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Kali Hays / Fortune: Sources: Meta laid off ~100 people, at least the third such incremental layoff at Meta in 2024, separate from those let go for improper use of Grubhub credits  —  Mark Zuckerberg at Meta Connect in 2024.  —  Scores of Meta employees have been laid off this week, as the company embraces …

Rich Woods / XDA Developers: Qualcomm cancels the Snapdragon Dev Kit, which was supposed to ship in June, and will offer refunds, as the product failed to meet its “standards of excellence”  —  - Qualcomm canceled the Snapdragon Dev Kit & will offer refunds, as the product failed to meet its “standards of excellence”.

Margaux MacColl / TechCrunch: Abel, founded by Daniel Francis, or @growing_daniel on X, to build AI that uses body cam footage and other data to fill out police reports, raised a $5M seed  —  Earlier this year, Abel founder Daniel Francis was in a car going 135 miles per hour down a highway in Oakland, California.

Samantha Cole / 404 Media: Sources: Matt Mullenweg offered another buyout offer to Automattic staff; Mullenweg appears to have redirected staff's Blind sign-up emails to himself  —  After an exodus of employees at Automattic who disagreed with CEO Matt Mullenweg's recently divisive legal battle with WP Engine …

Pew Research Center: Survey: 68% of US adults support a ban on middle and high school students using phones during class and 24% oppose it; 53% oppose a ban lasting full school days  —  As lawmakers and educators crack down on cellphone use in schools, most Americans back bans on using phones in classrooms but are less supportive of full-day restrictions.

Sabrina Willmer / Bloomberg: Filing: US prosecutors ask a judge to sentence Ilya Lichtenstein, mastermind of the 2016 Bitfinex hack, to five years in prison; sentencing is due in November  —  - Ilya Lichtenstein pled guilty to 2016 Bitfinex exchange hack  — He and rapper-wife Razzlekhan conspired to launder proceeds

Laura Hughes / Financial Times: NHS doctors warn of safety risks from an outdated IT infrastructure, as the UK government plans to digitize the world's largest publicly funded health service  —  Plans to digitise health service must first tackle ‘flip a coin’ nature of equipment across UK, say medical staff

Jon Victor / The Information: UK filings: Google DeepMind's operating profit rose 91% YoY to £136M in 2023, after Google Brain merger; Alphabet's Isomorphic Labs had £60.4M loss, up 3x+ YoY  —  Source:  —  Operating profit at Google's AI research unit, DeepMind, increased 91% last year to 136 million pounds …

Dave Sebastian / Bloomberg: Overseas share sales by Taiwanese companies, led by chipmakers and hardware manufacturers, have totalled $2.9B so far in 2024, on track for the most since 2007  —  - Share sales by Taiwan firms abroad totalled $2.9 billion  — Hon Hai among issuers seeking cash to fund capacity expansion

Prarthana Prakash / Fortune: Amsterdam-based Tebi, a payments app aimed at independent businesses like bars and cafes, raised a €20M Series A led by Index Ventures  —  Tebi was founded in 2021.  —  One of the founders of Dutch fintech star Adyen, Arnout Schuijff, has been quietly building out his next startup since leaving …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Dane Stuckey, the former CISO of Palantir, joins OpenAI as its CISO and will serve alongside OpenAI head of security Matt Knight  —  Dane Stuckey, the former CISO of analytics firm Palantir, has joined OpenAI as its newest CISO, serving alongside OpenAI head of security Matt Knight.

Bloomberg: Filing: Elon Musk poured ~$75M into his pro-Trump America PAC, making seven donations between July 3 and September 5; Musk was the PAC's only donor  —  - Disclosure is first look into Musks' donations to Trump group  — Super PAC spent $69 million to bolster Trump's ground game

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Xscape, which develops data center interconnects using silicon photonics, raised a $44M Series A led by IAG Capital Partners, taking its total funding to $57M  —  The GPUs and other chips used to train AI communicate with each other inside data centers through “interconnects.”

Allie Garfinkle / Fortune: Los Angeles-based Ghost, a B2B marketplace for surplus inventory with more than 6,000 members, raised a $40M Series C led by L Catterton  —  Ghost cofounders Josh Kaplan and Dee Murthy.  —  MATT CLERKIN AT CLERK CREATIVE  —  At Ghost, all product development groups are named after, well, ghosts.

Bloomberg: Filings: Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz each donated $2.5M to pro-Trump super PAC Right For America; Andreessen also gave ~$844K to the GOP and Trump campaign  —  - Horowitz later said he would also donate to Democrat Harris  — Apollo's Marc Rowan also contributed to pro-Trump super PAC

P.R. Venkat / Wall Street Journal: Filing: Chinese smart-driving company Horizon Robotics is targeting to raise ~$700M in its Hong Kong IPO; Alibaba and Baidu are among its cornerstone investors  —  Alibaba, Baidu, and state-owned Beijing Financial Holdings are among the cornerstone investors who have agreed to take over 30% of Horizon Robotics' shares ahead of the IPO

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Monogoto, which offers software-defined connectivity tools for enterprises, raised a $27M Series A led by Toyota Ventures, taking its total funding to $38M  —  Connectivity and connected networks are part and parcel of the way many devices and services operate today, thanks to innovations …

Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat: Anthropic updates its Responsible Scaling Policy, setting benchmarks for when an AI model's abilities reach a point where additional safeguards are necessary  —  Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the popular Claude chatbot, today announced a sweeping update …

Wired: A review of Character.AI finds several instances of AI personas being created without a person's consent, seemingly violating the company's terms of service  —  Character.AI lets users create bots in the likeness of any person—without requiring their consent.

Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post: A profile of Ben Nimmo, OpenAI's principal threat investigator who found evidence that Russia and China were using ChatGPT to sway political discourse online  —  Ben Nimmo brings a literary bent to the serious business of keeping ChatGPT from being an engine of misinformation.

Wired: How scammers in Southeast Asia are using generative AI, crypto drainers, Starlink terminals, and other tools to expand their pig butchering operations  —  Scammers in Southeast Asia are increasingly turning to AI, deepfakes, and dangerous malware in a way that makes their pig butchering operations even more convincing.

Lim Yu Qian / CoinGecko: Analysis: US regulators have secured $19.45B across eight settlements from crypto firms so far in 2024, including FTX's $12.7B, and ~$32B since January 1, 2019  —  What Are the Top Crypto Enforcement Actions in the US? … FTX and Alameda's lawsuit was led by the Commodity and Futures Trading Commission …

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: A look at Apple's new home strategy and plans for a ~$2K headset in 2025, Vision Pro 2 in 2026, and Ray-Ban Meta-like glasses and AirPods with cameras in 2027  —  Apple is finally preparing to compete for the smart home market after falling behind Amazon and Google.

Evan Halper / Washington Post: An energy crunch is forcing continued coal burning in a low-income area in North Omaha, Nebraska, as Meta and Google data centers strain regional power supply  —  An energy crunch forces continued coal burning in a low-income area as data centers strain the regional power supply.