Friday, April 19, 2024

Web design and hosting platform Webflow acquires Intellimize, which raised $50M and offers AI-powered webpage personalization, a source says for "eight-figures" (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Web design and hosting platform Webflow acquires Intellimize, which raised $50M and offers AI-powered webpage personalization, a source says for “eight-figures”  —  Webflow, a web design and hosting platform that's raised over $330 million at a $4 billion valuation, is expanding into a new sector: marketing optimization.



Meta is restricting certain election-related keywords for Meta AI in India due to ongoing elections; Meta started testing its AI chatbot in India last week (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Meta is restricting certain election-related keywords for Meta AI in India due to ongoing elections; Meta started testing its AI chatbot in India last week  —  Last week, Meta started testing its AI chatbot in India across WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger.



Sources: Mistral plans to raise €500M at an over €5B valuation from multiple VCs and wealth funds, after raising ~€400M at a €2B valuation in December 2023 (Financial Times)

Financial Times:
Sources: Mistral plans to raise €500M at an over €5B valuation from multiple VCs and wealth funds, after raising ~€400M at a €2B valuation in December 2023  —  One-year-old French start-up approached by multiple investors who view it as Europe's answer to OpenAI



Thursday, April 18, 2024

Twitch plans to roll out its TikTok-style discovery feed later in April, letting users scroll clips and livestreams, after testing the feature for a year (Emma Roth/The Verge)

Emma Roth / The Verge:
Twitch plans to roll out its TikTok-style discovery feed later in April, letting users scroll clips and livestreams, after testing the feature for a year  —  After nearly a year of testing, Twitch's new TikTok-style discovery feed will finally roll out to all users later this month.



French B2B software company Planisware raised €278M in a Paris IPO; its shares jumped up to 33% to ~€21 on its debut, giving Planisware a €1.1B valuation (Thyagaraju Adinarayan/Bloomberg)

Thyagaraju Adinarayan / Bloomberg:
French B2B software company Planisware raised €278M in a Paris IPO; its shares jumped up to 33% to ~€21 on its debut, giving Planisware a €1.1B valuation  —  - Stock opens at €21.01 versus €16 per share IPO price  — France joins nascent recovery in European IPOs after drought



Apple plans to spend $250M+ on its regional hub in Singapore, including expanding its campus later in 2024, as Tim Cook visits Vietnam and other Asian countries (Amanda Lee/Wall Street Journal)

Amanda Lee / Wall Street Journal:
Apple plans to spend $250M+ on its regional hub in Singapore, including expanding its campus later in 2024, as Tim Cook visits Vietnam and other Asian countries  —  Apple seeks to diversify its supply chain amid rising U.S.-China tensions and global concerns of decoupling trade



Sunday, April 14, 2024

As Netflix's new film chief Dan Lin takes charge, the company aims to shift its film strategy to focus on audience appeal and cost efficiency (Nicole Sperling/New York Times)

Nicole Sperling / New York Times:
As Netflix's new film chief Dan Lin takes charge, the company aims to shift its film strategy to focus on audience appeal and cost efficiency  —  Dan Lin, the streaming service's new film chief, wants to produce a more varied slate of movies to better appeal to the array of interests among subscribers.



LinkedIn: the number of companies with a designated head of AI position or a chief AI officer (CAIO) has almost tripled globally in the past five years (Emma Jacobs/Financial Times)

Emma Jacobs / Financial Times:
LinkedIn: the number of companies with a designated head of AI position or a chief AI officer (CAIO) has almost tripled globally in the past five years  —  As boards grapple with the opportunity and risk of generative artificial intelligence, companies are leaning into a new role: the chief AI officer.



Source: Google's new Pixel 9 series, next-gen Pixel Fold, and 5G tablet that is under development will feature a new modem that supports satellite connectivity (Kamila Wojciechowska/Android Authority)

Kamila Wojciechowska / Android Authority:
Source: Google's new Pixel 9 series, next-gen Pixel Fold, and 5G tablet that is under development will feature a new modem that supports satellite connectivity  —  The Pixel 9 is set to improve one of the lacking aspects of its predecessors and gain an useful feature.  —  •



A look at chip design companies like Oppstar that aim to push Malaysia, the world's sixth-largest semiconductor exporter, to the higher end of the value chain (Tsubasa Suruga/Nikkei Asia)

Tsubasa Suruga / Nikkei Asia:
A look at chip design companies like Oppstar that aim to push Malaysia, the world's sixth-largest semiconductor exporter, to the higher end of the value chain  —  Former Intel engineers attempt to push Penang to higher end of value chain  —  PENANG, Malaysia — When chip design company Oppstar listed …



Electricians are flocking to regions around the US to build data centers, as AI shapes up to be an economy-bending force that creates boom towns (New York Times)

New York Times : Electricians are flocking to regions around the US to build data centers, as AI shapes up to be an economy-bending force...