden, who has committed to sign it into law  —  A bill that would force China-based company Bytedance to sell TikTok — or else face a US ban of the platform …

Sarah McBride / Bloomberg: Xaira Therapeutics, which aims to use AI models to find new drugs to treat diseases, emerged from stealth with $1B in commitments from Sequoia and others  —  - Marc Tessier-Lavigne resigned from Stanford after controversy  — New startup has backing from high-wattage tech investors

Katie Deighton / Wall Street Journal: As software gets better at labeling photos, CAPTCHA designers are adopting more difficult logic-based prompts to thwart nefarious bots  —  Captchas that aim to distinguish humans from nefarious bots are demanding more brain power; ‘things are going to get even stranger’

MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC: Block says it has finished the development of its own 3nm bitcoin mining chip and is working through the design with a “leading global semiconductor foundry”  —  Jack Dorsey says that his payments company, Block (formerly Square), is expanding its bitcoin mining ambitions …

Financial Times: Q&A with BCG CEO Christoph Schweizer, who says the consulting firm expects 20% of its 2024 and 40% of its 2026 revenue will come from helping firms integrate AI  —  CEO projects share of sales will double as companies integrate technology into operations

Akila Quinio / Financial Times: Revolut plans ad sales push, expects to derive a “proper chunk” of its revenue from targeted ads, and hires a former TikTok executive to lead its media strategy  —  The London-based fintech has hired a TikTok executive to lead a ‘media strategy’ as it seeks to diversify revenues

Lizette Chapman / Bloomberg: Nominal, which offers tools for data analysis, testing, and more to startups building advanced hardware like drones, emerges from stealth with $27.5M in funding  —  - Lux Capital, General Catalyst, Founders Fund among investors  — Software platform aims to assist new manufacturing companies