Microsoft lays off nearly 5,000 employees across Xbox, commercial sales: Microsoft cut around 4,800 roles, or 2.1% of its global workforce, on Monday — the latest in a series of layoffs that’s stoking fears of AI replacing jobs. The layoffs will hit Xbox and commercial sales the hardest. Read More
Netflix invented binge-watching. Now it may have outgrown it.: A new report suggests Netflix viewers aren’t sticking around for Season 2. The bigger issue may be that binge-watching itself is no longer the advantage it once was. Read More
The first American autonomous ground vehicles are fighting in Ukraine: Forterra has deployed more than 100 of its self-driving ATVs in conflict zones in Ukraine. Read More
General Compute raised $15m to build the worlds first ASIC cloud. By removing the GPU bottleneck, it runs frontier LLMs up to 16x faster than standard GPU clouds. ASIC silicon is also far more energy efficient, so it deploys in air-cooled data centers, making growth and expansion dramatically easier.
AI law startup Norm raises $120M, hits unicorn valuation: AI law startup Norm has raised a $120 million Series C round led by Khosla Ventures, valuing the startup at $1.2 billion. Read More
US investors will soon get access to SK Hynix, another memory maker riding the AI boom: SK Hynix is experiencing a boom credited to AI. It will ride that to a multibillion-dollar U.S. IPO, expected to take place on Friday. Read More
If you use Google, you're training its AI. Here's how to opt out.: Consider this a belated PSA: A recent change to Google’s privacy settings is allowing the company to store more of your data, including media such as “images, files, and audio and video recordings,” to improve its AI models. Read More
This startup pits dealerships against each other to bid on your used car: Bidbus, which lets dealerships bid on used cars, has raised $15 million in a Series A round that was led by early-stage mobility fund Ibex Investors. Read More
Amazon competitor Bookshop.org says Kobo eReader support will happen this year after all: Bookship.org seemed to delay this anticipated partnership again, but tells TechCrunch that it has settled business terms and is working on integration. Read More
Last but Not Least
Hacktivists call out Trump by hacking and defacing US Army websites: The U.S. Army has fixed two of its websites that were hacked to display messages calling President Trump a "pedophile" and a "thief." Read More
