Tech Meme

Reed Albergotti / Semafor: Sources: Satya Nadella and Brad Smith had lunch with Trump, Vance, and Musk at Mar-a-Lago on January 15; Microsoft says its two execs had a “Productive meeting”  —  The Scoop  —  President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance had lunch with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Wednesday … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Bloomberg: Official report: Chinese hackers who breached the US Treasury accessed 400+ computers and stole over 3K files; classified data and email systems were safe  —  – Hackers likely stole more than 3,000 files from department  — Treasury found no evidence of lingering access or malware Lees verder op Tech Meme

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch: Mistral announces a content deal with the Agence France-Presse to improve answer accuracy in Le Chat, marking the French AI startup’s first such partnership  —  Just a day after Google inked a deal with The Associated Press, Mistral is also announcing a content deal with the Agence France-Presse … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Kathrin Hille / Financial Times: TSMC says it will raise 2025 capital spending to $38B-$40B, an over 30% increase after three years of stagnation  —  World’s biggest chipmaker faces less efficient operations in US and Japan but gets boost from AI demand  —  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has cut … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Kate Clark / Bloomberg: Insight Partners raised $12.5B for its 13th flagship fund, down from its initial target of $20B, making it one of the biggest tech-focused funds  —  The firm reduced its initial fundraising target from $20 billion.  —  Insight Partners, a New York-based venture capital and private equity firm … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Eric Geller / Wired: Joe Biden issues a cybersecurity executive order to improve the way the government monitors its networks, buys software, uses AI, and punishes foreign hackers  —  US president Joe Biden just issued a 40-page executive order that aims to bolster federal cybersecurity protections … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Yazhou Sun / Bloomberg: Germany-based Neura Robotics, which is building cognitive, humanoid robots for logistics and other sectors, raised a €120M Series B led by Lingotto Investment  —  Neura Robotics, a German startup that manufactures robots that can “see, hear and touch,” has raised €120 million … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: AI researcher François Chollet and Zapier co-founder Mike Knoop launch Ndea, an AI research and science lab focused on “developing and operationalizing AGI”  —  François Chollet, an influential AI researcher, is launching a new startup that aims to build frontier AI systems with novel designs. Lees verder op Tech Meme

William Langley / Financial Times: Canalys: China smartphone shipments rose 4% YoY to 285M units in 2024, with Vivo up 11% to a 17% market share, Huawei up 37% to 16%, and Apple down 17% to 15%  —  US tech giant faces competition on mainland as it struggles to introduce AI features on its flagship product Lees verder op Tech Meme

Reuters: Source: over 700K new users joined Xiaohongshu, or RedNote, in just two days; Sensor Tower: the app’s US downloads were up more than 200% YoY this week  —  New users have piled in to Chinese social media app RedNote just days before a proposed U.S. ban on the popular social media app TikTok … Lees verder op Tech Meme