Bloomberg: AI video startup Runway raised $308M led by General Atlantic, sources say at a $3B+ valuation, and plans to hire more filmmakers, screenwriters, and others — The deal, which is set to be announced Thursday, pushes Runway's value to just over $3 billion, according to people familiar …
Samuel Stolton / Bloomberg: Sources: Ireland's DPC will fine TikTok €500M+ before the end of April for illegally shipping European users' data to China, after a lengthy GDPR investigation — The penalty is likely to be the third highest ever dished out by the Irish watchdog following earlier fines of €746 million …
Bloomberg: Sources: Microsoft has halted talks for, or delayed development of, data center projects in Indonesia, the UK, Australia, Illinois, North Dakota, and Wisconsin — The software company has recently halted talks for, or delayed development of, sites in Indonesia, the UK, Australia, Illinois …
Ryan Weeks / Bloomberg: President Trump's tariffs are set to disrupt the Bitcoin mining sector, as many of the largest miners are based in the US and the supply chain is rooted in Asia — Lauren Lin is in a hurry. She has less than 48 hours to ship about 5,600 Bitcoin mining machines from Thailand to the US …
Matt Levine / Bloomberg: Circle's S-1 shows that it is a fintech and that, as of December 31, 2024, ~85% of USDC reserves were in a BlackRock-managed money market fund only for Circle — Circle, slangy wealth management chatbots, private credit runs, SEC climate rules and OCC desk space.
Ashley Carman / Bloomberg: Patreon says it now has 6.7M paid podcast subscriptions, generating $472M+ in 2024 revenue, up 35% YoY, and signs podcasting deals with Sony Music and Wondery — Podcasters made more than $472 million on the platform last year — Patreon Inc., a subscription platform for online creators …
Sankalp Phartiyal / Bloomberg: Indian investment bank The Rainmaker Group says 36+ Indian tech startups like Flipkart and PhonePe with a combined $100B valuation are set to go public by 2027 — - Investment bank Rainmaker sees India IPOs picking up pace — IPOs in India have lost steam this year as stocks have dropped
Takashi Mochizuki / Bloomberg: Ahead of the Switch 2, Nintendo is branching out to use its characters in cinema, theme parks, and merch in a Disney-like way to create more consistent revenue — Tech Across the Globe … Sequoia Capital and Spark Capital are in talks to co-lead the round. — Revalued
Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg: Samsung says TM Roh, who oversees mobile, will temporarily step into a broader role overseeing its consumer electronics, after the death of co-CEO Han Jong-Hee — Roh will fill the vacancy at the top of Samsung's Device Experience group until the company's board approves a formal successor to Han …
Bloomberg: With the Switch 2, Nintendo must do what it has rarely done before: follow one hit console with another; Nintendo sold 150M+ Switch units since its 2017 launch — The Japanese gaming giant is about to release its latest console. The stakes have never been higher to end the boom-bust cycle that's plagued the company for years.
Karin Matussek / Bloomberg: Nokia and Amazon settle a long-running, global patent dispute over Amazon using Nokia's video tech in Prime Video and its devices, without disclosing the terms — The agreement covers the use of Nokia video technologies in Amazon's streaming services and devices, resolving all patent litigation globally …
Benoit Berthelot / Bloomberg: France's antitrust regulator fines Apple €150M after a lengthy investigation into how iOS asks to collect user data under ATT and the impact on advertisers — France's antitrust regulator fined Apple Inc. €150 million ($162 million) after a lengthy probe into how the technology company asks …
Bloomberg: A look at inZOI, a new life simulation game by South Korean studio Krafton that aims to appeal to players in Asia, where The Sims never gained popularity — inZOI, a new life-simulation video game, gets more realistic and more multicultural — Most people have fantasized about inhabiting someone else's life.
Bloomberg: How Klarna's Walmart deal ahead of its IPO put long-simmering tensions between Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski and Affirm CEO Max Levchin on public display — Even by Sebastian Siemiatkowski's standards, it's been a wild month. — The chief executive officer of buy now …
Ryan Gould / Bloomberg: PE firm Clearlake agrees to acquire and take private Dun & Bradstreet, one of Wall Street's oldest data and analytics providers, for $7.7B including debt — The private equity firm will pay $9.15 per share in cash for Jacksonville, Florida-based Dun & Bradstreet, according to a statement Monday …
Bloomberg: Berlin-based Amboss, which makes study guide apps for medical students and online databases for clinicians, raised €240M, sources say at an €800M+ valuation — Kirkbi, Lightrock and M&G Investments joined a €240 million ($260 million) financing round into German medical startup Amboss …
Steven Church / Bloomberg: FTX tells a US bankruptcy judge it will make the first payment to its main creditors on May 30 using the $11.4B cash hoard it has collected since shutting down — Former cryptocurrency firm FTX will start paying its main creditors at the end of May using a cash hoard of $11.4 billion the company has collected since its shut down.
Bloomberg: Source: the new combined entity housing xAI and X is called XAI Holdings and is valued at more than $100B, not including debt — - New joint entity is valued at over $100 billion, person says — X, xAI already partnered on data sharing and Grok distribution
Bloomberg: Source: hackers broke into Oracle's Cerner servers sometime after January 22 and stole patient data to extort US medical providers; the FBI is investigating — - The FBI is investigating the incident from earlier this year — Hacker used stolen logins to access old servers, Oracle said
Bloomberg: An appeals court agrees with India's antitrust regulator that Google's app store billing policy was unfair and restrictive but cuts the fine from $110M to $25M — An appeals court Friday agreed with India's antitrust regulator that Google's app store billing policy was unfair and restrictive for developers …
Debby Wu / Bloomberg: Taiwan is investigating 11 Chinese tech firms, including SMIC, which is being probed for allegedly poaching engineers to access the island's advanced chip tech — Taiwan is investigating whether China's leading chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. illegally poached local engineers …
Satviki Sanjay / Bloomberg: EY: Indians collectively spent 1.1T hours on their smartphones in 2024, averaging five hours daily, with ~70% of the time on social media, gaming, and videos — Indians collectively spent 1.1 trillion hours staring at their smartphones in 2024, according to management consultant EY …
Newley Purnell / Bloomberg: Meta VP of Asia Pacific Dan Neary is leaving for personal reasons; the Singapore-based executive joined in 2013, and Meta now has ~1.1B users in the region — Dan Neary, the company's vice president for the region, assumed the role in 2013 and oversaw the rapid expansion of the company's user base …
Samuel Stolton / Bloomberg: An EU confidential decision, now public, shows the EU pressed Meta to create a separate version of Facebook Marketplace or let users access rival services — In the confidential decision from November made public on Wednesday, regulators also urged Meta to not use non-public data …
Rachel Yeo / Bloomberg: Chinese AI startup SenseTime reports FY 2024 revenue up 11% YoY to ~$524M, below ~$620M est., and a ~$592M net loss, above ~$551M est., as the AI race heats up — China's SenseTime Group Inc. reported a wider-than-estimated net loss for the full year as the AI tools developer continues …
Bloomberg: Bain Capital agrees to acquire a majority stake in Italian IT company Namirial from private equity firm Ambienta, sources say valuing Namirial at €1.1B — Bain Capital agreed to acquire a majority stake in Namirial SpA from private equity firm Ambienta. … It didn't provide financial terms.
Bloomberg: Sources: companies like Nvidia and many governments are trying to persuade Trump's team to loosen incoming AI chip export rules, known as the AI diffusion rule — - Nvidia and Oracle pushing for full repeal of AI diffusion rule — Companies must start complying with global restrictions May 15
Bloomberg: Internal TikTok memo: Blake Chandlee, who oversaw TikTok's ad sales globally, is moving to an advisory role; TikTok faces an April 5 deadline for a US sale — A TikTok executive responsible for its core advertising business is stepping aside as part of a reorganization …
Bloomberg: A profile of veteran Googler Liz Reid, who became Head of Search in March 2024 and rolled out major updates like AI Overviews, as Google competes with ChatGPT — Big changes are underway for the internet's most popular product, and Google (and the web) may never be the same.
Katie Roof / Bloomberg: CB Insights: Q1 2025 had 11 startup sales worth $1B+ or more, totaling a record $54.5B, up from two acquisitions worth $1B+ in Q1 2024, totaling $3.2B — Google's $32 billion Wiz deal is part of a surge of tech M&A. — Startup acquisitions have boomed so far this year …
Henry Ren / Bloomberg: SAP's stock rose ~1.6% to give it a ~€314B market cap, passing Danish weight-loss drug maker Novo as Europe's most valuable public company; SAP is up 42% YTD — German software developer SAP SE unseated Danish weight-loss drug maker Novo Nordisk A/S as Europe's most-valuable public company.
Bloomberg: Source: South Korean AI inference chip startup FuriosaAI rejected Meta's $800M takeover offer, opting to grow the business as an independent company instead — Korean chip startup FuriosaAI has turned down an $800 million takeover offer from Meta Platforms Inc., choosing instead to grow …
Bloomberg: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to “maximize the value of its business”, and co-founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki steps down; 23andMe was valued at $3.5B in June 2021 — The Silicon Valley-based firm commenced Chapter 11 proceedings in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Missouri to …
Muyao Shen / Bloomberg: Retail investors often bear the brunt of losses in the Solana blockchain's memecoin market, which is rife with insider trading cabals, rug pulls, and “sniping” — Rug pulls. Sniping. Trading “cabals.” The niche world of memecoins on the Solana blockchain is rife with danger …
Margi Murphy / Bloomberg: Research shows a surge in the popularity of deepfake porn services, with the 10 most popular “nudifying” websites receiving 18M views in January 2025 alone — An introduction to the Levittown podcast. Plus: Another billionaire's space dreams.
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg: After leadership changes and an internal studio closure, Netflix aims to refine its gaming strategy, focusing on smaller-scale games rather than big-budget ones — The company will focus on four areas: narrative, mainstream, party and kids — Hi everyone.
Ashley Carman / Bloomberg: As Spotify pushes its new video monetization program, sexually explicit videos have appeared on its top podcast charts, violating the company's terms of use — The sexually explicit videos, which Spotify doesn't allow, have shown up alongside some of the most popular podcasts on the service
Bloomberg: A profile of Jed McCaleb, the billionaire who was behind Mt. Gox and XRP, as his aerospace startup Vast looks to build a private space station with SpaceX — Crafting and launching a space station that can keep humans alive comfortably in orbit is no easy feat. — Jed McCaleb made a fortune in cryptocurrency.
David Pan / Bloomberg: The crypto-lending industry, nearly wiped out in the last bear market, is staging a comeback as Cantor Fitzgerald launches a $2B Bitcoin financing business — The last major bear market nearly wiped out the entire crypto-lending industry. Now, it's staging a major comeback …
Bloomberg: A profile of StubHub CEO Eric Baker, who, according to the company's S-1, holds 5.2% of Class A shares but controls over 90% of the votes through Class B shares — This time it isn't concert tickets Eric Baker is selling. It's shares of StubHub Holdings Inc., the company he co-founded and has owned on and off for a quarter century.
Sidhartha Shukla / Bloomberg: Coinbase and others eye India comeback as regulators tease pivot; Electric Capital: India had 12% of crypto devs in 2024, only behind the US, up from 4% in 2018 — Major crypto players are returning to India in a calculated bet that regulators may ease restrictions on digital-asset trading.
Gary Rivlin / Bloomberg: A book excerpt from AI Valley details the 2024 mass defection of staff at Inflection AI, which seemed to be thriving but faced scaling challenges, to Microsoft — An excerpt from AI Valley tells the story of why the staff at Inflection AI, which seemed to be thriving, defected en masse to Microsoft in 2024.
Bloomberg: European Central Bank Chief Economist Philip Lane says Europe needs a digital euro to avoid rising stablecoin risks and reduce reliance on US payment firms — Europe needs a digital currency to safeguard against threats from new forms of money like stablecoins, and reduce reliance …
Bloomberg: A look at Chinese AI startup Manycore, which develops spatial design software, has filed for a Hong Kong IPO, and reported a $58.3M loss from Q1 to Q3 2024 — China's AI startup Manycore Tech Inc. is keen to grow its global presence, despite tensions between Washington and Beijing presenting …
Luz Ding / Bloomberg: Temu-owner PDD reports Q4 revenue up 24% YoY to ~$15.3B, below est., and net income up 18% YoY to ~$3.8B, after intensifying domestic competition and US tariffs — The e-commerce company reported revenue of 110.6 billion yuan ($15.3 billion) for the December quarter. Net income was up 18% to 27.4 billion yuan.
Bloomberg: Huawei unveils the 6.3" Pura X, which folds to a square clamshell with a 3.5" display, its first flagship running HarmonyOS 5, launching in China for ~$1,036 — The 6.3-inch Pura X folds in half to a square clamshell with a 3.5-inch display on the exterior and was introduced …
Mark Bergen / Bloomberg: How Nvidia, SK Hynix, TSMC, and ASML, with a combined $4T+ market cap, dominate the AI supply chain, each having an 80% to 100% market share in their fields — Since ChatGPT arrived, Nvidia and its key manufacturing partners have dominated the market for AI chips. Will it last?
Michael R. Bloomberg / Bloomberg: US schools spending billions on laptops, an idea supported by technologists and computer makers, has led to students' worsening social skills and test scores — Technology should supplement, not substitute, traditional teaching methods. — Over the past two decades …
Bloomberg: A profile of Skydio, the US' largest drone maker, after its first batch of drones proved disappointing in Ukraine and it competes with Chinese makers like DJI — Drones are getting smarter, deadlier and more indispensable. Skydio believes America should make its own.
Anto Antony / Bloomberg: Bakkt names ex-SoftBank rainmaker Akshay Naheta as co-CEO to help turn around the struggling US crypto trading and custody platform; BKKT is down 62%+ in 2025 — Naheta will also be part of the company's board and will work with Andy Main, the firm's current CEO, according to a statement …