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Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Boston-based AceUp, which offers AI-powered business coaching and performance analytics services, raised a $22.5M Series A led by PJC  —  Is a business coach really worth the investment?  Execs often seek coaches to bolster aspects of their work, like communication skills and their productivity.

Ionut Arghire / SecurityWeek: Maryland-based Aembit, a non-human identity and access management provider, raised a $25M Series A led by Acrew Capital, bringing its total raised to ~$45M  —  Aembit has raised $25 million in Series A funding to protect non-human identities and minimize attack surface.

Ben Lovejoy / 9to5Mac: Apple's Activation Lock for iPhone components will make a huge dent in the market for stolen iPhones, though it introduces another barrier to DIY repairs  —  Apple's latest theft-prevention measure went live for beta testers yesterday: Activation Lock for iPhone components.

Shahram Mokhtari / iFixit News: Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold teardown: impressive repairability for a foldable, with a modular design that separates high mechanical wear parts like the USB-C port  —  The Pixel 9 Pro Fold has come a long way since the first generation Pixel Fold.  That's because unlike other foldable smartphones …

M.G. Siegler / Spyglass: OpenAI should've stuck with the name Strawberry for o1, avoiding user confusion between models named 4o and o1, and helping humanize the tech  —  They're wrong, but there are other, more pressing product questions...  Well, what was coming in “the next couple of weeks” ended up being “the next couple of days” — here's Kylie Robison:

Bloomberg: A profile of Chase Herro, who calls himself the “dirtbag of the internet” and sources say is the dealmaker behind Trump's crypto project World Liberty Financial  —  'If you do this right, who f—ing cares if it goes to zero,' Chase Herro once said of crypto.

Financial Times: An overview of California's AI safety bill SB 1047, which easily passed the state's legislature, as it awaits Governor Newsom's signature or veto before Sep. 30  —  California's Gavin Newsom has until September 30 to decide whether to sign legislation that will reach far beyond the state

Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal: Recent announcements from Apple and Google show that AI is most useful as a feature in devices and software we already use, rather than a standalone product  —  Apple and Google are showing how AI is really a feature in other products at this stage  —  AI's boosters have billed it as a technology …

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica: Doctor Web: malware dubbed Android.Vo1d has infected ~1.3M TV boxes running OSes based on Android Open Source Project in almost 200 countries, forming a botnet  —  Infection corrals devices running AOSP-based firmware into a botnet.  —  Researchers still don't know the cause …

Aditya Kalra / Reuters: In reports dated August 9, Indian antitrust regulator CCI found that Amazon and Flipkart violated local competition laws by giving preference to select sellers  —  An Indian antitrust investigation has found U.S. e-commerce giant Amazon (AMZN.O) and Walmart's (WMT.N) Flipkart violated local competition laws …

Menaka Doshi / Bloomberg: India's new M&A rule for deals exceeding ~$240M could create hurdles for startups that hope to be acquired in their early years to access funding and scale  —  Fears it could have a “chilling effect” on innovation. … Merger Control  —  A new anti-trust rule put into place this week …

Viola Zhou / Rest of World: Q&A with Alibaba.com president Kuo Zhang on the enduring importance of the US market, navigating geopolitical tensions, competing with Shein and Temu, and more  —  • LAS VEGAS, UNITED STATES  —  E-commerce giant Alibabai .com is setting its sights on America's mom-and-pop businesses.

Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog: OpenAI's o1 models aren't as simple as the next step up from GPT-4o as they introduce major cost and performance trade-offs in exchange for improved “reasoning”  —  OpenAI released two major new preview models today: o1-preview and o1-mini (that mini one is also a preview …

Matt Burgess / Wired: Researchers detail GAZEploit, a now-fixed Vision Pro vulnerability allowing hackers to determine which key a user is typing based on the user's eye movement  —  The Vision Pro uses 3D avatars on calls and for streaming.  These researchers used eye tracking to work out the passwords and PINs people typed with their avatars.

Jennifer Ouellette / Ars Technica: In two experiments with 2,190 American conspiracy theorists, conversations with GPT-4 Turbo reduced their belief in conspiracy theories by about 20% on average  —  Co-author Gordon Pennycook: “The work overturns a lot of how we thought about conspiracies.”  —  Belief in conspiracy theories …

Duncan Riley / SiliconANGLE: Every, which offers startups an all-in-one finance and human resources suite that combines banking, cards, tax, payroll, and more, raised a $22.5M Series A  —  Back office stack for startups company Every Inc. announced today that it has raised $22.5 million in new funding to add more products to its back-office suite.

Jason Schreier / Bloomberg: All 25 staffers of Annapurna's gaming division resigned this month after CEO Megan Ellison pulled out of talks to spin off the unit as an independent entity  —  Megan Ellison-led firm sees staffers quit after spinoff talks fail.  —  The entire staff of Annapurna Interactive …

Oliver Darcy / Status: Vox Media says its annual Code Conference has been put on hold, calling it a “strong franchise” but declining to share further information about its future  —  Outside missing a year during the Covid-19 pandemic, it's the first time the annual technology conference has not taken place in its more than two-decade history.

Sarah McBride / Bloomberg: YC plans to expand to four cohorts per year, adding spring and fall sessions in 2025; each batch will be half the size of the most recent cohort of 256 startups  —  The startup accelerator now will accept four smaller groups of startups instead of two larger ones.

Amir Efrati / The Information: Source: OpenAI's ChatGPT has 11M+ paying subscribers, including 1M for its higher-priced business plans, implying it's generating $225M+ in revenue per month  —  OpenAI's ChatGPT has more than 10 million paying subscribers and another 1 million subscribers that are part of higher-priced plans …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: The White House says Adobe, Cohere, Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Common Crawl made voluntary commitments to fight AI-generated image-based sexual abuse  —  The White House has announced that several major AI vendors, including OpenAI and Microsoft, have committed to taking steps …

Brody Ford / Bloomberg: Adobe reports Q3 revenue up 11% YoY to $5.41B, vs. $5.37B est., Digital Media revenue up 11% to $4B, Q4 revenue guidance below est.; ADBE drops 9%+ after hours  —  - Company has added AI tools to its signature creative software  — Revenue gains 11% in reported quarter; profit tops estimate

Ina Fried / Axios: Salesforce rolls out Agentforce, a suite of AI agents that handle tasks in sales, marketing, commerce, and customer service, starting at $2 per conversation  —  - Out of the box, Salesforce is offering a handful of agents that can handle tasks such as sales rep, service agent, personal shopper and sales coach.

Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch: At an Acquired podcast event, Mark Zuckerberg said his biggest career mistake was taking too much ownership for issues out of Meta's control  —  The home of the Golden State Warriors was packed on Tuesday evening this week, but it wasn't to watch Steph Curry.