The US awards $1.5B to GlobalFoundries from the $52B CHIPS Act to build a new fab in Malta, New York, and to expand its Fab 8 plant, plus $1.6B in loans (Drew Harwell/Washington Post)

Drew Harwell / Washington Post:
The US awards $1.5B to GlobalFoundries from the $52B CHIPS Act to build a new fab in Malta, New York, and to expand its Fab 8 plant, plus $1.6B in loans  —  The massive grant, part of the Chips Act, will help the U.S. establish a homegrown supply for some of the most critical components of modern life.

Hands-on with Khan Academy's ChatGPT-powered AI tutoring bot Khanmigo, which frequently makes basic arithmetic errors, as Khan Academy works to improve accuracy (Matt Barnum/Wall Street Journal)

Matt Barnum / Wall Street Journal:
Hands-on with Khan Academy's ChatGPT-powered AI tutoring bot Khanmigo, which frequently makes basic arithmetic errors, as Khan Academy works to improve accuracy  —  Khanmigo, a ChatGPT-powered bot, made frequent calculation errors during a Journal reporter's test

Apple Store sources: Vision Pro returns are between average and above average compared to other products; in-store demo conversion rate is as high as 10% to 15% (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Apple Store sources: Vision Pro returns are between average and above average compared to other products; in-store demo conversion rate is as high as 10% to 15%  —  The Apple Vision Pro has now been available for two weeks — and some of Apple's most dedicated customers are returning the device to get back their $3,500.

A look at Nvidia's AI startup investments through Nventures and its corporate development team, deals that come with intangibles, like access to research teams (Richard Nieva/Forbes)

Richard Nieva / Forbes:
A look at Nvidia's AI startup investments through Nventures and its corporate development team, deals that come with intangibles, like access to research teams  —  The trillion-dollar chipmaker has done over two dozen deals, through its Nventures investing arm and corporate development team.

How tech workers, spurred by geopolitical threats, are embracing battlefield tech; PitchBook: VCs invested $108B in defense tech companies between 2021 and 2023 (Washington Post)

Washington Post:
How tech workers, spurred by geopolitical threats, are embracing battlefield tech; PitchBook: VCs invested $108B in defense tech companies between 2021 and 2023  —  After a decade of building the future, tech's new guard is going back to the American past — spurring a funding frenzy in defense technology

Sources: the UK, the US, and other allies are working to provide Ukraine with thousands of new AI-enabled drones that could swarm Russian targets simultaneously (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
Sources: the UK, the US, and other allies are working to provide Ukraine with thousands of new AI-enabled drones that could swarm Russian targets simultaneously  —  - Technology could help Ukraine overwhelm some Russian targets  — Germany's Scholz calls on EU allies to increase Ukraine aid

Despite Google and OpenAI's promises, Gemini and ChatGPT appear to have almost no safeguards against creating AI disinfo for the 2024 US presidential election (Maxwell Zeff/Gizmodo)

Maxwell Zeff / Gizmodo:
Despite Google and OpenAI's promises, Gemini and ChatGPT appear to have almost no safeguards against creating AI disinfo for the 2024 US presidential election  —  Google and OpenAI's chatbots have almost no safeguards against creating AI disinformation for the 2024 presidential election.

Q&A with Figma CEO Dylan Field on managing the company after the failed sale to Adobe, maintaining culture, using the $1B breakup fee, expansion plans, and more (Alex Heath/The Verge)

Alex Heath / The Verge:
Q&A with Figma CEO Dylan Field on managing the company after the failed sale to Adobe, maintaining culture, using the $1B breakup fee, expansion plans, and more  —  Figma has a billion dollars and big plans for expansion as it emerges from the acquisition with its ‘foot on the gas.’  —  Happy Friday.

Ahead of the 2024 US election, Anthropic is testing Prompt Shield, which will redirect users asking political topics to "authoritative" sources of voting info (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Ahead of the 2024 US election, Anthropic is testing Prompt Shield, which will redirect users asking political topics to “authoritative” sources of voting info  —  Ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Anthropic, the well-funded AI startup, is testing a technology to detect …

An interview with Kurt Wagner on his new book Battle for the Bird, a Jack Dorsey biography morphed into a deep dive on Twitter's tumultuous transition to X (Zoë Schiffer/Platformer)

Zoë Schiffer / Platformer:
An interview with Kurt Wagner on his new book Battle for the Bird, a Jack Dorsey biography morphed into a deep dive on Twitter's tumultuous transition to X  —  Was it Jack Dorsey or Elon Musk?  Kurt Wagner and Zoë Schiffer, authors of two new books on the subject, interview each other about what they learned

PitchBook: Q4 2023 saw only 12 crypto exits, the lowest number since Q4 2020 and consistent with the "low-level activity seen throughout 2023" (TechCrunch)

TechCrunch:
PitchBook: Q4 2023 saw only 12 crypto exits, the lowest number since Q4 2020 and consistent with the “low-level activity seen throughout 2023”  —  The global venture capital market is enduring a long period of limited exits.  Startups are staying private longer …

TSMC rises ~8% in its first post-Lunar New Year trading session, reaching a record $575B market cap and passing Visa as the world's 12th most valuable company (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
TSMC rises ~8% in its first post-Lunar New Year trading session, reaching a record $575B market cap and passing Visa as the world's 12th most valuable company  —  - Global AI activity should benefit Taiwan's largest company  — TSMC is the main contract chipmaker to Nvidia and Apple

A US judge approves Genesis' plan to sell ~$1.6B in Grayscale crypto trust shares to repay creditors, including 35M GBTC shares, worth ~$1.38B (Dietrich Knauth/Reuters)

Dietrich Knauth / Reuters:
A US judge approves Genesis' plan to sell ~$1.6B in Grayscale crypto trust shares to repay creditors, including 35M GBTC shares, worth ~$1.38B  —  Bankrupt crypto lender Genesis Global on Wednesday received permission from a U.S. court to sell about $1.6 billion in Grayscale cryptocurrency trust shares …

Sources: Italian app developer Bending Spoons raised $155M from Baillie Gifford and more at a $2.6B valuation, after raising $100M in 2023, and seeks M&A deals (Daniele Lepido/Bloomberg)

Daniele Lepido / Bloomberg:
Sources: Italian app developer Bending Spoons raised $155M from Baillie Gifford and more at a $2.6B valuation, after raising $100M in 2023, and seeks M&A deals  —  - Italian app developer has raised $155 million in new funding  — Company on track to generate $500 million in sales this year

Prospects of a wide-ranging AI bill in the US this year are rapidly dimming, despite Senator Chuck Schumer's push to put AI regulation at the top of the agenda (Brian Fung/CNN)

Brian Fung / CNN:
Prospects of a wide-ranging AI bill in the US this year are rapidly dimming, despite Senator Chuck Schumer's push to put AI regulation at the top of the agenda  —  Artificial intelligence is already sowing chaos and confusion in US elections — from a bogus robocall impersonating President Joe Biden …